Summer 2018 Season Preview

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Well folks, the spring season’s beginning to wrap up, meaning it’s time to look forward to our upcoming summer slate, and see what new anime delicacies we’ll be devouring this time. Once again, I’ll be frank – the summer is looking to be a really weak season, following up on a spring that was also an extremely weak season. This isn’t the “new normal,” and this isn’t simply a reflection of my own more exacting standards (okay, maybe it’s slightly a reflection of that) – good anime seasons come and go, and the unfortunate fact is we’ve just run into a couple seasons in a row with a relative dearth of noteworthy projects. After an incredibly strong winter that simultaneously offered Violet Evergarden, After the Rain, A Place Further than the Universe, and Laid-Back Camp, both spring and summer seem destined to struggle.

Fortunately, My Hero Academia is still running, and it’s not like summer is a total wasteland – we’ve got Banana Fish to hold down the “prestige adaptation” slot, and perhaps most importantly, Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer’s author Satoshi Mizukami is writing one show himself. Plus, there’s always backlog – why suffer through the dubious fruits of whatever happens to be arbitrarily streaming at the moment when we can always watch actually good shows from the past? I might be professionally obligated to indulge fandom’s recency bias, but you all can be free! Go! Set sail! Embrace that freedom, and watch something good!

Anyway. Moving on. As usual, I won’t run down every single upcoming show here – you can check out a site like anichart for a list of general synopses, so there won’t be any of that here. Instead, I’ll just be highlighting the shows I personally have a reason to feel excited about, along with an explanation of whatever it is that caught my interest – great staff, beloved source material, or maybe just a really great trailer. Starting with my most-anticipated properties, let’s buckle up and see what the summer has in store!

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ef – A Tale of Memories – Episode 12

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It’s time at last to conclude our journey through ef – A Tale of Memories. This has been a very intriguing ride of a show, all told. Personally, I found its unique combination of melodramatic storytelling and highly interpretive visual design a little too impersonal to be all that emotionally moving – it fell into that issue I sometimes feel Ikuhara shows face, where the thematic lines and visual storytelling are so divorced from immediate human experience that it’s hard to invest in the characters’ struggles.

That said, I also generally liked ef’s characters, and found them to be compelling and multifaceted people. And even if it didn’t facilitate a greater emotional connection with the narrative, ef’s visual experiments were always pretty compelling for their own sake, offering both uniquely pretty compositions and plenty of clever storytelling tricks. Shin Oonuma clearly has a unique eye that has informed but is distinct from the modern Shaft aesthetic, and while not all of this show’s ideas work, the overarching effect is often impressive and never boring. Ef is also a show that leans heavily on its big dramatic turns, so with just one episode to go, I’m ready for beauty and tears from start to finish. Let’s close out this sad little tale of living for your art and suffering for your love!

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Ojamajo Doremi – Episode 29

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Let’s get right the heck back on board with Ojamajo Doremi! Last episode wasn’t necessarily a highlight, but it did establish a reasonable platform for the show’s drama going forward, integrating the whole “bad item” deal into Doremi’s more emotionally-founded conflicts in a very natural way. That was definitely one of the main things I was looking for in this arc – some way to marry the potentially interesting but emotionally removed Pureleine conflicts to the inherently compelling character drama Doremi already possessed. Doremi seems to be at its weakest when it leans on fantastical genre fundamentals like this Pureleine stuff, but the Majo Ruka arc also demonstrated that even in larger conflicts which don’t themselves possess that much emotional resonance, individual character struggles like Ai’s harmonica drama can still shine. With the overall Pureleine conceit and even the team’s regrettable new mascot pretty much settled into the show’s usual tone, it feels like the episodes from here on out could go basically anywhere. Let’s see where Doremi and the Ojamajos take us today!

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Spring 2018 – Week 9 in Review

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This week in anime was dominated by the shows that tend to be the benchwarmers, as both Legend of the Galactic Heroes and Hinamatsuri stepped up while Megalo Box and My Hero Academia each settled for more conventional episodes. That was totally fine by me – to be honest, the kind of things that Galactic Heroes and Hinamatsuri are good at appeal to me far more than the things Megalo Box and MHA generally succeed in, so I was happy to see them offer some new highlights. Hinamatsuri is just such an idiosyncratic thing, defined by a comic sensibility that clearly stands out among anime comedies, and matching that sense of humor with a confidence that lets it pull off eight minute segments dedicated to single extended jokes. Let’s start off with those wacky psychic shenanigans and run this week down!

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Why It Works: Junk Dog Vs. Soldier, Part Two

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Today I finish up my breakdown of the Joe versus Aragaki fight, covering just a few of the many smart structural and aesthetic decisions that made this fight work. The show hasn’t pulled off another episode this good since, but I’ve got plenty of faith that the last act will be a stunner. Megalo Box has just continued to impress me at every turn, and at this point it only needs to stick the landing.

Junk Dog Vs. Soldier, Part Two

Princess Tutu – Episode 9

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Tutu’s ninth episode opens with another fresh fairy tale, following up on last episode’s Fakir focus by humanizing yet another key member of Tutu’s cast. As we pan away from an image of a scale in the background, our narrator tells us that “once upon a time there was a girl who loved to dance very much. The girl made the mistake of putting on a pair of red shoes that would force her to dance for eternity once they were on. The girl continued to dance day and night. Oh my! This is a different story. But perhaps it is not so different after all…”

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Izetta: The Last Witch – Review

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I’ve got a new review for everyone today, this time of 2016’s kinda disappointing Izetta: The Last Witch. Izetta is one of those shows that’s just good enough to make you frustrated it’s not actually good, but I had a fair enough time with it all the same, and wouldn’t mind more of these inventive, middle-caliber action adventures. Some shows are actually a struggle to get through, but Izetta was pretty much always somewhat entertaining, and sometimes even pretty great. Here’s my review:

Izetta: The Last Witch

Chihayafuru S2 – Episode 12

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Our journey through Chihayafuru continues! The last episode was more of a role-filler than a standout, but it did a fine job of both articulating and celebrating just how much Tsutomu’s research helps the team, an unglamorous role that doesn’t really lend itself to pulse-pounding narrative drama. And having emphasized the close bonds of Chihaya’s original five teammates, those teammates are now all on the field at last, fighting in the semifinals of the friggin’ national tournament. This is the closest this team has ever gotten to the top, and possibly the closest they’ll ever get, so I’m guessing every match from here out will be its own reward – a very close competition designed to thrill purely based on its tactical interplay, not just fit some role in a larger narrative. And with Chihaya now facing down the woman Yumin beat to challenge the Queen, we’re guaranteed at least one desperate and extremely high-level karuta battle. The preamble has been ambled and the preliminary matches liminaried – let’s buckle in for a high-intensity episode of CHIHAYAFURU!

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The Promised Neverland – Volume 1

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Even from the cover of the first volume, it’s clear that The Promised Neverland isn’t your standard Shonen Jump property. The base art style favors delicate, almost wobbly linework and evocative scribbles over the bold splashes of black and white favored by, say, My Hero Academia or Bleach. The cover is confident in this fraying delicacy, happy to let a clearly defined spiraling staircase fade into half-imagined detail, and in doing so evoking the visual style of something like a children’s picture book. This doesn’t feel like the steady work of a Jump veteran; this feels like the first manga of a dedicated illustrator, perfectly suiting its fairy tale storytelling.

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Spring 2018 – Week 8 in Review

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Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Week in Review. With Legend of the Galactic Heroes taking the week off, my week in anime lost twenty-five percent of its volume, but worked hard to make up for in quality what it lacked in quantity. This week’s My Hero Academia was mostly just “solid original material (plus one highlight), adapted competently,” but both Hinamatsuri and Megalo Box knocked it out of the park, demonstrating both their consistent strengths and a variety of new tricks. Those two make for a pretty weird combination, but between them they cover an oddly exhaustive range of the stuff I look for in anime – stylish action, tactically-minded sports narratives, warm comedy, charming character pieces, etc. I’m basically just missing “auteur-directed,” “strong romance,” “themey-wemey show,” and “psychological drama” on my bingo sheet, and Legend of the Galactic Heroes is generally happy to hold down the theme fort. The anime is good and even these three shows have offered me plenty to talk about, so let’s get right down to another week in review!

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