Spring 2018 – First Half in Review

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Alright folks, let’s all buckle in for the spring season’s first half in review! Usually, this is the time where I rank all the things I’m actively watching, using this informal halfway point marker to plot out how I feel about the season as a whole. But at this point, I just don’t watch enough airing shows to make that feel meaningful, and I haven’t for a while. That’s not to say I’m watching any less anime – I’m actually watching more anime than ever, it’s just scattered across airing shows, full releases for ANN, and independent projects for you guys. And personally, I’m significantly happier this way – keeping up with shows just because they’re hits wasn’t ever very fun for me, arguing about whether some megahit is great or terrible is mostly exhausting to me, and cutting down to the shows I’m genuinely really enjoying has led to a far more positive relationship with anime in general.

Unfortunately, all that reflection and self-growth doesn’t really help the old-fashioned, extremely arbitrary First Half in Review. So for at least this edition, I’m going to keep what works and toss what doesn’t really make sense, and run through some overall thoughts on my shows so far without implying those thoughts are any kind of ranking or evaluation. I’ve never been a person who cares to evaluate what makes an 8.74/10 show better than an 8.72/10 show – I want to know what makes either of those shows interesting in their own right, and hopefully me digging at that is a little interesting for you too. So let’s start with My Hero Academia for the hell of it and run this season down!

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Why It Works: Oh Right, You Guys Are Here Too: The Unsung Heroes of Class 1-B

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Sometimes this job is so damn great. I had a lot of fun with this week’s Why It Works, as I looked back to catalog pretty much everything My Hero Academia’s second-most-heroic class roster have accomplished. As it turns out, the answer is Not Much, and a pretty hilarious Not Much at that. I hope you enjoy the piece!

Oh Right, You Guys Are Here Too

Flip Flappers – Episode 12

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Flip Flappers’ twelfth episode opens with Papika in an entirely new setting, trapped in a strange cave with bars over its entrance. Don’t expect any airtight explanation for this situation – we’re visiting the purgatory where she apparently spent time after colliding with Mimi in the past, but that’s about all the justification we’re gonna get for Papika’s age regression and strange current self. Like Yayaka’s nefarious organization, this setting underlines Flip Flappers’ clear lack of passion for narrative connective tissue; unlike Yayaka’s benefactors, Papika’s origin story actually is a pretty key element of this narrative, and so this cavalier handwaving certainly smarts. It essentially feels like a reprise of Penguindrum’s cages, devices the story placed a few of its characters for some nebulous amount of time because damnit, we gotta pull this story together somehow.

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Chihayafuru S2 – Episode 9

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Today we’re diving back into Chihayafuru! I was expecting last week’s episode to get us into the meat of the team tournament, but instead it used the first round more to celebrate the individual strengths of all our leads in a very low-stakes competitive situation. The charming team of ostensible foreigners were a fun group, and I appreciated how Tsutomu has naturally settled into a support role for the team, but I’m frankly ready for some blood. This annual team tournament is perhaps the only time Chihayafuru can fully make use of its ensemble, team-focused setup – every member of the team is simultaneously crucial here, leading to matches that can sometimes struggle to highlight everyone, but are always rich with drama worth mining. The regional matches leading up to that showdown with Retro were some of the most exciting the show has pulled off yet, and considering how well the show has built up Chihaya’s teammates over these thirty-some episodes, pretty much every team match episode feels like a direct payoff for all the training they’ve suffered. With the opening match cleared and Tsukuba having already gotten his chance to shine, I’m ready for the original five to turn some heads. Let’s get right to the action!

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Hunter x Hunter – Volume 35

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Togashi, what the hell are you doing.

I had assumed, upon reading and critiquing Hunter x Hunter’s thirty-fourth volume, that I’d essentially covered the gist of Togashi’s schtique – his tendency towards creating impossibly convoluted tactical setups, and his skill for resolving them as a series of dramatically coherent action beats. The fight between Chrollo and Hisoka was essentially that instinct in isolation, split between half a volume of expository notes on Chrollo’s powers and half a volume of evaluation time “I hope you got all that” payoff. Surely the complexity would let up just a tad for the next volume?

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Laid-Back Camp – Review

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I’ve got another full show review up today, this time covering last season’s coziest of camping exposes. Laid-Back Camp was a great time, offering a unique blend of different styles of slice of life, and nailing its more atmospheric material basically every time. Not a perfect show, but a pretty perfect slice of comfort food all the same.

You can check out my review over at ANN.

Spring 2018 – Week 5 in Review

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Welp, looks like it’s about time for another Week in Review. The spring season is pretty much just holding steady at the moment, with the action highlights and Galactic Heroes maintaining their usual appeal while Hinamatsuri trudges along the best it can. My schedule is turning out to be as light as I expected, and frankly, if I had some other well-written character drama to replace it, Hinamatsuri would be right out. That said, I’m not truly in any hurry to pick up more shows; this being a weak season also means I was able to find time for stuff like catching up on Violet Evergarden, which I’m very thankful for. Even if the actual airing shows disappoint, any season where I’m personally watching through productions like Princess Tutu and Chihayafuru can’t be that bad. But let’s put aside the paeans to backlog for now, and run down this week’s newest contenders!

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Why It Works: The Tactical Titans of Legend of the Galactic Heroes

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For this week’s Crunchyroll article, I dove into the very different worldviews of Yang and Reinhard, discussing how their respective upbringings very clearly influence their views of not just their countries, but their own potential, and the way humans and history interact. It’s really fun to see such an ostensibly “great men make history”-aligned narrative freely admit that we’re all products of our environment, but that’s basically the perspective that makes Galactic Heroes so good in general. The show’s a treat, I’m having a great time with it, and I hope you enjoy the piece!

The Tactical Titans of Legend of the Galactic Heroes

Princess Tutu – Episode 7

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Princess Tutu’s seventh episode begins with Mytho once again expressing how Ahiru’s actions have made him genuinely afraid of Princess Tutu. A stark profile shot illustrates how Tutu exists within Mytho’s world, an ominous figure with a menacing smile, pressing a heart shard upon him as he fearfully retreats. All stories are artifacts bound by their teller’s perspectives, and from Mytho’s perspective, Tutu is indeed a terrifying presence. Though Ahiru attempts to editorialize, desperate to assert the nobility of Princess Tutu, her words ultimately fade into a helpless quacking. Regardless of her feelings or actions, Ahiru rarely has the power to assert the definitive interpretation of her own narrative.

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Chihayafuru S2 – Episode 8

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It’s time for Nationals, everyone! After an extremely close loss in the regional tournament against their fiercest rivals, Chihaya and the gang are setting off for the national-level team tournament for the very, er, second time. The last time this tournament came about, Tsutomu and Kana were barely integrated into the team, and Chihaya’s collapse due to injury prevented the group from really getting anywhere. That collapse was a fairly natural narrative twist at the time; after all, Kana and Tsutomu weren’t nearly good enough to compete on a national level then, and their arcs needed a great deal more fleshing out before Chihaya’s crew could compete as a tactically cohesive group of five.

In contrast, Chihaya’s current team is composed of characters who’ve all survived individual arcs, all committed and recommitted to karuta, and all grown closer over time. This tournament is no longer dramatically hamstrung by the imbalanced dynamic of Chihaya’s team, and given this is the biggest team tournament they’ll experience this particular year, it seems very likely that the story will now embrace all the match-by-match theater it skipped over last time. Chihayafuru has essentially set up its dominoes to allow this tournament to be payoff after payoff all the way through, and I’m very excited to see just what’s in store. Let’s settle in for another episode of Chihayafuru!

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