Violet Evergarden – Review

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I finally took another stab at Violet Evergarden this week, and boy was I glad I did. With a better understanding of what the show was actually trying to do, even its first episodes felt much stronger this time, and the later highlights were absolutely breathtaking. Ultimately, Evergarden turned out to be a brilliantly realized mixture of intimate character development and larger reflections on self-expression and identity, peppered with individual vignettes capable of staggering beauty and emotional acuity. The Kyoto Animation golden age continues apace.

Violet Evergarden

Spring 2018 – Week 4 in Review

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Well well well. Here we are again. Wednesday has arrived, and as you all know, the astral spheres have clearly designated this of all days to be the chosen day of seasonal anime reflection. And on the third day, God watched Naruto, and it was good.

As far as this week in particular goes, the anime is doing pretty all right at the moment. This continues to be a season that’s sorely lacking in my kinds of character dramas or theme pieces, but fortunately, its top contenders in other genres are impressive enough to keep my interest anyway. My Hero Academia absolutely killed it this week, and while Megalo Box wasn’t at its best, it’s still maintaining a polish of execution and sturdiness of storytelling that make it an easy watch. And as long as I have Yang Wen-li mildly commenting on the inherent inhumanity of war, I’ll probably be okay. The cartoons are doing pretty alright, and I’m eager to talk about them. Let’s start with some megalo boxing and run this week down!

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Blame! – Review

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Aaand here’s my other late review, of another Polygon-Nihei combination. Blame! certainly wasn’t a great film, but it was still an enjoyable experience, and most importantly, it absolutely maintained the appeal of the comic. Certainly worth a watch.

Blame!

After the Rain – Review

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This one’s from last week, but I was rushing so much to do other writing then that I never reposted it here. Anyway! I reviewed After the Rain, the best show of last season (or so I thought until finally catching up on Evergarden). It was very good, for a variety of reasons. Here are those reasons for you:

After the Rain

Why It Works: Hinamatsuri’s Comedic Timing

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It unsurprisingly didn’t take long for Hinamatsuri to pop up in my Why It Works columns. The show’s pretty much a comedy marvel in all respects, and also very endearing as a found-family drama besides, making it basically the ideal show for a huge mark like me. The fact that its jokes generally aren’t that surprising only really underlines the strength of their delivery; pacing really can work wonders, and it’s certainly working wonders here. I hope you enjoy the piece!

Hinamatsuri’s Comedic Timing is So Snappy It’ll Break Your Neck

ef – A Tale of Memories – Episode 11

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Let’s roll on into the next ef – A Tale of Memories! There’s usually a pretty significant break on my end between watching these episodes, but right now I’m carrying on the momentum from yesterday’s writeup and rushing right into episode eleven. The show’s last episode didn’t feature the Chihiro-Renji story at all, and instead focused on resolving a great deal of Hiro’s conflicts. Having slept with Miyako and been confronted by Rei, Hiro was finally forced to make a definitive choice about his life course. Ultimately, while acknowledging he really had loved Kei in the past, he chose to actually pursue Miyako.

This choice fits perfectly in line with ef’s overall heart-on-sleeve infatuation with living for your art, and turning yourself into a monument to creativity. While Rei consistently urged moderation and making sure to balance his work and school life, Miyako was absolutely ready to join him in self-immolating for some wild ideal. I frankly don’t think picking Miyako was the healthy choice for Hiro, as not only is Miyako herself an incredibly unstable person, but Hiro has already demonstrated that pushing too hard in his career has left him burnt out and exhausted. But Miyako is still probably the “right” choice for this story, which overall takes an extremely romantic view of the artist’s plight. And the actual evocation of Hiro’s choice was one of the show’s standout moments so far, a thrilling mix of well-built character turns and evocative aesthetic tricks. Of course, we’ve still got two episodes left and a sequel besides, so I can’t imagine Hiro and Miyako have reached any sort of happily ever after quite yet. Let’s see what episode eleven brings!

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Chihayafuru S2 – Episode 7

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It’s time for more Chihayafuru, ya knuckleheads! With the regional team tournament now complete, the doors are open for this episode to prioritize basically any drama it wants to. Just like how the regional tournament last year was the moment that fully integrated Tsutomu into the group, the last scene of our last episode seemed to imply that both Hanano and Tsukuba are now invested in the team for genuinely karuta-related reasons, and no longer simply hanging around to achieve their own peripheral goals. That means it could easily be time to begin Hanano’s competitive arc, where we establish her style of play and explicate more karuta fundamentals through training, but we could just as easily leap straight from the regional to national tournament, and keep up the focus on our main team. After the satisfying but almost exhausting run of matches at regionals, I’d actually be fine with an episode that slows down a little, but Chihayafuru has never been one to slow its roll. Let’s dive right into one more episode of Chihayafuru!

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Princess Tutu – Episode 6

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Princess Tutu’s sixth episode opens with a new fable, a story about a princess trapped in an eternal sleep. The story is a familiar one; Sleeping Beauty, the tale of the princess Aurora and her noble savior. But in this version, when a young man arrives to wake Aurora, a voice whispers “awaken the princess from her sleep? What a cruel thing to do. Is the princess not wishing for the kiss of awakening, but rather to continue to sleep forever?”

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Spring 2018 – Week 3 in Review

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It’s Wednesday my dudes. Three weeks into the spring season, I’ve at last more or less “caught up,” and solidified the list of shows I’ll definitely be sticking with. As of now, I’m set on My Hero Academia, Megalo Box, Hinamatsuri, and Legend of the Galactic Heroes, with Wotakoi currently on the bubble. I’m pretty darn happy with that list – it’d be nice to have a more dedicated character drama like After the Rain, or a rich message piece like Gatchaman Crowds, but I have very few complaints with the four I’m sold on, and there’s a stacked bench waiting if I feel inclined to pick up Persona 5 or something. Megalo Box might be the only true stunner this season, but there are plenty of very solid shows just behind it, and I’m having a great time on the whole. Let’s catch up with some cartoons and run this week down!

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Why It Works: The Anime-Original Secrets of My Hero Academia

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Today on Crunchyroll, I focused on precisely the kind of nitty-gritty craft stuff that makes me so happy to have this column, exploring how the added content for My Hero Academia’s new season reflected the overall authorial voice of the show versus the manga. Obviously they didn’t include any overbearing new foreshadowing or anything, but the way My Hero Academia The Show sees its own cast is interesting to me, and material that diverges from the manga is one of the clearest avenues for exploring that perspective. This was a fun one to write, and I hope you enjoy it!

The Anime-Original Secrets of My Hero Academia