Today on Why It Works, I took advantage of Crunchyroll’s recent slate of acquisitions to rep a few lesser-known but very beautiful shows. It was nice to return to .hack, even if I was just looking for background images, and scouring through Aria episodes convinced me yet again that I really need to find time for that show. There sure are a lot of terrific anime out there.
The New Champions of Atmosphere in the Crunchyroll Catalog
It’d be hard for any episode to live up to Shigeyasu Yamauchi’s gorgeous interpretation of Tabuki’s rooftop duel with Kanba. That episode isn’t just great for this show, it’s an all-time great episode within anime at large. In light of that, it’s perhaps a bit less disappointing that Penguindrum’s nineteenth episode doesn’t even really try to compete with its predecessor. This is largely an information-expositing and board-moving episode, shifting us past the focus on Tabuki and into a new and somewhat abrupt arc starring Masako Natsume. This is the point where the cracks in Penguindrum’s overall narrative begin to show, but it still gets its job done.
It’s time to return to Casshern Sins! We’re nearing the endgame now, with the long-awaited arrival at Luna’s sanctuary raising more questions than it answered. After an entire show of seeking, Casshern seemed unhappy with the salvation provided by Luna, now having come to believe that death is actually an integral part of life. That philosophy makes sense of both his own unhappy invulnerability and the many lives he’s had to watch end, but it’s cold comfort to the robots who’ve spent all this time fleeing from Ruin.
Their counterpoint was directly articulated through Ohji’s harsh words, as he lambasted Casshern for idealizing the “beauty of death” even though he’d never had to fear it himself. Ohji’s counterpoint shook Casshern’s own confidence in turn, and so he essentially threw himself to Dio’s wolves. Casshern Sins’ thoughts on living and dying are only growing more complex and urgent by the moment, and this show could still end any number of ways. Let’s get right to it!
This week’s Classroom of the Elite represented a big step in the right direction for the show, returning to its bombastic comfort zone with a Lord of the Flies setup perfectly suited to its strengths. Even the show’s visual execution was much more engaging here, and the small outbursts of comedy were well-implemented as well. Classroom is certainly not going to turn into a good show, but this week put it on the right track to being an entertaining one.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below.
Tsuredure Children actually got kinda serious this week, and demonstrated it can handle thornier dramatic territory just as gracefully as the fluffy stuff. There was plenty of fluffy stuff too though, making this an all-around excellent episode. Who would have expected Tsuredure Children to be one of the better character dramas of the… year???
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below.
The conclusion of Game of Thrones’ mini-season sadly means these week in review posts will be shrinking again. Fortunately, the shows I still have to talk about were pretty much all excellent this week, offering a varied sample of distinctive pleasures. My Hero Academia started off on an exciting new mini-arc, Made in Abyss constructed a “filler episode” that was more satisfying than plenty of its normal episodes, and Tsuredure Children kept up its endearing shenanigans. Really the only outlier was Classroom of the Elite, and we don’t talk about Classroom of the Elite. Let’s start down in the abyss and work our way up through this week in anime!
Let’s get back to Ojamajo Doremi! The last episode we watched was utterly absurd, turning what theoretically should have been Doremi’s most serious conflict yet into a rolicking, ridiculous caper. Ai and Doremi used magic so freely they both ran out of magic spheres, but the whole “revealing magic to mundane people gets you frogged” deal was handwaved for the sake of an absurd adventure. Doremi is more often thoughtful than ridiculous, but it can do ridiculous very well.
In light of that episode, I’m expecting this one to return to the show’s usual mode, and probably involve some new classroom drama. Let’s get to it!
Today I conclude my journey through Monogatari’s various art styles, diving into its evolution in the post-Oishi era. This piece bounces between general style shift appreciation and digging into the actual dramatic effect of Monogatari’s various visual choices, and on the whole I’m pretty happy with it. I hope you enjoy the piece!
Why It Works: A Monogatari Art Exhibition, Part Two
I wouldn’t call myself a person who likes mystery stories. Locked rooms, remote islands, strange killings with no earthly explanation – all of that stuff strikes me as arbitrary in a way I don’t really want to read. Part of it comes down to the fact that such stories are often liars, or at least not tellers of the whole truth. Sherlock Holmes stories are deceivers – Sherlock Holmes himself is not a detective, but a magician. When Sherlock Holmes pulls out a solution, we are astonished not because he used the same information we had in a more elegant or insightful way, but because his brandishing of new, unheard information was so dazzling that we believed in the trick anyway.
And so we return to Casshern Sins. After nineteen episodes of seeking, last episode saw Casshern and his companions finally making contact with the new Luna – but regardless of whatever Dune saw in her, it seems this Luna offers no salvation at all. Though she claims to heal those dying to Ruin, the people who come to her ultimately find themselves in a great mass grave. On top of this, Luna herself seems disgusted at the thought of decay, and would rather pave over the dying than witness their final days.
In contrast, Casshern has come to both value life and also see great dignity in death, having been forced to work with and come to care for many robots and humans across the course of this series. Casshern may not have any kind of healing touch, but he has the forward-looking perspective and hope you need in a prophet, if not in a savior. Even his design, a white canvas touched with red markings, now seems to echo his vitality, aligning him with the cyclical inevitability of blood. I don’t know what Casshern can do to save these people, but it’s great to see him determined to try. Let’s see what the future holds.