I had virtually nothing to gawk at in this week’s Seiren, which was certainly a change of pace. Instead, this was just a remarkably grounded and overall successful slice of adolescent romance – understandable conflicts, multidimensional characters, and satisfying resolutions. I was pretty surprised! I certainly don’t mind, though – if Seiren permanently jumps from a weird oddity to a reasonable show, I’d be very happy.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below.
For this week’s Why It Works I returned to Maidragon, and dug into the specific kind of fantasy world the show presents. Magical realism is actually one of my favorite kinds of fantasy, and though its greatest exemplar in anime is likely The Eccentric Family, Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid is pretty great too. I hope you enjoy the piece!
Why It Works: Dragon Maids and Magical Realism
Natsume himself is the focus of this third episode. As we open, twilight colors and suburban sprawl return us to Natsume’s childhood, as he cries over his strangeness beneath a playground slide. As he laments his isolation, a girl comes up to console him, and asks the question he most wants to hear: “can you see them too?” Perhaps Natsume is not so alone after all.
Mawaru Penguindrum’s fourteenth episode has sex on the brain. After a cold open revealing the last of Yuri’s performances, we cut to Yuri and her costar in a private moment, where we learn that the hero of Yuri’s play is actually a heroine. Their sexuality is emphasized here to the point of performance, and their words feel like theater as well – Yuri’s partner seems to feel no embarrassment tossing off lines like “you can only share this feeling with another woman.” Happy to play the role of callous seductress, Yuri plainly states that “I’ve grown tired of you,” and abandons her lover. And after we hear a strange hint about Yuri’s “secret,” she drives off, leaving her paramour behind.
We’re back with the end of Mayoi Snail, and I’m back with another episode post that’s basically an essay in its own right. What can I say – Bakemonogatari steadily introduces pretty much all of the concepts that will become pillars of the franchise, and so there’s a whole lot to dig into. This time we get more on the strange nature of Mayoi arcs, a fair bit about Araragi’s personality, and plenty on Senjougahara as well. Let’s get right to it!
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my episode notes below.
The season halfway point has arrived at last! In spite of early speculation by certain disreputable parties, the winter season hasn’t fallen on its face, and is actually turning out to be stronger than last winter. It’s still certainly a weaker season, but for some reason that’s just how winters tend to be – and given I’m supplementing this season’s offerings with regular injections of unfair additions like Planetes and Nichijou, I can’t really complain. But today, it’s all about the winter shows, as I commence the seasonal tradition of ranking everything I’m watching at the exact point those rankings are least likely to be meaningful. Theoretically, this is supposed to reflect the fundamental pointlessness of constructing hierarchical rankings of art in general – in practice, it’s more like most other traditions: I do it because I started doing it and I’ve been doing it for a while and goddamnit if I’m gonna stop now. So let’s start right at the top and run this season down!
Yep, got another list for you! This time we’re celebrating the year’s most ruthless holiday with a bunch of romances, covering a wide range of love stories gone wrong and right. It was fun curating this list, though I probably should have included Wandering Son a second time, since the hetero is a bit overwhelming with this one. I tried to at least create a solid balance of romances from both male and female perspectives, and in a variety of subgenres – the one other area I’d have liked would be fewer high school shows, but I’ll be damned before Clannad shows up on one of these things. Gotta have some principles.
10 Best Anime to Watch on Valentine’s Day
The minutes tick by, SDF agents steering humanity’s “future” towards the Sea of Tranquility City. Suspended in darkness between the earth and moon, the Von Braun has never looked so fragile. At a time like this, it’s easy to forget the human cost of such a grand, breathtaking achievement. A million lives lost is a crime too vast for us to conceive of, while monuments are easy to believe in. A symbol can mean more than any number of innocents.
March continued its streak of excellent episodes this week, bringing great visual flare to the show’s consistently thoughtful conversations. This episode’s beauty frankly took me a bit by surprise – March is a pretty show, but I haven’t come to expect this level of fresh visual invention for each new episode. Hopefully it’s a sign of good things to come!
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below.
Seiren continued in its weird, rambling way this week, offering more bizarre one-liners and not all that much else. There was actually a pretty satisfying robot duel between Toru and Tsuneki this episode, but the pleasures are pretty thin on the ground in this show. I can’t really imagine enjoying this show as a romance, which is a pretty damning flaw for a, uh, romance. Ah well.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below.