Planetarian – Episode 3

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Planetarian continued to be its hopeful, melancholy self in this third episode, as Yumemi’s long-awaited projection served as a painting of mankind’s hopes etched on a canvas of its dire failures. Planetarian is a very small-scale version of exactly the kind of stuff I like, and though its somewhat flat aesthetics and limited characterization don’t allow for any truly soaring heights, it’s still a very competent and engaging production. I am having a good time with this sad robot.

You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below!

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Summer 2016 – Week 3 in Review

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Dear lord, one week after the retrospective and we’re already a quarter through the season. This season ended up offering a stronger collection of shows than I was initially expecting, meaning I get to be fairly discerning in choosing what I actually keep up with. At this point, I’m legitimately excited about everything I’m watching – we’ve got a great mix of pure fun (Love Live, Thunderbolt Fantasy) and engaging drama (Orange, Planetarian), with Mob Psycho offering a dash of action and visual creativity. Let’s start with those new Love Lives and run this week down!

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Orange – Episodes 1-3

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Orange has held firm for three great episodes now, though I’m hearing the production is actually going through some behind-the-scenes disasters. Fortunately, Orange already isn’t really a show I watch for the grace of its character animation – the director has always been a bit of a weird fit, but the fundamentals of his idiosyncratic style actually mesh pretty well with Orange’s equally unusual style of dialogue and storytelling. Barring some kind of serious rally from Battery, Orange is the current reigning prestige drama, and it’s bearing that crown with relative grace. I demand a steady diet of at least one of these every single season.

You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my episode three notes below.

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Mob Psycho 100 – Episodes 1-2

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Mob Psycho’s second episode turned out to be nearly as visually compelling as the first, and did great work in polishing Mob’s sympathetic character. Mob Psycho’s visual strengths are very obvious, but I’m really happy to also see Mob and Reigen gaining texture over time. I dropped Space Dandy because it was visual experimentation with nowhere to go – as much as I appreciate strong art design, I need to care about what’s happening. So far, it seems like Mob Psycho is going to fit that bill.

You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my episode two notes below.

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Keep on Vibrating, If You Must

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I knew I was in for some shit even just by reading the genre tags for this one, which included a nice mix of things like “anal,” “bestiality,” and “dystopia.” And Keep on Vibrating certainly didn’t disappoint there – the seven stories here offer a pretty consistent mix of prostitution, violence against women, and occasional scatterings of war and cultural decay. Keep on Vibrating doesn’t quite match the overtly misanthropic tenor of Denpa Teki na Kanojo, but its author sure has a lot of violence in his head. And that’s about all there is to it.

(incidentally, there’s definitely going to be some NSFW image links in this one, so watch out!)

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The Boy and the Beast – Review

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Continuing through Hosoda’s catalog, today I reviewed his newest and likely messiest original film. The Boy and the Beat has a lot of awkward parts, but my second viewing actually ended up being a lot more rewarding than the first – I knew it wasn’t going to be “followup to Wolf Children” good, so I could appreciate the many, many individually compelling moments. Hosoda’s dramatic priorities largely match my own – plot is basically always working in service of characters and relationships, not the other way around. In The Boy and the Beast, that ultimately results in a film that feels disjointed and somewhat lacks momentum, but the things he actually cares about are as strong as ever.

You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below!

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Wandering Son – Episode 3

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Episode three starts off with that eternal cavern of gender-based insecurities, gym class. Well, morning exercises more specifically, but the drama is the same – singled out by the teacher, Takatsuki is informed that he will have to start wearing a bra tomorrow, and promptly collapses. Puberty is resulting in unwelcome changes for both Takatsuki and Nitori, and the question of how they will be able to define themselves becomes more pressing all the time.

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Planetarian – Episodes 1-2

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I’m really enjoying Planetarian so far. As I say in my review, I appreciate a show whose storytelling tightly matches the scope of its premise – there’s a whole world being implied here, but Planetarian has one very specific story to tell. Yumemi’s character manages to thread a difficult path between inert cliche and maudlin overselling, coming across like a sympathetic person without the show having to harp on the tragedy of her situation. I’d love to see more small dramas like this; the 12 or 13 episode season can often result in unfocused narratives, but five episodes is a very manageable amount of time.

You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my episode two notes below!

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The Tatami Galaxy – Episode 1

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Oof, you guys really chose a brutal one this time. The Tatami Galaxy is one of the most rich and dense anime out there, spectacular in terms of visuals and nearly as impressive in terms of storytelling. It’s likely Masaaki Yuasa’s best work to date, and Yuasa is easily one of the strongest candidates for “best currently working director.” Even just its first episode is absolute madness, a madcap, stream-of-consciousness narrator accompanied by wild, spiraling visuals. The Tatami Galaxy is one of the few shows that starts with a high “difficulty level,” meaning it’s not just hard to comprehend, but even just keeping up with its subtitles demands a high speed-reading fluency. Even just the pre-OP sequence could warrant a page or two of unpacking.

So let’s do exactly that.

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My Hero Academia – Review

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Today I took one more look back at this spring’s big shounen superhero extravaganza. My Hero Academia’s strengths and weaknesses have been pretty firmly articulated at this point – the show had great material to work with, and understood the spirit of that material perfectly, but was hamstrung by the limitations of adapting too few chapters into too many episodes. In spite of that, I had a solid time with MHA, and am hopeful the second season will learn from this one’s mistakes. There’s always next time!

You can check out my full review over at ANN.

My Hero Academia