Kiznaiver – Episode 7

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Kiznaiver had its strongest episode of the season this week… in fact, Kiznaiver aside, I think this was just the strongest episode of anything I’ve watched this season. The show has often been a little clumsy in its emotional beats, but you wouldn’t have guessed that from this episode – this one was understated and beautiful and full of smart visual metaphors and purely tone-focused segments. Maki’s story turned out to be a lot more relatable than I’d expected; her fears and resultant feelings of guilt were totally understandable, and the episode did a great job of visually conveying the world she occupied. I was legit tearing up a bit by the end of this one – this kind of beautifully realized melancholy and slight emotional catharsis is exactly the kind of thing I love. Even if the rest of the show stays a little sketchy, I’m happy we got this.

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

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The Lost Village – Episode 8

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This was sadly a fairly normal episode of The Lost Village – not in that it was an average episode of this particular show, but in that it was a believable episode of an ordinary horror story. Well, as long as you discount the weird, self-destructive genre-awareness expressed during the Masaki interrogation. Aside from that, basically everything that happened here could really have happened in an ordinary show, which is pretty disappointing relative to what I generally expect from The Lost Village. Well, you can’t win ’em all.

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

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Texhnolyze – Episode 3

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Texhnolyze’s third episode is, well, another episode of Texhnolyze. Things are moving, but slowly, as ever. The boxer awakes and finds he is in the process of being reborn, while Kazuho rides the train into the city and makes a request of his companion. Angry factions swirl around the Organo, while the scientist seems bored of her everyday miracles. Things are slowly coming into focus.

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The Heroic Spirit of My Hero Academia

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Time for a new essay! This one focuses specifically on My Hero Academia, but is more generally about a spirit of optimism in fiction that I find really compelling and valuable. It was frankly kinda tough cutting down all the various topics I wanted to cover into one editorial-sized piece (I could easily write another entire article about the ambiguous ways idols interact with this concept), but I’m pretty happy with the result. I hope you enjoy the piece, and wish you luck finding some spirit of heroism in your own life!

The Heroic Spirit of My Hero Academia

My Hero Academia

Yuureitou – Volume 1

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There’s something ugly lurking in Yuureitou. It seeps in from every corner, lurking in too-close panels of drifter Amano savoring his darkest instincts, or his new friend Tetsuo reacting with uncommon violence or disdain. It’s there in the way the panels themselves fetishize Tetsuo, who seems uncomfortable in his own seemingly unwanted skin. It’s ingrained in the manga’s horror tones and exploitation roots, the way it crosses sex with violence so callously that you’d almost guess the mangaka thinks they’re one and the same. And it erupts in vivid, hideous bursts, as the story’s characters are made instruments of fear by lurking, bag-faced men.

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Mysterious Girlfriend X, Volume 1 – Review

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Today I reviewed Mysterious Girlfriend X, that weird manga with the spit-bond premise. I’d actually watched the anime a while back, and enjoyed it more than I expected too, even though the second half kind of fell apart. But this volume didn’t get to any of the show’s weaker material, and thus was more or less strong from start to finish. At its best, Mysterious Girlfriend X uses its fundamentally uncomfortable premise to explore how adolescent sexuality really is fundamentally uncomfortable, full of weird jolts of intimacy and difficult navigation of personal boundaries. The manga isn’t always able to make good on that premise, but there’s enough strong stuff here to make at least this volume an easy recommendation.

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

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Spring 2016 – Week 7 in Review

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Our strong spring season continued to chug merrily along this week, offering a few new highlights and a clunker or two, as you might expect. My weekly list has been paired down to the point where even the disappointing episodes are only mediocre entries in fundamentally strong shows, which feels like a real luxury (I dropped Macross Delta, incidentally, which I realized I hadn’t really been impressed with for a good 4-5 episodes). And both Kiznaiver and The Lost Village actually seem to be improving as they go along, which I wouldn’t expect from such shaky and unpredictable productions. Top that off with the reliably competent My Hero Academia and the consistently stunning Concrete Revolutio, and you’ve got a season that never fails to at least entertain. Let’s RUN ‘EM DOWN!

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My Hero Academia, Volume 4 – Review

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My Hero Academia is in absolute peak form all throughout this fourth volume. The school competition premise allows all of the manga’s characters to just wail on each other for eight chapters straight, which is pretty much all I could ever wanted from this series. The setup of the competition’s second round really facilitates having the characters both find new uses of their powers and see how they can work in concert with each other, making for the most consistently thrilling battles of the series. Individual unique powers are cool enough, but forcing these very imbalanced characters to play off each other is just a far better application of the manga’s premise. It’s nice to see an author so aware of what makes their own story compelling.

No notes this time, since I just sped through this one without taking a breath. But you can check out my full review over at ANN!

My Hero Academia

 

Planetes – Episode 2

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I mentioned in my last episode writeup that so far, Planetes was succeeding largely on premise and polish. On top of that, I also briefly talked about how both the show’s genre structure and its ending song somewhat gave away the fact that this was likely Hachimaki’s story, as he reignites the passion that sent him into space in the first place. This second episode reaffirmed all those points, and further underlined how important good storytelling fundamentals can be. On top of that, it was just a fine vignette that stared directly into the abyss of an unfulfilling professional life. For a show about spacemen in a glorious scifi future, Planetes is far more grounded than the vast majority of anime out there.

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Flying Witch – Episode 6

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Flying Witch had a bit of a dud episode this week, mainly because the second half’s big punchline moved swiftly from cute to irritating as the show drew it out. Flying Witch has generally been very good about not letting any given joke outstay its welcome, but this episode used a fairly weak concept as a load-bearing punchline, and the result was kind of disappointing. But hey, I’ve come to expect most anime comedies to have at least a few weak notes here and there. We can’t all be The Lost Village.

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

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