Winter 2016 – First Impressions, Part Two

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The week keeps chugging along, and mediocre shows keep piling up one by one. It seems this really will be a light season, but I don’t really need that many airing shows to feel content, and it’s looking like we’ll just about manage that. To accompany ERASED’s excellent premiere, Showa Genroku Rakujo Shinji turns in perhaps my favorite first episode so far, and BBK/BRNK pulls off a classic action-adventure opening strong enough to almost make up for its hideous, soul-breaking CG characters. I’m guessing we’ll only get one or two more watchable shows out of the remaining picks, but if that just means more time for Hyouka, I’m perfectly okay with that. Anime may be mostly bad, but “mostly bad” spread out across several decades of releases means we’ve still got plenty of backlog to get through.

Luck & Logic

You can check out the overall list of shows over at ANN, or scroll on down for my new scores and links to individual reviews. Anime ho!

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Hyouka – Episode 10

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Hyouka’s tenth episode opens with one more of those classic sequences where the framing tells two-thirds of the story, in a way you can viscerally feel even if you’re not looking out for it. The intent is to put you in a character’s headspace – Oreki’s, as usual. But this sequence isn’t designed to visually evoke his intimacy with Chitanda, or discomfort embracing the rose-colored life he consistently approaches. This sequence is about establishing How Freaking Scary Irisu Fuyumi Is.

We open with long shots down a well-to-do neighborhood and across a lengthy teahouse, shots that serve a duel purpose here. First, they establish this place as intimidating purely through its class and wealth; second, they create an initial assumption of open space, one that is swiftly countered as we switch to Oreki and Irisu. Our first shots of their meeting focus on Oreki’s intimate, uncomfortable body language, and then we see the small room they actually inhabit. Oreki is visually and emotionally cornered here by a much stronger predator, one who, unlike Chitanda, seems perfectly comfortable using her wealth as an extension of her own power. Extremely brief shots of Irisu from straight-on seem to imply that Oreki has difficulty making eye contact, and closeups emphasize how imposing her presence is. It is only when Oreki is able to establish his issues with each of the three detective theories that some semblance of equality is established.

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Winter 2016 – First Impressions, Part One

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A new season has begun, and I’m already well into the friggin’ preview guide. I mentioned back in my initial season preview that this looked to be a particularly dire season, and the shows so far have unfortunately born that out even more emphatically than I’d assumed. That list of shows only had eight new entries in the first place, and of those eight, two have turned out strong so far, three have disappointed me, one hasn’t been picked up for streaming yet, and one likely isn’t even airing this season. It’s a hard time for all of us, but as long as backlogs exist, I should be the only person who actually has to suffer. There have been a couple strong premieres so far, and there’s always the chance one of the season’s wildcards will impress, so there’s no reason to give up hope yet. Let’s keep the anime faith alive!

Norn9

You can check out the full list of shows covered so far over at ANN, or check below for my list of scores and links to individual reviews. LET’S GET TO IT.

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One Punch Man – Review

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Aw dang, I reviewed the season/year’s big breakout hit. My review turned out roughly how you’d expect if you’ve been reading my weekly thoughts – I felt the show certainly had beautiful animation, occasionally had interesting moments outside of that, and was mostly just a kinda mediocre gag comedy/action thing. I guess it’s become traditional at this point for me to have lukewarm feelings on the year’s big action hit, from Attack on Titan through Kill la Kill up to One Punch Man, and I think that makes sense. Action shows care about action, and I personally think pretty much any show is lesser if it doesn’t provide you with characters or ideas worth caring about – but the sorts of scenes that result in those things aren’t necessarily the kind of scenes people who like action for its own sake want to see in their shows. Pure action shows will continue to come out and electrify the western fanbase, and I will continue to find them kinda mediocre. So it goes.

You can check out my full review at ANN, or… wait, nevermind, I don’t have any notes. So go over there!

One Punch Man

The Star Under Lights: Millennium Actress

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Millennium Actress’s credits open with the view from a train, as light flickers past in a tunnel before giving way to city skyline. It’s fitting that an animated movie about the deception of film begins with those flickering lights; the light of a train on a tunnel is itself one of the simplest forms of animation, a series of starkly lit shots creating the appearance of motion. As the view transitions to a bombed city under blue skies, the image shifts, with a plane overhead melting into first a modern passenger jet, and then a rocket in space. Fluid transitions across time and space are an accepted part of reality in this world; what matters is not the base nature of the world, but the dramatic throughline of the object in flight. What catches the eye is what remains. What we remember is what exists.

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Hyouka – Episode 9

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Hyouka’s eighth episode pulled all sorts of meta visual tricks, using the context of an in-show movie in order to play with character acting and shot framing in a variety of interesting ways. Through its awkward direction and oddly remarkable animation, it pulled off techniques anime normally doesn’t use for very good reasons, in order to make intentionally bad staging decisions. The episode’s middle act was essentially a self-aware interrogation of the nature of visual storytelling; and so it seems only appropriate that the following episode is entirely focused on narrative storytelling, and how our relationship with a theoretical author dictates everything stories could possibly mean.

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Kizumonogatari – Review

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So now I’ve finally read some Monogatari in its “original” form. I was actually pretty worried I wouldn’t like this, and that the stuff I didn’t care for in the anime would be overwhelming in prose – but as it turns out, the opposite was true. Kizumonogatari is almost entirely the unfiltered good stuff, with its occasional dumb jokes eased by character voice and not slowed down by anime timing. I do like the visual world the Monogatari anime creates, but Kizu still “feels Monogatari” in almost all the ways that matter. I really enjoyed this read, and am eagerly looking forward to complaining about how the source material is better.

That was a joke, I’m not gonna do that. Don’t worry.

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

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2015 – Year in Review

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Aw dang, it’s Wednesday. That technically makes it time for the week in review, but there’s a bit of a problem – most of the shows I was watching have actually ended, so I don’t really have much to talk about. I’ve already written enough words about Beautiful Bones to last several lifetimes, and I even covered IBO on my ask.fm, so in the absence of much to discuss, I guess I’m just gonna pack this one in. Cya next time, guys!

Alright, clearly I’m not doing that. I wouldn’t have written that opening paragraph in the first place if I was just going to end it there. Instead, let’s do the very stupidest and most labor-intensive thing to replace the week in review. It’s December 30th, 2015 has been a pretty interesting year for me, and I might as well take a brief moment to look back. Let’s turn our eyes back to the year that was and RUN IT DOWN.

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Hyouka – Episode 8

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Hyouka returned to the school this week, to begin the second major arc of the series. The first third of this episode is a long, slow buildup to a new character reveal, one that begins before the opening, in one of the show’s most weirdly dramatic sequences yet. Text messages and chat window conversations speak of crisis and desperation as the camera very deliberately avoids giving us a clear view of the typist. Quick shots and zooms that crop all but the text create a sense of urgency, anxiety, and entrapment. The overall effect puts the audience off-kilter and in a position where they naturally distrust the typist… and then another participant joins the chat, and it’s clear even through text that this is Chitanda. The gang’s getting roped into another mystery, and it seems likely their patron is actively withholding information.

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Top Ten Anime of 2015

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And so, another year of anime winds to its end. There have been surprises and disappointments this year, and my ultimate list doesn’t really look much like what I’d expected to find, but in the end, anime is anime. At the beginning of this year, I was looking forward to crowning two of 2014’s better series – Your Lie in April and Parasyte. Unfortunately, both of those shows kinda lost their way in their second halves, which was sad for everyone. Later on, at the year’s halfway point, I was again excited about my end-of-year list – I already had a good seven or eight shows I felt were top ten-worthy, and was beginning to think this would be a year to rival 2013. Unfortunately, the year’s second half only really gave me the last couple shows I needed, and so here I am, recognizing just enough shows to fill out a full list. This year didn’t end out quite as strong as I’d hoped, but ultimately I probably shouldn’t complain about any year that featured enough shows to fill a list plus honorable mentions.

And I actually do have an honorable mention, one I honestly feel a little bad not including on my list proper. Although not all its sequences were equally strong, Studio Khara’s Animator Expo definitely deserves a mention – you might have heard of it just because of Me! Me! Me!, but the whole thing is full of wonderful, creative little vignettes. If you’re interested in the visual potential of anime, or just want to see some cool short-form pieces, Animator Expo is a can’t-miss experience. The third season is still available online (here’s a particularly good one), so I’d definitely check that out. I should also probably mention One Punch Man, since I get the feeling not mentioning it means it will dominate the comments. Yes, I watched it, and no, I didn’t think it was that great. Strong animation, but everything outside of that felt pretty mediocre, and so you won’t see it here.

But that’s all preamble. You guys are here for the top shows, and top shows you will have – shows from a wide span of genres and creators, shows to thrill and shock and make you cry. Every year in anime brings new treasures, so let’s buckle in and run down the best in one more year of Japanese cartoons!

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