Sound! Euphonium – Episodes 1-2

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Jeez, am I going to be able to do a full season of posts like this? I’m guessing tackling single episodes at a time will prompt me to switch to a more conventional breakdown style, but it was nice to do almost a tiny essay in the format of my KimiUso piece or whatnot for these episodes. I think I’m slowly getting better at achieving a balance of flow and analysis in the ANN pieces.

Oh, right, Euphonium. Euphonium is very good! Really liked these first two episodes, and since I didn’t cover it in the actual piece, I should say that I like the way is handling its establishment of a real ensemble so far. I don’t expect this to be Shirobako or anything, but it does seem like the show wants a bunch of characters to be recognizable people, and I also like that it’s taking pains to bring us in on basically the ground floor of this music group. Even though this really seems like Kumiko’s story, we need to be invested in the group if we’re going to believe in her eventual investment.

Here’s my full ANN writeup. Notes below!

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Spring 2015 – Week 2 in Review

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Well, I’m exhausted. Preview week’s done, my new media and identity essay is out, and I just want to lie down somewhere for a very long time. But anime marches inexorably on, and so it’s time once again for the week in review. This’ll just cover episodes that weren’t already covered in my retrospective – I’ll be continuing Punch Line conditionally and MY Love STORY!! definitely, but their first episodes only arrived within the last week. Other than that, my lineup seems pretty set for the time being. Let’s run ’em down!

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Death Parade – Review

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YEAHHH DEATH PARADE. I really wanted to write about this show, but I only had so much time before preview week, so I settled on a review that also includes the major thematic breakdown stuff I wanted to hit. Plus I get to talk about craft, in both aesthetics and the way the show juggles genre structure. And also about the crazy contradiction at the heart of the show’s goals – demonstrating the impossibility of judgment through vignettes that imply people are more than vignettes. It’s a neat trick! Death Parade is an excellent show, and I have sky-high hopes for its director. It’s not a Kyousogiga-level debut, but it’s not that far off, either.

Here’s my full review!

Death Parade

No Politics: Media and Identity

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We’ve been hearing a lot of it lately, at least from the more gurgly and questionable-smelling corners of the internet – a demand for “objective reviews.” Reviews that leave politics at the door, and simply give audiences an untainted appraisal of some media property. If you read my stuff at all regularly, I’m sure you can take a guess as to my thoughts on the validity of this request – given how often I stress the variability of personal experience, art experience, and critical evaluation, it should come as no surprise that I find this demand pretty misguided. But it keeps coming up, and it actually reflects on a number of more interesting elements of both how we parse media and how media is constructed, and so I figured I’d take my own shot at the topic. So let’s get down and dirty with objectivity in criticism!

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Spring 2015 – Virtually Every First Episode Retrospective

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It’s time at last. Time to run down all the highlights and lowlights, time to reflect on what was and what’s yet to come, time to talk about way too many god damn anime. As expected, this season’s new crop isn’t really able to measure up to the departing set – but when we’re losing Shirobako, Death Parade, Yurikuma, and Maria all at the same time, that’s probably to be expected. There are still new gems to enjoy, and new could-be heroes to watch with shining eyes as they rise only to incinerate in a cloud of their own wasted potential. The season’s beginning is always a fraught time, but don’t worry, I’ve got quick blurbs and links to all my friggin’ ANN reviews to guide you through it. Shows run from most loved to most reviled, with general categories of watchability marking each group as it arrives. And incidentally, the three I’ll be covering for ANN this season are going to be: SNAFU, Sound! Euphonium, and Nagato Yuki-chan. Alright, enough preamble, LET’S RUN DOWN SOME ANIME.

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Spring 2015 – First Impressions, Part Two

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PREVIEW GUIDE CONTINUES. I’m well and truly in it right now, with four reviews down yesterday and hopefully five total today. So far, the season’s playing out just about how I’d hoped – Oregairu remains excellent, Plastic Memories had a great first episode, Arslan seems perfectly watchable as a fantasy staple, and The Rest have flailed around and then slowly settled to the ground. Fun times with new anime!

Plastic Memories

Here’s another link to the preview guide, and you can check out immediate rankings and individual links below. FUN TIMES WITH TOO MUCH ANIME.

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Spring 2015 – First Impressions, Part One

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THE PREVIEW GUIDE HAS BEGUN. It’s still warming up at this point, so my sanity is more or less intact, but that will likely fade over the next couple days. I’m pretty sure there are eight new shows coming out today. EIGHT SHOWS. I’m trying to knock them down as fast as they appear, but I’m pretty sure momentum is on their side.

Oregairu

Here’s the preview guide, where I currently have reviews up for Is It Wrong to Try And Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? and Food Wars!, and SNAFU S2, with Seraph of the End soon to arrive. Quick ratings and individual links below!

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Winter 2015 – Week 12 in Review

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And so the season ends, with solid episodes and flops both largely where you’d expect them. Shirobako ends with a lovely tribute to its entire cast and spirit, Death Parade ends with a brilliantly personal episode that demonstrates the show at its best, and Yuri Kuma pulls out all the stops with one of its most personal and beautiful episodes yet. The rest of this week’s finales varied in quality, but the season remains one of the strongest in recent memory. We’re gonna have to remember this one through the potentially darker months ahead – we’re always lucky to get a season this good.

Incidentally, next week’s Week in Review will be replaced by my eventual, absolutely overwhelmed First Episode Retrospective of Absolutely Everything. I’m guessing I won’t be able to give status reports every few shows this time, since this is going to be the most overwhelming preview week I’ve ever taken part in, but I’ll make sure to let people know as soon as the flood begins. See you all on the other side!

Alright, enough news and reflections. LET’S RUN ‘EM DOWN!

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Yuri Kuma Arashi – Episode 12

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Well here we are, with bearly twenty more minutes of Yuri Kuma to go. I enjoyed a lot of what this show had to offer, and though I wish it were a bit more emotionally strong, it’s certainly offered plenty to talk about. Even if they did kill the best character goddamnit Ikuhara that’s not okay. Let’s see it end well!

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Rolling Girls – Episode 12

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Well, this was a garbage ending. It’s a real shame – I was actually looking forward to whatever theatrics Rolling Girls put together for its final episode, and then the finale ends up having zero animation and even less coherent plot. Friggin’ Log Horizon was more animated this week than Rolling Girls. And the plot ends in about as unsatisfying a way as it could, and the story just sort of falls over itself. How do situations like this even happen? It feels like professional writers should not write themselves into holes like this.

My full ANN post is available here. Incredulous notes below!

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