Log Horizon II – Episode 10

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God damn. This episode nailed it. The entire thing was one long, rousing speech from friggin’ William Massachusetts, laying out his philosophy on games and basically entire life story. And it was inspiring stuff! This is the kind of stuff SAO continuously tinkers with, but isn’t really self-aware enough to intelligently engage – here, the validity of virtual realities is established in strident terms through the degree to which William has invested in and learned from them. The sense of isolation and other-ness he feels in the real world is honestly exactly the kind of thing that prompts stuff like GamerGate (I almost felt tempted to offer some kind of “this is an unhealthy place to be, this can lead to very destructive attitudes” disclaimer to my ANN post), but the base emotions themselves are very earnest and understandable. This episode was basically a self-contained essay on the psychology of gaming, framed as a rousing call to arms. It was a hell of a thing.

Here’s the full ANN post. Jumbled, breathless notes below:

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Ask Bobduh: Writing Action Scenes

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As an enterprising writer, I’d like to ask… how do you go about crafting action scenes?

Action scenes are really tough in prose – never is a picture more worth a thousand words than when those words are turning a series of dramatic actions into a dry recitation of motions. There’s a variety of ways to tackle the problem – you can make quick poetry of it, you can make it matter-of-fact and let the reader paint their own emotional picture, you can frame it from a secondary/adversarial character’s perspective to actually give a better perspective on your characters’ actions. But you’re asking me, so I’ll tell you what I do.

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Parasyte – Episode 10

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Goddamn bulletproof episode this week. The conclusion to Shimada arc was the show’s best material yet – for once, the execution actually elevated the material, and the episode was filled with gorgeous shots and legitimately effective musical cues. Really, really hoping this is the turning point for Parasyte – this felt like the show it’s always just barely fallen short of reaching, and if it can keep this up, we’ll likely have an actual classic on our hands.

As I’ve been doing, all my breathless mid-episode notes are available after the cut. They’re a big garbled mess, but maybe you’re into that sort of thing!

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Fall 2014 – Week 9 in Review

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This was kind of a slow week overall, outside of nuts-good episodes from usual highlights Shirobako and KimiUso. Although both Chaika and Fate Stay Night also pulled out very fun episodes, Rage of Bahamut and Amagi were kind of subdued, and the bottom tier of Log Horizon and SAO both fell below average. But I mean, I’ve had seasons where I was happy to see one show keeping it together… I should probably be able to take it in stride when only four of the six shows I really like put out top-notch episodes. And this was the first great Chaika in a while, a very important Chaika in fact, so let’s start right there. Running it down!

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Bayonetta: Bloody Fate – Review

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Yeah yeah yeah. This movie’s about as crap as you’d expect, but a job’s a job. If anyone who reads my site is somehow legitimately curious about how good the friggin’ Bayonetta movie is, I go about as in-depth as anyone could reasonably be expected to on this artless tie-in. It’s honestly not the worst thing – it’s certainly tacky and dumb, but it at least has an actual personality. If that personality were backed up by solid animation, you’d have a decent schlock action movie – as is, it looks a whole lot more like a cynical cash grab. Good times!

Bayonetta

Winter 2015 Season Preview

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Time again for the ol’ season preview, where I run down everything that looks mildly interesting next season. This time that’s actually pretty easy, considering virtually everything I’m enticed by is either a sequel or a second half. Unfortunately (well, for me anyway), that really just means the actual madness will have to wait until I watch everything else for the preview guide anyway. As usual, my preview won’t actually cover everything – it’s easy enough to check out the full list at anichart if you’re interested in checking out the other shows, if you want to for some dumb reason. Winter is looking a great deal more manageable than fall, but winters are always kind of sparse, and there’s certainly still some cartoons to look for. Let’s run ‘em down!

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Sword Art Online II – Episode 21

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This episode was basically Sword Art Online in a nutshell. Fun action setpieces that are sometimes undercut by their own lack of tension, self-indulgence that makes it very hard to take seriously, and massive butterfingers when it comes to emotional drama. In light of that, my review gets a little bit meta in its thoughts on SAO as a thing I’m approaching as a critic. It’s hard! SAO is fundamentally “bad” according to a great deal of what makes stories effective in a general sense. SAO don’t give a fuck.

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Log Horizon II – Episode 9

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We jumped over to Shiroe’s camp this week, where things aren’t going terribly well. I was legitimately surprised by how solid Shiroe’s central death-reflection monologue was – after a long arc with Akatsuki that’s been about as kid-friendly as possible, I definitely wasn’t expecting a long sequence predicated on being old enough to feel embarrassed about the ways youthful insularity is actually a kind of selfishness. That by itself would have made this one of the best episodes this season, but that last repeat of the Ash Lake sequence was just too egregious of a cost-cutting measure for me to let slide. Still, I’m looking forward to where Shiroe’s arc takes us from here.

Incidentally, I’m including my actual during-episode notes below the cut for this one. They’re notes for me, not for any audience, so they’re far less “performative” than the time stamp posts, but I’ve had people ask me to post them a few times, so I’m including them anyway. Hope you enjoy!

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Parasyte – Episodes 8-9

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Double-header this week, which gave the show enough time to weave in about half a dozen small conflicts. I thought the show over-told a fair amount during these episodes, but the stuff it was conveying was actually really interesting, so I couldn’t muster too much annoyance at that. It’s kind of unusual for a Madhouse production, but this show is really leaning heavily into the strength of the source material – the execution isn’t elevating it, it’s just a perfectly reasonable articulation of a very good story. I guess that means it’s not as strong as it “could have been,” but the show’s still quite good, so eh.

Parasyte

Fall 2014 – Week 8 in Review

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Anime got pretty heavy this week, you guys. Between Shirobako and KimiUso, things were altogether a little too real in the land of Japanese cartoons. That’s how I like it, though – the sharp stuff is what I watch media for, and you can’t depict earnest triumph if you’re not willing to accept the possibility of failure. Pretty much everything else is holding steady, but my favorites are actively climbing at the moment, and it feels pretty goddamn great. Here’s hoping they both turn out to be as good as this week would promise.

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