Parasyte – Episode 11

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Parasyte took a moment to catch its breath this week, and so we got little vignettes from a variety of narratives. Which was a lot of fun, actually – Kana’s a pretty endearing mix of confidence and naivety, and that central fight scene was a totally unexpected visual bounty. Almost weirdly so, in fact – so far I’ve felt Parasyte’s atmosphere has generally been more effective than its big action setpieces, but that scene’s action was great. I’ve always liked the way the schoolyard fights generally resolve in one or two quick, brutal strikes, and applying that style to an extended fight made for a really tremendous sequence.

Here’s the full ANN post. Rough episodic notes are below the cut!

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Fall 2014 – Week 10 in Review

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Pretty killer episodes this week, at least from the top shelf. KimiUso, Shirobako, and Parasyte all turned in stellar performances, Chaika kept up the dramatic intensity from last week, and Log Horizon suddenly decided to toss off one of the best speeches I’ve seen. The other episodes were middling, but the season’s looking strong as we move into the endgame. Look forward to a pretty stupid amount of content over these next couple weeks – I’m planning on participating in the 12 Days of Anime posts (one post a day for the twelve days leading up to the 25th) along with all my usual review shenanigans, my top shows of the year post will follow that, and even ANN might have some kind of bonus piece to contribute. I hope this is what you want, internet. This is all the blood I have!

Alright, enough of that. Let’s run down some cartoons.

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Aldnoah.Zero – Review

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And the hits keep coming! Well… the reviews do, at least. “Hit” might be a stretch.

Poor Aldnoah – you started with such promise, and yet every new episode felt like another brick removed from your Jenga-tower of potential. At least the final toppling was entertaining – like with Kyoukai no Kanata, it was actually pretty cathartic seeing the finale of a show I’d entered with such expectations explode into such absurd, self-immolating nonsense. In the end, a show I’d hoped would be Urobuchi’s triumphant return ended up being just one more strong reminder that most people are not very good at building off his work. Ah well, at least there’s still Expelled from Paradise to look forward to…

You can check out the full ANN review here.

Aldnoah.Zero

The Flowers of Evil – Review

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Oh man, this was something. This was actually the first work I was assigned to review on ANN, but it took me a while to get around to it and a while to get through it. Flowers of Evil is a heavy, oppressive thing, but it’s so, sooo good. I did my best to capture what makes it such a rich experience in my review, and would recommend anyone who’s heard mixed things to at least give it a shot. It’s a pretty tremendous show.

Here’s my full ANN review. My copious episodic notes are below!

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Dragonball Z: Battle of the Gods – Review

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Yep, another extremely random movie review from me. Hey, they can’t all be winners. This one actually wasn’t so bad – it’s basically a bunch of Dragonball-style jokes followed by some Z-but-with-actual-animation fights, so if you have any lingering fondness for Dragonball, it’s not the worst way to spend an afternoon. The film doesn’t take itself particularly seriously, which makes the whole experience actually pretty enjoyable. And the new villain is a lazy cat, and cats are great, so, uh, there’s your recommendation.

Dragonball Z

Sword Art Online II – Episode 22

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Oh boy. This episode. What is there to say? Sometimes Sword Art Online can be pretty okay, and sometimes it tries to get really, really sad. This episode was basically Yui The Doll You’re Supposed to Care About Vol. II, with Yuuki and her Sleeping Knights piling on basically every sad-sack revelation the show could possibly muster. It’s so transparent and inept that I can’t even feel insulted by it – it’s like a little kid trying to tell a sad story. Episodes like this make me marvel at the fact that Sword Art Online is a massive production involving the work of hundreds of people. And all… all for this.

Here’s the full ANN post. Notes/incredulous tweets below!

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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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