Sword Art Online – Episode 10

Posted on by

Holy shit it’s Sword Art Online. This episode promises to be terrible, what with it literally starting with Kirito fighting to earn Asuna the right to take a vacation from a guild that she is the goddamn vice-commander of holy shit I can’t believe I even typed that goddamnit Sword Art Online. That’s cool though, because once we get through Kirito saving the day, we might actually emerge into some normal banter between the two of them.

I’ve very often complained about this show never getting around to exploring its central conflict, but last episode proved that might actually be for the best. Sword Art Online’s biggest problem remains Kirito, and Kirito is always at his worst when the show presents an actual conflict. When it’s just adventuring or slice of life, he can interact with other people normally – but when there’s a dragon to slay, suddenly everyone else is useless, and Big Man Kirito takes the stage. It’s the show at its most transparently pandering, and as someone who’s not really getting his rocks off on how awesome Kirito is, it has me checking my watch basically every time it happens. Even this might be forgivable if those action scenes were good, but last episode’s climactic fight just wasn’t particularly well-designed, either. I enjoyed it because it was very silly, but it was not a quality piece of entertainment.

That’s cool though, because if actions scenes tend to demonstrate this show at its worst, then the non-action Kirito-Asuna scenes are clearly the show at its best. Asuna’s actually a reasonable character, and Kirito can interact more or less like a normal person when he’s not required to be Captain Hero. If Building a Better SAO requires kind of ignoring the actual plot, then so be it. Let’s get through this dickwaving contest and on to some much-earned vacation time.

Continue reading →

Spring 2014 – Week 8 in Review

Posted on by

It’s so nice to only be watching good shows. I think One Week Friends kinda stumbled this week, but other than that, I don’t really have any complaints about anything. I should drop shows more often!

Continue reading →

Ping Pong – Episode 7

Posted on by

It’s a testament to how much Ping Pong respects its characters that the person who would occupy the “villain” role in a traditional narrative is here simply the most tragic member of a selection of co-protagonists. Kazama is an unhappy boy, and this episode was largely dedicated to defining and exploring that unhappiness.

Continue reading →

Shiki and the Setting Sun

Posted on by

I’m kind of tired of vampires, you guys.

At this point, they seem just generally kind of played out. They suck blood, they sometimes turn into bats, they originally meant “fear of feminine sexuality” and now mean “sexy danger.” Sexy danger is pretty cool I guess, but if you keep using vampires to be dangerously sexy, eventually the spark fades. The current wave of trashy vampire romances certainly hasn’t helped, but vampires have always had a ceiling on their resonance as long as they stuck to the old model of what vampires really are.

Fortunately, Shiki thinks vampires are something very different.

Continue reading →

Spring 2014 – Week 7 in Review

Posted on by

Some strong episodes and some weak ones this week, but fortunately the shows that could really be damaged by a weak link (Ping Pong, One Week Friends) came out swinging. Running them down…

Continue reading →

Ping Pong – Episode 6

Posted on by

“Heroes don’t exist. What exists is reality, and the fact that only those who can adapt to reality win.”

There’s a kind of fatalism to Ping Pong, something that separates it from a lot anime out there. Some of its characters aren’t very good, or have damaging weaknesses. Because of this, they fail. There’s no “I’ve got to give it my all anyway” here. There’s no “genius of hard work.” Yeah, you do have to work hard – everybody has to work hard. But sometimes working hard doesn’t mean chasing any dream you choose.

Continue reading →

Character Design 101: Want and Need

Posted on by

Management: Vague character-arc spoilers for a few shows here – FLCL, Eva, Tatami Galaxy, Cowboy Bebop, Hyouka. Hyouka’s the only one I get particularly specific on.

Gonna share something a little different today! Recently I’ve been thinking about characters, which is probably because I am always thinking about characters. While a lot of my personal views on character writing have obviously come from reading and watching a whole lot of stories, a fair amount of my understanding has also come from writing characters. As a fiction writer, knowing how to write a fleshed-out human being is rarely optional – but even just as someone who just wants to poke more deeply at the things they consume, I think analyzing characters from a character-creation standpoint can be very enlightening. Characters are kind of like trees – though the individual branches of their actions may look strange and circuitous, generally everything winds its way back to the central trunk of their base nature and desires. And looking at characters trunk-first can do a whole lot of work to make sense of their wildly winding limbs.

So let’s get down to that trunk, to the absolute base nature of a character. There are a few ways to approach this, but personally I think the easiest way to consider character writing is to start with two key variables. The two often-conflicting desires that tend to define their choices, their conflicts, and their ultimate resolution: what they want and what they need.

Continue reading →

Spring 2014 – First Half in Review

Posted on by

Welp, we’ve reached the season’s halfway point, which means it’s once again time to roughly shepherd everything I’m watching into a reductive hierarchy that through its very nature misses the point of art altogether. Everybody loves lists!

Incidentally, the fact that it is so reductive is why I do this nonsense in the middle of the season, and not the end. Lists are fun, but I don’t want lists anywhere near my actual takeaway from shows, so I use this mainly just to sort out my general feelings on the season’s overall tenor. This season has turned out to be very good, and I have already dropped every single show I’m not solidly enjoying – if anything on this list looks entertaining to you, I can confirm that even the lowest shows have been solid enough at what they’re doing. And the top shows… yeah, this is a season to be proud of. Let’s run it down!

Continue reading →

Sword Art Online – Episode 9

Posted on by

Oh shit, another Sword Art Online post only a week after the last episode? Don’t worry, what I’ve given up in tardiness I’ll make up for in laziness. I actually do want to finish this damn series before the second season comes out, and at this rate, that is very much not happening. So let’s burn some episodes down! Time to fight a giant monster wooooo!

Continue reading →

Mushishi and the Hand of God

Posted on by

Mushishi is a broad and ambiguous collection of vignettes, and it offers few easy answers. In light of this, it seems silly to try and impart any “one truth” of Mushishi’s narrative  – everyone will take something different from its stories. In light of that, I hope my audience will forgive me for my own somewhat selfish experience of this series. Mushishi can mean many things to many people, but it means one very important thing to me.

Continue reading →