It’s closing time, folks – open all the doors and let you out into the world. I’d be happy to just quote one hit wonders this week, but the season really is ending, so I suppose we should also survey some cartoons. Given I’ve already dropped everything that seemed to be juggling more narrative balls than it could handle (aka Franxx), I wasn’t surprised to see this week’s finales conclude their shows with general grace, with both Laid Back Camp and A Place Further than the Universe offering not necessarily their best episodes, but fine representations of their overall appeal. And among the continuing shows, After the Rain continues to hone in on a genuinely satisfying endpoint for Kondo and Akira, while March comes in like a lion… well, I mean, it’s March, it’s always gonna do its own thing. All these shows have been consistent enough that I have entirely run out of new things to say about them, so while I’m sad to see them go, I’m also looking forward to whatever fresh madness the spring will bring. Let’s send this season’s contenders off right, and run this week down!
Tag Archives: Anime
Princess Tutu – Episode 3
More fragments of Drosselmeyer’s half-finished tale arrive as we begin Princess Tutu’s third episode. We learn that along with his heart, the prince had both his kindness and his memories stolen. We also learn that the shards of his heart found their way to people with voids in their own heart – a classic conceit of the magical girl genre, here applied to a tighter narrative frame where that choice directly ties into the story’s overarching themes. Princess Tutu is well aware of the power stories have to shape our own feelings, and even direct our own lives. As our narrator warns, among those who were possessed by the shards, many found their own tales twisting awry.
Chihayafuru S2 – Episode 3
Alright, let’s jump right into some more Chihayafuru! The show’s last episode saddled itself with an almost insurmountable challenge: integrate Hanano into the overall team in a way that didn’t feel completely out of character for her. Hanano is clearly not the kind of person who’d naturally gravitate towards the karuta team; making her entrance a dramatic hurdle doesn’t require any contrived circumstances, because it’s only under contrived circumstances that she’d even want to join in the first place. Instead, the true challenge of her entrance was basically just justifying its end point. Hanano’s personality would greatly help the team’s overall dynamic, but what series of events could possibly bring her to the point where her presence on the team is already an assumed fact?
Chihayafuru settled on “she’s willing to sacrifice in order to pursue Taichi, and she bonds with Kana.” Those choices don’t really result in clean or entirely believable drama, but that’s basically a tradeoff the show is forced to make in order to justify introducing a character who will clearly improve the overall team dynamic, but has no believable reason to be on a karuta team. One episode of slightly unbelievable drama is a fine price to pay for a character like Hanano, and I’m excited to see how she integrates into the group now that she’s truly joined. Let’s get started on the third episode of Chihayafuru 2!
The Woman Called Fujiko Mine – Episode 1
Today we’re starting off on a new show, as we check out the first episode of The Woman Called Fujiko Mine! This one’s a pretty interesting property in all respects – it’s ostensibly an entry in the Lupin III master thief franchise, but its acclaimed director Sayo Yamamoto decided instead to focus on Fujiko Mine, the femme fatale who generally plays more of a supporting role in Lupin’s stories. My experience with Lupin III is very limited – I’ve essentially just seen a couple scattered episodes and Miyazaki’s Castle of Cagliostro, which I’ve been lead to believe isn’t really representative of the mainline series’ less family-friendly style.
My experience with Yamamoto is a bit less limited, but still pretty far from exhaustive. I watched her breakout hit Yuri on Ice!!!, but didn’t really find it that compelling. I felt the story essentially lost its focus after the excellent first few episodes, that lots of irrelevant skating performances killed its pacing, and that the combination of so-so character writing, a total lack of interest in conveying skating as any sort of tactical competition, and consistent animation issues prevented its big setpieces from really landing with much impact. The show’s success makes sense to me, but as an art object, I wasn’t really that moved.
Outside of that, my experience with Yamamoto is limited to a few of her terrific opening/ending segments, as well as her reasonably solid Space Dandy episode and her other collaborations with Shinichiro Watanabe. As for Fujiko Mine’s writer, Mari Okada is one of the great wildcards of anime, equally capable of stirring character-focused melodrama and godawful character-focused melodrama. She undoubtedly possesses one of the clearest voices in anime writing, but unlike the reliable craft solidity of someone like Gen Urobuchi, her stories’ narrative fundamentals can range from bulletproof to wibbly-wobbly nonsense.
Where these two voices and this particularly property intersect, I don’t really know. Fujiko Mine has a cult reputation, but my experience with Yuri on Ice has left me wondering if Yamamoto is simply not my style of creator, and so I’m interested in checking my own reaction here. Let’s start with the first episode and get to the capers!
Winter 2018 – Week 10 in Review
The anime kinda killed it this week, folks. Well, alright, at least one anime specifically killed it, and that anime constitutes a large enough percentage of my weekly quality variance that it alone killing it pretty much lifts the whole ship. To put a finer point on it, this week’s episode of A Place Further than the Universe was absolutely phenomenal, and given all three of my other airing shows tend to maintain roughly the same level of quality every week (barring a climax episode of March), Universe’s success makes for a Week in Review success. Both Universe and After the Rain accomplished the difficult tasks of convincing me they could actually conclude their stories at satisfying points this week – Universe through its graceful return to its initial themes, and After the Rain through its continued detailing of what a glimmer of hope might look like for either of its heroes. In spite of this being a relatively light season in terms of raw show numbers, After the Rain, Universe, and March all fall so squarely into precisely My Jam territory that I can’t really complain. Not one, not two, but THREE melancholy character dramas about quietly unhappy people trying to reach out to each other. My cup runneth over with gentle sadness, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Let’s run this week down!
What’s in Store for My Hero Academia?
Today on Crunchyroll I’m basically just hyping the hell out of My Hero Academia’s third season, which was easy to do, considering I myself am hype as fuck for this one. My Hero Academia’s second anime season was a dramatic step up quality-wise from the first, and with the material this third season’s covering offering an even more significant quality jump, I’m pumped to see whatever Bones can pull together. It’s awesome to have a tentpole shounen like My Hero Academia receive such a strong episode-to-episode adaptation, and can’t wait to see Midoriya punch stuff good one more time.
What’s in Store for My Hero Academia?
Love Live! Sunshine!! – Review
Today on ANN I reviewed the first season of Love Live! Sunshine!!, an altogether compelling followup to the first Love Live that possesses an interesting mix of effectively purposeful and exhaustingly slobbering reverence for its predecessor. It was fun to return to Sunshine and fun to discuss its mix of strengths and weaknesses – shows like Love Live, where their greatest strengths are based in their most practical craft fundamentals, are some of the most rewarding to formally review. I hope you enjoy the piece!
Toradora – Episode 2
Toradora’s second episode is essentially one entirely self-contained love story, though its participants don’t really understand that. I wondered in my last writeup if my memories of Ryuji and Taiga’s rapport were a little rose-tinted, and whether Taiga’s tsundere schtick would get tiresome in the long run. Well, I am happy to report that that’s absolutely not the case – these two are still wonderful together, and through this episode, we see them essentially perform their first dates, first fight, and first reconciliation, ultimately arriving at a comfortable and engaging neutral. I’m always on the lookout for more romances about couples who are already in a relationship, and though Ryuji and Taiga would argue heatedly to the contrary, I’m now realizing that part of this show’s strength is that in many ways, it’s already there.
Ojamajo Doremi – Episode 26
Let’s get right back to Ojamajo Doremi! It’s been a while on my side since I had a chance to write about Doremi, and I’m very excited to be back. Not only is Doremi just a generally charming show, but last episode saw us reaching the end of the Majo Ruka arc, meaning we’ll likely be returning to episodic conflicts starring Doremi’s classmates. Ruka’s arcs had its highs and lows, but the stories focused on Doremi’s classmates tend to demonstrate the show at its best – thoughtful, often very poignant, and generally just solidly written. Even at its most mundane Doremi is a pretty satisfying show, and when it comes to highlights like Hadzuki’s rabbit episode or Ai’s harmonica story, Doremi can match basically any show out there for emotional power. Let’s see what we’ve got this time!
Princess Tutu – Episode 2
Princess Tutu’s second episode begins with an echo of its original prologue, telling the story of the storyteller and his characters, the crafty raven and the tragic prince. But this time, the story continues, as if lines had been secretly appended to its unfinished pages. We learn now that the prince took out his own heart to seal the raven, and that his heart was shattered in the process. Scattering across the town, the shards of his heart turned this town into a place where stories and reality intermix.