This week I went back and took a second look at Parasyte, which still holds up pretty well across its first half. In retrospect, it’s less my kind of show than I would have thought a year ago, but it’s still a fine horror-thriller with a lot of polish. The one glaring weakness is, of course, the music. Parasyte’s music sounds like the kind of noise a robot attempting to imitate the concept of human music would create – grating electronic brips and braps that shift jerkily in some uncanny approximation of tempo and melody. But hey, you can’t win ’em all.
Tag Archives: Anime
Dagashi Kashi – Episode 11
This week’s episode of Dagashi Kashi sure was an episode of Dagashi Kashi. There is virtually nothing at all to critique in this show, given each episode is very nearly the same, they all have fairly low ambitions, and they all succeed and fail in very minor ways. The show sets itself a low bar and slowly rises over it every single week, occasionally disappointing by trying too hard to be funny, occasionally finding success by leaning into its character relationships. It is a very harmless show.
You can check out my full review at ANN, or my very minor notes below!
Puella Magi Madoka Magica – Episode 3
Madoka Magica’s third episode opens with the reveal of Sayaka’s secret treasure, the one thing she might be willing to die for. Sayaka is a strong-willed and driven person, but Sayaka is also a teenager, and her secret reflects that; it’s a boy she happens to like. The late afternoon light sets a melancholy tone as we’re introduced to Sayaka’s crush, a boy who keeps smiling even though he’s bedridden, who turns away when he has to cry. It’s a very efficient bit of storytelling, and one more example of how Madoka embraces narrative minimalism and inference to make the most of its running time. We just get a brief conversation detailing the tone of their relationship, and then Sayaka’s “gift” sends her back into a memory, where she sees the passionate boy who inspired her love. Her gift is as cruel as Kyubey’s, and her revery seems like Madoka’s simplistic idealization of Mami; with a cut to her crush’s tears and then his crippled arm, we see that his smile is a mask. A destructive little tragedy in a minute and a half.
ERASED – Episode 12
ERASED finished with the remains of its dignity intact, forcing us to survive through just one final scene with Satoru’s supervillain nemesis before heading towards the end. Most of the show’s thematic threads were at least nodded to here, and there were a number of pretty scenes to counterbalance the weight of Yashiro’s ridiculousness. The show fell apart fairly close to the end, so it’s kind of ending on a low note, but in retrospect it’s obviously a reasonable production – it just hit its highs very early and its lows very late. In the end, the biggest lesson I find myself drawing from ERASED is to stop letting myself trust fans of source material. The fans always lie!
You can check out my review over at ANN, or my episode notes below.
Active Raid – Episode 12
Active Raid is over! The show ended about as well as it could have – that is, it’s a mediocre show that will be forgotten in a week or two, but it tied its threads together and concluded with relative grace. The ultimate reveal of Mythos’ motivation was as underwhelming as you’d expect, but Mythos has always been the show’s weakest element, so what are you gonna do. I liked the banter between the Unit 8 leads, having that friggin’ Clippy app actually be evil was perfect, and the last fight was pretty okay. Not much point in yelling at a show for not being a very different one.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below!
Winter 2016 – Week 11 in Review
Anime was pretty great this week! Basically anything would feel like an improvement after last week’s tragic slate of episodes, but this week’s selection was about as strong as you could hope for. ERASED didn’t magically fix the heavy fundamental damage its last episode caused, but it recovered as well as it could with an episode that mostly rediscovered the concept of subtlety. Dagashi Kashi had one of its best episodes so far, and Rakugo made up for its relatively grounded visual storytelling with some of the most endearing character moments of the season. Things are looking pretty okay in animeland at the moment. This may have been a relatively underwhelming season, but with Rakugo on track to become a legit classic, you can’t really call it a letdown.
The Idolmaster: Cinderella Girls, S2 – Review
Unsurprisingly, my journey back through Cinderella Girls’ first season was swiftly followed by a run through the second. And as it turns out, Cinderella Girls is actually a pretty great show! The show certainly lacks the easy humor and aesthetic brilliance of its predecessor, but it makes up for that with a set of dramatic conflicts that actually work. The corporate vision stuff that underlies the show’s entire second half is legitimately engaging, and even Uzuki’s final personal conflict feels very earned and dramatically effective. Cinderella Girls starts off very shaky, but it comes together quite nicely in the end. It’s not a personal favorite, but it’s a fine show.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my episodic notes below!
Dagashi Kashi – Episode 10
Dagashi Kashi pulled off a strong episode this week, sticking largely to its slice of life comfort zone while also peppering its one core concept with lots of nice incidental gags. There were good Hotaru faces and nice interactions between the friends and plenty of dagashi shenanigans to be had. Dagashi Kashi doesn’t have to be flashy to succeed, and when it does work, it’s a very likable show. It’s not going to win any awards or break any hearts, but it’s a fun series that I’ve enjoyed my time with.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below!
Puella Magi Madoka Magica – Episode 2
Madoka Magica slows down in its second episode, as all that exposition stuff the first one avoided gets woven in with our formal introduction to Kyubey and Mami Tomoe. The episode is less overtly thrilling until its (tiro) finale, but that’s partially the point. There are consistent repeated shots and sequences here, from the moment Madoka turns before “waking up” to the various shots and full scenes used to represent her daily life. The show is establishing an initial sense of normalcy, and beyond that, how Madoka feels about her normalcy. This is a safe, pleasant, and relatively empty world – a world that demands little, but doesn’t offer Madoka much of an identity.
The Idolmaster: Cinderella Girls, S1 – Review
I apparently just can’t help myself with the dang idols, so I went back and took another look at Cinderella Girls. This show’s early material pretty much confirmed my first impression – the early episodes here are awkward, and the first major conflict kind of undercooked. On top of that, the aesthetic magic that made the original so unimpeachably solid is in large part missing here. Fortunately, the second half of this season pulls together fairly well, and at this point I already know the second season will be even more of an improvement. Cinderella Girls is a scrappy one, but it works out in the end
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my episode notes below!