Hello everyone, and welcome to the Week in Review. This summer’s slate of premieres was altogether far too entertaining, and has left me with a completely unsustainable slate of weekly viewing contenders. I’m sure you know what that means: it’s time to get ruthless. I can’t physically keep up with seven to nine weekly anime while also performing all my other anime-related duties, so something’s going to get the chopping block. A few properties are safe from this righteous culling – Vinland Saga is hanging above the fray due its three part premiere (not that I’d be dropping Vinland Saga either way), while Symphogear is probably just going to be watched in some marathon chunk as soon as the fourth season is fulling streaming. But for everything else, my judgement will be swift and merciless, and only the strong will survive. Let’s crack our knuckles and get down to work then, as we enter the Summer 2019 Week in Review Thunderdome!
Tag Archives: Carole & Tuesday
Spring 2019 – Week 12 in Review
Anime was good again, folks! After a punishing drought, my seasonal contenders emerged with episodes that were, if not full returns to each of their strengths, at least indicative of their potential. Demon Slayer had one of its most visually astounding episodes yet, with the tight geometric confines and perspective-based conceit of its latest battle allowing ufotable’s team to pull off a truly astonishing spectacle. Carole & Tuesday finally felt like it was regaining some momentum, and gave us our first new song by its leads in three weeks. And JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure continued to center its drama on an extremely no-nonsense talking turtle, a choice which obviously justifies itself. There’s plenty more details to discuss, so let’s dive right into another Week in Review!
Spring 2019 – Week 11 in Review
The spring season just doesn’t seem to be ending that well, unfortunately. Though this week’s JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure was hindered more by the inherent limitations of an exposition-focused episode, both Demon Slayer and Carole & Tuesday felt like they were running out of momentum, and too often lingering on their worst elements. Demon Slayer in particular is definitely hovering in the drop range at this point – the show’s writing is consistently terrible, and the reintroduction of the insufferable Zenitsu made it feel like the show was outright challenging me to keep watching. At this point, I’m pretty sure I’m only sticking with the show until the summer provides some new bright-eyed anime children to suffer my inevitable disappointment – but until then, I’ve got plenty of grievances to share with all of you. Let’s break down another resoundingly mediocre week in anime!
Spring 2019 – Week 9 in Review
Holy hell folks, we’re at the three quarters mark of the season. One of the sad truths of aging is that each week, season, and year somehow passes even faster than the last, but fortunately, at least this week’s cartoons were really excellent. Every single show I’m watching offered a fine episode this time; the combination of Carole & Tuesday having a slightly weaker episode and everything else excelling meant this week was pretty much an even line of solid entertainment from start to finish. They weren’t even the kind of straightforward “well that was competently executed” good that leaves me without much to talk about – they were good in exactly the convoluted, context-dependent ways that make for plenty of meaty critical interrogation. Let’s dive into the spoils then, as we break down another impressive week in anime!
Spring 2019 – Week 8 in Review
There is nothing truly new to report about this week’s anime as a whole, and I’m already two hours late on posting this article anyway, so we’re jumping right into it, folks. Demon Slayer was solid, JoJo was ridiculous, Sarazanmai was repetitive, Carole & Tuesday was transcendent – I think that’s about it for preamble? Yeah, I think we’re basically covered. Starting off with Tanjiro and Nezuko’s shonen shenanigans, let’s run down one more week in anime!
Why It Works: Music in Anime: The Song is the Story
Today I’ve got a Why It Works post I’m very happy with, as I got to write at length on a topic I’m always fascinated by – storytelling conveyed without narrative, and particularly storytelling conveyed through sound design. The entry point for this discussion was how well Carole & Tuesday’s songwriting expresses its protagonists’ growth, but many of my favorite shows use not just music, but in-show musical performance as key emotional moments and character turns. As a musician and songwriter myself, I’m naturally inclined to embrace music-focused anime, and fortunately, several of my favorite anime directors seem to love musical performances just as much as I do. Here’s the piece!
Music in Anime: The Song is the Story
Spring 2019 – Week 7 in Review
As we enter the second half of the season, all of my airing contenders have more or less settled into their default modes, as hope and anticipation solidify into weekly expectations, and rambunctious young stories find their mature footing. Demon Slayer’s episodic strengths and weaknesses have become relatively predictable, while Carole & Tuesday’s consistent genius is now the one goddamn thing I can rely on in this blighted world. Predictability gets a bad rap, but being predictably terrific is a pretty good thing in my mind, so I am all in favor of Carole & Tuesday’s choices. Let’s check in with our young rock stars and all this season’s other heroes, as we plow through another Week in Review!
Spring 2019 – Week 6 in Review
Well shit you guys, the season’s halfway over. Traditionally, this would be the time where instead of offering reflections on this week’s episodes, I rank the overall field of everything I’ve watching. However, once I started cutting down my seasonal watch schedule to only the shows I was genuinely loving, that became a pretty meaningless exercise. I could rank my viewing schedule, but everything I’m watching is something I’d highly recommend, so what would be the point? In light of that, I instead started to simply summarize my overall impressions of each show so far – but as one commenter pointed out, you can already get a pretty clear view of my overall feelings on a show from my weekly commentary. Given all that, today I’ll be offering… an entirely normal installment of the Week in Review! Yes, that’s right folks, we’ll be celebrating the seasonal halfway point by doing exactly what we always do. I can tell your excitement is already at a fever pitch, so I’ll wrap this intro up now, as we dive into one more extremely normal Week in Review!
Spring 2019 – Week 5 in Review
This season gets pretty lean when it’s time for a JoJo recap episode, huh? With Bucciaratti’s boys stuck reliving all their most recent traumas, it fell to my other three ongoing productions to keep the peace this week. Fortunately, all three of those shows are pretty darn good, so I wasn’t really left wanting for entertainment either way. Demon Slayer continued to stick to its familiar narrative template, but also persisted in bolstering that template with lots of phenomenal art direction, as well as some theoretical thematic substance. Sarazanmai also stuck to its regular formula, but did a terrific job of fleshing out Toi as a protagonist. And Carole & Tuesday basically shored up any deficiencies in the other two, offering yet another ridiculously charming and far too short collection of capers. All this at greater length, as we break down the highs and lows of another week in anime!
Spring 2019 – Week 4 in Review
The anime is good, folks. I may have intentionally reduced my seasonal payload to a lean and star-studded roster which is almost categorically incapable of disappointing me, but either way, the anime is good. I think this week’s episode of Carole & Tuesday was actually the show’s best yet, which is really saying something, while Demon Slayer pulled off its most impressive visual feats so far. JoJo maintained its recent string of fantastic episodes, and though Sarazanmai is getting a little repetitive, there was still plenty to appreciate in the main stage debut of its third protagonist. But you’re not here to read summaries of summaries, so let’s get to it. Here’s to one more week in anime!