Anime was good this week! Basically every show I’m watching had a solid episode, and some impressed with legitimate highlights, too. Both Konosuba and Dagashi Kashi have now established their character relationships firmly enough that they can often just coast on audience investment, and ERASED pulled off a real stunner this week, focusing largely on Hinazuki’s feelings for the first time. Grimgar executed a major action sequence with characteristic emotional grace, and Rakugo Shinju continued to be just as great as it always is. This season has a fairly light spread of shows, but you don’t really need catalog depth if the first couple tiers are holding strong. Let’s get right into this week’s highlights and RUN ‘EM DOWN!
Tag Archives: Dagashi Kashi
Winter 2016 – Week 7 in Review
This week in anime was a week in anime. We’re entering that stretch of the season where shows often become kinda tough to write about – they’ve established a firm rhythm and personality at this point, but they’re not quite into the leadup to the climax, and so episodes can oftentimes just be described as “pretty much like the last episode, I guess.” Even a show like Konosuba, one of this season’s most inconsistent wildcards, is now at least becoming steady in its inconsistency. There were some slight dips and slight rises among individual shows, but everything is at the moment falling within the margin of error of its existing expectations. That doesn’t mean things are impossible to talk about – that just means I have to work harder to find good points of interest. So sit there and appreciate my hard work as I run this week down!
Dagashi Kashi – Episode 6
Dagashi Kashi continued on its merry way this week, pulling off another episode that was far from laugh-out-loud funny, but also plenty endearing regardless. I like this cast, it’s nice spending time with them, that’s pretty much all I need from this show. I’m glad the show generally sticks to jokes that actually respect each of them as people, and I think its way of weaving small bits of characterization into larger comic bits is actually pretty graceful. It’s an easy show to watch, and that’s pretty much all I ask of it.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my episode notes below!
Winter 2016 – First Half in Review
And suddenly, six weeks have passed. Fortunately for me, it’s actually hard to pretend the winter season has rushed by; not because the shows themselves have proceeded slowly, but because I live in goddamn New England, and so every day is an interminable march of suffering through sub-arctic temperatures and mocking snow. I hate winter, and I’d rather live in a place where it doesn’t exist, but for the moment I’m stuck here. As far as anime goes, this has actually been a perfectly reasonable season.
This seems like one of those seasons where, to an even greater degree than normally, the show quality just drops off a cliff after the second tier. In an ordinary season, there are a decent number of shows I’m not watching that people in a general sense are still enjoying – things that don’t appeal to me genre-wise, or whose writing or art style don’t gel with me, or some other quirk of preference. But this time, it seems like nearly everyone I know is watching the same shortlist of anime, and then there’s just a vast desert of nothing. But this actually doesn’t affect my viewing habits at all – I never tend to find more than half a dozen or so shows watchable, and as far as that small crop goes, as long as I have two to three shows that seem genuinely good, I’m satisfied. But it’d be far too mature of me to just say “I’m enjoying a fair number of shows for a variety of reasons,” and besides, we’ve got traditions to uphold. So let’s start at the top and ruthlessly rank this season’s claimants to the throne!
Winter 2016 – Week 5 in Review
I hate to say it, but this was not a good week in anime. Everything beyond Rakugo Shinju and ERASED has been kinda iffy this season, but this week, not only did ERASED put out its worst episode by far, but both Dimension W and KonoSuba were so bad that I’m probably dropping them until further notice. I was already sort of on the edge with both of those shows, and it honestly wouldn’t take that much to convince me to give KonoSuba another episode, but when half the shows you’re watching disappoint you, it’s not a good scene. ERASED in particular was a real disappointment – the show’s existing issues of overselling dramatic peaks and just being too much of a boilerplate thriller took over entirely this week, leaving me with an episode that felt more silly than dramatically effective. But that said, there were also highlights to make up the difference, and I can always use the time saved to work on more Current Projects! Let’s start at the top and RUN ‘EM DOWN.
Dagashi Kashi – Episode 5
Dagashi Kashi was generally enjoyable again this week, if not so consistently funny that it actually felt shorter than twenty minutes like last week’s. I frankly kind of expected the show to peter out in the style of the third episode, and rely on a bunch of unfunny repetitions of the same one or two ideas – but the show is both varying its style of humor and actually making its characters more likable by the episode. Both Kokonotsu and Hotaru have exceeded my expectations as characters, with Kokonotsu in particular going far and above the general “straight man MC” template I’d pinned him for. The show is warm and funny and easy to watch – it’s not great television, but it’s never something I feel bad about watching.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my episode notes below!
Winter 2016 – Week 4 in Review
Things are still settling to some extent here in the fourth week, largely due to the fact that a full third of my current watch group consists of comedies. Comedies are tricky, and comedies are inconsistent, and comedies have much less of a tendency to settle into a reliable groove than most genres. So while Rakugo and ERASED continue to be excellent week after week, this time Konosuba was pretty terrible, while Dagashi Kashi was actually consistently funny. Other than that, I’m beginning to lose patience with Dimension W – the show is reasonably watchable, but absolutely nothing beyond that, possessing virtually no personality and being more interesting as a demographic artifact than an actual piece of media. Grimgar, on the other hand, is all personality, personality to a fault, and that actually makes it my third-favorite show at the moment. All that and more in this week’s Week in Review! Let’s RUN ‘EM DOWN!
Dagashi Kashi – Episode 4
Dagashi Kashi really surprised me this week. I’d expected the show to be no more than reasonably pleasant from start to finish, with some occasionally effective jokes – but this episode was actually funny, featuring confidently constructed half-episode conceits with strong fundamental ideas and consistently inventive comic flourishes. The second half’s silly race in particular was one of the better-executed comic sequences I’ve seen a while now, offering both many incidental gags and a strong fundamental absurdity that the show wisely avoided actually pointing out. Having Kokonotsu actually be willing to play along with Hotaru’s schemes pretty much instantly improved this show, and I hope they maintain a real friendship going forward.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below!
Winter 2016 – Week 3 in Review
The season’s shows are still jostling at this point, jockeying for position and demonstrating which of their early strengths they can maintain and as-of-yet not quite imploding. Rakugo Shinju and ERASED are the easy top contenders, but beyond that, it’s a mixed field of shows that are either imbalanced, lacking in ambition, or somewhat inconsistent, but all still more or less worth watching. It’s probably not the generally strongest member of this pack, but Grimgar is actually the one I have the highest hopes for. The show’s weaknesses are loud and frustrating and obvious, but its strengths are very unique, and that appeals to me more than something like Dimension W’s straightforward but somewhat flavorless polish. But the overall crop still makes this easily the best season since last spring, so I’d say this is a good place to be. Let’s RUN ‘EM DOWN!
Dagashi Kashi – Episode 3
Dagashi Kashi’s third episode came and went with little fanfare or incident. This episode is very watchable, but that’s about it – the jokes aren’t generally that funny, and the structure’s a little samey. That said, I was very happy to see this episode’s second half actually start to make Hotaru feel like a real person. Shows about wacky comic instigators I could take or leave, but shows about awkward kids who inherently lead to funny situations through their weird passions? Yeah, that I can deal with. Hopefully this wasn’t just a one-off thing.
You can check out my full episode review over at ANN, or my notes below.