Today on ANN, I reviewed the Garo the Animation tie-in film, which was… well, basically just what you’d expect from a tie-in film. In spite of coming out years after the show and following on with the continuing lives of all its characters, this film’s actual narrative was pretty minimal. Instead, the focus was clearly on constructing beautiful sets and conducting outrageous fights, two Garo mainstays that made for a very entertaining viewing experience. You can check out my full review below!
Garo’s second half finally came out, and so I got to finish this recent swashbuckling adventure ride. The second half was unfortunately not quite as impressive as the first – the show kinda felt like it had just run out of fundamental story after the collision of Leon and Alfonso, and introducing devices like a born-to-be-fridged girlfriend certainly didn’t help matters. But Garo is still just a fundamentally compelling production, and so I still had a fine time with its conclusion.
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my episode notes below!
Today I dipped back into one of the few shows I slept on in 2014, a show whose CG suits and slightly hair metal aesthetic initially put me off. As it turns out, Garo’s first episode wasn’t really indicative of the production overall; Garo is a confident and polished adventure serial, full of solid drama and compelling fight scenes. It’s a little too purely archetypal for me to say I was all that emotionally invested, but it’s certainly a well-told story, perfect for anyone starved for fantasy that falls outside of the usual light novel wheelhouse. A fine time all around!
You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my episode notes below.
The preview guide is once again nearing its end, meaning it’s time to run down every single one of these goddamn cartoons that never stop coming out for one second ever. The actual hits this season were pretty limited, but that’s pretty much what I expected going in – even in my preview post, I was only actually looking forward to a bare handful of shows. Most of those shows turned out to be either solid or display some potential, though there weren’t any real positive surprises outside of just how nicely composed One Punch Man turned out to be. But what the hell are we even doing here if we’re not watching cartoons, and I gotta earn my too-many-words keep, so let’s run ’em all down anyway. TAKING IT FROM THE TOP!
It’s time! Time at last to start thinking about putting this lousy season behind us, time pick our heads up from the anime-parched earth and take a glimpse towards the horizon. Is that a mirage in the distance, taunting us with the thought of media sustenance? Are we doomed to wander this barren waste forever, continually lowering our standards until eventually we forget anime was anything more than a vehicle for monstergirls and pee jokes?
Nah, there’s some new shows coming out. Some of them look pretty good, too! We’ve got long-awaited manga adaptations, sequels to steady favorites, new entries in venerable franchises, and even some tasty-looking originals and wildcards. My overall bench isn’t terribly deep, but I’m confident I’ll be happy with at least a couple of them, and even outside of my picks, every season holds surprises.
As always, I won’t be running down every new show here – there’s vast selections of shows I know I’ll never be interested in, and even among those shows, if there are any standouts, I’ll hit them during preview week anyway. If you want the full list, you can check it out over on anichart – here, I’m just gonna break down what I’m excited about, along with maybe a reason or two to feel optimistic. So let’s get to it!
The week in review returns! Nice to finally be back covering stuff here again. This post is gonna be all second episodes – I know some first episodes came out in the past week, but I wrote about every goddamn one of them over on the preview guide. Right now, I’m in “what the fuck can I actually drop” mode – after a slow start, this season ended up giving me somewhere around fifteen shows I wanted to continue, and the physics of that kind of schedule just don’t work out. In light of that, I’m gonna try to be pretty ruthless in what I drop throughout the week. Unfortunately, enough shows seem to be holding together that I’m likely going to be in “anime or sleep” mode for a while yet. Let’s run them down!
I have been very busy these last couple weekends! Working on the ANN preview guide has meant I’ve had to watch and write about virtually every full-length show that premiered this fall – I believe the only ones we missed were G Reco, Amagi Brilliant Park, and Seven Deadly Sins, and I actually wrote about the first one and took notes on the second anyway. Of course, since all that was for ANN, you guys over here haven’t had heard as much from me. So in light of that, I’ve decided to do a hyper-speed mega-Week in Review rundown of my most summarized thoughts on every goddamn show, complete with links to individual ANN pages where you can find the small essays I wrote on every single one of them. If you want to hear me praise stuff, stick to the top, if you want to hear me tear shit apart, check out the bottom. There’s been a wide, wide range of shows this season, and every one of them has earned a whole bunch of words. LET’S DO THIS.