I really don’t know how this happened, but somehow we have arrived at Wednesday once again. With the overall year drifting into its final stages, I find myself once more buried under a variety of seasonal projects, as I start to hack away at top tens and bottom fives and whatever else the ceaseless content mill demands of me. Additionally, this happens to be a uniquely consequential year, as it signals the end of a full decade in… well, reality I guess, but more specifically anime. While I try to marshal my thoughts regarding the inherently panic-inducing last ten years of my life, I hope you all enjoy reading my latest thoughts on the week’s new cartoons. Let’s get to it!
Tag Archives: Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Fall 2019 – Week 6 in Review
Pack it on in folks, it’s time for the Week in Review! We’ve somehow arrived at the season’s halfway point, and though this year’s increasingly rapid succession of days is a source of constant terror for me, it’s also a source of NEW CARTOONS! Today I’ve got plenty of new episodes to talk about, having finally caught up on Vinland Saga, and I’m eager to share all my hip-fired opinions with you fine people. From My Hero Academia at last starting its engine to Stars Align demonstrating some remarkable sports drama finess, we’ve got plenty to discuss regarding this week’s episodes. Let’s get to work!
Fall 2019 – Week 5 in Review
Hey folks, and welcome back to the Week in Review! I’m unfortunately still behind on Vinland Saga, but I think I have a pretty good reason for it this time: I’ve spent the last four days feeling sick as a dog, coughing all through the night, and trying to make up on lost sleep all through the day. I’m feeling somewhat better now, but I’m also behind on basically all of my projects, so Vinland Saga will have to wait until next week.
Fortunately, this week’s other new episodes still gave me plenty to discuss! Legend of the Galactic Heroes is such a rich and politically acute production that each episode prompts a short essay’s worth of reflections, and Stars Align continues to stake a claim as one of the year’s very best dramas. Let’s break down all (er, most) of the latest anime highlights in one more Week in Review!
Fall 2019 – Week 4 in Review
Japanese broadcast scheduling issues have left us with an unusually “fun-sized” Week in Review this week, which is a term candy manufacturers use to market their smallest portions of candy, since “this candy has less candy than the other candies” is apparently a bad marketing pitch. All this is to say that only Legend of the Galactic Heroes and Stars Align actually aired this week, so that’s what we’ll be talking about! Fortunately, Legend of the Galactic Heroes and Stars Align are both incredibly good shows – Stars Align has not once let up on either its fluidity of animation or acuity of adolescent perspective, while Legend of the Galactic Heroes only becomes more gripping as it moves into the genuine meat of its drama. Let’s break down these two excellent franchises’ latest attractions in this fun-sized Week in Review!
Why It Works: The Young Titans and Ailing Empires of Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Today on Why It Works, I dove once more into Legend of the Galactic Heroes, to explore the fascinating contrast of Reinhard von Lohengram and Yang Wen-li. Each of them are rich characters who are simultaneously compelling both as individuals in their own right, and as representatives of their distinct philosophies on shaping human history. Legend of the Galactic Heroes consistently urges us to look beyond the assumptions of our immediate political moment, and I’m always happy to celebrate its far-seeing perspective. Here’s the piece!
The Young Titans and Ailing Empires of Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Fall 2019 – Week 3 in Review
Well shit folks, it’s time for the Week in Review. After one more week of racing to catch up on all the shows I’ve left hanging, I believe I’m at this point current on my actual schedule for the season. I finally caught up on Stars Align, which has continued to offer convincing and unexpectedly sharp-edged adolescent drama, and also powered through the remaining Vinland Saga. I’ve also put Blade of the Immortal on hold, which isn’t really a knock against the show itself – pulpy action dramas just aren’t really my thing, and my schedule this season is pretty darn full. I also won’t be covering Chihayafuru here, for basically the opposite reason – Chihayafuru is so much my thing that I’ve already written two separate articles covering its season premiere. With all that sorted out, let’s dive into the highlights of another week in anime!
Fall 2019 – Week 2 in Review
Alright folks, we’ve got a ton of anime to discuss and not nearly enough time, so let’s get to work. In addition to catching up on all the second episodes I missed due to preview week’s never-ending nature, I also spent much of the last week tying up various loose ends from the summer season. I spammed through what remained of Vinland Saga, have nearly caught up on JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, concluded Carole & Tuesday, and swore a blood oath to catch up on O Maidens at the first possible opportunity. With only a single season left in the anime year, it’s time to start thinking about 2019’s best shows, and that discussion kinda demands actually having watched the year’s best shows in the first place.
Meanwhile, the fall season itself is proving to be full of treasures, packed with strong continuing productions, excellent sequels, and some genuinely stunning new productions. Both Blade of the Immortal and Stars Align have immediately established themselves as top shelf 2019 productions, while steady favorites like Legends of the Galactic Heroes and Chihayafuru remain as compelling as ever. It’s a genuinely kickass anime season, and I’ve got a heck of a lot to talk about. Let’s break down the concluding stars of summer, and the new favorites of the fall season!
Fall 2019 – Virtually Every First Episode Retrospective
Hello folks, and welcome to hell. Having fought my way through nearly every premiere of the fall season, I’ve weathered injustices and disappointments both familiar and entirely new, all to bring you the freshest possible anime delicacies. There were a huge number of new releases this fall season, but with so many of the season’s high-profile shows being sequels, separating the strongest newcomers from the pack seemed even more arduous than usual. I succeeded, though, and I return to you with arms full of alluring new cartoons. Additionally, many of the shows that are either continuing into the fall or commencing new sequels are also really darn good – if you’re not current on them, I’d highly recommend supplementing your viewing schedule with something like Vinland Saga, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, or Chihayafuru.
As usual, I wrote full length reviews for all of the premieres I’ll be summarizing here, which you can check out over at ANN’s preview guide. I’ll also be including links to each individual review below, as I run down the season’s new prospects from best to worst, and separate them into loose tiers of view-worthiness. Returning to help me define those tiers will be an array of representative Chaika gifs, because everybody loves Chaika and it’s easier to describe gifs than to write funny descriptions anyway. Without further ado, let’s break down the fresh premieres of the fall anime season!
Spring 2018 – Week 12 in Review
Week twelve, you guys. The season is basically over, and we’ve already arrived at the end of June. How could this possibly happen? I feel like I was still settling on what to watch this season just a couple weeks ago, and now we’re saying goodbye to Hinamatsuri as Joe preps for his very last match. The uncharitable reality might just be that this season was never able to establish much of an identity for me; neither My Hero Academia nor Legend of the Galactic Heroes are shows I’d considered tethered to this particular moment, while Megalo Box will likely end up a low entry on my end-of-year list and Hinamatsuri will shuffle off into fun but kinda trifling seasonal memory. But while the season as a whole might not be much to speak of, this particular week in anime was strong all around, demonstrating there are damn good reasons I’ve kept up with this particular catalog. Any week that adopts one of my favorite scenes from My Hero Academia can’t be that bad, and this week’s episode did everything it could to do that sequence justice. Let’s start right off with that then, and run this week down!
Spring 2018 – Week 11 in Review
This week in anime was Holy shit did you see that My Hero Academia episode. I’m sure other stuff happened, but oh my god, All Might versus All For One, what an incredible event. Easily the best episode of the season, and possibly eclipsing the Deku-Todoroki fight as the best episode of the show altogether. Fortunately, while All Might’s battle cast a long shadow this week, everything else I was watching also turned in reasonably solid performances. The theme of this week seemed to be “strong execution of fundamentally iffy material,” as Hinamatsuri managed to turn a one-joke bit into a highlight, Megalo Box did its best to work around the Burroughs fight’s dramatic limitations, and Legend of the Galactic Heroes spun drama out of “our supply lines are getting overdrawn and everyone back at command is an idiot.” It’s frankly nice to not be watching anything whose wild, flailing fortunes could stress me out – there are no temperamental half-masterpieces here, it’s all sturdy productions by very consistent teams. But anyway, let’s get right back into the All Might gushing and RUN THIS WEEK DOWN!