Hello friends, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. I recently received a request to write some sort of “sakuga article,” meaning an article relevant in some way to the exemplary individual cuts of animation we anime stalwarts refer to as “sakuga.” This has been a source of some consternation to me, as I don’t generally consider myself particularly studied or well-informed when it comes to the specific craft of animation in the abstract. I know enough to describe why a cut feels evocative or impactful to me, but my specialties are first and foremost writing-related, followed by filmic technique, with animation following behind.
Tag Archives: March comes in like a lion
Why It Works: Reigen is Great, But There Are Other Great Anime Parents Too!
After last week’s parental love letter to a remorseless conman and serial liar, I felt kinda obligated to celebrate some anime parents who don’t necessarily possess quite so much baggage. For this week’s Why It Works, I ran down a scattering of other great parents or parental figures, giving me a fine opportunity to rep shows like March and Eccentric Family once more. Look, if March didn’t want to show up on half of my recommendation lists, it shouldn’t have been so good at absolutely everything.
Reigen is Great, But There Are Other Great Anime Parents Too!
Top Ten Anime of 2018
Hello folks, and welcome to the end of another dang year. 2018 has been a pretty terrifying and seemingly endless year out in the real world, as empires crumble and we draw ever closer to climate-prompted apocalypse. Fortunately, the world of anime seems largely unperturbed by our coming oblivion, and offered plenty of delights in all sorts of genres throughout this year. As a contributor to Anime News Network’s preview guide, I watched almost every single full-length premiere this year, and did my best to keep up with everything that seemed worth watching. Even then, a few shows managed to slip through the cracks – Bloom Into You will likely earn a spot on this list once I’ve caught up with it, and I still haven’t found the time to watch Hisone and Maso-tan, among other things. In spite of that, I watched a hell of a lot of anime this year, and am eager to share my favorites with you.
The anime this year was so good, in fact, that I actually have a few honorable mentions. First off, the third season of My Hero Academia was a generally excellent time, though it unfortunately peaked hard at the end of its first half. There’s also Megalo Box, which was a thrilling action spectacle that felt just a tad too archetypal for me to truly love. And finally, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure‘s fifth arc has been a wild and creative adventure so far, and would easily make this list in a year with fewer standouts. I’m also not including anime films, both because I feel they don’t really make for a meaningful direct comparison with shows, and also because nobody wants to read a list that’s just Liz and the Blue Bird repeated ten times. With that covered, let’s get to the reason we’re all here. It’s time to run down my top ten anime of 2018!
Winter 2018 – Week 11 in Review
It’s closing time, folks – open all the doors and let you out into the world. I’d be happy to just quote one hit wonders this week, but the season really is ending, so I suppose we should also survey some cartoons. Given I’ve already dropped everything that seemed to be juggling more narrative balls than it could handle (aka Franxx), I wasn’t surprised to see this week’s finales conclude their shows with general grace, with both Laid Back Camp and A Place Further than the Universe offering not necessarily their best episodes, but fine representations of their overall appeal. And among the continuing shows, After the Rain continues to hone in on a genuinely satisfying endpoint for Kondo and Akira, while March comes in like a lion… well, I mean, it’s March, it’s always gonna do its own thing. All these shows have been consistent enough that I have entirely run out of new things to say about them, so while I’m sad to see them go, I’m also looking forward to whatever fresh madness the spring will bring. Let’s send this season’s contenders off right, and run this week down!
Winter 2018 – Week 10 in Review
The anime kinda killed it this week, folks. Well, alright, at least one anime specifically killed it, and that anime constitutes a large enough percentage of my weekly quality variance that it alone killing it pretty much lifts the whole ship. To put a finer point on it, this week’s episode of A Place Further than the Universe was absolutely phenomenal, and given all three of my other airing shows tend to maintain roughly the same level of quality every week (barring a climax episode of March), Universe’s success makes for a Week in Review success. Both Universe and After the Rain accomplished the difficult tasks of convincing me they could actually conclude their stories at satisfying points this week – Universe through its graceful return to its initial themes, and After the Rain through its continued detailing of what a glimmer of hope might look like for either of its heroes. In spite of this being a relatively light season in terms of raw show numbers, After the Rain, Universe, and March all fall so squarely into precisely My Jam territory that I can’t really complain. Not one, not two, but THREE melancholy character dramas about quietly unhappy people trying to reach out to each other. My cup runneth over with gentle sadness, and I couldn’t be happier about it. Let’s run this week down!
Winter 2018 – Week 9 in Review
Alright folks, it’s time once again for the Week in Review! With the season continuing to wind its way down, my own weekly pickings are looking even slimmer than usual. The big news this week is that I simply couldn’t muster any enthusiasm to watch Franxx, and so the butt handles have been dropped until their show gets better at handling its butts. Aside from that, the anime was pretty alright this week, which isn’t a surprise – I’ve honed my seasonal viewing down to just four shows, including a long-running sequel. If I can’t derive any pleasure from that short of a shortlist, I’m probably in real trouble. This has turned out to be a pretty standard off season all around, still housing a few random treasures, but mostly just laying out the carpet for next season’s copious sequels and adaptations and originals. That is, as ever, perfectly fine by me; regardless of what’s currently airing, I’m still buried in Princess Tutu and Chihayafuru and Simoun and plenty of other old gems. Every season is a great anime season if you’re not paralyzed by recency bias – but for now, let’s embrace that recency bias once more, and run down some random thoughts on the industry’s latest wares!
March comes in like a lion – Episode 40
March hit it out of the goddamn park this week, building off last week’s relatively reserved episode to turn the second half of Yanagihara’s story into one of the show’s best episodes to date. This episode’s skillful match of tactical drama, grounded emotional conflict, and overarching, fanciful metaphor made for a gripping and beautiful watch, once again demonstrating that March can find poignant humanity in pretty much anyone’s story. What a great show.
You can check out my full review over at ANN.
Winter 2018 – Week 8 in Review
Alright guys, I’m starting to run out of enthusiasm here. After seemingly gathering itself into a genuinely respectable show, Darling in the Franxx shit the bed for the second time straight this week, meaning the season’s wild card is rapidly losing all hope resolving into a genuinely good show. On top of that, my interest in A Place Further Than the Universe has only lapsed further, as the show continues to indulge in just-kinda-par slice of life episodes. And with even After the Rain turning in a relatively so-so episode this week, it feels totally unfair to hang all my hopes for excellence on Laid Back Camp, a show that is just trying to have a good time and is feeling so attacked right now. None of this is unusual, of course – a great first episode is a lot easier to achieve than a great show, and every season’s back half ends up littered with the regrets of shows that could have been. But still, I can’t help but feel just a bit demoralized as we embark on this Week in Review. Let’s pick up our spirits the best we can and run this week down!
March comes in like a lion – Episode 39
March comes in like a lion made its long-awaited return this week, offering more of the oppressively intimate and often fatiguing character drama we’ve come to know and love. Up this week was Yanagihara, a regular member of the local shogi association who’d never really gotten much focus before. Yanagihara’s deal is “lion in winter, oldest class A competitor, and bearer of all his absent friends’ shogi dreams,” and this episode did an excellent job of making that deal a lived experience. March is back folks, and still really damn good.
You can check out my full review over at ANN.
Winter 2018 – First Half in Review
That sacred time has come yet again. Once again we’ve arrived at the halfway point of the season, and once again I’ll be foregoing my episodic-specific thoughts in lieu of general feelings on everything I’m watching so far, all sorted into a neat show ranking. As usual, I should impress upon everyone that these show rankings don’t aspire to anything approaching objectivity, and the fact that I’m only doing this ranking here, when many shows have only just finished clearing their throats, means it’s basically impossible to draw any conclusions from them. These rankings also used to feel a bit more meaningful when I actually watched seven or eight shows a season – these days I tend to max out at half a dozen, and generally drop anything I’m not thoroughly enjoying. All five of these shows have been tested and found worthy in their own various genres and specialties, and I’d happily recommend any of them to the right person. But there can be only one champion, so let’s start with my top pick and RUN THIS SEASON DOWN!