Tag Archives: March comes in like a lion

March comes in like a lion – Episode 4

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March comes in like a lion spent an entire episode in its goofier, comedy-happy mode this week, which inevitably resulted in a weaker episode overall. I like these characters well enough that such episodes are still far from unpleasant, but the show has just not found graceful ways to integrate the comedy of the manga. The slice of life elements are clearly key to the structure of the whole, so hopefully the show eventually gets a better grasp on its own material!

You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my notes below.

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Fall 2016 – Week 3 in Review

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Anime is so friggin’ good this season. I thought I was lucky last season, given my sturdy crop of half a dozen reliably entertaining shows, but this one is offering a solid handful of shows that could easily be the best anime of a normal season. Yuri!!! On ICE is consistently funny and extremely propulsive, Sound! Euphonium is every bit the equal of its predecessor, Girlish Number is giving Watari Wataru an easy canvas to riff on, and March comes in like a lion might still be my favorite thing I’m watching. With Flip Flappers and Izetta each offering their own very different strengths, pretty much every kind of show I like is solidly represented here. I remember noting in the spring season that all I was lacking was a strong character-focused story – well, I may not be getting a Conrevo-style themey-wemey show this time, but I think I can be content with this embarrassment of character-focused riches. Anime is being very good to me, so let’s stop with the rambling and RUN THESE SHOWS DOWN!

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March comes in like a lion – Episode 3

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March comes in like a lion finally spent basically a whole episode in its reflective, melancholy tone this week, and the results were predictably excellent. The show’s random tonal switches and jokes are such an isolated weakness that I actually don’t really feel that put off by them – they’re awkward, but when it comes to all the stuff that counts, March is excellent. I’m looking forward to following these characters for a long time!

You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my extremely limited notes below.

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Fall 2016 – Week 2 in Review

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Preview week has finally concluded, and most shows are already past their second or even third episodes. This season turned out to be even more bountiful than I’d expected, meaning I’ve had to make some ruthless cuts to make the absolutely most efficient usage of my cartoon consumption experience. Magical Girl Raising Project’s second episode killed the sleepy magical girl, so it’s off the list. Keijo’s second episode only had me intermittently laughing through its first half, so it’s gone. With roughly forty or fifty weekly articles to write, I’ve been forced to cut down my list of “leisure anime” to only the fiercest, boldest, most ruthless entertainment machines on the market. It’s brutal work watching all these cartoons, but I can take solace in compressing the painstaking work of dozens of artists and animators into an offhand paragraph for your lunch break consumption. Let’s grit our teeth, clench our bowels, and RUN THIS DOWN!

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March comes in like a lion – Episodes 1-2

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And with March comes in like a lion, we’ve got all three of my episodic shows up and running. March is very excellent so far – its tone can sometimes feel disjointed and its comedy can be pretty bad, but its characters and framing are easily strong enough to make up for those issues. Some shows can get by purely by conveying a character’s headspace as well as this show’s first episode – the fact that it seems the character development going forward will be just as strong is gravy. I’m having a great time with this one!

You can check out my full review over at ANN, or my episode two notes below.

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Fall 2016 – Virtually Every First Episode Retrospective

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Holy shit I’m alive. Having dragged myself through one more gauntlet of endless, senseless, pitiless animation, I can finally say I’ve survived another one. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say this was the least psychologically damaging crop of debuts I’ve had to weather since joining the preview guide. Sure, there were bad shows – there are always plenty of bad shows – but the number of true spirit-breakers was mercifully low, and a surprising number of shows were competently executed even if they didn’t appeal to me. Anime’s current production model may be an unsustainable trainwreck of manic overproduction, but the bastards didn’t get me this time!

And so, having sat through all those many, many hours of animation, it’s time to send my battle report back to the folks back home. As usual, I’ll be running down every single show I watched in general order of how impressed I was, grouping things into categories based on how much they hurt me. Also as usual, you can check out the whole list of reviews over at ANN, or click on any of the titles below to go to that show’s specific reviews (I’m Nick Creamer over there). There’s a ton of very reasonable anime this season, so let’s get right to it!

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