The spring season was basically over this week, and preview week has already started its unholy charge, so this is gonna be a light and breezy week in anime. We’ve basically just got My Hero Academia and Megalo Box to cover, and that’s such a limited “group” that I can’t even waste a paragraph rambling about the overall tenor of my weekly viewing experience. My Hero Academia was bad, Megalo Box was good, and they are the only shows I have to talk about. Let’s see if we can stretch that summation into a little more substance, and start with the bad news as we RUN THIS WEEK DOWN!
Tag Archives: Megalo Box
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!
Spring 2018 – Week 10 in Review
Another week of anime has come and gone, drawing us ever closer to the end of this altogether lukewarm season. I can’t really say I’ll be missing this one, as half of my airing schedule are actually long-running shows that just so happened to cross this season (LoGH and MHA), while the other half hasn’t really been memorable enough to stick with me. This week was an unfortunate low ebb for most of what I’m watching, as My Hero Academia kinda stumbled in conveying a key manga moment, while Megalo Box couldn’t quite find enough emotional substance in its requisite “the band is breaking up” conflict. Meanwhile, Hinamatsuri seems to be running out of gas for a few of its running jokes, while Legend of the Galactic Heroes… well actually, Legend of the Galactic Heroes is pretty much always great. Let’s start with that then, and open with some positive thoughts about cynical themes as we run this week down!
Spring 2018 – Week 9 in Review
This week in anime was dominated by the shows that tend to be the benchwarmers, as both Legend of the Galactic Heroes and Hinamatsuri stepped up while Megalo Box and My Hero Academia each settled for more conventional episodes. That was totally fine by me – to be honest, the kind of things that Galactic Heroes and Hinamatsuri are good at appeal to me far more than the things Megalo Box and MHA generally succeed in, so I was happy to see them offer some new highlights. Hinamatsuri is just such an idiosyncratic thing, defined by a comic sensibility that clearly stands out among anime comedies, and matching that sense of humor with a confidence that lets it pull off eight minute segments dedicated to single extended jokes. Let’s start off with those wacky psychic shenanigans and run this week down!
Why It Works: Junk Dog Vs. Soldier, Part Two
Today I finish up my breakdown of the Joe versus Aragaki fight, covering just a few of the many smart structural and aesthetic decisions that made this fight work. The show hasn’t pulled off another episode this good since, but I’ve got plenty of faith that the last act will be a stunner. Megalo Box has just continued to impress me at every turn, and at this point it only needs to stick the landing.
Junk Dog Vs. Soldier, Part Two
Spring 2018 – Week 8 in Review
Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Week in Review. With Legend of the Galactic Heroes taking the week off, my week in anime lost twenty-five percent of its volume, but worked hard to make up for in quality what it lacked in quantity. This week’s My Hero Academia was mostly just “solid original material (plus one highlight), adapted competently,” but both Hinamatsuri and Megalo Box knocked it out of the park, demonstrating both their consistent strengths and a variety of new tricks. Those two make for a pretty weird combination, but between them they cover an oddly exhaustive range of the stuff I look for in anime – stylish action, tactically-minded sports narratives, warm comedy, charming character pieces, etc. I’m basically just missing “auteur-directed,” “strong romance,” “themey-wemey show,” and “psychological drama” on my bingo sheet, and Legend of the Galactic Heroes is generally happy to hold down the theme fort. The anime is good and even these three shows have offered me plenty to talk about, so let’s get right down to another week in review!
Why It Works: Junk Dog Vs. Soldier: MEGALOBOX’s Finest Fight
This week on Why It Works, I finally start on a big craft breakdown for Megalo Box, exploring the many smart decisions that made its recent Aragaki fight so spectacular. Megalo Box has always been a stylish and entertaining show, but the storytelling here felt the most sturdily constructed and rewarding so far. I hope you enjoy the piece!
Junk Dog Vs. Soldier: MEGALOBOX’s Finest Fight
Spring 2018 – Week 7 in Review
The anime was good this week, folks. Actually, the anime’s been pretty damn good these past two weeks, with Megalo Box pulling off what was easily its most satisfying fight yet, Hinamatsuri finally establishing what feels like a confident balance between its various modes, and Legend of the Galactic Heroes just chugging away as consistently as ever. If Megalo Box can maintain the standard set by the second half of Aragaki’s fight, it could easily end up being my favorite show of the season – of course, that also depends on how My Hero Academia handles its upcoming highlights. We’ve basically got a seasoned pro squaring off against an energetic young gun here, and whoever wins, we in the audience get to enjoy all of it. Let’s settle back and run these past weeks down in one more week in review!
Spring 2018 – First Half in Review
Alright folks, let’s all buckle in for the spring season’s first half in review! Usually, this is the time where I rank all the things I’m actively watching, using this informal halfway point marker to plot out how I feel about the season as a whole. But at this point, I just don’t watch enough airing shows to make that feel meaningful, and I haven’t for a while. That’s not to say I’m watching any less anime – I’m actually watching more anime than ever, it’s just scattered across airing shows, full releases for ANN, and independent projects for you guys. And personally, I’m significantly happier this way – keeping up with shows just because they’re hits wasn’t ever very fun for me, arguing about whether some megahit is great or terrible is mostly exhausting to me, and cutting down to the shows I’m genuinely really enjoying has led to a far more positive relationship with anime in general.
Unfortunately, all that reflection and self-growth doesn’t really help the old-fashioned, extremely arbitrary First Half in Review. So for at least this edition, I’m going to keep what works and toss what doesn’t really make sense, and run through some overall thoughts on my shows so far without implying those thoughts are any kind of ranking or evaluation. I’ve never been a person who cares to evaluate what makes an 8.74/10 show better than an 8.72/10 show – I want to know what makes either of those shows interesting in their own right, and hopefully me digging at that is a little interesting for you too. So let’s start with My Hero Academia for the hell of it and run this season down!