Tag Archives: Planet With

Why It Works: Planet With’s Villains Are Right

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Today on Crunchyroll, I finally took my first stab at a Planet With article, which will hopefully be the first of many. There are a million possible angles to tackle this show from, but I went with a pretty central one to start: the moral ambiguity of the various shifting factions in this very unique show. There are no clear villains in this one – even the friggin’ dragon has his own ethos, as horribly violent as it is. I’m excited to see how alliances shift in the second half!

Planet With’s Villains Are Right

Summer 2018 – First Half in Review

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Welp, the first half of August basically just disappeared in the space of a sneeze or something, so we’ve somehow already arrived at the season’s halfway point. Like last season, I’m not really watching enough airing shows to make any sort of ranking meaningful, and I mean, it’s not like these rankings have ever been meaningful in the first place. Also like last season, I don’t really have any problems with that – I’m much happier watching the shows I genuinely love on an episodic basis, and just dropping the stuff that doesn’t actually thrill me. I have to keep up with at least some seasonal anime for the sake of my actual work, but on the whole, I highly recommend dropping stuff you hope will become or return to being good, and instead check out some shows that people have been loving for years and years.

If we just looked at the airing shows I’d been watching, this would be a pretty bad year for me – the only shows I’ve really loved are After the Rain, Violet Evergarden, Laid-Back Camp, and likely a couple of this season’s shows. But given all the other projects I’ve been working on, this has actually been one of my most rewarding years since I started watching seasonally, offering shows as diverse and fantastic as Princess Tutu, Ojamajo Doremi, Precure Hugtto, and even some non-magical girl shows. The urge to keep up with the airing conversation can definitely be strong, but there’s a wide anime world out there, and I’m still discovering new favorites all the time.

Anyway! Week in Review. I might not be ranking shows any more, but I actually still like the idea of covering my thoughts as a whole at the halfway point, so we’ll be going with a more gentle style of evaluation. With all three of my seasonal titans excelling in their own ways, I’ve got a pretty satisfying spread of visual splendor, thematic poignancy, and just-plain-excellent entertainment. Let’s start with Satoshi Mizukami’s beautiful baby and run this season down!

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Summer 2018 – Week 5 in Review

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Hot tip: it turns out if you drop everything you’re watching except for the really great shows, EVERY week in anime is a great week in anime! So it goes for this particular week, where my likely unsurprising decision to finally drop Angolmois means I’m only watching shows I really, really enjoy. Fortunately for you folks, the less I watch, the more I apparently have to say about it – My Hero Academia, Planet With, and Revue Starlight all left me with plenty to talk about, and I’m eager to get to it. Even without a dedicated character drama this season, both Planet With and Revue Starlight are doing their best to give me meaty drama and thematics to sink into, while My Hero Academia continues to offer a thoroughly engaging mix of sturdy fundamentals and creative embellishments. Let’s start out by exploring My Hero Academia’s uniquely clever adaptation choices, and run the highlights of these excellent shows down!

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Summer 2018 – Week 4 in Review

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The anime was pretty darn great this week, folks. First off, I settled into an actual watch schedule, which comes out to… well, all of the same stuff I was watching last week. I tried to pick up Hanebado! again, but to be honest, in a year where I’ve been spamming episodes of Chihayafuru nearly every week, it’s really hard to appreciate a show that’s so much worse at sports drama. When the show tried to dip into its trauma drama I pretty much instantly thought “can’t we just fast forward to the cool matches,” and it was at this point that I realized I wasn’t treating the show fairly enough to genuinely engage with it. “If you’re not enjoying something, just watch something else – you will not learn anything critically by continuing to watch it, you’ll just feed your own sense of superiority” is a lesson I’ve tried hard to internalize lately, and I might as well put it into practice here.

Fortunately, while Hanebado! was a bust, Angolmois actually stepped up enough this week that I feel happy continuing it, meaning I’ve got a pretty sturdy schedule. My list is still perilously low on compelling character dramas, but compelling character dramas are just not something anime is willing to give me every season, to my eternal dismay. Until we can bottle and mass produce Nisio Isin stories, I think that’s just a truth I’m going to have to live with – in the meantime, let’s survey what we’ve got and RUN THIS WEEK DOWN!

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Summer 2018 – Virtually Every First Episode Retrospective

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Well folks, the premieres have mostly crash-landed at this point, and it’s finally time to start sifting through the wreckage. My work on the ANN preview guide means I’ve personally watched basically every non-sequel premiere, and thus have a moral responsibility to share my knowledge, lest anyone else suffer this terrible burden. Every new season comes with somewhere around thirty relevant new productions, and it is absolutely not worth anyone’s (unpaid) time to watch all those shows, so today I’ll be breaking down this season’s premieres into vague tiers for your perusal. As always, I should clarify that this isn’t meant to be a hard, “objective” list or anything – I personally think I’m pretty okay at critiquing narrative/aesthetic craft and whatnot, but we all bring unique and valid perspectives to art, and so my list can’t really amount to much more than “I thought this was pretty cool.” Ultimately, if you’re a fan of some show’s given genre, most anime are at least watchable – but hey, you’re here and reading this, so you might as well check out my thoughts.

You can check out the full list of shows/reviews over at ANN, or just keep reading as we run through the season’s offerings. I should also mention that not everything actually has had its premiere yet, and thus last-minute challengers could still shake up the season (looking at you, Revue Starlight). And finally, this season I’ll be delegating the job of tier designation to Chitanda Eru, who I’m certain will do a phenomenal job. Let’s start with the season’s all stars and run through some premieres!

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Summer 2018 – First Impressions, Part Two

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Alright, looks like I’ve got at least half an hour or so before the next flood of shows arrives, so let’s take stock with another first impressions post! I am currently utterly overwhelmed by the volume of new releases, but fortunately, it already seems like this season is shaping up to be an unexpected solid one. Pretty much all the shows I was hoping would be good pulled off strong first episodes, but even unexpected contenders like Chio’s School Road and Asobi Asobase have turned out to have plenty to recommend them. As usual, you can click through here to check out the full ANN list, or look below for all of my new scores and links to individual reviews. Let’s get right to it!

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Summer 2018 Season Preview

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Well folks, the spring season’s beginning to wrap up, meaning it’s time to look forward to our upcoming summer slate, and see what new anime delicacies we’ll be devouring this time. Once again, I’ll be frank – the summer is looking to be a really weak season, following up on a spring that was also an extremely weak season. This isn’t the “new normal,” and this isn’t simply a reflection of my own more exacting standards (okay, maybe it’s slightly a reflection of that) – good anime seasons come and go, and the unfortunate fact is we’ve just run into a couple seasons in a row with a relative dearth of noteworthy projects. After an incredibly strong winter that simultaneously offered Violet Evergarden, After the Rain, A Place Further than the Universe, and Laid-Back Camp, both spring and summer seem destined to struggle.

Fortunately, My Hero Academia is still running, and it’s not like summer is a total wasteland – we’ve got Banana Fish to hold down the “prestige adaptation” slot, and perhaps most importantly, Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer’s author Satoshi Mizukami is writing one show himself. Plus, there’s always backlog – why suffer through the dubious fruits of whatever happens to be arbitrarily streaming at the moment when we can always watch actually good shows from the past? I might be professionally obligated to indulge fandom’s recency bias, but you all can be free! Go! Set sail! Embrace that freedom, and watch something good!

Anyway. Moving on. As usual, I won’t run down every single upcoming show here – you can check out a site like anichart for a list of general synopses, so there won’t be any of that here. Instead, I’ll just be highlighting the shows I personally have a reason to feel excited about, along with an explanation of whatever it is that caught my interest – great staff, beloved source material, or maybe just a really great trailer. Starting with my most-anticipated properties, let’s buckle up and see what the summer has in store!

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