Hey all, and welcome back to the Week in Review. The summer season is basically over at this point, as Planet With turns in its final assignment and my other airing shows prep for their own finales. This season was ultimately, obviously pretty top-heavy, as the dropoff between what I actually stuck with and what I could have picked up pretty much always felt precipitous, but I still ended up with a fair amount to talk about, and I’m guessing all three of this season’s heavyweights will end up on my end-of-year list. Planet With’s presence on that list is basically assured – in fact, I’m guessing that one will be duking it out with Violet Evergarden and whatever the fall’s best show is for my top pick of the year. Revue Starlight and My Hero Academia are a little more iffy, but both of them have demonstrated great strengths throughout this season, and I’ll be sad to see them go. Starting with the season’s clear champion, let’s poke at the summer season one more time!

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The anime was dominated by titanic clashes this week, as all my shows galloped towards their endgames while offering some dramatic fireworks along the way. While My Hero Academia demonstrated that it had indeed been hoarding all its animation eggs in the Deku-Bakugo basket, Revue Starlight showed off with a two-on-two duel featuring some of its most convincing secondary character work so far. And over in Planet With land, this season’s most visually conservative star showed off in its own way, vividly demonstrating the richness of characterization and thoughtfulness of narrative structure that have elevated it all along the way. I had little to complain about and much to revel in this week, and I’m happy to share all my gushing with you folks. Let’s start with the showdown between everyone’s favorite rowdy boys as we run down one more week in anime!

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With the summer season entering its twilight hour, everything I’m watching began clearing its throat this week, mostly by taking care of various dramatic minibosses in order to prep for the finale. That resulted in a collection of episodes that weren’t really all that thrilling for their own sake, but still necessary in various ways, and littered with occasional small pleasures. Having each pulled off a sequence of jaw-dropping episodes in their recent history, both Revue Starlight and Planet With unfortunately ended up faltering in their most common ways this week; Revue Starlight through its sometimes shaky characterization and storytelling, and Planet With through its so-so visual execution. Neither of this season’s highlights are perfect shows, but they’re both relentlessly interesting shows, and even their missteps leave me with plenty to talk about. Let’s break down those complaints and more as we run down one more week in anime!

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As we move towards the final act of the summer season’s various performances, I’m happy to say that both Planet With and Revue Starlight seem squarely aimed at tremendously satisfying climaxes. Well, in Planet With’s case this will be its fourth or fifth tremendously satisfying climax, but I was worried about Starlight at least for a while there, and this week’s episode went a serious distance towards putting my fears to rest. The story’s “villain” is now clear, the show’s internal conflicts have both the immediate dramatic consequences and larger thematic relevance they needed, and the execution of each individual episode somehow seems to actually improve over time. Revue Starlight opened with infinite potential, but it’s only recently hammered down its dramatic solidity, and I couldn’t be happier. But anyway, starting with the old favorite that’s unfortunately turned out to be the runt of this seasonal litter, let’s work our way up and run this week down!

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Hey folks, and welcome back to another week in review. The anime was the anime this week – one show triumphed with one of its best episodes, another show disappointed with one of its least impressive, and Planet With was as indescribably Planet With as ever. The success story this week was Revue Starlight, which illustrated a shocking revelation regarding the true nature of this competition through a beautifully realized tone piece, giving us an evocative glimpse into the headspace of Starlight’s most mysterious contender. Offering consistently striking layouts and a variety of dramatic reveals, it marked a major step up for the series in terms of narrative tension while also thrilling as its own self-contained vignette. I should probably reserve some of my gushing for the show’s own dedicated segment, though, so let’s hold off there and start with the runt of the weekly litter. It’s time to run this week down!

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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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