Holy hell folks, we’re at the three quarters mark of the season. One of the sad truths of aging is that each week, season, and year somehow passes even faster than the last, but fortunately, at least this week’s cartoons were really excellent. Every single show I’m watching offered a fine episode this time; the combination of Carole & Tuesday having a slightly weaker episode and everything else excelling meant this week was pretty much an even line of solid entertainment from start to finish. They weren’t even the kind of straightforward “well that was competently executed” good that leaves me without much to talk about – they were good in exactly the convoluted, context-dependent ways that make for plenty of meaty critical interrogation. Let’s dive into the spoils then, as we break down another impressive week in anime!
Tag Archives: Sarazanmai
Spring 2019 – Week 8 in Review
There is nothing truly new to report about this week’s anime as a whole, and I’m already two hours late on posting this article anyway, so we’re jumping right into it, folks. Demon Slayer was solid, JoJo was ridiculous, Sarazanmai was repetitive, Carole & Tuesday was transcendent – I think that’s about it for preamble? Yeah, I think we’re basically covered. Starting off with Tanjiro and Nezuko’s shonen shenanigans, let’s run down one more week in anime!
Spring 2019 – Week 7 in Review
As we enter the second half of the season, all of my airing contenders have more or less settled into their default modes, as hope and anticipation solidify into weekly expectations, and rambunctious young stories find their mature footing. Demon Slayer’s episodic strengths and weaknesses have become relatively predictable, while Carole & Tuesday’s consistent genius is now the one goddamn thing I can rely on in this blighted world. Predictability gets a bad rap, but being predictably terrific is a pretty good thing in my mind, so I am all in favor of Carole & Tuesday’s choices. Let’s check in with our young rock stars and all this season’s other heroes, as we plow through another Week in Review!
Spring 2019 – Week 6 in Review
Well shit you guys, the season’s halfway over. Traditionally, this would be the time where instead of offering reflections on this week’s episodes, I rank the overall field of everything I’ve watching. However, once I started cutting down my seasonal watch schedule to only the shows I was genuinely loving, that became a pretty meaningless exercise. I could rank my viewing schedule, but everything I’m watching is something I’d highly recommend, so what would be the point? In light of that, I instead started to simply summarize my overall impressions of each show so far – but as one commenter pointed out, you can already get a pretty clear view of my overall feelings on a show from my weekly commentary. Given all that, today I’ll be offering… an entirely normal installment of the Week in Review! Yes, that’s right folks, we’ll be celebrating the seasonal halfway point by doing exactly what we always do. I can tell your excitement is already at a fever pitch, so I’ll wrap this intro up now, as we dive into one more extremely normal Week in Review!
Why It Works: Searching for Home in the Anime of Kunihiko Ikuhara
Today on Why It Works, I used the reveal of Toi’s backstory as a jumping-off point to explore the searching for a home that dominates all of Ikuhara’s anime productions. It’s nice to be able to put all those hours spent exploring and detailing Penguindrum’s themes to good use, and always a treat to revisit the art design of Ikuhara’s works in general. Here’s the piece!
Searching for Home in the Anime of Kunihiko Ikuhara
Spring 2019 – Week 5 in Review
This season gets pretty lean when it’s time for a JoJo recap episode, huh? With Bucciaratti’s boys stuck reliving all their most recent traumas, it fell to my other three ongoing productions to keep the peace this week. Fortunately, all three of those shows are pretty darn good, so I wasn’t really left wanting for entertainment either way. Demon Slayer continued to stick to its familiar narrative template, but also persisted in bolstering that template with lots of phenomenal art direction, as well as some theoretical thematic substance. Sarazanmai also stuck to its regular formula, but did a terrific job of fleshing out Toi as a protagonist. And Carole & Tuesday basically shored up any deficiencies in the other two, offering yet another ridiculously charming and far too short collection of capers. All this at greater length, as we break down the highs and lows of another week in anime!
Spring 2019 – Week 4 in Review
The anime is good, folks. I may have intentionally reduced my seasonal payload to a lean and star-studded roster which is almost categorically incapable of disappointing me, but either way, the anime is good. I think this week’s episode of Carole & Tuesday was actually the show’s best yet, which is really saying something, while Demon Slayer pulled off its most impressive visual feats so far. JoJo maintained its recent string of fantastic episodes, and though Sarazanmai is getting a little repetitive, there was still plenty to appreciate in the main stage debut of its third protagonist. But you’re not here to read summaries of summaries, so let’s get to it. Here’s to one more week in anime!
Spring 2019 – Week 3 in Review
Hold onto your hats folks, it’s time for the Week in Review! It turns out I’m probably not going to be following that many shows this season, but what I’m lacking in range of properties, I’m more than making up in volume of rambling. All of the shows I’m watching gave me plenty to talk about this week, with JoJo pulling off one of its best episodes in months while all three of my newcomers worked to establish their own identities. I’m also appreciated the stark contrast between this season’s two heavyweights – Carole & Tuesday seems determined to embody the strength of a classic story told well, while Sarazanmai embraces creativity for its own sake, and clearly values the power of novelty and surprise. Both of them are great, and with two sturdy action vehicles aside, I’m basically just a slice of life short of a full hand. Let’s break down all the week’s highlights as we run down another week in anime!
Spring 2019 – Virtually Every First Episode Retrospective
Well folks, the time has come again. With basically every spring premiere on the books, and me having watched them all in some misguided pursuit of cartoon enlightenment, we can at last run down the hits, misses, and egregious humanitarian crimes of the spring anime season. Though to be honest, the international tragedies were actually in pretty short supply this time – this was a premiere season defined by consistency, and low on outliers in either the positive or negative direction. That’s not to say there’s nothing worth watching, though; there’s actually a pretty wide array of respectable premieres in all sorts of genres, along with a couple genuine gems.
As usual, I’ll be breaking down my evaluations into a vague tier list, and keeping my blurbs fairly brief, while also linking to all of my lengthier reviews over at the preview guide. This isn’t meant to be an authoritative ranking of quality or anything – I mean, these are just first episodes, pretty much any of these productions could surprise us (except for AFTERLOST). In light of that, I’ll be returning to the most simultaneously telling and useless of evaluation metrics – silly anime gifs, the only true currency in our apocalyptic age. Starting with the best of shows and happiest of anime gifs, let’s run this whole damn season down!
Why It Works: Revolutionary Girl Utena’s Ikuhara is Directing an Anime this Spring!
Today I wrote the necessary followup to last week’s Watanabe-focused article, this time exploring the career of the equally remarkable Kunihiko Ikuhara. It’s a pretty classic retrospective, focusing on both his themes and influences, with a solid shoutout to Junichi Sato for good measure. Let’s get to it!
Revolutionary Girl Utena’s Ikuhara is Directing an Anime this Spring!
