Bakuten – 5-7
Lenlo: Alright I have a lot to cover and only a paragraph to do it in so lets make this fast! Right off the bat I really liked the horror-style directing of episode 5. It took what was essentially a bottle episode, relationship filler, and did something interesting with its presentation. Of course we will only see if this episode was worth it or not later down the line when these relationships get put to the test. Charging forward we come to episode 6! More than anything else this episode was a show of what Bakuten’s CGI can do and it wasn’t bad. It looked the worst during the performance oddly enough, with the harsh lighting really making them stand out. But the interesting and dynamic camera angles along with the full body movements kept it visually engaging enough that I think I’m going to call that a passing grade for now. Overall though the CGI is definitely wavering. Finally episode 7, backstory! This was nice, it was satisfying to see all the dominoes come together and finally get a complete picture. I can’t say I care for the teacher that much but he’s at least a character now, so points for that. All in all I think these 3 episodes weren’t half bad! Bakuten is silent but solid this season. Not making any great waves but steadily holding course, consistent with its quality. That’s refreshing!
Also the manager is still cute. Shoulda submitted her for the State of the Season, damn.
Back Arrow – 19-20
Wooper: I have nothing nice to say about these episodes or Back Arrow in general. It’s thicker than ever with pseudoscientific dialogue, asphyxiating plotting, and screechy voice acting. Even Zetsu and Rudolph, the show’s two reliably fun characters, have gone from unpredictable forces of chaos to mere mouthpieces for writer Kazuki Nakashima’s half-formed thoughts on God. I won’t be mentioning this show ever again (though I’ll marathon the last four episodes when I’m in a self-flagellating mood).
Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song – 9
Helghast: For the first three episode length arc of Vivy, it sure ended off with some of the best fight animation of the season and maybe even the year. Studio Wit made up for the slower-paced nature of the last two episodes by just flexing a sustained action sequence that went on for a couple of minutes and it looked good. However, aside from the flashy fights and wrist cannons, I found the basis of Kakitani’s motivation to be pretty mushy and weak. Having your piano teacher AI save you and seeing the way his funeral was conducted is a long leap of logic to ending up in an anti-AI terrorist group. Furthermore, the knowledge given to him that Diva would be conducting the singularity project on that specific day raises some troubling implications. Is there another player that was sent back from the future in order to insure that the AI uprising would succeed? In any case, Ophelia’s story came to a better conclusion than her human counterpart although I’m not sure if she survived or if Matsumoto ended up destroying her. I will be missing this version of Diva but hey, Vivy is back now to suffer some more existential crisis about her mission for the final stretch to the conclusion.
Godzilla SP – 2-3
Wooper: I’ll be trying a handful of shows over the next few weeks to replace all the stuff I was watching before. First up is Godzilla SP, which is receiving a damn good fan translation by MoyaiSubs. They’ve got their work cut out for them, since the show is packed with scientific terminology – unlike Back Arrow’s bullshit, I can imagine Godzilla’s script making sense to the STEM majors of the world. Character designs are flavorful, with bold, scratchy outlines that I quite like. Many of the characters themselves seem to have their head in the clouds, but I’ve got a few favorites so far, Pero 2 the sentient computer program chief among them. His transformations are endearingly inventive, and the way he brought Mei and Yun together for just a moment in episode 3 was a clever bit of narrative piping. Studio Orange’s CG pterodactyls feel visually divorced from the rest of the show, but the kaiju scenes themselves are well-executed – the monsters pose a serious threat to humanity, and with the key to their defeat still out of reach, the characters are forced to get creative when dealing with them. Godzilla SP’s first episode was frankly overwhelming, but I liked these two follow-ups, so I’ll continue with the series for now.
Despite the escalating shit happening with things like Shu somehow dying randomly, Rudolph’s ridiculous mech and dreadnought, Zetsu de-aging to team up with Arrow (who became a sword again) to fight against Rudolph, and Bit getting his own morpher which transforms him into a giant morpher that transforms the Granedger into a mech, it is severely disappointing to see the plot of Back Arrow boil down to another FF Tactics-esque “God is evil” story that isn’t even telegraphed particularly well. Not going to even bother watching it to see how it ends and will just see how much Taniguchi is willing to push it in terms of ludicrousness over the next four episodes.
I did find a little bit more enthusiasm for Moriarty the Patriot compared to the previous few weeks though. The Merchant of London episode was a fun court case episode with kid William and Louis against a greedy noble who wants to siphon money out of their orphanage, despite some leaps in logic and largely being more set-up for the Milverton plotline coming up, since all we get plotwise is Milverton discovering that Will is the Lord of Crime.
What’s more interesting is the White Knight of London arc which in no way was inspired heavily by Harvey Dent in the Dark Knight film (i.e. optimistic lawyer wants to make a better society (increase voting to everyone and not just the upper class) but is targeted by sinister forces who oppose him and are willing to break him (including going after his disabled younger brother)). Engrish was especially terrible here with The Dairy Londrer lol.
Fairy Ranmaru despite my initial enthusiasm (due to its initial horniness) is really starting to feel repetitive at this point, since they’re giving each fairy another episode it seems, and one of the characters of the week even returned for a rather weak plot last episode. Even the magical boy sections are losing their luster. Just tell us who Sirius is and the nature of the fairy world already. At least there’s a cliffhanger depicting Uruu “providing CPR” to Homura if you know what I mean. Although I was sorta expecting the King of Prism creator to pull that one out of his hat here inevitably.
Out of curiosity, I did binge TWEWY ep4-7 which covers Week 2 in the game. It’s better, but it’s because the plot in Week 2 is getting more elaborate compared to Week 1, and not because this adaptation has gotten more competent (just slightly more so if we’re being fair), since it still has some of the same issues as in ep1-3 (rushing through scenes, game was more impactful, some characters still sidelined). Now I sleep on it until ep8-12 covering Week 3 are out.
And Lenlo, I thought you were going to cover Mars Red since I did point out how it was deviating from the manga (and for the better imo).
One of the more disappointing aspects though about this adaptation of Yuukoku no Moriarty, is that despite having to unavoidably skip and truncate several arcs due to their overt usage of 007 references that clearly would’ve pissed off the Fleming estate and the asshole producers at EON, it sadly had to skip over arguably one of the most integral chapters in the manga (Adventure of the One Student).
Unfortunate since it helped fully develop the dynamic between William and Sherlock through interacting with each other at the school. At least it could be still be told via a drama CD packed with the last BD volume, but the omission in the show itself is disappointing. It’s pretty much hellbent on adapting to the end of Milverton’s plotline.
I was but as I watched it I just… lost interest? I got through 8 and when it came time for this post it I just couldn’t write anything about it. Nothing worth jotting down at least. Is it nice that its separating from the manga? Yes, very much so. Is it a good show? No. Not at all.
Though tbf it’s kinda amusing (if not a little disturbing right now) to see that Nakajima effectively forced the populace into a mass vaccination campaign against vampirism, which actually turned them into vampires, all for the sake of fulfilling his twisted, misguided desire to create an army of vampire super soldiers that would defend Japan against outside forces. And then there’s the Great Japan Earthquake of 1923 to deal with as well.
Yeah Kakitani’s backstory couldn’t be less interesting. I thought he might stick through to the end of the story as a human witness to the actions of the AI Vivy but I guess that’s it for him. A plot device basically
Kakitani’s rationale for joining a terrorist group is weak, and his obsession for Vivy is also a bit weird. I feel that his backstory was just shoved in last minute and they could have fleshed him out a bit more in earlier episodes. I just didn’t connect with him and really didn’t care for his death (which is surprising in this anime). I like that the anime tried to make Kakitani a layered character; that he wants a black/white answer for how AIs function or him wanting humans to treat AI a certain way; anyhow I agree with zyzyx420 – a plot device.