Author: Lenlo

Vinland Saga S2 – 10 [Cursed Head]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Vinland Saga

Another week, another episode of Vinland Saga! This week sees a timeskip, the return of Canute, and the first signs of conflict for the farm. Lets jump right into it!

Starting off, time skip! That’s right, 3 years have passed. 3 years on the farm, 3 years of cutting down the forest, 3 years for Thorfinn to figure his shit out. Does this skip over a lot of stuff, is it an excuse for Thorfinn to progress off screen? Yes, a little bit. But do I think it will enable a greater story because we can see these changes through Thorfinn’s actions to future events? Also yes. This sort of time skip, where a character truly comes into their own and changes substantially, are only a problem when a series fails to show us how said character has changed. And I don’t think that Vinland Saga will have that problem. Not with how much focus it’s already given to Thorfinn. What I’m saying is, to anime-onlies watching Farmland Saga for the first time, don’t worry. The time skip is good.

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Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 9 [Insignia of an Ancient Castle]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Kaina and the Great Snow Sea

Welcome everyone, to another (late) episode of Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! I really need to get my shit under control, these are taking way to long. Let this be a lesson about doing 4 shows in a season, you just get to busy. Speaking of busy, Kaina has a lot going on this week, so lets just jump right into it!

Starting off, lets talk about the war. So far? It’s fine. A pretty standard affair if I’m being honest. The most I can say is that it’s nice Kaina is actually trying to use tactics. Setting up a beach head to prevent ships from landing, cannons to whittle them down from afar, Orinoga planning a surprise attack on their command. I like that it’s all based on imperfect information. Orinoga doesn’t know that Valghia is kind of a tyrannical dictatorship at this point, nor that there really isn’t a command structure. Of course they won’t care if he attacks the capital, there’s nothing of value there. The more people he kills the less mouths there are to feed later. It’s a decent way to add tension to the fight while giving him and Amelothee some one-on-one time while the ships duke it out. Not bad really.

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2022 Anime Awards and Top 10 List

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Yearly Summaries

Amun: “Wait a second, 2022 was almost a quarter of a year ago?! Where’s our 2022 Year Post?!” Put down with your pitchforks, gentle reader, as we are here with what you need (albeit a little late). With Wooper’s retirement, that writer’s whip has been sitting gently in the corner – leading to some late posts. But, anyways, 2022! What a year for anime – we saw a new franchise born (Chainsaw Man) and one fan-favorite say farewell (Mob Psycho). In between, there were a handful of popular sequels (My Hero Academia, Kaguya, DanMachi (hehe)) and some unexpected highlights (Bocchi the Rock). In fact, the Fall season will go down as one of the best seasonals ever – can 2023 hope to match that? Join us as we discuss the best of the best…preceded by the year’s worst misfires!

Lenlo: P.S. I will never forgive the fact that my #1 show of the year only appeared as a runner-up on this list. Savages, everyone else on this team.

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Wolf’s Rain – 5/6 [Fallen Wolves/The Successors] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Throwback Thursday, Wolf's Rain

Welcome everyone, to another week of Wolf’s Rain! This week we arrive at a new city, meet some new wolves, and see some dead dreams. All in all a pretty cheery episode if you ask me! But enough jokes, lets dive into the episodes.

This week I wanted to start off by taking a look at the music. After 6 episodes I feel like I have a decent idea what it’s like, of what the legendary Youko Kanno of Ghost in the Shell and Cowboy Bebop fam is going for. And you know what? I think it’s just as good as her previous work. She doesn’t restrict herself to any one style of music, picking and choosing what would work best for each track/purpose. In particular I love the sheer amount of vocal tracks in Wolf’s Rain’s OST. Stuff like this episodes “Strangers“, playing as they run in the snow past a train, or “Amore Amaro” as they all reconcile and recover from the night before. There were a few others in previous episodes as well, but I don’t want to look through the whole OST and spoil myself on anything coming.

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Vinland Saga S2 – 9 [Oath]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Vinland Saga

Welcome everyone, to another episode of Vinland Saga! This week is one giant gut-punch as it takes everything about Thorfinn, throws it on the ground, and steps on it for good measure. Is it the most healthy thing in the world? Probably not. But it makes for damn good television. Now lets dive into it!

First up, the visuals. Vinland Saga is not a particularly animated show. And it never needed to be! Action is nice, but this isn’t a battle Shounen, it’s not what is important. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t nice to have when it steps up, and that’s what happened this week. Just the entire visual experience of Thorfinn’s “Valhalla”, the way the warriors moved and fought (When not CGI at least), the color direction and detail on Thorfinn’s hands. It was beautiful. In a dark, deeply traumatic sort of way. Now was it particularly subtle? No, not really. Vinland Saga has never been very subtle with its themes. But is it still effective? I would say so. Sometimes punching someone in the face leaves a better impression then politely asking asking them. And that’s what Vinland Saga did here.

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The Fire Hunter – 8 [Garden of the Gods]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, The Fire Hunter

Welcome everyone, to another week of Fire Hunter! This was an interesting week, lots of lore drops, and a possible shake up of the status quo. Was it good? Will it save the series? I don’t yet know. But at least I have plenty to talk about. Now lets dive right into it!

Starting off, credit where it’s due, Fire Hunter has some incredible lore. We learned so much this episode. From the Flickering Flame being a satellite in space put there by the previous civilizations to the Treefolk being experiments created by the Divine Clans, with only the “successes” being sent out into the forests to act as benevolent helpers to the villages. Meanwhile the failures are left to rot inside the city, unloved and uncared for by their creators. There’s even some backstory regarding how humans came to be this way, along with the Flame Fiends! It’s all pretty interesting stuff. Which makes Fire Hunter’s ability to deliver it in the most dry, uninteresting way imaginable all the more egregious. Despite the lore being inherently interesting, all I could think of while watching the episode was if I could get away with skipping forward or not. And that sucks.

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Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 8 [Lost at Sea]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Kaina and the Great Snow Sea

Welcome everyone, to another week of Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! This is a slow week all thing considered, which is weird when you realize it’s also the week of their great escape. Still slow doesn’t mean bad, just that it was nice and relaxing. So without further ado, lets dive into the episode! And apologies for the delay, I had some computer troubles this week.

Getting into the episode, this week was a bit of a disappointment for me. As far as escapes go, it was barely an escape at all. Resolved almost immediately, they used a small raft already made by those they had befriended. While it was sweet seeing them come to an understanding and inspire the downtrodden, it wasn’t the most engaging way to leave Valghia. It becomes even more disappointing when you see what they give us after that: Recaps. A bunch of recaps. Well I say a bunch, it was more like 5 minutes. But 5 minutes of recaps in a 22 minute episode is still a sizeable chunk. Regardless of specifics, it simply wasn’t the most exciting way to spend the episode for me.

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Wolf’s Rain – 3/4 [Bad Fellow/Scars in the Wasteland] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Throwback Thursday, Wolf's Rain

Welcome everyone, to week 2 of Wolf’s Rain! This week sees our intrepid heroes band together and set out on their epic quest. No doubt there will be many trials and tribulations along the way, disputes over territory, Tsume being a tsundere and Toboe having no idea how to do literally anything, but I’m sure it’ll be a good time. Now without further ado, let’s dive into the episodes!

Starting off, this week I wanted to talk a bit about the backgrounds. Don’t worry music fans, I plan to talk about that next week. I just want to give it a bit more time to settle and hear a few more tracks before I start talking out of my ass about it. Atsushi Morikawa is the Art Director for Wolf’s Rain, with Tomoaki Okada and Shingo Takeba doing Art Design. And while I don’t know the specifics of what goes into these jobs, what I can say is that the backgrounds that are coming out of their pipeline are stunning. In particular the natural expanses and variety of locations once our group leaves the city in episode 4 are just beautiful, as well as the war-torn city they pass through. I’m curious about how diverse the world seems to be for only 3 days travel, but hey its pretty.

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Vinland Saga S2 – 8 [An Empty Man]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Vinland Saga

Hello everyone, and welcome to another week of Vinland Saga! This week continues Einar and Thorfinn’s quest to grow wheat, as well as delving a bit further into how they both feel about this whole “slavery” thing. Sound fun? Good, cause it is. Now lets dive into the episode!

Starting off, a fun fact for everyone. The opening scene of this episode might feel like it comes out of nowhere to some, shoving us into the end of one of Thorfinn’s nightmares. What might surprise you to learn however is that this is the last moment of a 2 minute short released on Youtube, for free! From what I heard it was because they animated it but couldn’t figure out how to fit it into the episode. Whatever the reason, it’s a small bit of action and a longer look into exactly the kind of stuff Thorfinn dreams about. Becoming his old self again, how many families and people he killed for no reason, his usual sort of PTSD. I recommend you go take a look, I’ll link to it here for you!

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The Fire Hunter – 7 [Chance Encounter]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, The Fire Hunter

Welcome everyone, to another week of Fire Hunter! I’ll admit, I wasn’t looking forward to much to writing this post, as Fire Hunter has done little of praise recently. And that hasn’t changed this week either! But I can’t just not write whenever the episode bad. If I do that this season will take forever. So lets dive right in shall we?

Before I get to negative, I will give Fire Hunter some praise. This week sees our leads finally meet up and get together, and it’s great. Not just because there is some payoff in watching these two storylines intersect, but also because it cuts down on the number of black-screen cutaways. I can’t understate how much I hate these cutaways. Not only do they completely break the flow of the episode and ruin transitions, they are just downright lazy. So seeing those start to peter out as Touko and Koushi intersect, cutting down on the number of different groups, was really nice to see. Hopefully as Fire Hunter progresses these groups continue to intersect, until they become one smooth narrative.

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