Author: Lenlo

Spy X Family – 13 [First Contact]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Spy X Family

Welcome everyone, to the grand finale of SpyXFamily! This week was a massive surprise for me. The jokes were minimal, the pacing slow, the subject matter serious. This episode is perhaps the most serious across its 26 episode run. And for me, that’s a good thing. Now lets jump into it!

So in case it wasn’t obvious, this was a serious episode and I loved it. I’ve long wanted SpyXFamily to treat it’s premise with the severity it deserves. Even just a one-off side episode would have been enough! Just anything to remind us, and to make use take seriously the fact, that the backdrop of this cutesy family friendly Slice of Life is the freaking Cold War. And what I got wasn’t just some random side episode with wacky tennis spectacle. Instead it was 20 minutes of Loid finally meeting the central villainous figure of the series: Donovan Desmond. And you know what? I loved it. This was easily my favorite episode of the season, which is funny considering how little actually happens in it. It’s just a meeting, a first contact if you will. Nothing more. But I loved it anyways. Lets talk about why.

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Michiko & Hatchin – 9/10 [The Chocolate Girl in Love/The Carnival of Hyenas] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Michiko e Hatchin, Throwback Thursday

Welcome to another week of Michiko & Hatchin! It’s been a busy week, between catching up on posts and starting up a Mob Psycho review. A bunch of stuff needs to go out by new years and I’m not sure I can get it all done. So if a few things start to slip a bit, like maybe this post being late cough, don’t hold it against me yeah? Now without further ado, onto the episodes!

Overall this was an interesting week, as we get 2 solo episodes. This is the first time since episode 1 where Michiko and Hatchin haven’t been together, and the first time in the entire series they haven’t shared an episode. I’m honestly rather surprised by that. I thought that they would be reunited by the end of episode 10, at the latest. Instead this appears to be our new status quo, with both of them going their separate ways and heading further and further apart. Makes me wonder when they will reunite, if they ever will. Are they going to look for Hiroshi on their own, finding him at the very end with their own methods and reuniting as a family with all of them full self actualized? Won’t lie, that would be pretty cool if they came to miss and appreciate each other that way. Only time will tell.

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Mob Psycho 100 III – 12 [Confession ~The Future~]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Mob Psycho 100 III

This is it everyone, welcome to the grand finale of Mob Psycho 100. Not just of this arc, or this season, but of the entire show. There will be no season 4. No special. No movie. This is it. Lets dive into it.

Overall I thought this was a great finale. It’s all about Reigen and Mob, it was their episode, going so far as to even cut out Mob’s confession to Tsubomi so that it could focus on just them. A good decision I think! Their relationship is sort of the bedrock for the entire series. Mob came to Reigen to get help understanding himself and his powers, and ever since then its been a slow progression of coming to accept himself. For it to culminate in them both having a heart to heart talk, no more subtext just getting it all out in the open, was good. I think that ??? Mob got a bit shafted in his presentation, not going to lie. The sense of dread surrounding him was diminished compared to his earlier appearances like in Season 1. But Reigen’s run (Give me 100% Reigen cowards) made up for that.

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Spy X Family – 12 [The Role of a Mother and Wife]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Spy X Family

Welcome everyone, to a super late SpyxFamily episode! Apologies for that. I didn’t get back from a wedding until Monday, and then had to get the Seasonal Preview and Hikaru no Go review out. Not to mention the end of year Anime of the Year post we have coming up. Suffice to say, this is a busy time of year in every sense. Now without further ado, onto the episode!

Starting off, the first half of this episode was all about Loid and Yor, and it was great. My big issue with SpyXFamily has always been how few and far between its moments of character progression are. How the same jokes become stale and it becomes afraid to change the status quo. And in a way, even with this segment, it still isn’t changing the status quo. The very end of the segment has Yor saying she forgot what happened because she was drunk, though it did sort of walk that back by saying they had the conversation again. But it doesn’t change that, on some small level, progress did happen in these two’s relationship. Loid opened up and let Yor in, telling her about his own childhood. Not some WISE story, his actual parents and his experience growing up in a war. It’s slow, glacially slow, but still progress.

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Hikaru no Go Anime Review – 90/100

by Lenlo, posted in Anime Reviews, Finished Series: Sports, Hikaru no Go, Reviews by Lenlo

Slam Dunk. Haikyuu. Cross Game. Aside from being fantastic series in their own right, and being about sports, they all share one thing in common: Their success helped popularize their sport, both in Japan and the world at large. Slam Dunk has an actual basketball scholarship program named after it for goodness sake. They galvanized entire generations, showing them how fun and accessible these sports are, and how cool they could be if they played them. In a way, in some communities minds, they have come to define that sport just as specific athletes like LeBron James or Lionel Messi do. And today, I would like to introduce you to another series from this most hallowed of halls. Originally written by Yumi Hotta with direction split between Susumu Nishizawa, Jun Kamiya and Tetsuya Endou, animated at Studio Pierrot, I give you 2001’s Hikaru no Go.

Be warned, this review contains minor unmarked spoilers for Hikaru no Go. It also contains major spoilers in some sections however these will be heavily marked to avoid accidents. Continue reading “Hikaru no Go Anime Review – 90/100” →

Winter 2023 Season Preview

by Lenlo, posted in Seasonal Previews

Lenlo: Merry Christmas everyone! Or, depending on when you read this, Happy New Year! Some of you might be wondering why I am the only one on this preview this time. I’m wondering that to. Everyone’s pretty busy, yet I’m the one attending weddings and shit. Lazy bastards. Anyways, I won’t lie, this season isn’t looking to exciting. Part of that is that nothing would look exciting after that Fall season. From Mob Psycho to Gundam Mercury, Bleach to SpyxFamily, lots of big stuff there. Even things I don’t personally like, such as Chainsaw Man, are blowin up the internet. Suffice to say, Winter can’t match that. But it does have a few gems sprinkled in to at least make it worth checking out. Vinland Saga returns for its long awaited 2nd season, while Nier and Trigun are both making long awaited returns to the medium. On top of that, there’s a number of new contenders that have the potential to be great. Will any of them reach that potential? Probably not. But I can dream damnit! Enough with the preamble though, lets dive into some series shall we?

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What the Hell

My Life as Inukai-san’s Dog

Studio: Quad
Director: Takashi Yasudo
Series composition: Unknown
Source: Manga

The Premise: Man who is horny on main gets turned into a dog so he can be pampered by his crush.

Lenlo: Now look… I will admit that this is purely on the list because of horny. It’s just curiosity I swear! I want to know just how horny this thing can get. Considering the PV has her stripping in front of him and putting her between her legs to bathe him, I’m imagining a lot. But can we go even further. Why do they blush? Why do they get all flustered? Are they going to fuck this dog? I don’t know! But I kind of need to know. I need to see just how god damn degenerate anime can get. Because the original creator for this series is a hentai artist. They make doujins, that’s all they do. So how the hell this got picked up for an anime I will never know. But I want to know… Fuck… Am I the degenerate now?

Middling Expectations

Spy Classroom

Studio: feel.
Director: Keiichirou Kawaguchi
Series composition: Shinichi Inozume
Source: Light Novel

The Premise: Conflict-ravaged nations now deploy covert waifu operatives instead of missiles. Follow a team of absolutely hopeless girls as they try their best to complete… the Impossible Mission.

Lenlo: I won’t lie, this looks like your pretty standard “What setting can we throw cute girls into this time” sort of show. The opening PV seemed more intent on making sure we knew all of our available waifu options than it did introducing any kind of plot or narrative. On top of that, it doesn’t even look that good visually. Lots of dark shots, flat lighting, standard anime designs. The only reason it’s on this list is because I like spies, and I think the spy setting has a lot of potential that anime isn’t really tapping into with all of these shows. Maybe, in some hope against hope, Spy Classroom will do something cool. But I’m not holding out much hope for it to be frank.

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Mob Psycho 100 III – 11 [Mob 3 ~Trauma~]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Mob Psycho 100 III

Welcome everyone, to the penultimate episode of Mob Psycho 100! I apologize for this delay, I’m attending a wedding right now so writeups had to go on the backburner a bit. No idea when this will be out but I will try my best. Excuses aside though, lets dive into the episode!

Starting off, lets talk about the only real problem with the episode first: Suzuki. I was not a fan of him in Season 2. I thought him very simple, very dull, and generally not a great foil for Mob. And that carries over to his portrayal here in Season 3 as well. I am predisposed to not enjoy him. And this becomes a pretty big problem when you consider just how much of this episode was about him. Suffice to say, I wasn’t particularly engaged with him. Yet despite that, I think Mob Psycho did a good job of correcting its past mistakes and making me care about him. It focused on his relationship with his son. His family. The things he gave up for his power. It was… surprisingly poignant, and brought a lot of depth to his character that I wasn’t expecting. So good job Mob Psycho!

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Michiko & Hatchin – 7/8 [The Rain that Falls in Monotone/Black Noise and a Dope Game] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Michiko e Hatchin, Throwback Thursday

Welcome everyone, to another week of Michiko & Hatchin! This is going to be a weird week since I will be attending a wedding when this goes up. Maybe it will mean that this actually goes up on time this time though, who knows. Anyways, without further ado lets dive into the episodes!

Starting off, this week I want to take the opportunity to talk about Michiko & Hatchin’s OST. I haven’t had the opportunity to go through it in full yet, I tend to save that for the final review. But this week definitely served to bring it to my attention, with tracks like “Desencanto” and, I believe, “Gagorra“. Now for those of you who read my Megalo Box: Nomad review this should come as no surprise, but I absolutely love Latin music. There’s a rustic passion to it I feel, a beautiful simplicity that speaks to the heart that a lot of more modern, urban music just doesn’t for me. So tracks like this, or what little I heard of “Temporada das frutas” before I turned back to avoid spoilers, are right up my alley. Hopefully Michiko & Hatchin can keep delivering on them moving forward, because I love it.

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Spy X Family – 11 [The Unwavering Path]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Spy X Family

Welcome everyone, to another episode of Spy x Family! This week is another example of the perfect Spy x Family episode experience. We got great action, incredible wholesomeness, poignant spy moments and fantastic animation. Despite my criticisms of some of the recent episodes, this is the stuff I watch this show for. So without further ado, lets dive into it.

Right off the bat, it’s obvious that this episode looked fantastic. Not just in it’s wild full-body movements during the tennis match, though those were great as well, but also the interesting camera angles used to frame them as well as the great effects work during Yor’s scene at the end. Touches like angling the shot through the sniper scope, closeups of the racket as we follow the balls path, etc etc. Simply put, this was one of, if not the most, visually engaging episodes Spy x Family has had across it’s 24 episode run up to this point. I know it’s not good to hope for this on every episode, it’s just an unreasonable demand. But god damn when Spy x Family wants to it becomes just as much a visual treat as Chainsaw Man and Mob Psycho this season.

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Michiko & Hatchin – 5/6 [The Saudade of Fools, Part 1/Part 2] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Michiko e Hatchin, Throwback Thursday

Welcome everyone, to another week of Michiko & Hatchin! This week is our first 2 parter, so we have a lot to talk about. From getting more of Michiko’s past to Hatchin going out on her own, it’s all inside. So lets dive right in!

First up we have episode 5, “The Saudade of Fools, Part 1”. This was a really interesting episode, and definitely my favorite of this week. We get loads and loads of backstory for Michiko, not only arriving at her home town but meeting who raised her, seeing how she met Hiroshi, and learning how she fell into a life of crime. All the while we see the knock on effects of these moments in the present as Michiko returns to town with Hatchin. I cannot understate, I really really liked this. Backstory is generally hard to do in anime, and is often just a forced flashback during a climactic moment. And while this was a flashback at times, it was done via Michiko revisiting those locations in the present and remembering them herself. They had in-narrative effect on her own emotional state, making them feel so much more purposeful.

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