Author: Lenlo

Yofukashi no Uta – 11 [Do You Know What a Vampire Is?]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Yofukashi no Uta

Welcome everyone, to what might be one of the most important weeks of Yofukashi yet. Why is it important? Because this week places us at a crossroads. Yofukashi can go down either one and be decent. Or it can attempt both, and achieve neither. So without further ado, let’s dive into it.

So, why do I say that Yofukashi as at a crossroads right now? Why is this episode so important? Well if you’ll remember back, waaaay at the beginning, I said probably something along the lines of: “Yofukashi will have to choose whether it wants to be about relationships or vampires”. And for the past few weeks, it’s chosen relationships pretty consistently. It’s brought vampires into them sure, we have a whole cadre of vampire waifus. But they all existed to examine relationships in one way or another, some more successfully than others. Well that changes this week. Because this week introduces the first thing that could be called an “Antagonist” to a series that’s otherwise not really had one. That antagonist would be the Vampire Hunter, Anko Uguisu. Or at least as close to a vampire hunter as Yofukashi is willing to take it so far.

Continue reading “Yofukashi no Uta – 11 [Do You Know What a Vampire Is?]” →

His and Her Circumstances – 7/8 [Their Estrangement/Her Day/In a Grove of Blossoming Cherry Trees] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, His and Her Circumstances, Throwback Thursday

Welcome everyone, to another week of His and Her Circumstances! I really need to stop putting off writing these until the night before, I’m gonna be late some day. Is that day today? I’ll find out when I post this. At least I spent it watching Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, that was a good time. Now onto the episodes!

Before we get into the episodes proper I want to take a moment to talk a bit about Circumstances production. You see, it occurred to me that some might find my handling of Circumstances unfair. That I constantly critique it’s more limited animation, yet always follow up by saying it’s fine. There’s a reason for that, and it’s rather simple: There is a difference between being “poorly” animated and “sparsely” animated. In the first, such as say… this seasons RWBY, the show moves but it does so poorly. Meanwhile in the second, Circumstances may not move much but it does a lot with the limited movement it has. Things happen on screen, characters express themselves, the editing and transition between stills do just as much to communicate with the audience as the pictures themselves. It’s using it’s limitations intelligently, rather than running headfirst into them. And that’s worthy of praise.

Continue reading “His and Her Circumstances – 7/8 [Their Estrangement/Her Day/In a Grove of Blossoming Cherry Trees] – Throwback Thursday” →

RWBY Ice Queendom – 11 [Light in Shadows]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, RWBY: Ice Queendom

Welcome everyone, to the penultimate episode of RWBY: Ice Queendom. This episode is the climax, the big finale, wrapping up the story and leaving us an epilogue for who knows what. Was it any good? Did I get the emotional high I wanted? Did Nagata make a return? To at least one of those, the answer is yes. Let’s dive in.

Starting off, the easy one: Nagata does indeed return. And it looks fantastic. It’s obvious that even he is struggling with the production, you need only look at his scenes to see they aren’t what they could be. But what we did get is still so far above the rest of the show, it’s enough to make you weep for what could have been. It’s like Shaft contracted him for one good scene per girl almost. With this week being Yang’s time to shine. And shine she did, as we got to see her semblance in all its glory. Watching her smash the giant robot was something I’ve been waiting for Queendom to do ever since they introduced it. You probably remember me complaining about the robot fights prior to this. Well we finally got it. And as for the rest of the show? As a RWBY fan, it works.

Continue reading “RWBY Ice Queendom – 11 [Light in Shadows]” →

Yofukashi no Uta – 10 [Enlarge the Peeping-Tom Photos]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Yofukashi no Uta

Welcome everyone to another (incredibly late) episode of Yofukashi no Uta! Apologies for the delay on this one, very busy Friday for me. Enough with that though, you’ve been waiting long enough for this episode so lets just jump right into it!

Starting off, lets talk about what Yofukashi is trying to be about this week. Like last episode, this one is trying to explore and humanize another of our new vampire side-ladies, Midori Kohakobe. And in doing so, it hopes to explore another facet human relationships and why we desire them so. This weeks topic? Attention. The desire to be desired, to be wanted, to have people look at you. This is a good topic, I think it’s something everyone feels at some point or another. That innate desire for recognition, to be seen. Whether it be for vanity or simple self expression, it exists in a lot of forms. On paper this sounds great. It’s right up Yofukashi’s alley and very similar to Seri’s episode. But in practice this week fell short for one very simple reason: Midori isn’t the main character of the episode.

Continue reading “Yofukashi no Uta – 10 [Enlarge the Peeping-Tom Photos]” →

His and Her Circumstances – 5/5.5/6 [Days of Labyrinth/His Ambition/Your Voice That Changes Me] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, His and Her Circumstances, Throwback Thursday

Welcome everyone, to another week of His and Her Circumstances! This week was an odd one, and perhaps an indicator of things to come from what I’ve been told. There’s no better way to deal with that though than to just talk about. So lets dive in and do just that!

Starting off, the animation felt like it took a hit this week. There were a lot of reused scenes, stills, and overall minimal cost-saving animation practices. Oh don’t get me wrong, Circumstances was very clever about it! What we did get was well directed and story boarded to produce a specific effect or emotion. Take for instance the way it showed us the same scene twice, once from each of our leads perspectives. Showing us just how different they are and how they weren’t quite on the same page yet. Only for them to have the same response in the last of such scenes in the episode, showing how much closer they have become over it’s course. I’m not saying the editing didn’t have purpose, it very much did and when I understood it, I was impressed. But it’s a fact that it still wasn’t particularly interesting, visually at least.

Continue reading “His and Her Circumstances – 5/5.5/6 [Days of Labyrinth/His Ambition/Your Voice That Changes Me] – Throwback Thursday” →

RWBY Ice Queendom – 10 [Mirrors of Darkness]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, RWBY: Ice Queendom

Welcome back everyone, to another week of RWBY: Ice Queendom! This episode continues the trend of “I like this narrative, dear god it looks like shit”. Sometimes I wonder what’s happened at Shaft that this kind of mismanagement has become their norm, but that’s outside the scope of this post. So without further ado, lets dive into the episode!

Like usual, this episode looked like garbage. And I’m not just talking about the regular jank Queendom has had throughout the season. Oh no, this week was extra bad. If you check the episode credits, you’ll find that they fused the 2nd Key Animation and Douga roles. For those who don’t know what that means, they basically merged the initial creation and cleanup steps for part of the process. On top of that, it’s like the compositing team didn’t even show up for work this week, so badly do the animation fit into their surroundings. All of this on it’s own isn’t anything to new, Queendom has looked like shit before. But what makes it worse is that this week, Hiroto Nagata and others made their return! So spliced between all this shit are moments that look great. And you’re just left wondering… Why can’t the rest look like that?

Continue reading “RWBY Ice Queendom – 10 [Mirrors of Darkness]” →

Yofukashi no Uta – 9 [No Fair]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Yofukashi no Uta

Welcome everyone, to another week of Yofukashi no Uta! This is another decent week for our vampire waifu’s if you ask me. Remember when I said the new girls were just cardboard cutouts and I was hoping they got some development? Well this week sort of gives us that, though only for Seri, who was already the most fleshed out of them all. I’ll take what I can get though! Now lets jump in to the episode.

Production wise this week was just fine. There were some nice closeups, some interesting angles at times and one amusing slow mo shot. But most of the rest were rather dull wide shots of our characters in one of the like… 3 locations of the episode. And the only time Yofukashi really branched out and tried to do something different, it ended up flooding the screen in singular splotches of neon. It reduced all the nice shading and lighting I enjoyed into blobs of color and was just really off putting. To be honest, it’s kind of disappointing how uninspired Yofukashi has been with its color palette. Always playing things safe, with the few times it does anything else just being flooding the screen in color without any kind of nuance. This could have been one of the best looking shows of the season! Instead it’s just kind of… there.

Continue reading “Yofukashi no Uta – 9 [No Fair]” →

His and Her Circumstances – 3/4 [His Circumstances/Her Difficult Problem] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, His and Her Circumstances, Throwback Thursday

Welcome everyone, to another (probably late) week of His and Her Circumstances! This week we get into the weeds, as things start to happen and our leads start to truly get to know each other. Is it good? Is it trite? Can it cover in 4 episodes what took Kaguya-sama 3 seasons? Let’s jump in and find out!

Starting off, I feel the need to repeat just how good this show looks. Like seriously, His and Her Circumstances looks absolutely gorgeous. Not because of any high detail models/backgrounds or any kind of interesting art style. Both of those are actually pretty standard for the genre and era I feel. Rather, it’s just how consistently expressive Circumstances is. Whether it be clear and emotive facial expressions or clever visual metaphor’s, it never fails to communicate the emotions of a scene. And despite having so many still frames, it never feels like a static show. Instead all I can remember when thinking back on it are the edits and implied motion from said stills. I’ve been told multiple times, from multiple people, that it’s production falls apart in the latter half, so I don’t want to get to excited. But its hard not to when it looks this good.

Continue reading “His and Her Circumstances – 3/4 [His Circumstances/Her Difficult Problem] – Throwback Thursday” →

RWBY: Ice Queendom – 9 [My Dream, Your Dream]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, RWBY: Ice Queendom

I’ve tried my best to be positive about RWBY: Ice Queendom up through now. As a character study on Weiss, I still believe it’s not bad! But this week… This was not a good week, for a lot of reasons. Let’s dive in and talk about them.

Starting off, dear god did this episode look bad. I’m not talking about just bad or janky animation, that’s been present since the beginning. Though that does of course exist as well. No, rather what I want to draw attention to is just the half-assed, absurdly lazy direction and storyboarding of the episode. Stuff like Yang just standing in the center of the screen while the camera slowly pans upwards. Or the incredibly static nature of a train and its occupants sliding across the screen. Stuff like that. They even managed to make a train crash boring and unimpactful! And you can find this basically everywhere. From the small Ruby and Weiss fight to Yang’s motorcycle to Smol!Weiss and Pyrrha shooting out of the train cars. It all feels like the most basic, straight forward, lazy way the scenes could have been presented.

Continue reading “RWBY: Ice Queendom – 9 [My Dream, Your Dream]” →

Yofukashi no Uta – 8 [All of Us]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Yofukashi no Uta

Welcome back to another, delayed, episode of Yofukashi no Uta! while last week was a bit of a disappointment with its new cast, this week more than made up for it. Relationships progress, Nazuna and Ko have meaningful conversations, and we even get our first new male character. A lot happens! So without further ado, lets dive into the episode.

Like I said, as a follow up to last week I actually really liked this one. The introduction of a timer feels like it has kickstarted Nazuna and Ko a bit. They are finally starting to be proactive about this relationship rather than just languishing together and let it happen. I think that’s really important for a romance! If the leads are just standing around doing nothing, reacting to situations and letting that inform their feelings, then as a viewer it feels like no progress is being made. At least if they are actively trying to do stuff, even if they fail, it feels like things are moving. It’s effectively the difference between the characters being reactive vs proactive. And in a story like this, I feel that proactive is almost always better. So long as one of them is that way at least.

Continue reading “Yofukashi no Uta – 8 [All of Us]” →