I didn’t abandon you, Great Pretender – my cigarette heist just took a few weeks longer than expected.
Continue reading “Great Pretender – 21-23 [Wizard of Far East]”
Great Pretender – 21-23 [Wizard of Far East]
Author: SuperWooper
Akudama Drive – 04 [Speed]
Here’s a curious case of an episode that’s just as action-packed as the first two, yet fails to bring the thrills of those earlier installments. The whole time I was watching the ‘Courier vs Kouhai’ and ‘Brawler vs Executioner’ fights, I was wondering when the show would do something new. It might have revealed some characters’ hidden abilities, or used its unique setting (aboard the Shinkansen) to give one combatant a surprise advantage over another. That didn’t happen, though, at least not to my satisfaction. I’ve got a couple theories about how that dissatisfied stew came to occupy my brain, but that’ll probably be it for this week. Speculating about the history of the Kanto vs. Kansai conflict would be fruitless, given our limited knowledge on the matter, and the main cast themselves are so static they might as well be Virgil Hawkins. So, let’s talk about what makes some anime fights better than others.
Fall 2020 Summary – Week 4
Wooper: Ask and ye shall receive; we’ve got mini impressions from not one, but four writers in this edition of our weekly recap. Feels good to have some company for this column! Lenlo, Amun and Armitage pitched in to deliver thoughts on a few of the fall’s bigger shows and sequels, while I’m still banging on about weird anime comedies and a stray shounen property. It’s the new and improved Weekly Summary, y’all – enjoy, and we’ll see you next time.
Kamisama ni Natta Hi – 02/03
Armitage: I was supposed to write entire full-length posts covering this show but turns out that the events of each episode don’t lend themselves to wordy breakdowns. Still, this is one of the major torchbearers of the Fall Anime Parade and I cannot in good conscience let it air without any coverage. Which means that from now on, I shall be using the Weekly Summary section to give my thoughts on it! So far, Kamisama ni Natta Hi has essentially played out as a gag comedy anime and a solid one at that. Episode 2 was especially great with its parodies of Armageddon, Edward Scissorhands and the gut-bustingly funny Rocky skit. I am the kind of person who rarely full-on ‘laughs out loud’ but yeah, this episode got that out of me. Episode 3 too had its nice moments with Youta’s suit and sparkling MSG but it didn’t work quite as well as its predecessor. The characters, while being really entertaining, have not yet come off as people you truly care for and I hope the show remedies that in the coming weeks. Lastly, I just wanted to give a shout-out to Natsuki Hanae, the VA for Yota, as he is the one who solely makes the show such a blast to watch, displaying a voice range on par with Mamoru Miyano from Zombieland Saga. Honestly, this show is worth a watch just to hear him say “IZANAMI-SAAAAAAAN” as anime Rocky.
Golden Kamuy Season 3 – 04
Lenlo: I’m not usually a fan of comedies, anime ones especially. Something about their humor or their aesthetic just falls flat to me. So it’s always a joy when Golden Kamuy gets me chuckling for its entire run time, week after week. Something about the mix of murder and humor lines up perfectly with my love of gallows humor. It helps that every single joke has layers upon layers to it, similar in a way to classic Simpsons, though not of the same level. Take the chase scene early on for instance, Koito’s section alone has at least four jokes in 30 seconds that all build on each other. We go from the Naruto run and leap, to him running in the air, to grabbing a branch which then snaps, to his silly landing, to the branch landing on his head. It’s all small stuff, but no joke exists on its own, always building to the next.
Alternatively Golden Kamuy also establishes these episodic comedic narratives inside its larger dramatic narrative. This episode it’s Genjiro’s saga with dancing girls. His failure to actually dance, being fawned over and encouraged by children only to get a riff on a romance or career drama thrown in for good measure. There’s just something funny about this massive muscular soldier in a tutu getting fawned over by children for dancing a side-bit, and without a doubt the reaction faces help it. Suffice to say I am continuing to enjoy Golden Kamuy. From military circus jokes to “I’m gonna cut it” jokes to just how petty Koito is willing to be over his tricks. I am not caring that much about the larger narrative but god damn if this show isn’t fun.
Taiso Samurai – 03 [Dueling Samurai]
Here’s a more conventional sports anime episode for you. Leo still refuses to take off his ninja headgear and Big Bird is still squawking up a storm in the Aragaki household, but those oddities were baked into the show from the outset. If you were to tinker with the structure of this week’s Taiso Samurai, you’d be hard-pressed to make it more ordinary. There was a strategy session between Jotaro and his coach, an 80s training montage, an injury surmounted by hard work and dedication, and a showdown with an angry rival (whose constant outbursts were the low point of the episode). If straightforwardness is what you wanted from this very quirky show, congrats on the fulfillment of your wish. Here’s an equally straightforward blog post to match.
Akudama Drive – 03 [Mission: Impossible]
This episode was a far cry from the spectacle of the first two. There were no dust-ups with the Execution Department, no direct assaults on massive buildings or organizations, and no interpersonal conflicts within the main cast. It consisted mostly of planning a heist, then quietly executing the first half of it (as quietly as a show like Akudama Drive can manage, anyway). Perhaps some viewers needed a breather after two straight weeks of madness, but personally, I was hoping for twelve. Still, a relatively subdued affair like this one gave the production team a chance to relax their weary pencil/mouse hands, and let the characters themselves carry the burden of bringing the show to life. Were they up to the task? Eh, sort of.
Fall 2020 Summary – Week 3
Wooper: We’ve reached the third week of the new anime season, and you know what that means: it’s time for the hopeful anticipation of viewers everywhere to be ground into the dust of unmet expectations! Or maybe that’s just me. None of these series had showings poor enough to take them off my radar, but a couple of them are inching away from my range of interest. Shows like Jujutsu Kaisen and Kamisama ni Natta Hi are holding down the fort just fine, though, so an early misstep from the B-team isn’t the end of the world. You still get to read my complaints about a couple of recent episodes, though – and they might not be the ones you’d expect.
Maou-jou de Oyasumi 03
Maou-jou continues to be a fun weekly diversion, but there’s not much more to it than fun. Princess Syalis always completes her quests, so the show doesn’t offer much suspense – it’s her unconventional methods that serve as mild surprises each week. And what’s more surprising than stumbling upon a genie trapped inside an ancient grimoire? For most fantasy anime, the answer would be “nothing,” but according to Syalis-hime, even the latest edition of Shonen Sunday would provide more entertainment. If it isn’t contributing to her forty winks, she’s not interested, so Alazif (the spirit within the grimoire) comes and goes within the span of five minutes. The middle segment was based entirely on misunderstandings, so I could take or leave that one, but I did appreciate the detail put into the last one. The princess made use of items acquired in previous episodes for her jailbreak, creating a string of neat callbacks, and the forest she explored had an enchanted feel that paired well with the interior of the Demon King’s castle. This show may be a sleeper, but it gets a lot of mileage from that simple vibe.
Majo no Tabitabi 03
Witch Weekly busted out a two-parter for this episode, but neither story provided me with much food for thought. The first was marred by cheap computerized textures, both for the overhead shots of the meadow from the opener and the curse that afflicted the sentry at the end. A better visual representation of his poisoning would have done a lot for the conclusion, but even if the art had held up its end of the bargain, the story boiled down to “beautiful flowers can be dangerous, too.” Elaina didn’t have a participatory role in the story, and that’s fine – but if she’s going to be little more than a guide, the people she meets have to carry their weight.
The second story had the same failing, despite using more time to develop its scenario. A slave girl’s sadness at being shown a bottle full of happy memories might be touching or profound, if not for the fact that she, her master, and his son (the memory bottler) underwent precisely zero change during the episode. Majo no Tabitabi is so lesson-oriented that it hardly seems to care where it leaves its characters; the wrap-up here involved Elaina summarizing a similar story she’d once read, and criticizing the moral as being heavy-handed. Based on what I saw this week, I’d have to agree.
Taiso Samurai – 02 [Rock-Bottom Samurai]
I may have jumped the gun on this one, y’all. Taiso Samurai’s first episode was so strange that I couldn’t help but root for it, but the second one’s weirdness was of a less fun variety. Personally, I’d take ‘rooftop chase scene between wannabe ninja and three secret agents’ over ‘transgender acupuncturist chews scenery’ any day of the week. Jotaro’s hastily conceived training menus were kind of funny here, and the introduction of a temporary antagonist in Tetsuo might give the show a little spark next week, but I bought very little of what this episode was selling. (There’s one exception to my disappointment, but we’ll get to that in a bit.) I signed up to blog this on an episodic basis, but unless it can wow me again before we reach, say, mid-November, there’s a better than decent chance it’ll end up dropped.
Akudama Drive – 02 [Reservoir Dogs]
It’s often said that TV anime dump a disproportionate amount of time and talent into their first episodes, leading to a noticeable drop-off in episode 2. As a piece of conventional wisdom, it makes sense – producers want to hook as wide an audience as possible, as early as possible, so the extra effort would be warranted. And yet, we’re seeing a bunch of exceptions to this rule of thumb in the fall 2020 season alone. Jujutsu Kaisen had a terrific second outing that convinced me to follow the show week to week, while Dragon Quest’s employment of 3DCG animation in episode 2 was a massive improvement on the first. And sure enough, here comes Akudama Drive with a follow-up that’s just as unhinged and action-packed as its premiere. It didn’t manage to top itself (that would have been an absurd feat), but these twenty minutes surely delivered on the promise I saw last week. If you consider realism to be an optional component of your anime intake, this may be the show for you.
Fall 2020 Summary – Week 2
Wooper: With the low-output Summer 2020 season in the books, our weekly summary posts are going back to their roots: talking about currently-airing shows that aren’t receiving full episodic coverage. There are a bunch of extra shows we’re following this fall, and though some will surely wear out their welcome before the year’s end, the present freshness of the season has us in the mood to chat about them. It looks like it’s just me this time around, but I expect that some of the other writers will chime in over the next 10 or 11 weeks. For now, you can scroll down for one man’s thoughts on a handful of the season’s more underrated shows.
Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken 02
Wooper: I know we’re only two episodes in, but this adaptation of Dai no Daibouken isn’t letting up on the gas. Princess Leona’s introduction flew by in what felt like minutes, thanks to her companions’ betrayal arising so quickly. Her magic tutor in particular turned out to be the sort of unhinged villain you don’t see too often in modern anime, which meant that his fight against Dai turned into a yelling match within the first few seconds. On the plus side, the CG during their battle was used to tremendous effect, showcasing Dai’s acrobatic abilities as he ran circles around the tutor’s mech before delivering the crushing blow. Despite the script’s efforts to paint him as an untalented mage, Dai’s physical strength and instinctive use of spells in high pressure situations make him way, way stronger than the average shounen protag. He may be the Chosen One, but I hope the story chooses some more powerful opponents to put in his path pretty soon. We are meeting new major characters with each passing episode, though, so for now I’ll patiently await Popp’s introduction and see how things progress from there.
Hypnosis Mic: Division Rap Battle 02
Wooper: After a wild premiere that jumped between four different rap groups, Hypnosis Mic settled down with a single trio (the Buster Bros) this week. I’ve got to say, the results were better than expected – even though the younger siblings’ idolization of their older brother Ichiro makes for tiresome conversation, the show does make a convincing hero out of him. He always shows up to save the day, he defends innocent people during a hostage situation, and he’s got so much love for his little bros that all his rap verses celebrate their partnership. The hip-hop numbers are still the best thing about the series by far, bursting as they are with cool poses, dynamic colors, on-screen lyrics, and song-ending explosions. Even when the Bros aren’t conducting their musical onslaughts, though, Hypnosis Mic can be pretty fun. The moment when a stick-up artist pulled back his jacket to reveal a bunch of illegal microphones – which the cops treated as though they were guns – cracked me up. You love to see a ridiculous show like this one embrace its gimmick so wholeheartedly.
Fall 2020 Coverage & First Episode Awards
Wooper: Finally, our quarterly ritual of gorging on new premieres has come to a close, and we’ve emerged with a handful of blogging prospects. Our team will be covering the six shows in the grid above, plus Lenlo will carry on with his usual Throwback Thursday column. Our weekly recap posts will resume, as well, offering brief thoughts on Majo no Tabitabi, Dragon Quest, and others – I’ll do my utmost to keep them on schedule. Will this season fall short of expectations, or will it propel a handful of series into our eventual Top 10 for the year? Stick with us to find out, and click through to see the results of our First Episode Awards!
Fall 2020 Lineup
Lenlo: Jujutsu Kaisen, Twelve Kingdoms, The Woman Called Fujiko Mine (intermittent)
Wooper: Akudama Drive, Taiso Samurai
Amun: DanMachi S3, Kamisama ni Natta Hi (w/ Armitage)
Armitage: Adachi to Shimamura, Kamisama ni Natta Hi (w/ Amun)
Mario: On vacation
Aidan: Waiting for Re:Zero S2
Continue reading “Fall 2020 Coverage & First Episode Awards”