Author: SuperWooper

Chihayafuru S3 – 08 [As Friends and Strangers]

by SuperWooper, posted in Chihayafuru, Finished Series: Sports

Last week I labeled Mizusawa’s class trip an obvious maneuver to isolate Chihaya from the rest of her Class A rivals. To the show’s credit, though, it made the most of the opportunity, with many of its strongest karuta players making appearances. Even though we were blessed with an Inokuma match just a month ago, I was grateful for her return, and Sakurazawa’s competitive fire being rekindled is good news for more than just Eromu. Sudo was released from the penalty of his losing bet, and Harada-sensei’s bear mode was in full effect, proving that he’s still a beast even at age 57. Meijin Suou and Queen Shinobu made unconventional appearances at the West Japan qualifier, too, as foreshadowed last week. These are all worthy characters, but the real stars of the episode were Taichi and Arata. Were they able to carry the show with Chihaya sidelined in Kyoto? Fortunately, the answer is yes.

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Fall 2019 Summary – Weeks 7-8

by SuperWooper, posted in Other:, Weekly Summary

Wooper: It’s Thanksgiving and Black Friday week in the U.S., but we’ve got a new site to promote, so the flow of fresh content must proceed. Lenlo is off someplace being a responsible adult, but the rest of your weekly summarizers are on the case, this time with some bonus dual-writer impressions. Enjoy!

No Guns Life 6-7

Mario: Okay, I took over the writers board for No Guns Life this week. These two episodes focus on the new arc of Over-Extended assassination and for me this arc so far embodies many core aspects of NGL to great affect, from its body vs machine theme to the conspiracy behind using these Over-Extended as tools for war. As with most new arcs, the show introduces many new characters and although I’m not too fond of their designs, they are a bunch of interesting characters. You can see the CG models here and there but overall I think the show does a decent job of animating it. It’s a constant surprise for me to see that NGL still holds up week after week. Here’s hoping that it can land the ending soundly.

Amun: Much love to Mario for chiming in! I agree with everything he says, especially about the CG – I’m loving Cronen though. He started off a bit flat, but he brings an element of professionalism and rule following that the rest of the underworld cast has been lacking. Like Juzo, I agree that the major strength of the season has been the consistency of each episode – also have my fingers crossed for a good landing!

Mugen no Juunin: Immortal 7-8

Wooper: Oh lawd, that dog scene at the end of episode 7 was Not Good. Immortal’s cold opens present objects and symbols that are important to each story (the dog, in this case), but there’s no way those dirty rainbow filters and bouts of manic laughter were justified after the decapitation came to light. Hamasaki’s version of the story thus far has been a tone piece, but this just seemed tone-deaf. Even putting the dog aside, these were the show’s most brutal installments yet, largely because of Shira’s violence against prostitutes. The girl in the first one receives an especially tragic death, due to the symbolism of her glass ornament and the way it was positioned between the camera and her corpse. Watching him immobilize and then rape the second woman in episode 8 was nauseating, but there was something more than shock value at play there; Shira’s psychotic display forced Rin into action, even though he’s an ally in her fight against the Itto-ryu. Her thirst for vengeance has seemed absolute in the past, but now she’s willing to cut down someone like Shira, even if it lowers her odds of bringing Kagehisa to justice. Unfortunately, Rin isn’t a strong enough fighter to finish him off, but I have faith that she’ll get there before the series concludes.

Continue reading “Fall 2019 Summary – Weeks 7-8” →

Welcome to Star Crossed Anime!

by SuperWooper, posted in About, Other:

Hey there! You’ve managed to find the new incarnation of psgels.net, one of the oldest surviving English language anime blogs on the web. Though our history may be long, we’re always looking forward, as seasonal anime is the bread and butter of our site. Here you’ll find episodic reviews of currently airing shows (plus weekly installments of Throwback Thursday), quarterly season previews, first impressions of new series as they premiere in Japan, and yearly rundowns of our favorite anime – 2019’s is just around the corner!

Whether you’re coming from psgels or you’re new to Star Crossed, we appreciate your readership. Let us know you’re here with a comment below, or by sounding off in the shoutbox to the right. Though we’re in the midst of a busy holiday season, new content will start appearing on the site very soon. Anime is a ride that never stops running, and neither do we – the new era of Star Crossed Anime begins now!

Hoshiai no Sora – 07

by SuperWooper, posted in Finished Series: Sports, Hoshiai no Sora

This episode was a tale of two halves in my view, but there’s no good tennis metaphor that I can use as a comparison, so a direct explanation will have to do. Essentially, I found the first half (the conclusion of Maki and Toma’s doubles match) to be a dull affair, while the team barbecue during the B part reignited my interest in the series. Hoshiai no Sora established itself as a character drama from its very first outing, and with so many unresolved anxieties still to address within Shijo’s tennis club, the recent emphasis on sports has generated mixed results. No such issues arise, however, when the show sits a bunch of people around a table to converse about their lives (the food is just a pretext).

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Chihayafuru S3 – 07 [The Storm Blasts]

by SuperWooper, posted in Chihayafuru, Finished Series: Sports

I’ve positively loved the last five episodes of Chihayafuru’s third season, so I don’t derive any pleasure from saying that I kind of hated this one. “The Storm Blasts,” in my eyes, makes an unwise narrative choice to achieve a convenient result, and creates a minefield of non-credibility for the show going forward. Though it’s this episode I’ll be criticizing here, Madhouse’s adaptation is perfectly faithful to Suetsugu-sensei’s manga, so her plotting is the thing that actually troubles me. The mechanical aspects of the anime are great, as usual, but the issue of Chihaya attending her class trip has implications beyond delaying her run at the Queen title by a year. Hit the jump if you’re interested in a breakdown of why that is.

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Hoshiai no Sora – 06

by SuperWooper, posted in Finished Series: Sports, Hoshiai no Sora

I’ll say this for Hoshiai no Sora – the tennis scenes look good. Characters are shown positioning themselves, swinging, and following through with remarkable consistency. The shortcuts that once plagued Baby Steps and Prince of Tennis rarely appear during this series, and that’s worth celebrating. There were even a few serves in this episode that approached Hanebado levels of frame density, so it’s clear that the show’s animators are reaching for the stars. That said, many of the characters are given the same form on their forehand shots, and the matches are composed with ample time for them to set up in front of the ball. Without mixing in more backhand winners, smashes, and diving returns, games will start to feel too familiar once we enter the eventual tournament arc. The alternative would be to be to rely on gimmicks, and judging by this episode’s third match, that’s not Sora’s strong suit.

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Chihayafuru S3 – 06 [Tatsuta River Ablaze]

by SuperWooper, posted in Chihayafuru, Finished Series: Sports

Every time I try to take notes on this series, I get sucked into its rhythm and hit the end of the episode before I know it. The show arranges bursts of competition, moments of inner monologue, and diverse crowd reactions for maximum effect. In wondering how it manages to cast that spell so consistently, I checked director Morio Asaka’s ANN page, and he’s got a ton of storyboard credits to his name. Almost all of his non-directorial work, in fact, has been in that capacity, and the team he’s got working on Chihayafuru right now has done storyboards for Utena, Monster, and HxH 2011, among other classics. That last one makes sense, as it’s also a Madhouse production, but even if the studios hadn’t matched, I could have identified the link between both shows. Chihayafuru often surrounds its characters with the sort of auras that Hunter x Hunter did, to the point that I got Meruem vibes from some of Inokuma’s scenes last week. Maybe that’s why I get so wrapped up in this series – the episode planners know exactly when to push the “camera” in, and how to make the characters pop when they do.

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Fall 2019 Summary – Week 6

by SuperWooper, posted in Weekly Summary

Wooper: I have good news and bad news, everyone. The bad news is that there won’t be a Weekly Summary next Monday. The good news is that our quarterly State of the Season post will be taking its place for one week only, packed with takes of all temperatures on the fall’s anime offerings. We hope you’ll be entertained by our divergent opinions and questionable tastes. In this week’s post: Mario drops a commenter favorite, amun continues to insist on the greatness of NGL, and Wooper assumes Immortal duty.

Hi Score Girl II 1-3

Mario: Hi Score Girl is back and it picks up right away. It’s a neat trick to start the season from Oono’s perspective, for example, since she’s a stoic character who doesn’t mutter a single word (how funny that she also participate in vulgar shiritori with her sister and Haru’s mom), and because the rest of these three episodes focus more on Haru – Hidaka dynamic. Out of the three mains, Hidaka remains the most sympathetic character, mostly because she is true with her emotions and the sad situation she’s in (the cursed third wheel). Her emotional progress towards Haru is believable, and her push towards Haru through physical means just signifies how desperate she is now. At the same time, there’s plenty of arcade games and its cultures throughout these episodes. There’s an original-content bit that I feel is well done as it strengthens the charms of this coming-of-age show. Haru’s taking part of Shibuya crowd is a bit to rush, though, given we see very little of how he spends time with them. All in all, Hi Score Girl is back in full force.

 

Kabukichou Sherlock 5

Wooper: I was waiting for this episode. Ever since we learned that Kabukichou features five detectives apart from Sherlock, I’ve been wondering when we’d get a case where he’s not at the center of things. Turns out it happened relatively early in the show’s run, as Sherlock didn’t make an appearance until the 11 minute mark here. Lucy is the primary investigator instead, and even though the title character solves the case of the swindled sumo wrestler before she does, she’s the one to confront the criminal, who also happens to be her former idol. That’s an important detail, because it makes the episode more personal for her. There’s a flashback to her early childhood (which is marked by tragedy and abandonment), and we also get the story of the future thief who saved her sister upon their arrival in East Shinjuku. It’s the first real showcase for any non-Sherlock character, and given how early it arrived in the series’ two cour run, it’s unlikely to be the last.

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Hoshiai no Sora – 04/05

by SuperWooper, posted in Finished Series: Sports, Hoshiai no Sora

Let’s have a round of applause for Maki the Genius, everyone. In a tennis club full of clashing personalities, only he was incisive enough to see that hotheads and shy boys shouldn’t be paired together. Imagine everyone’s surprise when he put compatible players on the same doubles teams and they immediately started to work in synchronicity. He even took it easy on them to boost their confidence, a gesture that the script bends over backwards to illustrate. And just in case you missed his masterful makeover of the tennis team, Toma directly thanks him for bringing about all this change in such a short amount of time. How does Maki respond? “Naw, everyone is just trying their best.” Sasuga Maki-sama. Is there anything this kid can’t do? Apart from stopping his new best friend from signing his own death warrant, I mean.

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Chihayafuru S3 – 04/05

by SuperWooper, posted in Chihayafuru, Finished Series: Sports

Raise your hand if you thought it would be Chihaya vs. Taichi in the finals of this tournament. Okay, manga readers, you can put your hands down.

The odds were against them; a former queen, a sadistic Class A beast, and a Meijin hopeful stood between our heroes and the finals of the Yoshino tournament. Sure, Hiroshi scooped to Chihaya in the semis so that she could get some sleep, but defeating Inokuma wasn’t easy for her. And Taichi’s path to the championship match was nothing short of harrowing, so he’s probably going to be wiped out during next week’s episode. Nevertheless, they made it, and their upcoming showdown will likely have a seismic impact on their relationship. Even if you set aside their rivalry and Taichi’s infatuation, one of them is about to win a tournament with dozens of Class A players in attendance. In the immortal words of Eri Ninamori, “That’s pretty good, right?”

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