Category: Currently Watching:

Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 7 [Fortress Nation]

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

Note: Turns out, I forgot to hit post on this earlier this week. Um… Oops?

Welcome all, to another week of Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! This week sees our heroes explore Valghia, make some friends, and maybe even begin a resistance movement. How do they do it? Well lets dive in and find out!

Immediately, I need to say that Valghia as a location is just awesome. Everything about it, from its construction to the people, is just inspired. It looks so massive and monolithic from the outside, this enormous titan of a ship. Yet the inside is a rickety strung together mess of wood, filled with small crevices and barely holding rivets. It’s clear how the inside has slowly been built up over the years, as there’s no uniformity to plan to the layout. Just people building what they can where they can. And this is all reflected in the people as well! All of them survivors and refugees of other nations huddled together in the bowels of the ship, no true comradery or national identity among them. Just like the ship itself, the very nation of Valghia is this hastily constructed “thing” that could shatter at any moment. I love it.

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Wolf’s Rain – 1/2 [City of Howls/Toboe, Who Doesn’t Howl] – Throwback Thursday

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

Welcome everyone, to the next season of Throwback Thursday! This edition? The 2003 Studio Bones piece, Wolf’s Rain, directed by Tensai Okamura of Memories and Darker than Black fame. Is it any good? Or will it be the anime equivalent of Twilight? Lets dive in and find out!

Starting off, lets talk visuals. I really like how Wolf’s Rain looks! It’s very animated, lots of character movement and effects, snappy designs and cel animation. It’s all very… 90s. Like the last call of a dying breed, Wolf’s Rain feels like a show that doesn’t belong in the modern era. Which makes sense considering how much of its crew is made up of the Cowboy Bebop team, and fits the premise of the show well. Now I do have some concerns, as during my preparation for this season I learned about the 4 recap episodes (Which we will be skipping) as well as the finale being knocked back to the OVA (Which we will be watching). I’m curious just how long Wolf’s Rain can keep this kind of production up, what with SARS and all. Personally though? I really hope it can, because it looks great so far.

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Vinland Saga S2 – 7 [Iron Fist Ketil]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Vinland Saga

Welcome everyone, to another (late) post this week, this time for Vinland Saga! Turns out that when one post gets pushed back by a day or 2, so does everything else. Good thing I already have Wolf’s Rain done for tomorrow or else I’d be in a pickle. My struggle to consistently put out content aside, lets dive into the episode!

Getting into the episode, so far in Vinland Saga we’ve had 2 distinct worlds/stories. The first is, of course, Ketil’s farm where the focus in on Thorfinn, Einar, and building things up. The second though is the war front, with Canute, Thorkell, and a focus on death and destruction. These two stories have, so far, been completely separate and diametrically opposed. So why do I bring up the obvious? Because, slowly but surely, these two worlds are starting to intersect. Because this week Thorgil, Ketil’s elder son and the embodiment of everything Einar hates, of what Thorfinn used to be, has returned to the farm. And in just a single day he’s already begun to stoke not only Olmar’s dreams of going to war, but violence on the farm itself.

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The Fire Hunter – 6 [The Capital]

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

Hello everyone, and welcome to a (Very late) episode of Fire Hunter! Apologies for that, this was a busy weekend for me as I have to write another 5 page report. The joys of grad school. Still, the show must go on, and after this I have to write up a Wolf’s Rain post. So lets get right to it!

This episode I have a whole new nitpick for Fire Hunter’s visuals. Up until now I’ve largely harped on the animation and lack of detail, the sort of core issues that show up in every scene. This week though? This week I want to rage against the lighting. Because my god, it feels like some scenes were just… half finished. Just look at the buildings when Touko and co arrive in the capital for instance. Some of them stand brightly lit and beautiful, while their immediate next door neighbors look pitch black. Alternatively, look at when Akira the fire hunter collapsed from exhaustion in the house. She’s lit as if there isn’t a single light in the house, while her surroundings are bright. It feels like two different drawings with different understandings of the lighting forced into the same scene, with no work done to correct them.

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Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 6 [Ririha in a Cage]

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

Welcome everyone, to the halfway point of the season and another episode of Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! This is a bit of a slower week, even with Kaina’s pacing, and perhaps one of the chlllest rescue missions I’ve ever witnessed. But was it bad? Lets dive in and find out!

Starting off, like I said above, this was a bit of a slow week even by Kaina standards. That isn’t automatically a bad thing of course, if the content is interesting then what’s the problem, right? And there was definitely plenty of interesting stuff, as we saw Ririha’s rescue and our first up-close glimpse of Valghia. Toss in a few more small character moments, such as Ririha quietly whispering her thanks in the crate or her father thinking her dead and asking for her forgiveness, and you have a fine episode. Its just that, personally, I was hoping for something a bit more… impactful? Some kind of meeting between Kaina and the Admiral, or some other confrontation of sides. Something to set them against each other on a personal level beyond the Admiral just being a stereotypical sadistic bad-guy. So it wasn’t bad, just didn’t fully scratch that itch.

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Vinland Saga S2 – 6 [I Want a Horse]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Vinland Saga

Welcome back everyone, to another week of Vinland Saga! This week sees us return to Thorfinn and Einar as they continue their quest to build a farm. Doesn’t sound all that exciting right? Yet for me it was one of the most thematic and emotionally poignant episodes of the year so far. So without further ado, lets dive into it!

Right off the bat, from visual cues alone, you can see in how much better a place Thorfinn is. His hair is pulled back, allowing us to see his face, and his eyes shine with a depth they previously lacked. Thorfinn also walks straighter, with less of a hunch, and he overall seems much cleaner. On top of that, he’s also talking much more. A lot of it is softly-spoken sure, and he is still rather demure. But he’s much more willing to ask questions of people. And he even raises his voice when it’s just him and Einar working the farm, clearly feeling more comfortable expressing himself! All these small things come together to paint Thorfinn as a completely different person then he was when we last left him. It’s like he’s been born again almost, both literally and figuratively.

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The Fire Hunter – 5 [The Spider Child]

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

Hello everyone, and welcome to another week of Fire Hunter! I apologize for the delay, I was celebrating a friends birthday this weekend and so I wasn’t able to work on this until Monday. We have a lot to talk about this week, as a small glimmer of hope shines through Fire Hunter’s myriad of problems. So without further ado, lets dive into it!

Starting off, I’ve harped against Fire Hunter’s visuals for a while now. And while it continues to degrade and get worse and worse, this week I wanted to harp on something else: The pacing. More than the disappointing visuals and lackluster story presentation, I think the format of the episodes themselves are what’s holding Fire Hunter back. Simply put, Fire Hunter is killing itself with how it communicates to the viewer. Take the end of the episode as a prime example of this! A whale breaking the oceans surface behind the boat, this moment of monumental natural beauty in a dystopian world. But how do we lead into that? A stare down, ominous music, dogs growling, and a sudden, shitty cut. This should have been an easy slam dunk of a scene! Instead it falls on its face, like the rest of the episode.

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Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 5 [Rescue Mission]

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

Welcome everyone, to another week of Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! Continuing its upward rise through the season, this was another good episode for Kaina, with a lot to like. So lets skip the preamble and dive right into it!

Having talked about the CGI and the backgrounds for a while now, this week I wanted to start with something different: The music. Composed primarily by Kouta Yamamoto and Misaki Umase, Kaina has one of the best OSTs of the season. Not just in the uniqueness and style of the music, but in how its integrated into the show itself. Tracks like “In The Snowsea” merge beautifully with the immense majesty of the undersea roots. Meanwhile “K_hide_G” I think it is fits the chase of the undersea fish so well. While I haven’t heard enough to truly make a decision on it yet, I can certainly say its something I notice every week. Its the combination of music and background that really bring Kaina’s setting to life I feel.

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Vinland Saga S2 – 5 [The Path of Blood]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Vinland Saga

Welcome all, to another episode of Vinland Saga! This week we take a break from Thorfinn, instead spending time with our other favorite damaged boy: Canute! And man is he kind of fucked up. So without further ado, lets dive into it!

Getting into the production, Vinland Saga continues to not be the most animated of shows. It has a few moments, such as Thorkell or the flashback, but that’s about it. There were also some CGI soldiers in some shots that didn’t look great, but they came and went very quickly. Luckily for Vinland Saga, this arc isn’t particularly action packed so it really doesn’t impact it much. Instead what stands out is the strong direction, such as framing Canute atop the pile of coins or in front of the burning countryside, along with solid background art and compositing/lighting to bring it all together. The end result ends up giving Vinland Saga a lot more gravitas and drama then some kind of flashy action sequence would, as the focus isn’t on war and battle but rather Canute’s avoidance of direct combat. What does that mean? Well lets talk about it.

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The Fire Hunter – 4 [Flickering Flame]

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

Welcome everyone, to another episode of Fire Hunter! This week was… It was a disappointment, to put it lightly. I’m really starting to lose faith. Why? Well lets talk about that.

Now I really hate to keep beating this horse every week, but Fire Hunter keeps finding new ways to disappoint. Yes, the animation was still trash. And yes, the direction was largely uninspired. But this week saw the melt also extend to the detail. Flat smoke with no linework or details, just a shape filled brown. The composite falling apart as Kanata and Touko look like they don’t even belong in the environment. Characters in the foreground, not the background mind you, with just no detail whatsoever. Legitimately incomplete drawings and fucking pop-in. Pop-in, from an animation. Now I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes with Fire Hunter, but clearly something is going down in their pipeline. Because Yasunori Miyazawa, from shows like Ping Pong and even better cuts from this very show, is far better than this. Easily some of his most disappointing work for me.

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