Wooper: Happy New Year, everyone! This is both our final post of 2021 and one of my last solo posts ever, as my semi-retirement from blogging begins today. I’ll still be lending a hand on bigger projects at the start and end of each season, but I’m leaving episodic reviews and the weekly recap behind in favor of, well, not writing about anime as often. But enough about that – read on to learn how the usual second-tier suspects performed just before the year turned over. I wish you all a safe and successful 2022! See you on the other side.

Super Crooks – 11-13

That was more like it! I found these episodes to be more enjoyable and efficient than much of Super Crooks’ other heist-related material. The swiftness with which it assembled the team of villains was much appreciated, as was the wise choice to portray Kasey’s dissatisfaction with civilian life (which would be crucial in setting up the finale’s big reversal). The Gladiator wasn’t exactly a standout addition to the crew, but I really liked the scene where he smoked a cig while The Praetorian went to town on everyone else – a fitting move for a man who was blackmailed into working alongside his enemies. (Their fight scene was pretty cool too, especially the cut of Praetorian launching himself down a hallway.) Characters were a bit sharper during this last arc overall, owing to the time they spent bonding and butting heads before the mission kicked into high gear in episode 12. If there was a weakness here, it might be that the show didn’t lean into the absurdity of its plot with sufficient enthusiasm. There was some really dumb stuff in these episodes: a time machine investment pitch, a death ninja squad (that the temporarily powerless villains managed to hold off for far too long), a Harry Potter-style suitcase that was bigger inside than out, etc. Not a big issue that the show placed its focus elsewhere, though, since Kasey’s psychic victory over The Bastard was the sort of nifty twist that makes everything else go down smoothly. Based on the bumpiness of this season as a whole, I’m not interested in seeing more of Super Crooks, but at least it left on a strong note.

Continue reading “Fall 2021 Summary – Week 13” →

Wooper: Merry Christmas, everyone! Whether you’re spending the holidays with family and friends or you’re All Alone on Christmas Eve, I have a gift for you: a brand new weekly recap post! It might not seem like much compared to our impending winter impressions or the upcoming 2021 Anime of the Year bonanza, but hey, at least I got you something. Happy reading, and I hope your December to January transition is a safe and healthy one.

Aggretsuko S4 – 1-5

This is the first time in four years that Retsuko has taken a backseat in her own show, and I’m not convinced it was the right call. She’s currently part of a romance subplot involving hesitant leading man Haida and a handful of co-workers who range from well-meaning to meddlesome. While Tsunoda the Love Expert’s lectures in the office AV room are chuckle-worthy, Haida’s indecisiveness is mostly just annoying, as he’s bailed on a dinner date with Retsuko and refused an invitation into her apartment despite being head over heels for her. The show takes plenty of opportunities to point out Retsuko’s impatience with his cold feet, making the date they went on in episode 5 feel more like a dream sequence than anything else; I’m still half-convinced that it took place in one of their imaginations. I think I’d have preferred Retsuko to play a more significant role in the season’s larger plot: the restructuring of her company by an ambitious new president named Himuro. He’s the sort of single-minded profit seeker who views the company’s accounting department as nonessential, which puts him into conflict with the star of the season: Director Ton. Who knew that three years after being introduced as the series’ primary antagonist, Ton’s fight to retain all of his employees amidst downsizing would make him a hero? The glimpses of his home life (especially those involving his hilarious twin daughters) have added a lot to his character, and I’m excited to see how Ton turns the tables on Himuro once I get through the rest of season 4.

Continue reading “Fall 2021 Summary – Weeks 11-12” →

Komi-san wa, Komyushou desu – 8

Wooper: This episode peaked early, as its funniest gag arrived just before the OP kicked in. It’s pictured above on the left – the “?!” represents the confusion of Komi’s ancestors at her claim that they’d had a nice graveside chat. In reality, she’s so awkward that even her internal dialogue earned a silent “…” when visualized on screen, which means even dead people are more expressive than poor Komi. That lack of expressiveness continued with diverse results, as she was able to play a board game with her cousin for the first time, and even got out a full (if fragmented) sentence to Tadano during their time at the Bon festival. It’s interesting to note that while a lot of anime treat matsuri as climactic events, Komi-san inserted its festival into the middle segment in one of its middle episodes. That’s probably an indicator that it’s on a different schedule than most romcoms, which typically aim for a confession at a fateful moment in their finales. Komi-san is on another sort of journey, it seems: pushing its heroine to the point where she’s comfortable around others (not just the guy she likes). I can appreciate that mission, just as I appreciated the perfect deployment of side characters Yadano and Nakanaka in this episode. Each girl had a tiny appearance at just one booth during the festivities, both of which made the most of their competitiveness and delusion, respectively. A fine episode on the whole, even if its sappy final segment was a bit much for me.

Continue reading “Fall 2021 Summary – Week 10” →

Wooper: Another week, another solo appearance. I might as well retitle these posts “What’s Wooper Watching?” (Not a bad idea for a separate column, actually.) The three shows discussed below are getting regular coverage at this point; Stone Ocean would have been a great one-off addition, but I’m hopelessly behind on JoJo’s. I’ll surely throw in a few words about Aggretsuko’s fourth season when it drops in mid-December, so at least there’ll be something new to read in a week or two. See you then!

Star Wars: Visions – 7

“The Elder” is the second of Trigger’s two contributions to the Visions anthology project, as well as the driest of the seven I’ve seen thus far. Dry isn’t an adjective commonly applied to Trigger works, but it’s appropriate for the way this dialogue-heavy story was laid out. A drifting Jedi Master and Padawan sit in their spaceship for a while and discuss which planet they should explore next, eventually settling on an exceedingly gray and rocky one, which they explore for a bit. They stumble upon an old Sith, the last of his kind (an inversion of the light/dark balance in “The Ninth Jedi”), and have a brief lightsaber duel resulting in his death. And that’s it! Notice how the story opens on two men with no goal or destination in mind. They’re only motivated to visit a particular planet because one of them senses – you guessed it – a disturbance in the Force. Their Master/Padawan dynamic created a lot of opportunities for sagely sayings from the former, which seemed to be the aspect of the production most attractive to the director. Even after his opponent was defeated, he went right back into sage mode, talking about the inevitability of time and the proper mindset for strengthening oneself. I don’t mind a little philosophy in Star Wars stuff, since the Jedi are essentially a religious organization, but all ”The Elder” managed to depict here was a day in the life of a long-winded, lightsaber-wielding patrolman.

Continue reading “Fall 2021 Summary – Week 9” →

Super Crooks – 1-2

Wooper: I went into Super Crooks completely blind, so I had no idea it was a superhero – or more accurately, supervillain – series. Turns out it’s a “mature” take on the genre in the same vein as The Boys or Invincible, which in this case means comically large-scale violence and implied sex. The violence showed up in episode 1, a high school origin story for newbie hero Johnny “Electro Boy” Bolt, with all the Spiderman theft that entails (the “hero” even has a crush on his bully’s girlfriend). Compulsory scenes of Johnny confiding in his nerdy best friend and trying on his first costume had my eyelids drooping, but the over-the-top carnage of his superhero debut (which ended with a bunch of dead pigs in a public swimming pool) managed to wake me up. Cut to episode 2, set in the present day, where an adult Johnny is released from prison and the exposition begins to flow. Tales of powerful enemies and a shadowy villain organization were all over the second script, but they were neither illuminating nor tantalizing enough to hook me. For all the show’s clunkiness, it’s amusing to see Bones tackle this material, even if its stiff visuals tell us it was hardly a priority. The substudio that produced it is also working on Mob Psycho 100’s upcoming third season, but hey, I doubt anyone would protest that Super Crooks was sacrificed at the altar of Mob’s wondrous animation.

Continue reading “Fall 2021 Summary – Week 8” →

Blade Runner: Black Lotus – 1-2

Wooper: Black Lotus is yet another of Sola Digital Arts’ CG reimaginings of classic sci-fi properties. Kenji Kamiyama (who also directed the Star Wars: Visions episode discussed below) and Shinji Aramaki have been pumping these out for a few years, and now it’s Blade Runner’s turn to get the Barbie treatment. So what’s the verdict, setting aside my distaste for the primitive 3D art style? After two episodes, I’d call it a passable replication; the rainy neon streets, murky lighting, and Vangelis-inspired soundtrack evoke the original film, but only superficially. (I haven’t seen 2049, so it may be that Black Lotus’s vacant streets are a more accurate reflection of Villeneuve’s sequel, but they certainly can’t hold a candle to the bustling exteriors of Ridley Scott’s version.) The story is a wisp of a thing with an amnesiac protagonist (Elle) and a handful of fight scenes to mask the absence of atmosphere. Most of the characters lean too far in one direction or another – the friendly black market trader is too helpful, while the corrupt senator is too evil. Episode 2’s final moments served as a pretty good hook, though – the show skillfully cut between Elle being hunted in both the past and the present, leading to a cliffhanger that honestly surprised me. I wouldn’t recommend this series to many people, but Blade Runner superfans can rest easy knowing it’s got a shade of promise.

Continue reading “Fall 2021 Summary – Weeks 6-7” →