Category: Other:

Wooper: We’re bringing back the pre-column author’s notes this week! Not for anything too exciting – just a heads up that there won’t be a recap post on June 21st, since that’s Summer 2021 Preview day. We’ll do a final Spring Summary on the 28th, though, before jumping straight into first impressions mode. Seasonal anime never stops running, and neither do we!

Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song – 12

Helghast: What kind of super AI records in a 4:3 format and has an antique VHS overlay when recounting Vivy’s one hundred year journey? With that kind of tech, maybe it came to the conclusion that humanity has become stagnant and that AI should replace them to continue to evolve much like how children end up replacing their parents in the long term just with killer robots and apocalyptic imagery. Speaking of killer robots, that entire mission could not have gone more poorly for Vivy and her crew trying to take down the Archive. Everyone is dead and humanity got its ass kicked by hundreds of thousands satellites falling from the sky. I’m glad that Toak brought some rifles to the party and there were some awesome sequences, including a fight with the archive that bordered on abstract art.

Unlike Teppei’s other works of Re:Zero, there are no more retries. The autosave overwrote the timeline where Osamu is still alive and placed Vivy at the door of the final boss. At least Vivy finally has an answer to her question of what her heart is. I suspect it has something to do with her own desires and dreams of protecting those close to her and conveying those strong passions through her singing. With next week’s episode title being “Fluorite Eye’s Song,” I certainly hope that it will be a banger to close off a spectacular original show.

Continue reading “Spring 2021 Summary – Week 11” →

Bishounen Tanteidan – 5-6

Wooper: There was a reason I opted not to follow Bishounen Tanteidan on a weekly basis, and this hour of the series showcased it beautifully; for me, listening to this author’s dialogue is like overdosing on Ambien. All of his characters talk circuitously, and they don’t manage to generate intrigue in the process, either. Take episode 5, for instance – in its final minutes, all Doujima needs to do to expose Lai as a cheater is watch him carefully, since she knows he’s taking cues from an invisible man. Instead, we have to suffer through her internal monologue about concentrating all her thoughts on a single point, which leads her to realize that she has to look “at her own self” because she’s been accepted by her new friends, who she really wants to help by exposing Lai as a cheater. See how we looped around to where we started? This show is full of shit like that, and even when it’s not skipping Composition 101 to do donuts in the parking lot, it’s engaging in gab sessions about art that have nothing to do with the smaller stories it wants to tell (see episode 6). When even a windbag like me can’t appreciate your meandering script, you know something has gone sideways. Dropped.

Continue reading “Spring 2021 Summary – Week 10” →

Fruits Basket S3 – 8

Amun: This final season is intense. For all the almosts the previous season(s) of Fruits Basket had, it’s all coming together here. We have (attempted?) murder, sex, confessions, backstories…tired of the emotional tease and need some feels payoffs? Here ya go! I’m mixed on the reveal of the Kyo-Honda-mama connection – on the one hand, it’s like a modified childhood friend route – a bit overdone. On the other, the reactions and character’s actions are spot on – this is a show about trauma after all. It’s clear the feels train is barrelling into the station – taking a broader view of how we got here, there have been some overall surprises. Early on in the show, I didn’t really expect Kyo to be the main character, honestly I thought it would be a more Yuki-centered story. The big genderbender was a shock too – and really complicated matters intensely. I thought Shigure would be a sleazeball with a heart of gold – but actually he’s just a sleazeball. If I’m rooting for anyone to get shanked, it’s him. I guess I would have liked to see Akito wield their power over the Zodiac a bit more – they come off as really childish and we didn’t see the sway over the other animal spirits quite enough. That’s pretty much my only gripe though, since this has been a banger of a season. Get your ships in order, hold on to your childhood hats, as we try to land this hot mess and get everyone out alive!

Godzilla SP – 4-5

Wooper: I’m hardly acquainted with any of the characters in Godzilla SP, but I’m hanging in there. The show has ways of making its ultra-nerdy dialogue palatable, whether it be putting scary monsters on screen, cutting to interviews with laymen about the proliferation of kaiju, or enlisting Pero 2’s help to explain difficult concepts to Mei. The two of them were involved in my favorite scene from either of these episodes: a one minute and forty second flurry of text messages between Mei and Yun, with Pero showing up in various LINE stickers on Mei’s end. Showing a text conversation on screen is a fantastic way to lose your audience’s attention (doubly so if it’s about molecular arrangements), but the intrigue of two scientists collaborating without knowing a thing about each other kept me interested. On the other hand, I care about very few people on the periphery of the story, especially the researchers who escaped the massive Radon tank in episode 5’s big set piece. Even if that’s the tank from which Godzilla will eventually emerge, there are at least two degrees of separation between all of those characters and our heroes, maybe more. Every second spent watching them, or anyone not directly involved with Yun or Mei, feels like lost time.

Continue reading “Spring 2021 Summary – Week 9” →

Bakuten – 5-7

Lenlo: Alright I have a lot to cover and only a paragraph to do it in so lets make this fast! Right off the bat I really liked the horror-style directing of episode 5. It took what was essentially a bottle episode, relationship filler, and did something interesting with its presentation. Of course we will only see if this episode was worth it or not later down the line when these relationships get put to the test. Charging forward we come to episode 6! More than anything else this episode was a show of what Bakuten’s CGI can do and it wasn’t bad. It looked the worst during the performance oddly enough, with the harsh lighting really making them stand out. But the interesting and dynamic camera angles along with the full body movements kept it visually engaging enough that I think I’m going to call that a passing grade for now. Overall though the CGI is definitely wavering. Finally episode 7, backstory! This was nice, it was satisfying to see all the dominoes come together and finally get a complete picture. I can’t say I care for the teacher that much but he’s at least a character now, so points for that. All in all I think these 3 episodes weren’t half bad! Bakuten is silent but solid this season. Not making any great waves but steadily holding course, consistent with its quality. That’s refreshing!

Also the manager is still cute. Shoulda submitted her for the State of the Season, damn.

Back Arrow – 19-20

Wooper: I have nothing nice to say about these episodes or Back Arrow in general. It’s thicker than ever with pseudoscientific dialogue, asphyxiating plotting, and screechy voice acting. Even Zetsu and Rudolph, the show’s two reliably fun characters, have gone from unpredictable forces of chaos to mere mouthpieces for writer Kazuki Nakashima’s half-formed thoughts on God. I won’t be mentioning this show ever again (though I’ll marathon the last four episodes when I’m in a self-flagellating mood).

Continue reading “Spring 2021 Summary – Weeks 7-8” →

Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song – 07

Helghast: After the mayhem of the Metal Float, this week honestly felt like a Carole and Tuesday episode with Vivy getting a hard reset back into Diva and getting back to the musical side of things with a special insert OP. I do like her personality change as it’s overall less stiff than her previous version. She feels a lot more human with her confidence and expressions of a veteren songstress looking to make it big beyond the main stage of Nialand. It even extends to her willingness to throw herself off the building in order to get more information when the AI cube of Matsumoto makes his return in an almost reluctant way. While the first half of Vivy had setpieces keep getting bigger and bigger with falling skyscrapers, falling space stations and an AI island gone crazy, the twist of Ophelia’s future sucide doesn’t seem to have that WOW factor but I’m sure the author has several surprises for the viewers to lose their minds over. I can think of why an AI might end their existence due to the fact that they have failed their mission. While this may or may not be the case with Ophelia, Diva has proven that such a thing is possible at the conclusion of the Metal Float mission. Having her come to terms with it when she regains her memories and seeing how that will play into preventing her AI younger sister’s sucide will be moving at say the least.

Continue reading “Spring 2021 Summary – Week 6” →

Mars Red – 04/05

Lenlo: God Mars Red is just so… aggressively mediocre. About once per episode it will have a good, focused moment of vampiric humanity. Of immortals interacting and living in a mortal society. And then the rest of the episode is just mediocre political subplots, vampires we don’t know or care about subplots and downright terrible action sequences. There’s only ever one scene of any value in these episodes. You could watch that one scene on youtube, skip the rest and lose absolutely nothing. And that’s a damn shame.

Back Arrow – 17

Wooper: Last week our heroes declared the Granedger to be its own sovereign nation, but that claim feels silly now that the show is handing out massive warships like Oprah. “You get a dreadnought, you get a dreadnought, everybody gets a dreadnought!” Not only are they being given to antagonists left and right, those antagonists are being defeated just moments after receiving them, making this whole arc feel even hastier than usual (a real feat for a series like Back Arrow). We’re just making all of this up as we go along, it seems, but at least that improvised feel leaves room for plenty of fights – the Rekkan Emperor kicked so much ass this week that he must have broken both ankles. Am I crazy, or did he manifest as both an arrow and the bow that fired it during his battle with Tae’s dreadnought? I had to rewind that scene a couple times to double check what I’d just watched, and I still don’t really understand it. Looked pretty cool, though! All the cult/prophecy nonsense about Arrow destroying the world is just background noise, as far as I’m concerned – give me more fights and less story, please.

Continue reading “Spring 2021 Summary – Week 5” →

Super Cub – 03

Wooper: Is it just me, or did this episode feel like the conclusion to a three-part OVA? Koguma’s closing monologue neatly closed the book on her lonely Cub-less life without creating the need for a sequel. It was nicely-written, especially her reflection on how it felt to receive a classmate’s phone number versus a motorcycle license, but there wasn’t much of a “tsuzuku” vibe to it. And yet we know, thanks to the magic of the Internet, that there’s another main character who’ll be introduced at some point during the next two months. I’m looking forward to it, especially since she might be unfamiliar with motorbikes, giving Koguma a chance to pass on what she’s learned to a novice rider. That would be great for her self-esteem, which has grown bit by bit during Super Cub’s first “arc,” but is still miles behind where it could be. She doesn’t have the guts to claim use of the microwave at lunchtime, and she’s still hesitant to call Reiko a friend, even though they eat together every day at school. That timid personality continues to receive good visualization, since Koguma’s movements are slow and deliberate – I just wish the CG bike scenes would ride into the sunset and never return.

Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song – 05

Helghast: Is Vivy going to have a different animated OP every week now? That transition from her concert to the opening just hits in such a smooth and delightful way. What is more pressing is the fact that their successful exploits within this timeline have only accelerated the evolution of AI to the point where the coming conflict of the future may be not too far off. The existence of the Metal Float that draws parallels from the Nation of Zero One in the Animatrix is proof of that. It does a good job in presenting itself as a pretty benign and well-intentioned place in serving humanity as shown by the cute little WALL-E robots. The little time that the show spends on them is enough to make me feel bad for what happens in the final minutes. Seeing M’s dream of tending to children being shattered by Vivy was heartbreaking to say the least. I think that seeing Vivy slowly realizing that she must destroy the dreams of other AIs in order to realize her dream of bringing happiness to everyone through her song is such an interesting theme going forth. Just how will the rest of the world react to the island of AIs actually preemptively wiping out the human attackers and what the hell did that virus do? There are so many ways that this can all end and that’s the fun thing about original shows. I just don’t know what’s going to happen next.

Continue reading “Spring 2021 Summary – Week 4” →

Wooper: With the Spring 2021 season now in full swing, we’re watching quite a few shows that aren’t receiving regular coverage, so here’s a column to run them down. High school club shows, sci-fi originals, Taiwanese puppetry – this post has it all, including a blurb from Helghast. If that sounds like your kind of thing, let the blitz of second (and third) impressions commence!

Bakuten – 02

Lenlo: Bakuten had a solid 2nd episode this week. Not only was the production crisp and clean with some great gymnastics shots but the actual character and narrative work was nice too. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before of course but after last season’s 2.43 I’m willing to accept something solid and uncomplicated. The relationship between the main duo is quite nice so far and I look forward to learning whatever family troubles are keeping him from staying after practice. Meanwhile the group dynamic is fun, I like the shared experiences that keep them all together even if they have only known each other for a few days. Hopefully it can stay solid until the end, I would love for one of these seasonal sports shows to not shit the bed.

Bishounen Tanteidan – 02

Mario: Guess I underestimated NisiOisin’s ability to go wild as a writer. When I heard about this case I was preparing for the solution to be something like “the star is within your eyes” – that would make sense since the show makes no secret of admiring the girl’s “beautiful eyes like the stars.” Never in my wildest dreams did I expect the plot to involve military satellites burning up in the sky and all that jazz. NisiOisin is more than capable of twisting the audience’s expectations, at least, but now I am looking more for human drama. One of the main reasons why shows like Monogatari had such a massive impact on me is because they’re first and foremost about their characters’ growth, and so far I see very little of it here. I guess the true test to see whether this show is worth following will be next week when it wraps up this introduction arc.

Continue reading “Spring 2021 Summary – Weeks 2-3” →