Category: Weekly Summary

Hey all, quick note at the top here, apologies for all these delays. Wrote it in the Nana post but I’ve been pretty sick since Wednesday and have been catching up these past few days. That’s all.

Dungeon Meshi – 21 [Egg/The Golden County]

This was an interesting episode of Dungeon Meshi, as we start to expand our scope beyond the dungeon and into the wider world and its history, as well as all the consequences that brings. On the surface, this means we get to meet the Fantasy Cops AKA, the Elves. This squad is… interesting. Every single one of them looks like a sociopath, from Mr. “Covered in magical tattoos” to “I had a stroke and I’m still better than you”. Honestly it’s a pretty cool looking cast, I like how varied their designs are and I’m looking forward to their role in the story. They are obviously gonna be bad guys, we were warned about how the Elves react to Ancient/Dark Magic back when Marcille was doing her thing. So there’s not a doubt in my mind they are going to end up fighting our main party. The question is just whether or not we inevitably team up with them to take down the Mad Mage, or if we fight them after the Mad Mage goes down to secure Marcille/the loot/Dungeon Lordship. Should be interesting! Meanwhile underground we get some history, meeting some more of the ghosts, learning about their Curse Of Immortality, and the source of his power, the Winged Lion, kept further down. We have a goal, a weakness, and a prophecy now! Things are ramping up! All in all a lot of fun, I’m enjoying the slow escalation of the story, it feels like a fantastic home game of D&D with just the right mix of action and comedy. The fact that Dungeon Meshi is a complete story gives me a lot of hope too, I wasn’t aware of that before now.

Continue reading “Spring 2024 What-I’m-Watching Summary – Week 7” →

Wind Breaker – 7 [Fight to Win]

It’s absolutely ridiculous how close Wind Breaker is to figuring itself out and being great. It already has the shounen stuff down, seriously, Wind Breaker’s fight choreography is fantastic, having some of what are easily the best fights in the season. The way Togame and Sakura’s bodies move, the different fighting styles like Togame’s grapples and stomps to Sakura’s pinwheel kicks and strikes, it’s impossible not to get pulled into the fight. The camera can be a bit ambitious at times, making some transitions look awkward, but Wind Breaker tries so hard to make sure we always see their full bodies as they fight that it generally comes together anyways. The only thing Wind Breaker really needs to work on is the narrative, the core themes of building and maintaining a community and what those communities mean to the individuals within it. Part of why this episode is good is because we get a lot of that with Togame. We see how he gets pulled into the Shishitoren before it got corrupted, how Choji made it feel like home and helped him feel comfortable interacting with others. We get to watch as Choji is consumed by his desire for strength, for freedom, resulting him in kicking out anyone who he doesn’t see as strong, creating this culture of fear. This forces Togame to take on this role of the “villain” within the Shishitoren, performing all of the “skinning” himself, becoming the man every other member fears because, even if they fear him, so long as they love Choji the Shishitoren, the community he came to love so much, will endure. It’s all right there, Wind Breaker has the pieces! Now just imagine if this was episode 10 instead of 7, if we knew more of about Bofurin was like to contrast it against, if we got more time with Togame as an antagonist to understand where this is coming from prior to the fight. It would have been utterly fantastic, a beautiful way to end a season and begin Sakura’s journey in earnest. Instead it’s just one good episode in an otherwise eh team-battle arc. A damn shame if you ask me, but I’ll take what I can get.

Continue reading “Spring 2024 What-I’m-Watching Summary – Week 6” →

Jellyfish Can’t Swim at Night – 5 [Viewer Comments]

Ah Jellyfish, the only other show this season that has a shot at consistently beating out Dungeon Meshi. I absolutely adored this episode, top to bottom. From Yoru’s struggles with artistic motivation and feelings of inadequacy to Kano’s attempts to lift her up. Once again, Jellyfish managed to hit me right in the kokoro. Her reactions to comments? The fear of reading them, the knowledge that someone saw and might not have liked your work? I get that exact same thing, yet all I’m doing is writing a few thousand words about anime on the internet. She’s drawing official art for their group and then having bigger, more successful, more talented artists draw fanart of it and then having people say they should be drawing for Jelee instead of her. That must be soul crushing. Watching her work through that, doom scrolling until she commits herself to art fully so she can feel good about what she draws, adding her name back to the mural she previously erased, taking classes seriously and such again, all good shit. I wish this had maybe been a multi-episode plot, but considering the end I’ll accept what we got. Speaking of the end, Jellyfish is entering dangerous territory here. If this is legit, if Kano and Yoru are going to be a real couple with real romance, it could be fantastic. But if we’re just getting yuri-baited because they know that’s what anime fans watch, then it’s going to suck. We can’t know until the next episode, which I’ll be watching right after I finish writing this since it’s Saturday, but I’m hopeful that Jellyfish will pull it off.

Oh and P.S. RIP Mei, her Bad Luck fortune came true the same day she drew it when she lost the love race with Kano. F in chat for our girl.

Continue reading “Spring 2024 What-I’m-Watching Summary – Week 5” →

Dungeon Meshi – 18 [Shapeshifter]

To absolutely no ones surprise, Dungeon Meshi continues to be great. This week it brought us the classic Doppelganger encounter, but with the usual Dungeon Meshi twist. Not content with just one Doppelganger, we had nine, three for each of our cast members. And as if that wasn’t enough, each Doppelganger’s appearance was based on the mental image another party member had of that person, which Dungeon Meshi so helpfully drew in slightly different styles and details so a perceptive viewer could pick out the real one on their own. So for Laios? Each of Marcille, Chilchuck and Senshi view him as some brand of moron or weirdo, leading them to easily pick out his fakes. Meanwhile for the others we have poor attention to detail resulting in inaccurate clothing and tools, as well as a complete misunderstanding of magic resulting in a silly spell book. There’s a lot of good stuff in here, all of it leading to a fun finale where Laios figures out who the real ones are by their awareness of the dungeon around them, as well as how they talk. Of course Chilchuck wouldn’t sit on a box that might be a mimic, he hates them, and of course Senshi would never disrupt an ecosystem so carelessly by stealing and egg, and of course Marcille would be so stubborn as to not eat a humanoid egg even if it might save Falin. All of that culminating in Laios barking like a dog to face down a monster, only for Marcille to blow it up since she was completely dun with the situation, made for a fun episode. I’m not sure about this Ninja girl or why she’s following them, was she ordered to kill Marcille or something? I don’t know, but I’m looking forward to finding out. Dungeon Meshi hasn’t lead me astray yet, somehow staying fresh and fun for two whole cores, I’m not going to start doubting it now. Oh and one more thing, Laios barking was hilarious and exactly the kind of comedy I’ve come to expect from this utterly ridiculous show.

Continue reading “Spring 2024 What-I’m-Watching Summary – Week 4” →

Lots of drops this week as we enter Week 3 for the Spring Season! Mostly just me cleaning house with a few of the lesser series of the season, nothing to extreme.

Dungeon Meshi – 17 [Harpy/Chimera]

Dungeon Meshi took a break for a few weeks there, letting other shows strut their stuff, but this week it returns with a vengeance for that first place spot. Seriously, what a great episode. From Shuro confronting Laios over the consequences of his actions, berating and criticizing him for the use of Black Magic and how blasé he is about everything, to Falin showing up and wrecking house. And holy crap, did she show up. Dungeon Meshi has always been very emotive, from facial expressions to how the characters move, it’s always been good at conveying emotion. But this week was… It was on another level. I can’t get over how incredible Falin’s new design is, from the feather coat and draconic torso to her new eyes and how her expressions can turn on a dime. One minute she’s almost cute, smiling and blushing as she crushes Maizuru’s skull beneath her foot, the next crying out for her brother as her true self takes control for but a moment. And the way the music tied it all together, just fantastic stuff. Not to mention the actual narrative of the episode, how Dungeon Meshi called Laios out for his hypocrisy regarding monsters after he had already gotten on Senshi for the same shit, or Shuro sticking to his word and reporting them to the authorities but still giving them an opportunity to escape should they succeed. All around one of the best episodes I’ve seen in a long time. If I had any complaint it would be that no one actually died, there was no cost to the conflict, which feels like a missed opportunity. I get it, resurrection is normal here, I don’t begrudge Dungeon Meshi bringing back all the important ones. But I would have liked if one or two had stayed dead, just to hammer home the situation and what Laios/Marcille have done here. Even with that though, a stellar episode, I swear I’ve watched it like 3 times. I’m hyped for where Dungeon Meshi is going.

Continue reading “Spring 2024 What-I’m-Watching Summary – Week 3” →

Jellyfish Can’t Swim at Night – 2 [Mei the Fangirl]

Jellyfish was fantastic this week. I’ll admit, early on I was a tad put off. Mei was such a fangirl, so obsessive and weird, that I really didn’t like her. And I feared that Jellyfish would somehow end up supporting her antics, justifying them or having Kano give in to her demands to get her working with them. Luckily, Jellyfish did nothing of the sort. It still made Mei sympathetic, but instead of excusing her obsession it instead sought to explain how she got there in the first place. How she was desperate for a friend, for acceptance, for some kind of human connection, and she found that in Kano, known as Nonoka at the time, by going to one of her fan events. It was the first time someone was genuine to her, accepted her hair color and mannerisms, even seemed to like her. Watchin Mei’s room slowly fill up with Nonoka merch, over taking the trophies and book, it was really sad but really effective. Jellfyfish didn’t excuse her behavior, only made us understand it. And by the end? She had walked it back a bit, coming to view Kano as her own person and not as her obsession. Meanwhile Kano came to realize that she can’t just deny her past, that while she may not want to continue it anymore, her work as Nonoko is still part of who she is and touched a number of people. I really liked that, it worked for me, and by the end I found myself enjoying the episode a lot.

Continue reading “Spring 2024 What-I’m-Watching Summary – Week 2” →

Hello all! This is a bit of an odd week, what with one season ending and another beginning. We’re mostly wrapping up what was left, with only Bucchigiri and Dungeon Meshi continuing to next week, but then we will start to get new shows as well. In the mean time, make sure to check out the First Impressions that are going up every day or so! Also, wanted to let everyone know, tomorrow I will be building a new PC from scratch. This means I have a metric shit ton of programs to reinstall on it, settings to update, data to move such as website backups, etc etc. What I’m saying is, if things get delayed a bit, that’s why. With any luck though it shouldn’t take too long and once I’m done I’ll have a shiny new box. Woo!

Bucchigiri – 11 [Unanswered Wishes! Sudden Crab Fried Rice]

Bucchigiri once again escalates the conflict as Matakara takes down Ken and Arajin finally steels himself to for the fight to come. Overall the episode worked? I really liked the buildup with Ken, both the flashbacks to Matakara’s brother, Mitsukuni, asking him to take care of Matakara as well as his first spoken words in the series being out of concern for others. Really drives home that he isn’t really a delinquent at all, just a man born in the wrong era. His fight with Matakara was cool too, I’m always a sucker for the indomitable human will and refusing to fall even while defeated. It’s a classic for a reason. As for Matakara, we see him fall further and further into the darkness, even absolutely brutalizing his old friend Zabu who tried to stop him from going to the fight. Easily the most brutal fight we’ve seen yet, if only because Matakara doesn’t hold back at all. Finally we get a bit more to the Senya/Ichiya backstory, which seems like it’s setting itself up as Ichiya being upset Senya was holding back on him and not giving him the true fight he desired. I wish Arajin and Senya had had this fight earlier, not only because Arajin not having Senya would have better justified him staying out of the conflict but also because him losing/reuniting with Senya in a single episode felt a tad fast. Still, the idea is solid enough, and the presentation is great, so I’m still enjoying it.

Continue reading “Spring 2024 What-I’m-Watching Summary – Week 0 (?)” →

Dungeon Meshi – 13 [Red Dragon III/Good Medicine]

What is this, 3 weeks in a row? Dungeon Meshi has been killing it lately, and this episode is no exception. The first half was unexpectedly terrifying, “introducing” our new big bad and final goal, the Mad Magician who created the dungeon. This was a really cool twist, and something I think Dungeon Meshi setup well. Everything from the ghosts to the painting to the structure of the dungeon/castle itself feels obvious looking back, but it’s only with the Mad Mage’s arrival that I finally put together that this is the same castle. That some tragedy occurred and, in attempting to divert or undo it, the Mad Mage created this dungeon. Every ghost is a citizen of the kingdom, every monster or trap something created to keep out looters and ne’er-do-well’s. And should one of his bigger pets, like the dragon, get slain? Well he shows up to deal with the problem himself and set things back until he figures out how to save his king. Great stuff, really horrifying imagery, absolutely love all of that. As for the second half, it’s all about our team recovering and realizing they are in way over their head. Chilchuck’s inner conflict of not wanting to see his friends die, but expressing it as his own cowardice, and subsequent conversation with the white orc was really good. Also the white orcs design is great for a one-off, really hope we see more of her in the future. Anyways, it’s a nice way to reset, get them out of the dungeon, gather more allies, and dive back in for another run. All good shit. My only complaint is that Falin’s “kidnapping” feels like a “Your princess is in another castle” situation. Yeah, her getting resurrected alongside the dragon in the same body or whatever is cool, good use of resources/magic. But we literally just got/saved her, can we not spend some time with her before she disappears as a character again? Aside from that disappointment, I thought it was a fantastic episode. Really excited for the second cour.

Continue reading “Winter 2024 What-I’m-Watching Summary – Week 12” →