Category: Weekly Summary

Wooper: We’re back with another weekly roundup – the last of the year, and perhaps for the foreseeable future. I restarted this column because I found the fall season to be particularly diverse, with lots of worthy shows that weren’t receiving regular coverage. Not all of them remained in our good graces, of course, but this format gave us a fun and easy way to heap both praise and criticism on whatever series we felt like discussing each week. Will winter 2020 be similarly inspiring? We’ll need a few weeks before making that judgment.

First Impressions for the new season are slated to begin a week from now, and our yearly awards post will go live around January 20th. Those are our priorities at the moment – if these weekly summaries do return, it won’t be before that second date. They could reappear in spring, or summer, or not at all. We’ll see what the future holds! Until then, for the final time in 2019, here are some thoughts on what we’ve been watching this week.

No Guns Life 12

Amun: No Guns Life 1-10 were a solid string of excellent episodes. 11 and 12 just took a wildly different turn; I’m not saying they were bad by any means, just that they could have been episodes 3 and 4, and I think it would have made more sense in the overall flow (Apparently there are 24 episodes, but I’m judging this as the first half) That being said, 11 and 12 represented a stand-alone story that served to introduce some characters seen in the OP – I got some real GiTS vibes here. Also, this was quite a well-done car chase scene and some unexpected fanservice. Despite the rather odd midseason redirection, NGL has been superb this whole season. Engaging characters, crisp storylines (11 and 12 notwithstanding), and a beautiful Unreal engine rendered world give NGL a winning combination. To me, this is the future of below-blockbuster tier shows: put the effort into character designs and fight animations and let the computers handle the annoying backgrounds.

Hi Score Girl II – 09

Mario: After spending time with these kids from primary school up to their high school, it’s kinda sad to see it all end. The airport scene wraps up Oono and Haruo’s romance nicely, albeit a tad bit repetitively. We’ve seen this airport scene before, we have seen this situation where Oono gets further away from Haruo before, and we all have seen how Haruo, staying behind, improves himself to become worthy of Oono before. Yet it couldn’t have ended in any other way. The same goes for Hidaka’s role. She’s a supporting character at heart and here she knocks some sense into Haruo even at the cost of losing him forever. Yet she remains such a fantastic character. And that is the core strength of Hi Score Girl – even with all its love for arcade games, it’s all the characters that I find myself thinking about long after the credits roll.

Continue reading “Fall 2019 Summary – Week 13” →

Wooper: I’m all on my lonesome, it seems. We’ve got just two blurbs for this week’s post, both written by yours truly. The holidays are a busy time, after all, and – wait, does this mean my life is the emptiest of all the Star Crossed writers? On that uplifting note, here are a few thoughts on some anime I watched over the past week.

Mugen no Juunin: Immortal 12

This episode felt like a greatest hits compilation to me. How much time was supposed to have passed between the beginning, when Rin encountered Kagehisa, and the end, when they parted ways? It’s very difficult to tell, because each phase of the story was represented by a single scene. Their conversation in the cave near the beginning passed too quickly to quell her vengeful intentions, so the mere fact that they traveled together afterwards felt wrong. If the show had given their partnership another two or three scenes to establish itself, I’d have been okay with it.

Midway through the episode, Rin helped him fend off a band of assassins, and later pleaded with Manji to kill another group of Kagehisa’s pursuers. The overall direction that this takes her character is consistent with what we’ve seen in the past; despite Rin’s anger at the death of her family and her hatred of the man who orchestrated it, the vein of compassion running through her is similarly deep. The issue isn’t the road taken by this episode, then, but the speed at which it traveled. Kagehisa’s illness came on far too quickly, and the appearance of Manji, Magatsu and Makie during the lakeside battle was so sudden that it felt nearly surreal. Of all Immortal’s jam-packed installments thus far, this was the hardest for me to swallow.

Mairimashita! Iruma-kun 12

Looks like we’re on to the next phase of the story: choosing an after-school club. They’re called “Battlers” in the netherworld, and many of them have their eyes on Iruma after his recent dodgeball exploits. Since he’s courted by a handful of club presidents, and countless others are handing out flyers and doing recruitment drives, we get a good look at what sort of extracurricular activities there are to choose from in this version of hell. That’s a fine way to elaborate on your setting, but I feel as though the series missed an opportunity here. At this point, we know that choosing your club has a big impact on your ability to rank up, but we don’t get a sense of what Battler life looks like on a day-to-day basis. The latter is probably more important to Iruma than the former, given the value he places on friendship (as well as his cautious nature). I wish the episode had spent half of its time popping its head into various clubs, then settled on one to really explore during the second portion. It’s a minor quibble, but it did gnaw at me during and after the show this week.

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.

Continue reading “Fall 2019 Summary – Week 6” →

Wooper: The gang’s all here this week. Mario has returned from Isekai Hell with a couple impressions of shows he’s still watching, and our resident shounen expert Amun has an update on an overlooked sequel from this season, plus some thoughts on NGL. Lenlo and I are up to our usual tricks, as well. We’ll be publishing our second ever State of the Season column in a couple weeks’ time, so this post should provide some big hints as to what we’ll be highlighting in mid-November. Until then, thanks for reading!

Ore wo Suki nano wa Omae dake ka yo 4-5

Mario: I’m still on the fence with this one. Episode 4 was its weakest week so far, mostly because it plays exactly like what we expect. While the show so far still offers some minor tweaks to its genre here and there (as bold as pointing out stuff like: I’m like a protagonist of a romcom), the very fact that it’s there to poke fun makes the characters inconsistent for me. The library girl suffers from this the most as for the last two episodes she doesn’t drive the story at all, instead she’s just there, and our Main-kun switches between being an asshole and still acting genuinely nice to his friends. More additions to the cast are welcomed but when they’re there for the sole purpose of interacting with Main-kun, they better be unpredictable.

 

Radiant S2 5

Amun: Surprise sequel: we’re checking back in on our boy Seth and his search for Radiant. Despite the new city, Radiant still keeps things in check and the plot tidy so far. This latest episode also had one of the best confrontation scenes I’ve seen in a while – if you watched the first season and are on the fence about this one: Seth getting schooled by Mellie is definitely worth these 5 episodes so far. We have really only one new character introduced, and that’s more than fair given the number of ones we’ve left behind. So far, aside from past emotional trauma and abandonment issues, Seth’s interactions with the Magical Knights have kept the show from getting too heavy. We’re getting towards revealing some mysteries, so Radiant has me still hooked.

Continue reading “Fall 2019 Summary – Week 5” →

Wooper: The weekly recap is back, packed with impressions of worthwhile shows that we weren’t able to blog due to a severe case of sequelitis. I say “we,” but it’s just Lenlo and I running things this time around. Mario recently burned himself out by watching Literally Everything, and I stepped in to blab about No Guns Life in amun’s stead this week. They might be back next time, or they might not! Until then, we hope you enjoy these scattered thoughts of some of the season’s better offerings.

Mairimashita! Iruma-kun 4

Wooper: This episode delivered on the feeling of fun that I want from Iruma-kun. Clara (the green-haired genki girl) received a double feature last week, which was okay, but the show halted its exploration of demon society to give her that spotlight. This time, Iruma is assigned to a class full of misfits boasting nearly a dozen named characters, each of whom have a quirk that gives the classroom scenes an absurd sense of possibility. The biggest addition, both literally and figuratively, is Sabnock, a hulking man whose only aspiration is to become the Demon King. Thus the show kills two birds with one stone: we get a fun macho personality added to the cast, and we hear from him about the process of climbing hell’s military ladder. Clara’s character was also put to wonderful comedic use in the background, whether she was measuring Sabnock’s height with a yardstick, getting eaten by carnivorous plants, or checking out a flight course with magically conjured binoculars. Telling a single story per episode is definitely my preferred format for this series, rather than splitting it into two halves like last week – everything feels fresher and funnier without the need to juggle two distinct plots.

 

Mugen no Juunin: Immortal 4

Lenlo: Blade did another weird thing this week. As it took some of Makie’s backstory, which was in the 200 pages of cut content, and put it are the front of this weeks. Choosing to use that instead to build up our Antagonist’s relationship with his grandfather, which itself got sped through. Sure, the pacing of the episode itself was fine enough, but the overall story is just burning through content. Rearranging it to fit each individual episode, without much regard for what it does to the overall story. Surprising no one, adapting 30 Manga Volumes into a 2 cour season is not a good idea. That said, I still enjoyed bits of it. I like Kagehisa and his world view, though I wish Blade was giving us more time and exposure to it instead of this chunks torn from the manga. It’s also nice to see our lead getting called out for effectively abandoning her style. And even though she is getting some training from Manji, it still isn’t enough. My major complaint though, production aside, will continue to be the overarching pacing.

Continue reading “Fall 2019 Summary – Week 4” →

Wooper: Setting aside the three sequels that have yet to air (two of which we’ll be blogging), the fall season is in full swing. We’re giving regular coverage to a lot of continuations and sequels at the moment, so we’re bringing back the Weekly Summary feature as a way of broadcasting our brief thoughts about everything else. Some of these series will show up here every week; others may appear in some posts and not in others. The unlucky ones may be dropped, never to be mentioned on Star Crossed again. Which series will still be standing come the end of December? Keep checking back to find out!

Mugen no Juunin: Immortal 3

Lenlo: I have to say, Immortal really stepped it up this week. This was really good. From the fights to the direction to the new character, I think it nailed them all. Sure the animation was rather limited at times, but they really did their best with what they had and I think it worked. I loved the progression of 2 plots side by side with Maki. The odd sort of parallels between the two, her growth, and the actual defeat of Manji. The continued use of flower imagery, and our leads budding relationship with Manji. I sort of wish I had blogged it for my full length posts right now, but boy would that be a lot of work. As is, I will have to settle for some surface level praise about how good this week was. That said, still worried about pacing. This one episode was like… 200 pages of manga content. That’s almost an entire volume, in a single episode. There is no way all the episodes will work as well as this and I can’t imagine how much was skipped over.

 

No Guns Life 2

Amun: Alright, so NGL’s second episode wasn’t quite as hype as episode 1. And you know what, that’s 100% okay. What we got instead of the bikini battle was a good guy (girl actually) introduction, bad guy introduction, and a bit of worldbuilding. And apparently these cigarettes are a major plotpoint, can’t forget those. One of the things that I am absolutely respecting the ever living gunsmoke out of, is how they’re making their MC an actual bad, bad…gunhead. Lots of shows try to do a tough guy (I’m even looking at you Trigun) and tend to make a mockery of it. NGL, so far, has actually made a real wiseguy. The other respectable point here is a villian actually acting (semi) intelligently – buying up all the cigarettes was a nice move. NGL enters their third week with the hype train still going strong – unlike the one that ole’ Revolver head just broke.
 
Continue reading “Fall 2019 Summary – Weeks 2-3” →