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.
Assassins Pride 12
Amun: Assassin’s Pride is about a guy who throws away a promising career because of an underage girl. Okay, that sounds way worse than what actually happened, but it’s still a ridiculous premise. Granted, his promising career involved killing her, but I digress. As far as plot, Assassin’s Pride is all over the place: affair coverup, random vampire, imouto memory wipe, and spooky library masquerade party. But it looks pretty good doing it, so I can’t really complain. The overt chivalry annoyed me, but I enjoyed the rest (despite being tossed around by the plot).
Mugen no Juunin: Immortal 13
Wooper: Hoo boy, I could hardly follow the first half of this one. Mired as it was in the political feud between the Itto-ryu and Mugai-ryu schools, it’s difficult to talk about this episode without engaging in some kind of plot summary. Briefly, then: Kagimura is revealed to be the head of the Mugai-ryu, as well as a key member of the shogunate. Giichi is suddenly given major prominence through his relationship to Kagimura, who directs him to capture Manji (a mission that he fails to accomplish). Makoto, the Mugai-ryu spy who poisoned many Itto-ryu members off-screen last week, is suddenly killed by Abayama, who then pledges allegiance to Kagehisa… and that’s just the first part of the episode.
I feel like the major issue here was that the slaughter of the Itto-ryu took place in the margin between the previous installment and this one, so Kagimura and Giichi’s elevated status didn’t connect to last week’s focus on Rin and Kagehisa. Makoto’s death was very near the definition of anticlimax, as well. He appeared for only several seconds in episode 12, his most important contribution to the plot was implied rather than shown, and then he’s quickly dispatched in this one? He wasn’t a major character, but even the deaths of secondary players ought to be depicted with sincerity and care, especially in a show as obsessed with death as Immortal. And how about the moment where Rin kisses a sleeping Manji, before the plot kicks back in and it’s left behind without a second thought? Yeah, the series’ reckless adaptation speed is starting to get to me after all these weeks.
Shinchou Yuusha
Amun: What if there was an isekai that prominently featured all the side character’s facial expressions from Kill La Kill? If that sort of jarring character change comedy is your cup of tea, Shinchou Yuusha is the show for you. For everyone else, it was a decent, self-contained manga promotion that had decent characters, flat gags, and a mildly interesting world…with adequate fanservice. I’d give it a passing grade mainly because it kept me interested and entertained throughout the season, but I highly doubt I would ever watch it again.
Mairimashita! Iruma-kun 13
Wooper: This may be where Mairimashita! Iruma-kun and I part ways. It’s not the best stopping place in terms of overarching story, but with winter 2020 breathing down our necks, I need as much open space as possible on my watchlist. Iruma-kun has been a lot of fun at times, and a bit of a chore at others. Unfortunately, everything to do with Amy in this episode was the latter, at least in my view. Now that Iruma has joined his school club, Amy’s one gag – getting sick after using magic – is likely to recur far too often. It was already tiresome after the first five minutes of this episode, but with Asmodeus and Clara joining the club as well, the show has doubled down on a character I don’t particularly enjoy. The B-part was much better, owing to its goofy take on the Council of Badasses shounen trope, but it was too breezy for any of the new characters to imprint themselves on my memory. It’s not a guarantee that I’ll drop the show here, but in the event that I do, it was worth watching the first half for Clara, at the very least.
Amun: I’m a bit more optimistic about our helpful boi than Mr. Wooper is. Mairimashita! Iruma-kun has consistently overachieved this season, and I have faith it will continue. Now my faith is not always rewarded (looking at you Sherlock), but I will persist! Iruma-kun has definitely been a show that’s greater than the sum of its parts: a supernatural highschool setting that looks like a low-rent, reverse Beelzebub and whose main mechanic of societal advancement is…dodgeball? No way is that good. But through the persistence of Iruma’s evangelism for Japanese ideals in the Demon world, I (and Babel) have been won over. While I’m not as excited about the new character, like Wooper said, I also wasn’t excited for Ameri at first, but she’s turned out to be a wonderful addition to the cast. Here’s to more “Bobby Lous” (or whatever they’re saying) for the next cour!
Hataage! Kemono Michi
Amun: Haatage created an isekai out of pro-wrestling and pet ownership. That’s an idea that’s just so crazy, it might work. Except, it didn’t really. What resulted was a forgettable but mildly enjoyable offering (if you could look past the obvious furry fetish fodder). Due to falling into mundane troupes (girl who eats everything), Hataage never was quite different enough to stand out. If you passed on watching… you didn’t really miss much.
