Fall 2020 Summary – Week 3

Wooper: We’ve reached the third week of the new anime season, and you know what that means: it’s time for the hopeful anticipation of viewers everywhere to be ground into the dust of unmet expectations! Or maybe that’s just me. None of these series had showings poor enough to take them off my radar, but a couple of them are inching away from my range of interest. Shows like Jujutsu Kaisen and Kamisama ni Natta Hi are holding down the fort just fine, though, so an early misstep from the B-team isn’t the end of the world. You still get to read my complaints about a couple of recent episodes, though – and they might not be the ones you’d expect.

Maou-jou de Oyasumi 03

Maou-jou continues to be a fun weekly diversion, but there’s not much more to it than fun. Princess Syalis always completes her quests, so the show doesn’t offer much suspense – it’s her unconventional methods that serve as mild surprises each week. And what’s more surprising than stumbling upon a genie trapped inside an ancient grimoire? For most fantasy anime, the answer would be “nothing,” but according to Syalis-hime, even the latest edition of Shonen Sunday would provide more entertainment. If it isn’t contributing to her forty winks, she’s not interested, so Alazif (the spirit within the grimoire) comes and goes within the span of five minutes. The middle segment was based entirely on misunderstandings, so I could take or leave that one, but I did appreciate the detail put into the last one. The princess made use of items acquired in previous episodes for her jailbreak, creating a string of neat callbacks, and the forest she explored had an enchanted feel that paired well with the interior of the Demon King’s castle. This show may be a sleeper, but it gets a lot of mileage from that simple vibe.

Majo no Tabitabi 03

Witch Weekly busted out a two-parter for this episode, but neither story provided me with much food for thought. The first was marred by cheap computerized textures, both for the overhead shots of the meadow from the opener and the curse that afflicted the sentry at the end. A better visual representation of his poisoning would have done a lot for the conclusion, but even if the art had held up its end of the bargain, the story boiled down to “beautiful flowers can be dangerous, too.” Elaina didn’t have a participatory role in the story, and that’s fine – but if she’s going to be little more than a guide, the people she meets have to carry their weight.

The second story had the same failing, despite using more time to develop its scenario. A slave girl’s sadness at being shown a bottle full of happy memories might be touching or profound, if not for the fact that she, her master, and his son (the memory bottler) underwent precisely zero change during the episode. Majo no Tabitabi is so lesson-oriented that it hardly seems to care where it leaves its characters; the wrap-up here involved Elaina summarizing a similar story she’d once read, and criticizing the moral as being heavy-handed. Based on what I saw this week, I’d have to agree.

Hypnosis Mic: Division Rap Battle 03

Bad news for fans of Hypnosis Mic’s rap battles: there’s a lot of dumb dialogue to trudge through before this episode’s first and only hip-hop throwdown. That might not be a problem for true blue HypnoMic fans, but my continued viewing of this series is somewhat ironic – I’m here for the miniature music videos and not much else. There were a couple good jokes this week, my favorite of which came when Dr. Jakurai threatened to shoot a cue ball into the groin of an unwilling witness, but there was also a lot of fluff. The whole plot about framing the redheaded rapper for murder was hard to sit through, especially since it became obvious that he wasn’t the intended victim long before the show spelled it out for us. And whenever there’s a tiresome evil plot at play, the villain’s defeat becomes less exciting and more obligatory. Such was the case here, as Matenro seemed to dispatch their pesky opponents with more mercy than style. The next couple of episodes are poised to focus on individual trios, as well – I just hope we return to the philosophy of “the more rap battles, the better” before my interest dies.

Dragon Quest: Dai no Daibouken 03

It’s a training episode, ushered in by the convenient appearance of the hero tutor Avan and his student Popp. On the whole, I found this one to be lacking the standout elements of the premiere (background animation aboard the ship) and week 2 (CG mecha fight). The island monsters’ brief inclination to eat Dai was just a convenient way to signal the Dark Lord’s return, and all the training he went through was preparation to cross the sea, which ought to happen very soon at this rate. None of this is to say that the episode was disappointing. There was a lot to like here: Popp’s skill at magic made him more than just another comic relief sidekick, and Avan’s domestic side was a fun discovery. Sure, anime’s 400th rendition of “cleave this boulder with your sword” was a bit too familiar, but the hero’s teacher transforming into a dragon is probably sub-40. I expect that Dai’s glowing forehead will bail him out of trouble once again during the fight against dragon!Avan, but that’s fine – we’re being prepped for a quick entry into the show’s first arc, and you’d have to be a real hardass to resist that process.