Watching episode 11 had me so anxious for the finale. This isn’t like last season, where by the time the final two episodes came along, all hope was lost. No – this was anxiety born of seeing far too many “almost” good endings. Well fear not, gentle reader – DanMachi capped off an absolutely superlative season… and stuck the landing! Let’s go!
Continue reading “DanMachi 3 – 11/12 (Ultra Soul/Argonaut) FINAL”
These two episodes were absolutely stuffed with plot developments, character deaths, and big reveals. There’s no way I can comment on everything they had to offer in a regular-sized post, and I’m not so enamored with Akudama Drive that I’d give it a Great Pretender-length review. So I’m going to do what every pop culture journalist in 2020 does when they’ve fallen behind schedule: churn out a low-effort list article. Here are the major events of “Babel” and “War Games” ranked from worst to best (with their associated episode in parentheses). If you’re keen on playing with the newest and the best hacks and cheat codes, you can check out new world hack here and find out for yourself.
#7: Wonderful Christmastime (10)
I’m already cheating with the structure of this post, and right off the bat I’m cheating a bit more. This wasn’t a major event, but rather a small scene that played right before the midpoint of the episode; still, it was saccharine enough to earn the last place slot with ease. Not long after the mass murder of hundreds of civilians by the Execution Department, Akudama Drive thought it would be a nice idea to play an uplifting musical sting as Sister experienced her first snowfall. The main issue here was that the scene functioned as a montage, so the wintery orchestral piece also accompanied images of cops suppressing crowds with beam swords and, most jarringly, Doctor lounging next to the corpse of a recent victim. Tone-deaf doesn’t begin to describe it.
This is the home stretch for Twelve Kingdoms people! The final 12 episodes, the final cour, and we begin with open rebellion. All of our leads have found each other, swords have been drawn and bullets fired. So without further ado, lets dive into this weeks three episodes!
So starting off… whew that shit got dark. I knew it could, we saw in the first cour where Twelve Kingdom’s was willing to go. But it’s been awhile since then, things have been… not necessarily positive, but not dark. It wasn’t until Shoukou’s introduction a few episodes back that this started to change. But now? Armed revolution, children (more children) murdered in the street, shot? I’m not complaining of course, Twelve Kingdom’s has ramped this up very naturally, narratively and visually. Early on, most of our scenes took place in the day. But as the story has progressed, as we have gone to war and people have died? They took place further and further in the day. Shifting the whole color palette of the show to lead into this. I hadn’t even thought about how dark it was getting right up until the gunshot, that’s how well it worked.
Continue reading “Twelve Kingdoms – 34/35/36 – Throwback Thursday”
Wooper: Just two more weeks until 2020 can finally be put to rest. Here at Star Crossed, the Winter Preview is a key step in bidding farewell to each calendar year, so we’re hard at work on that project as you read this. But that busyness couldn’t stop us from offering our thoughts on these penultimate seasonal episodes – we had to lay the foundation for our final verdicts, after all, which ought to arrive next week-ish. See you then!
Lenlo: Jesus, Golden Kamuy, that was easily the tensest episode of the season and possibly of the year. I really don’t know how to describe this without spoilers, so let’s just say everything came to a head this week. Sugimoto and Asirpa finally meet again, which means so does Ogata and Sugimoto, and Tanigaki and Kiroranke, and basically every character combination you can think of. Combine that with a treasure hunt that only one person knows the answer to and a whole bunch of guns and you have something going on. All in all, I loved this episode and I don’t know how to talk about it without spoiling everyone.
Wooper: After cameos in episodes 8 and 9, Cubey finally revealed herself as a succubus who admires Princess Syalis for her popularity, not her evil counterpart from a parallel universe. I suppose it’s better that the show kept it simple, since it allowed the quest formula to be maintained after a few leaps in logic. Syalis’ ruthless training of her new body double ironically ended in her own death, which wasn’t tough to predict, but it’s the way she died that really sold the segment: drifting off to sleep while plummeting toward a fiery lake, satisfied with a job well done. Of course, the castle’s cleric revived her in time for the next chapter, where the other characters got a peek into her dreams. This was the spot where her relationship to the Hero was revealed to all parties involved, giving him a bit more to do than usual. As a matter of fact, the Demon Lord confronted the Hero face to face in this episode, though it was just a small gag about the man’s willingness to trust an obvious enemy. I haven’t mentioned the Hero in these miniature blurbs much, which is due to a lack of column space and his distance from the main characters, but also because I don’t find him especially funny. I’ll be interested to see whether his character “works” in next week’s finale.
Y’all know the drill by now, it’s time for another week of Jujutsu Kaisen! This week see’s the conclusion of Mahito’s fight, Yoshino making a new friend and Itadori getting caught up in it all. So without further ado, lets dive in!
Production wise, I think this week looked good. Park’s camera angles were still there in the Mahito fight but they were more contained this week. Easier to follow, if that makes sense. Last week he kept switching sides or doing 360 degree spins around characters/scenes. It made the space and the characters positions within said space difficult and annoying to follow. This week though he manages to rein it in a bit, not breaking the 180 degree rule, etc. All the while keeping the wilder and expressive character animation. All in all, I think this episode was a success production wise and I’m looking forward to seeing more from Park in the future! Obligatory production talk out of the way, lets get into what y’all really care about, narrative!
I must admit, I was almost late getting this Twelve Kingdom’s post out. Something about this new game, I’m sure you’ve never heard of it, Cyberpunk was just robbing my time. That aside, this is once again a big week for Twelve Kingdoms. From rampant corruption to public executions, things are getting bad. So without further ado lets jump right into it!
Starting off, this is a complex week and I am unsure of where to start. As I said above, things are getting bad though in Kingdom of Kei, so lets being there. This was the first week were we really got to see Kei’s political situation, on a local level. Sure we learned from Enho about land distribution, and we have seen the palace court. But those aren’t the officials who handle the day to day. They aren’t the boots on the ground, so to speak. And what Twelve Kingdom’s showed us wasn’t pretty. It’s here that the previous displays of what Hou was like before it fell come back to haunt us. Rampant corruption, murder in the streets, public executions. Things we, the viewer, thought were a thing of the past. Yet now we see them in Nakajima’s own back yard. And it’s all thanks to Shoukei.
Continue reading “Twelve Kingdoms – 31/32/33 – Throwback Thursday”
Wooper: In case you’ve been living under a boulder, you ought to know that Attack on Titan returned to the airwaves three days ago, and Armitage has thoughts about the new episode. So do Lenlo and Amun, I assume, but you’ll find them talking about different series after the jump, plus a few contributions from yours truly. It’s our biggest recap post in quite some time – hopefully we can keep this momentum going as the blog’s busiest season looms ever larger!
Armitage: I can safely say that I have not waited for an anime with this much anticipation. Ever. I wasn’t nervous this much-awaited return would be underwhelming, I was downright afraid. In entertainment media, Attack on Titan is one of the few shows that’s bigger than the medium they inhabit. One that most people who are even remotely interested in ‘Japanese cartoons’ have at least heard about. So, you can imagine how skeptical its fans were with the studio change announcements and a new director and staff at the helm. MAPPA had pulled the shortest of sticks by volunteering to follow the massively successful Studio Wit in producing the final season of Attack on Titan. So how did they do in their first at bat? Well, to my and almost every other viewer’s pleasant surprise, they knocked it well and truly out of the park.
This was easily the best season premiere this series has given us since its very first episode more than 7 years ago. Instead of wasting precious minutes with exposition and recaps, we are thrown headfirst into the action, a whole new cast of characters is introduced within seconds and the show expects us to be well-caught up on previous events to follow character motivations. While none of our original main cast shows up we do get to see Reiner and Zeke kicking some ass. And what glorious ass-kicking at that. We had actual good CG, fluid character movement carrying through the weight of every Titan’s attacks and set-pieces as bombastic as they have ever been, all accompanied by a thunderous background score. The barrage from the sky even reminded me of the Chimera Ant arc from Hunter x Hunter 2011. My only fear at this point is that in the process of hitting an opening Home Run, MAPPA may have broken their bat altogether. But as an anime-only who has somehow managed to avoid all spoilers about what’s to come, I am honestly more excited and way more optimistic than I ever was.
2020 hasn’t been great for many reasons, but at least it’s a good year to be a Danmachi fan. These two episodes were outstanding. While episode 8 may be the best of the series, 9 and 10 were on point. Go watch them if you haven’t. There’s not much for me to add, except to sit basking in the glow of a good DanMachi season.
I had a bunch of things to say, but that seemed boring – so here’s the Bell’s harem report from these two episodes.
For all the sex and murder featured in this episode, it left me a little cold. Last week’s focus on Swindler didn’t just make her more sympathetic, it painted a way forward for both her character and the story: the rescue of Brother from Kansai’s clutches. “The Shining” didn’t seem to care much about that, opting to split its focus between a sudden civilian uprising and an homage to its namesake film. With just four (and now three) episodes left in its run, narrative momentum is of the utmost importance, but Taguchi and his team went in a different direction with this one. To be fair, that decision resulted in a lot of stylish images – assuming your X-ray vision penetrated the black fog censoring all the bloodiest bits.
It was inevitable folks. Jujutsu Kaisen has been consistently pretty good up until now, so it was bound to misstep eventually. And while its not terrible, there was still some good here, this episode was that episode. Curious? Well lets jump right into it then.
Starting off, the camera work in Kento and Mahito’s fight was… it was something. It seems as if director Seong-Hu Park is finally making himself known just like he did with last seasons God of High School. The camera has gained a mind of its own and begun to float and fly around the scene in ways that are… not necessarily the best. Don’t get me wrong, the animation in these scenes were fine to good. I’m not criticizing the animators work. More that the camera undercut a lot of it and made it either difficult or undesirable to follow. The constant heavy movement made it so much of the fight didn’t really stick, or lost weight in the movements. This wasn’t every shot of course, and Mahito still came out better for it and I will talk about him later. But overall it felt like to much.
Continue reading “Jujutsu Kaisen – 10 [Idle Transfiguration]”