Winter 2024 What-I’m-Watching Summary – Week 9

by Lenlo, posted in Weekly Summary

Hey all, wanted to let you know real quick here at the top that posts this next week may be late or skipped entirely. Had a death in the family on Friday and it’s been a busy weekend. I need to fly home for a funeral and such. Don’t worry about me, I’m fine, just wanted to give you all a heads up. Now on with the post!

Frieren – 26 [The Height of Magic]

Funnily enough, the most enjoyable part of Frieren this week had absolutely nothing to do with Frieren. Don’t get me wrong, the fight with the clone was cool enough, but it felt very… Flashy for flashiness sake, if that makes sense? What I mean is, compare it to the demon fight back in the mid-season climax. While both are very well animated, the demon fight felt smooth and purposeful, Fern was showing off, you could still make out and understand what was happening. Meanwhile this battle, aside from the very end with Frieren’s mention of “I haven’t had to use that in 80 years”, felt like it relied way more on effects work and bright lights and so just wasn’t as interesting. Still fun and flashy, but not the highlight of the episode for me. So what does that honor belong? Ubel. Something about her flashback, the conflict with Sense’s clone, this addendum to the “Magic is about imagination and visualization” rule showing us just how powerful a sociopath can be. Cause when you think about it, it makes sense. Cloth? Hair? People? Those can be cut, duh. Magic barriers? Well that’s magic, can’t cut that. But a dude in a cape? Sure why not. It definitely runs on some “Rule of cool” logic, Frieren is without a doubt a soft magic system on the Sanderson scale. But it’s presented in a cool manner, and Ubel is this great mix of “Don’t cut me” scary and “Step on me” hot. Still, even with that critique I want to make this very clear: Frieren was fun and definitely the highlight of the week. Just because it wasn’t as good as one of its best episodes doesn’t mean it was bad. Overall, I’d call this 2nd test a success.

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Black Lagoon – 17/18 [The Roanapur Freakshow Circus/Mr. Benny’s Good Fortune] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Black Lagoon, Currently Watching:, Throwback Thursday

Welcome back, to another week of Black Lagoon! I have another pair of episodes for you, these two wrapping up the Jane arc with just as much fun as it started. There’s a decent amount to talk about, and I want to actually get this up on time for once, so lets dive right into it!

Starting off we have episode 17, “The Roanapur Freakshow Circus”. This picks up right where we left off, with bounty hunters storming the hotel and Eda explaining her brilliant plan. Turns out? I was right! She did plan all of this. In fact, she’s run this so many times that she not only has a specific room picked out, she has signs setup directing Jane right to her alley. Hell, she has a track record of doing this. And you know what makes it all even funnier? The moment Eda and Revy get involved, all of the other bounty hunters immediately back off and demand more pay. Not because they are afraid of them, we see later they gladly fight. More that fighting them simply isn’t worth the paltry 1k they were being paid before. The hilarity! And that’s exactly how I would describe both of these episodes: Hilarious.

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Spring 2024 Season Preview

by Lenlo, posted in Seasonal Previews

Lenlo: Welcome all, to the early days of the Spring season! Boy time sure does fly. And I still haven’t caught up on a lot of my projects. Jesus christ adulting is hard… Let this be proof I haven’t forgotten about them though! Anyways, we have a lot of shows to talk about, most of them looking terrible… So I’m going to skip them and only talk about things that caught my eye! That of course means some things won’t be on this list, from sequels I either haven’t seen the previous season for, like Yuru Camp S3 and Reincarnated as a Slime S3, to ones I actively don’t care about and think are bad, like Mushoku Tensei S2 Part 2 and The Irregular at Magic Highschool S3. There’s also some premiers that don’t get mentioned simply because they don’t look interesting, like The Fable. If something you’re curious about isn’t discussed, post about it in the comments! Tell me why you’re looking forward to it! I’ll keep it in mind when the season starts and I’m watching all the pilots. Until then though? You’ll have to settle for my taste and the shows I think have promise. Now without further ado, lets dive into them!

What will you be watching this spring?
VoteResults

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Winter 2024 What-I’m-Watching Summary – Week 8

by Lenlo, posted in Weekly Summary

Undead Unluck – 21 [Memento Mori]

It’s simultaneously fantastic and depressing just how good Undead Unluck is when it’s not poorly paced. Seriously, this episode was brilliant. Spending 20 minutes with a young Andy who doesn’t know about his powers? Watching him go from this dour person unable to find joy in life to one strong enough to face tomorrow? That one Fuko line about how learning about Andy meant learning about the numerous farewells, something obvious in hindsight since he’s functionally immortal? I loved all of it. Honestly, between this, Frieren, and the Wolverine comics I’m reading right now, the “Immortal finds purpose through the transient lives of others” trope might be one of my favorites. It’s ripe with potential, and each of them is hitting it in a different way. I also loved that we saw the beginnings of what has been holding Andy back power-wise. How he views death as “The brain stops functioning”, which inherently limits his “Undeath” to negating just that. But if he broadens his mind a bit, views death like Fuko does, as “When you’re forgotten”… What will that do to his negation ability? What will that do to his personality? Only time will tell. And then Undead Unluck just has to cap it off with a beautiful confession scene, tying a nice little bow on one of the best episodes we’ve gotten in weeks.

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Black Lagoon – 15/16 [Swan Song at Dawn/Greenback Jane] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Black Lagoon, Currently Watching:, Throwback Thursday

Welcome all, to another slightly late week of Black Lagoon! Turns out implementing Deep Q-Learning and then trying to teach it to play Snake is harder than I thought and I lost track of time. Grad school aside, we have a lot to talk about this week. Black Lagoon seems to have heard my issues and done a lot to address them. So lets dive into this weeks episodes!

First up is episode 15, “Swan Song at Dawn”. This episode concludes the Vampire Children arc, and you know what? It was better than I was expecting, a surprisingly effective ending. Not only did Black Lagoon manage to tie things up well, writing the twins out of the story and resolving Balalaika’s vendetta, it even managed to involve Rock and Revy in an arc that, really, they had no business being involved in. On top of that, it also dialed back the sadism I felt was holding the twins back while dialing up the victim angle just the right amount, at just the right times, too sell their scenes. Overall? I feel a lot better about this arc. Now onto the spoilers!

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Winter 2024 What-I’m-Watching Summary – Week 7

by Lenlo, posted in Weekly Summary

Hey all! Real quick, I am aware that I am ludicrously late on both the 2023 Anime of the Year awards and the preview for the next season and some reviews. Don’t worry, I’m workin on them. I have just been… So ludicrously busy outside of the blog and it’s taking everything I have just to maintain what we have now. Hopefully things will calm down soon, but know that I haven’t forgotten about them, or you. Thanks! Now lets check out this week.

Dungeon Meshi- 8 [Raspberries/Grilled Meat]

Another absolutely great episode of Dungeon Meshi this week. Split down the middle between Marcille’s first meeting and budding friendship with Falin and a fight with an Undine, it had a perfect mix of emotional development and action for me. The flashback was great because, so far, Falin hasn’t really been a character. She’s someone we hear about through other peoples stories. And while this is no different, this one is more of a regular day-to-day for her. We get to see how she’s different from the other students, how she focuses more on life experiences and what she learns in the natural world than books. It’s that difference that makes her more specialized, but far more skilled at what she’s passionate about than Marcille’s broader skillset. It’s also just a really cute scene of the beginning of their friendship, and the detail that goes into the environment and ecosystem of this cave is simply brilliant. As for the second half, this looked fantastic. Incredibly expressive, Marcille getting her own 1v1 fight was cool too, from a visual standpoint I loved everything about it. Dungeon Meshi even managed to fit in food in an episode where they didn’t kill anything, cooking meat to help Marcille recover some blood. Just good shit all around, I continue to enjoy Dungeon Meshi a lot.

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Guest Post: Unearthed Treasure with Firechick – Grimm’s Fairy Tale Classics (77/100)

by Lenlo, posted in Anime Reviews

(This review covers both seasons, not just the first one)

Fairy tales have always been a staple in our lives, whether because our parents read them to us, we learned about them in school, or saw the Disney movie versions. Everyone’s probably heard of at least one fairy tale, like Snow White or The Little Mermaid. Even other countries have their own fairy tales, or their own original spins on familiar ones. But what many don’t know is that often, the original sources are a lot darker and less kid-friendly than the interpretations we were exposed to. Such is the case of the fairy tales by the Brothers’ Grimm, who are famous for having much darker and more cynical versions of popular fairy tales. Of course, in the eighties, Japan had the bright idea to adapt some of Grimms’ fairy tales into an anime series, titled Grimm Masterpiece Theater in Japanese, retitled Grimms’ Fairy Tale Classics in English. If you can believe it, this was one of the first anime that Saban Entertainment dubbed and brought to America back in their heyday. It even got aired on Nick Jr of all things. I was born in 1993, so I never saw it growing up, but I became friends with many people who did grow up with it. But because of Saban’s tendency to never put stuff they license out on home video, or in some cases not completely, many episodes of this series were considered lost media until just a few years ago. Thanks to Discotek Media not only finally re-releasing this series on Blu-Ray, but even released the Japanese version with English subs. Curious, I bought both sets and wanted to see what this was all about.

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Black Lagoon – 13/14 [The Vampire Twins Comen/Bloodsport Fairytale] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Black Lagoon, Currently Watching:, Throwback Thursday

Welcome all, to another week of Black Lagoon! This week marks the halfway point of this watch, as well as the beginning of a new season for Black Lagoon. We have plenty to talk about, so lets dive right into it!

First up we have episode 13, “The Vampire Twins Comen”. This episode introduces a new pair of villains for Black Lagoon and I have to say, my initial impression was… Iffy, if I’m being honest. I get what Black Lagoon is going for with these kids, Hansel and Gretel. A pair of sociopaths molded by the world, hurt by it, victims of it in every way who still have to be put down because of the horrible things they are now doing. Black Lagoon wants us to question just how at fault these kids are, and how our world can ruin a child innocence and turn people into monsters later in life. And we’ll talk about all of that, because that’s solid! But I think Black Lagoon takes it a step to far in its presentation of it all.

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Winter 2024 What-I’m-Watching Summary – Week 6

by Lenlo, posted in Weekly Summary

This was a good week for the season. I don’t think there was a single bad episode, from any show, across the board. Some were better than others sure, but I enjoyed every last one of these, and that’s a treat. Really happy with this week.

Shangri-La Frontier – 18 [Putting Feelings Into a Moment, Part 4]

Daaaamn, Shangri-La got hands this week. And by that I mean, for the first time since the premier, Shangri-La actually looks pretty damn good. Director Toshiyuki Kubooka and his team over at C2C went all out this week and it shows. Sunraku’s movements were fluid, the effects on Pencil and Katsu were awesome, and Wethermon and his crumbling armor looked absolutely incredible. And as if that weren’t enough? The actual content underneath those visuals was great too! I loved watchin Sunraku face this “unbeatable” mechanic head on, using all of his resources as he slowly figured it out, eventually timing all of his buffs and shit to maximize his parry chance. Dude basically solo’ed the encounter since the other two were dealing with the mount, Kirin. Is it convenient how all of these systems come together for his specific build? Obviously, yes. But that doesn’t make it any less fun, and Shangri-La executed on it perfectly such that it all worked anyways. Plus Wethermon’s line at the end about their brilliance was pretty great to. An all around fantastic end to Shangri-La’s best arc yet. I love these gamer assholes.

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Black Lagoon – 11/12 [Lock’n Load Revolution/Guerrillas in the Jungle] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Black Lagoon, Currently Watching:, Throwback Thursday

Welcome all, to a late week of Black Lagoon! This has been a busy few days for me, so apologies for the delay and shortness of the post. I actually didn’t even get to watch the episodes until Wednesday night, and writing this got put off until Friday morning. Turns out everything is starting to ramp up around here. Still, the show must go on, so lets dive into the murky world of international terrorism, oh yeah!

First up, let’s talk about some production. Black Lagoon continues to run into this “Early digital animation era” problem of fidelity. I’m talking pixelated line work and choppy movement. It doesn’t happen often, this isn’t an “Every scene” sort of issue. But it definitely happens at least once an episode, and it’s noticeable. Additionally, this week the English dub also had some… interesting decisions. I’m of course talking about Shenhua and Leigharch. They sound great, their actors did a good job! But for Shenhua specifically, I can’t help but think it sounds… Kinda racist? It’s a heavily stereotypical Chinese accent done by a Canadian woman? I make no moral judgement, I’m not attacking anyone, in fact I absolutely adored her banter with Revy. Just… In the modern day, almost 20 years down the line, it looks, or in this case sounds… questionable. Still, the quality is good, gotta give’m that.

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