Fall 2020 Summary – Week 4

by SuperWooper, posted in Weekly Summary

Wooper: Ask and ye shall receive; we’ve got mini impressions from not one, but four writers in this edition of our weekly recap. Feels good to have some company for this column! Lenlo, Amun and Armitage pitched in to deliver thoughts on a few of the fall’s bigger shows and sequels, while I’m still banging on about weird anime comedies and a stray shounen property. It’s the new and improved Weekly Summary, y’all – enjoy, and we’ll see you next time.

Kamisama ni Natta Hi – 02/03

Armitage: I was supposed to write entire full-length posts covering this show but turns out that the events of each episode don’t lend themselves to wordy breakdowns. Still, this is one of the major torchbearers of the Fall Anime Parade and I cannot in good conscience let it air without any coverage. Which means that from now on, I shall be using the Weekly Summary section to give my thoughts on it! So far, Kamisama ni Natta Hi has essentially played out as a gag comedy anime and a solid one at that. Episode 2 was especially great with its parodies of Armageddon, Edward Scissorhands and the gut-bustingly funny Rocky skit. I am the kind of person who rarely full-on ‘laughs out loud’ but yeah, this episode got that out of me. Episode 3 too had its nice moments with Youta’s suit and sparkling MSG but it didn’t work quite as well as its predecessor. The characters, while being really entertaining, have not yet come off as people you truly care for and I hope the show remedies that in the coming weeks. Lastly, I just wanted to give a shout-out to Natsuki Hanae, the VA for Yota, as he is the one who solely makes the show such a blast to watch, displaying a voice range on par with Mamoru Miyano from Zombieland Saga. Honestly, this show is worth a watch just to hear him say “IZANAMI-SAAAAAAAN” as anime Rocky.

Golden Kamuy Season 3 – 04

Lenlo: I’m not usually a fan of comedies, anime ones especially. Something about their humor or their aesthetic just falls flat to me. So it’s always a joy when Golden Kamuy gets me chuckling for its entire run time, week after week. Something about the mix of murder and humor lines up perfectly with my love of gallows humor. It helps that every single joke has layers upon layers to it, similar in a way to classic Simpsons, though not of the same level. Take the chase scene early on for instance, Koito’s section alone has at least four jokes in 30 seconds that all build on each other. We go from the Naruto run and leap, to him running in the air, to grabbing a branch which then snaps, to his silly landing, to the branch landing on his head. It’s all small stuff, but no joke exists on its own, always building to the next.

Alternatively Golden Kamuy also establishes these episodic comedic narratives inside its larger dramatic narrative. This episode it’s Genjiro’s saga with dancing girls. His failure to actually dance, being fawned over and encouraged by children only to get a riff on a romance or career drama thrown in for good measure. There’s just something funny about this massive muscular soldier in a tutu getting fawned over by children for dancing a side-bit, and without a doubt the reaction faces help it. Suffice to say I am continuing to enjoy Golden Kamuy. From military circus jokes to “I’m gonna cut it” jokes to just how petty Koito is willing to be over his tricks. I am not caring that much about the larger narrative but god damn if this show isn’t fun.

Continue reading “Fall 2020 Summary – Week 4” →

Taiso Samurai – 03 [Dueling Samurai]

by SuperWooper, posted in Currently Watching:, Taiso Samurai

Here’s a more conventional sports anime episode for you. Leo still refuses to take off his ninja headgear and Big Bird is still squawking up a storm in the Aragaki household, but those oddities were baked into the show from the outset. If you were to tinker with the structure of this week’s Taiso Samurai, you’d be hard-pressed to make it more ordinary. There was a strategy session between Jotaro and his coach, an 80s training montage, an injury surmounted by hard work and dedication, and a showdown with an angry rival (whose constant outbursts were the low point of the episode). If straightforwardness is what you wanted from this very quirky show, congrats on the fulfillment of your wish. Here’s an equally straightforward blog post to match.

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Jujutsu Kaisen – 4 [Curse Womb Must Die]

by Lenlo, posted in Jujutsu Kaisen

Welcome to week 4 of Jujutsu Kaisen! Last weeks cliffhanger promised us some death, but it looks like that will have to wait until next week. In the meantime we do get some dismemberment, some curses and a whole load of pretty colors. So without further ado, lets jump right in!

Starting off, everyone’s favorite section, production! Animation wise what stood out to me the most were the ragdoll physics. Watching Itadori get knocked around or Sukuna jump around was a treat. I really enjoyed how the limbs flew around or bodies bounced off the ground, etc. There was also a 3D hallway scene similar to the first episode, but whether it be lighting or the environment, it didn’t look as good this time around. That said, Jujutsu Kaisen continues to be very colorful, using a lot of bright blues, purples and greens to keep things interesting. It was really nice how ever scene had its own color palette to differentiate it. From the dark blue with the curse to the bright red of their initial entry to the green’s of the waterway. Not only did it make it easy to tell locations apart, but it simply looked good.

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Akudama Drive – 03 [Mission: Impossible]

by SuperWooper, posted in Akudama Drive, Currently Watching:

This episode was a far cry from the spectacle of the first two. There were no dust-ups with the Execution Department, no direct assaults on massive buildings or organizations, and no interpersonal conflicts within the main cast. It consisted mostly of planning a heist, then quietly executing the first half of it (as quietly as a show like Akudama Drive can manage, anyway). Perhaps some viewers needed a breather after two straight weeks of madness, but personally, I was hoping for twelve. Still, a relatively subdued affair like this one gave the production team a chance to relax their weary pencil/mouse hands, and let the characters themselves carry the burden of bringing the show to life. Were they up to the task? Eh, sort of.

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Adachi to Shimamura – 03 [Isosceles Triangle]

by Armitage, posted in Adachi to Shimamura, Currently Watching:

Another week, another incremental improvement over its previous iteration by Adashima. This show keeps going from strength to strength, learning from its minor narrative follies and dialing up the adorableness with every new episode. This time around it (kinda) embraced its fantastical elements yet still managed to not make it feel completely out of place. But were there no stumbles at all? Let’s find out! Continue reading “Adachi to Shimamura – 03 [Isosceles Triangle]” →

Twelve Kingdoms – 10/11/12 – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Throwback Thursday, Twelve Kingdoms

I gotta say, I was a little bit worried last week with how Twelve Kingdoms handled a few things. Sugimoto seemed like wasted potential, still might be to be frank, and the pacing was whack. But Twelve Kingdoms isn’t letting that hold it back as it barrels forward into 3 more good episodes! This week we hear the King of En’s backstory, get a lot more information on King/Kirin relations and finally meet Kou face to face. So lets jump right in!

This week on my little pre-spoiler production section I want to take a moment to talk about the OST. While watching, Twelve Kingdoms sounded… fine, but not unique. Like basic background music. However when I went and listened to the full tracks on Youtube, boy was I surprised. Rather than a bunch of smaller one-note pieces, I found a smaller selection of pieces that shifted between these different melodies, each in their own style. Take the piece “Kuni-Touhoureiin“. It starts primarily as a flute piece, really evoking that Mulan, Eastern China vibe, before it shifts into this rolling drum beat before shifting again to let the strings take control. Another piece, “Ifuuoukei” does this as well with low flutes into strings and drums. Or “Getsumeifuuei” with soft vocals. It’s a small sample size for now, but I’m going to keep an ear out for how its used in the future.

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Fall 2020 Summary – Week 3

by SuperWooper, posted in Weekly Summary

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.

Continue reading “Fall 2020 Summary – Week 3” →

Taiso Samurai – 02 [Rock-Bottom Samurai]

by SuperWooper, posted in Currently Watching:, Taiso Samurai

I may have jumped the gun on this one, y’all. Taiso Samurai’s first episode was so strange that I couldn’t help but root for it, but the second one’s weirdness was of a less fun variety. Personally, I’d take ‘rooftop chase scene between wannabe ninja and three secret agents’ over ‘transgender acupuncturist chews scenery’ any day of the week. Jotaro’s hastily conceived training menus were kind of funny here, and the introduction of a temporary antagonist in Tetsuo might give the show a little spark next week, but I bought very little of what this episode was selling. (There’s one exception to my disappointment, but we’ll get to that in a bit.) I signed up to blog this on an episodic basis, but unless it can wow me again before we reach, say, mid-November, there’s a better than decent chance it’ll end up dropped.

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DanMachi 3 – 2/3 [Monster/Xenos]

by Amunchet, posted in Currently Watching:, DanMachi 3

When you think of a nuanced show, the source of the “Hestia Ribbon” does not nautrally spring to mind.  However, this season of DanMachi, for all the previous misfires and service jokes, is setting up a complicated, interesting plot.  Whether or not they can pull it off is a whole other thing entirely, but so far – season 3 has been great.

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Jujutsu Kaisen – 3 [Girl of Steel]

by Lenlo, posted in Jujutsu Kaisen

3 weeks, 3 good episodes of Jujutsu Kaisen! This week we meet the final member of our trio, get some THICC shots and end on a cliffhanger I can’t believe is real. All that and more in this weeks episode! So lets dive right in.

As always, we start with production, because this way I can put all my spoilers after the break. For only being 3 episodes in, Jujutsu Kaisen has had some pretty fantastic cuts. Whether it be running down a hallway or a dynamic camera following a fight, its looked good. This week though we see Jujutsu Kaisen slow it down a bit. Nothing bad, there isn’t a serious drop in quality or anything. Its just clear that MAPPA is in this for the long haul, saving the big animation for the big moments. As while it looks fine, there are no big standout “wow” scenes. We did at least get some cute little chibi reactions to fit with the lighter mood, and I like those a lot! They are very expressive. No, the only noticeable issue this week were some inconsistent backgrounds at the station but that gets left behind quickly.

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