Mob Psycho 100 III – 5 [Divine Tree 2 ~Peace~]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Mob Psycho 100 III

Welcome everyone, to a very late episode of Mob Psycho 100! Apologies for the wait on this one, busy week of work and grad school has slowed me down and I prioritized Throwback Thursday going out on… well Thursday. Excuses aside though, let’s dive into this weeks episode!

As usual, lets start with the production. This is going to be a bit of a controversial statement, but I think Mob Psycho was rather subdued this week. It was good, obviously. I’m not saying it was bad, Mob Psycho’s baseline consistency is great and puts most shows highs to shame. It just hasn’t given us anything incredible yet. Nothing that has pushed or exceeded my expectations for the show. Maybe this is a consequence of hype though. How to much can lead to unattainable expectations, sort of like how the Chainsaw Man fandom is at war with itself right now over it’s own visual production (Which I’ve enjoyed so far, to be clear). For Mob Psycho, after 2 seasons of pushing that envelope I, and others, have come to expect that once again. Will we get it? Probably, eventually. But we haven’t yet, despite being beautiful otherwise.

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His and Her Circumstances – 22/23/24 [14 Days, Part 4/14 Days, Part 5/Recap] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, His and Her Circumstances, Throwback Thursday

Welcome everyone, to the penultimate week of His and Her Circumstances! That’s right, we only have one more week before this is done and you get a final review. So if you have a series you want covered in Throwback Thursday, make sure to leave a comment so I can put it on the poll. Now without further ado, lets dive into the episodes!

First up, episode 22, “14 Days, Part 4”. This episode is all about them prepping for the upcoming play. And you know what? I need to say it. I have no idea how this is going to transition into a satisfactory finale. Between the prep there are some small scenes about Arima’s jealousy and personal issues, despite Miyazawa’s previous affirmations about their relationship, but it’s not thing particularly notable. And even if it was, this play doesn’t seem like a good way to address them what with it’s sci-fi themed subject matter and how Arima isn’t involved in it at all. In fact, it seems like Asaba is doing more to notice and address Arima’s issues than anyone else. But even he disappoints in just silently being there rather than any kind of… cathartic discussion, and also not having any actual arc of his own.

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Chainsaw Man – 4 [Rescue]

by AidanAK47, posted in Chainsaw Man, Currently Watching:

Another week and another piece of Chainsaw action with this being the episode with the most anime original content to date. Public response looks to be brimming though as for myself I find that I am both impressed and a little disappointed. I don’t mean to be a downer though as I hear Japanese twitter fans are hounding staff over dumb things.(They even got Fujimoto to stop pretending to be his sister on twitter, those monsters!) It’s just that to be perfectly honest I was really looking forward to a moment that was to come just after credits, and not for the reasons you likely expect. I had a full write up prepared to put to paper today and now I have to save it till next week. I was also going to complain about this covering less chapters than I hoped, only to look at the manga to find we covered three chapters instead of the usual four so it wasn’t a massive departure. Not to mention this is another post where I just don’t know how much I have to talk about until I type it so let’s just see how this goes. This also marks the first time I had to dig out the Japanese title for the episode because someone at Crunchyroll forgot to put the episode title on the video. I really don’t want to dog on you guys but really with the subtitles, server troubles and this, you make it far too easy.
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Spy X Family – 4/5 [Yor’s Kitchen/Carry Out the Griffin Plan]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Spy X Family

Hello everyone, and welcome back to SpyXFamily! Apologies for missing last week, had a bit of a family emergency. Don’t worry though, everything is going much better! Enough with real life problems though, let’s just dive right into our weekly anime.

Right off the bat, this is a bit of an odd (double) week for SpyXFamily. Both episodes have a singular, larger plot to them, like a normal episode should. But neither of these plots are enough to fill an entire episode on their own. So what do you do? Drag it out, or fill the space with something else? In this case, SpyXFamily has chosen the latter. Rather than drag out two perfectly paced stories, it instead added a miniature “filler” story to the end of each episode. As a sort of epilogue to these episodes, mini-sodes meant to show us small parts of these characters daily lives, this is fine. But for me, as someone who isn’t big on Slice of Life, they certainly weren’t my favorite of the things SpyXFamily has done. What I’m saying is, they were cute but lets not do them to often, you know?

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His and Her Circumstances – 20/21 [14 Days, Part 2/14 Days, Part 3] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, His and Her Circumstances, Throwback Thursday

Welcome everyone, to another (late) week of His and Her Circumstances! There’s a fair amount to talk about this week, most of it concerning, but worth the time regardless. That warning given, lets dive into the episode!

Starting with the production, this week is actually an improvement. The same way being punched in the stomach is an improvement over being kicked in the balls. Sure, there are no more paper cutouts overlaid onto real life future, and things have progressed beyond sketches. But at the same time you can count the frames in most scenes, and most of the characters simply look… off. It’s like all of their designs and models got downscaled to 240p. They lack small details and proportions are off, making them look like completely different characters half the time. And with Anno gone the interesting and engaging direction that made these still screens actually work has left with him. It’s a shame really. Circumstances started off so strong visually, yet here it is falling apart like the very definition of production melt. At least the narrative can salvage it… right?

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Mob Psycho 100 III – 4 [Divine Tree 1 ~The Founder Appears~]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Mob Psycho 100 III

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Mob Psycho 100! Apologies for missing SpyXFamily last week, had a bit of a family emergency. But that’s all resolved and I’m back in the saddle now, so lets dive into this weeks best episode!

Starting off, Mob Psycho looked fantastic this week. It still hasn’t dropped the animation bomb we are all looking for, and for some that might be disappointing. But barring that, this episode was filled to the brim with great character animation incredible storyboards. Just look at Tome’s segment in the opening shots of the episode, how her whole body moves with her gestures, and how the other club members express their confusion with her. Or how the atmosphere of the episode slowly grew more and more oppressive and uncomfortable as it progressed, with the color green slowly invading each scene. Omnipresent, always watching, waiting as it took over the show and the characters within. It was tense, almost horror-esque, with it’s uncomfortable closeups, silent wide shots and stark lighting. Once again we learn that even without sakuga, Mob Psycho is one of the best visual experiences airing right now.

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Chainsaw Man – 3 [Meowy’s Whereabouts]

by AidanAK47, posted in Chainsaw Man, Currently Watching:

Chainsaw Tuesday has come and gone again and these week long waits are really starting to drag. Feels especially frustrating with an episode like this where the action just makes the minutes feel like seconds. It also makes my job difficult as episode content is sparse and straightforward with little for me to add. Still I can try and see how far I go with this post. Haters of CGI may be relieved to know that this action scene had considerably less of it but once again I reiterate that I am having a hard time distinguishing which from which. Also those concerned about source loyalty can rejoice as this is pretty much as loyal as you can get. Though I still have issues with Crunchyrolls translator using phases that make understanding the situation harder. I understand that you are underpaid but I would think it wouldn’t be too hard to consult maybe the manga translation to make your job easier. As another piece of advice for crunchyroll, maybe consider upgrading your servers? The third week in a row that Chainsaw Man managed to bring the site down which yeah, taking that into account this show might be doing rather well.
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Mob Psycho 100 III – 3 [Getting Carried Away ~100%~]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Mob Psycho 100 III

Hello everyone and welcome back to Mob Psycho 100, the best show of the season! It’s a rather tame episode this week, but even tame a Mob Psycho episode is still one of the most solid things to air. Don’t believe me? Well lets jump in and see if I can’t convince you by the end of this post.

First up, what do I mean by “tame”? Simply that there weren’t any “big” moments. No grand sakuga showcase, no fight, nothing that we can point to and say “That looked incredible”. Instead what we got was simple, solid consistency. Everything from small scenes of character acting to expressive body language and engaging visual metaphors. The kind of things that fall by the wayside in a lot of series, because who is going to notice, right? But Mob Psycho is known both for its incredible highs and it’s consistently solid “lows”. So now that we’ve seen that solid “low”, when can we expect the high? And remember, I say low but that’s still wildly above average for TV anime. Back to the high, from what I’ve read we know that Hakuyu Go, from Season 2 Episode 5 fame, is working primarily on episode 8. So expect that to be huge.

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His and Her Circumstances – 18/19 [Progress/14 Days, Part 1] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, His and Her Circumstances, Throwback Thursday

Welcome everyone, to what is a very important week for His and Her Circumstances. Why is it important you might ask? Because this week marks the departure of Hideaki Anno from the production, and the production then imploding upon itself. What does that mean? What does that look like? Let’s dive in and talk about that.

So, the production. Does it really look that bad? The answer: Yes. Yes it does. In fact it looks so bad that I almost didn’t believe it. I thought that this must just be for the opening recap, right? That’s why it’s literally sketches on paper taped to sticks being held in front of a camera, or live footage of the streets outside the production studio? But no, this was the entire episode. So the question becomes: What happened? Well the best I can figure, based on a small amount of research, is that this is the point where Anno simply left the production. Between recent (for the time) laws regarding anime production, pressure from the studio about removing sex scenes (Will get to that) and arguments with the original author, things were starting to fall apart. But the sad thing about it, to me? It wasn’t completely bad.

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Chainsaw Man – 2 [Arrival in Tokyo]

by AidanAK47, posted in Chainsaw Man, Currently Watching:

Enter week two of Chainsaw Tuesdays and we have a quieter episode this week with the primary focus being the introduction of our main cast. We are near the end of volume 1 of the manga though that did resort in the cutting of a scene. But before getting to that I would give an overall impression of this episode being good. We got some laughs and it set up things for the next. It did the job it was meant to do though that may not wow people still looking for Chainsaw Man to deliver the answer to the hype it’s gotten. I think crunchyroll’s translation continues to muck up a bit thus making jokes land not as well or muddy certain lines with greater implications. CGI haters can relax as we have a fully 2D episode…I think. I will go into that but my confidence in telling the difference has been put down a notch. Also for those interested Crunchyroll has announced that the English Dub of Chainsaw Man will be debuting next week on the 25th. Which kinda shoots my plans of covering it weekly with the two episode delay but I am curious as to whether this could lead to grabbing a more mainstream audience. Chainsaw Man so far has landed pretty well but I think it has an appeal that could extend even to non anime watchers, with the only detriment at the moment being its subtitle only release.

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