Yofukashi no Uta – 9 [No Fair]

Welcome everyone, to another week of Yofukashi no Uta! This is another decent week for our vampire waifu’s if you ask me. Remember when I said the new girls were just cardboard cutouts and I was hoping they got some development? Well this week sort of gives us that, though only for Seri, who was already the most fleshed out of them all. I’ll take what I can get though! Now lets jump in to the episode.

Production wise this week was just fine. There were some nice closeups, some interesting angles at times and one amusing slow mo shot. But most of the rest were rather dull wide shots of our characters in one of the like… 3 locations of the episode. And the only time Yofukashi really branched out and tried to do something different, it ended up flooding the screen in singular splotches of neon. It reduced all the nice shading and lighting I enjoyed into blobs of color and was just really off putting. To be honest, it’s kind of disappointing how uninspired Yofukashi has been with its color palette. Always playing things safe, with the few times it does anything else just being flooding the screen in color without any kind of nuance. This could have been one of the best looking shows of the season! Instead it’s just kind of… there.

Continue reading “Yofukashi no Uta – 9 [No Fair]” →

His and Her Circumstances – 3/4 [His Circumstances/Her Difficult Problem] – Throwback Thursday

Welcome everyone, to another (probably late) week of His and Her Circumstances! This week we get into the weeds, as things start to happen and our leads start to truly get to know each other. Is it good? Is it trite? Can it cover in 4 episodes what took Kaguya-sama 3 seasons? Let’s jump in and find out!

Starting off, I feel the need to repeat just how good this show looks. Like seriously, His and Her Circumstances looks absolutely gorgeous. Not because of any high detail models/backgrounds or any kind of interesting art style. Both of those are actually pretty standard for the genre and era I feel. Rather, it’s just how consistently expressive Circumstances is. Whether it be clear and emotive facial expressions or clever visual metaphor’s, it never fails to communicate the emotions of a scene. And despite having so many still frames, it never feels like a static show. Instead all I can remember when thinking back on it are the edits and implied motion from said stills. I’ve been told multiple times, from multiple people, that it’s production falls apart in the latter half, so I don’t want to get to excited. But its hard not to when it looks this good.

Continue reading “His and Her Circumstances – 3/4 [His Circumstances/Her Difficult Problem] – Throwback Thursday” →

RWBY: Ice Queendom – 9 [My Dream, Your Dream]

I’ve tried my best to be positive about RWBY: Ice Queendom up through now. As a character study on Weiss, I still believe it’s not bad! But this week… This was not a good week, for a lot of reasons. Let’s dive in and talk about them.

Starting off, dear god did this episode look bad. I’m not talking about just bad or janky animation, that’s been present since the beginning. Though that does of course exist as well. No, rather what I want to draw attention to is just the half-assed, absurdly lazy direction and storyboarding of the episode. Stuff like Yang just standing in the center of the screen while the camera slowly pans upwards. Or the incredibly static nature of a train and its occupants sliding across the screen. Stuff like that. They even managed to make a train crash boring and unimpactful! And you can find this basically everywhere. From the small Ruby and Weiss fight to Yang’s motorcycle to Smol!Weiss and Pyrrha shooting out of the train cars. It all feels like the most basic, straight forward, lazy way the scenes could have been presented.

Continue reading “RWBY: Ice Queendom – 9 [My Dream, Your Dream]” →

Yofukashi no Uta – 8 [All of Us]

Welcome back to another, delayed, episode of Yofukashi no Uta! while last week was a bit of a disappointment with its new cast, this week more than made up for it. Relationships progress, Nazuna and Ko have meaningful conversations, and we even get our first new male character. A lot happens! So without further ado, lets dive into the episode.

Like I said, as a follow up to last week I actually really liked this one. The introduction of a timer feels like it has kickstarted Nazuna and Ko a bit. They are finally starting to be proactive about this relationship rather than just languishing together and let it happen. I think that’s really important for a romance! If the leads are just standing around doing nothing, reacting to situations and letting that inform their feelings, then as a viewer it feels like no progress is being made. At least if they are actively trying to do stuff, even if they fail, it feels like things are moving. It’s effectively the difference between the characters being reactive vs proactive. And in a story like this, I feel that proactive is almost always better. So long as one of them is that way at least.

Continue reading “Yofukashi no Uta – 8 [All of Us]” →

Isekai Ojisan – 6 [So They Threw Me into the Basement of a Freak Show…]

Welcome to another week of Iskeai Ojisan! A bit of a slow post on my part, grad school makes my schedule difficult. Don’t you worry though, I’m not stopping anytime soon! So without further ado lets just jump into this weeks episode.

In general I think this week was strictly fine. There were some decent, and not so decent, jokes. A bit of a lore dump and even some Uncle history dropped in. But those last two are more concerning than you might think. Because while they seem innocuous, to me they indicate that Ojisan is listing dangerously close to becoming that which it is mocking. Take last weeks joke about his “gift” from God being useless for instance. Turns out? It’s actually just as OP as any other “gift”, allowing him to use magic more quickly and at a level no one else can match. The supporting cast of women, previously lampooning Isekai casts? It’s just a harem now. Being thrown in jail, getting payback, and looking like a rapist? Well now this is just Shield Hero. Considering we are only halfway into the season, this makes me very concerned.

Continue reading “Isekai Ojisan – 6 [So They Threw Me into the Basement of a Freak Show…]” →

His and Her Circumstances – 1/2 [Her Circumstances/Their Secret] – Throwback Thursday

Hello everyone, and welcome to the start of His and Her Circumstances! We have a lot to talk about this week. Only 2 episodes in and it’s already moving at a mile a minute so lets just jump right in to our new season of Throwback Thursday!

Right off that bat I have to say, Circumstances look good. Not in any kind of unique way. We’ve seen this style and aesthetic all over the place, its the 90s and cel animation. And while I love both of those, they aren’t the reason I think Circumstances looks great. No, that honor belongs to the sheer creativity and expressiveness of the characters. The way they completely ignore their models to sell an emotion. Or that flipcard effect with showing Miyazawa’s inner thoughts and feelings vs what she shows to the public. Or the postcard memories, or the visual metaphors, or this or that, the list goes on! To make a long story short, Circumstances is animated gorgeously. It’s different from the modern “drowning in digital effects” of Ufotable sure, but that doesn’t make it bad. In fact, with how consistent and ubiquitous it is, I say this is better

Continue reading “His and Her Circumstances – 1/2 [Her Circumstances/Their Secret] – Throwback Thursday” →

RWBY: Ice Queendom – 8 [Where You Belong]

Welcome everyone, to another episode of RWBY: Ice Queendom! Much to my surprise, Queendom continues its trend of actually being kinda good. Not visually, that’s still an absolute dumpster fire. But narratively? I’m… I’m kind of invested. And every time I write that I have to stare at it in shock. Why? Let’s dive in and talk about it.

First up, let’s just completely skip animation. We both know it’s not good at this point. Queendom didn’t even give us a fight with the giant robot statue Nicholas this week, that’s how disappointing it was. So instead lets skip right to the story where Queendom totally surprised me. Remember last week when I said this was the final run and we were going to slowly work our way to Weiss? Well forget that. Because instead we just speed ran our way back to the Grimm, failed, and then got punted to an even lower nadir. A nadir so low in fact that I am actually entertaining the possibility that someone might actually die. It’s a low chance, don’t get me wrong. But the OG RWBY did it, and we’ve already broken from canon, so why can’t Queendom? Suffice to say, I’d be really impressed if it did.

Continue reading “RWBY: Ice Queendom – 8 [Where You Belong]” →

DanMachi 4 – 04/05 [Mermaid/Argo Vesta]

Remember when I was wishing that Bell would fight someone other than the Minotaur?  I got my wish – Bell is now currently fighting…an overgrown bush?  It’s a pretty scary overgrown bush though, so all is not lost.  Let’s get into this pair of episodes, which had plenty of good points (and a few small flaws).

Continue reading “DanMachi 4 – 04/05 [Mermaid/Argo Vesta]” →

Yofukashi no Uta – 7 [Reproduce]

Welcome everyone, to another episode of Yofulashi no Uta! I’m a bit late on this one, Path of Exile just released a new league and I wasted a day on that. Don’t worry though, the novelty will wear off soon and I’ll be right back on schedule. So without further ado, lets dive into the episode!

Starting off, Yofukashi actually moved this week! And it looked good doing it! I know that comes off as a joke, but seriously. Yofukashi isn’t what I would call “animated”. It exists primarily as a set of stills with pretty backgrounds, snappy dialogue and bright color palettes. So to see it move like this was a treat. It had to sacrifice some detail in places to do it obviously, forgoing some of it’s signature style. But I think that’s totally fine for a one-off treat like this. And I do assume it will be one off unless Yofukashi uses this as an excuse to start bringing more action into the series. I wouldn’t be against that necessarily, but it would have to be well considered before being thrown in. What do I mean by that? Well lets talk spoilers after the break.

Continue reading “Yofukashi no Uta – 7 [Reproduce]” →

Isekai Ojisan – 5 [That Reminds Me, I Almost Got Assassinated Once]

It’s back everyone, Isekai Ojisan is back! It’s been to weeks without the seasons premier comedy. And what happens on it’s first week back? Well… It falls a little flat if I can be honest. Lets dive in and talk about why.

So like I said, I’m pretty mixed on this weeks Ojisan. On the good side, the jokes were mostly fine. Baseball terminology being scary, Mabel’s return, the ring joke again, etc. Even a complete repeat of making a girl fall for him, with a melting sword/heart metaphor in the background, only to completely undercut it with his own stupidity. Making her go from rejecting him to thinking she was rejected herself. It’s all strictly fine. I wish that Ojisan had some more original material this week, stuff like the Youtube ad crisis was absolutely hilarious. But this isn’t the worst rut to be stuck in I suppose. Sadly however, these were not all of the jokes in the episode. In fact there was one in particular that kind of put me off the whole thing: The rape joke.

Continue reading “Isekai Ojisan – 5 [That Reminds Me, I Almost Got Assassinated Once]” →