Kimetsu no Yaiba S4 – 1 [To Defeat Muzan Kibutsuji]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Kimetsu no Yaiba

Welcome back everyone, to the 4th season of Kimetsu no Yaiba! It’s been a while. Gotta say, with a title like “Hashira Training Arc” I’m not that excited for this one. I’ve covered every other season of the show though, so I’ll be damned if I miss this one just because it’s lining up to be the worst entry yet. Anyways without further ado lets dive into a 45 minute double feature of an episode!

Diving into things, initial signs for this arc are… not good. As per the title, the whole thing is framed as one big training arc. We have no idea how many episodes this will be, 6? A full cour (12)? Two cour? No idea. The sad thing is that there is no right answer here either. It doesn’t matter how long the arc is if it’s nothing but Hashira training, that’s going to get old fast. The only good outcome for Kimetsu no Yaiba is if the title of the season is a lie and it covers far more than the training arc. Maybe it could cover some of the side stories or novels to fill out the season? I don’t know, the only thing I’m sure of is that if this entire season is just training arc, it’s going to suck.

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Ranger Reject – 5 [Fighter D, as a Part of ‘Ranger Force’]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Ranger Reject

Ranger Reject is back everyone! Sports may have stolen our episode from us last episode, but I think that breather did the series good because this episode was much better than the previous one. Not perfect, and we’ll talk about why, but it’s nice to see Ranger Reject back on the upswing. So without further ado, lets dive into the episode!

So starting off, Ranger Reject slowed down a lot this week it felt like. Last episode we covered 5 or 6 chapters I believe, and you could feel it in the episode. We sprinted through content that, if we’re being honest, needed much more time to explore. And it looks like that’s what we’re getting this week as Ranger Reject circles back around on Hibiki’s past, how he got here and what his plans were. In fact, the only major issue I see with the episode is the sheer size of the cast it’s introducing. We got like… 9 new characters this week, none of which I’m going to bother remembering until they actually do something. Not because of any stubbornness on my part, I just have no idea which ones will end up being interesting so it’s up to Ranger Reject to make them worth remembering.

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Spring 2024 What-I’m-Watching Summary – Week 5

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Weekly Summary

Jellyfish Can’t Swim at Night – 5 [Viewer Comments]

Ah Jellyfish, the only other show this season that has a shot at consistently beating out Dungeon Meshi. I absolutely adored this episode, top to bottom. From Yoru’s struggles with artistic motivation and feelings of inadequacy to Kano’s attempts to lift her up. Once again, Jellyfish managed to hit me right in the kokoro. Her reactions to comments? The fear of reading them, the knowledge that someone saw and might not have liked your work? I get that exact same thing, yet all I’m doing is writing a few thousand words about anime on the internet. She’s drawing official art for their group and then having bigger, more successful, more talented artists draw fanart of it and then having people say they should be drawing for Jelee instead of her. That must be soul crushing. Watching her work through that, doom scrolling until she commits herself to art fully so she can feel good about what she draws, adding her name back to the mural she previously erased, taking classes seriously and such again, all good shit. I wish this had maybe been a multi-episode plot, but considering the end I’ll accept what we got. Speaking of the end, Jellyfish is entering dangerous territory here. If this is legit, if Kano and Yoru are going to be a real couple with real romance, it could be fantastic. But if we’re just getting yuri-baited because they know that’s what anime fans watch, then it’s going to suck. We can’t know until the next episode, which I’ll be watching right after I finish writing this since it’s Saturday, but I’m hopeful that Jellyfish will pull it off.

Oh and P.S. RIP Mei, her Bad Luck fortune came true the same day she drew it when she lost the love race with Kano. F in chat for our girl.

Continue reading “Spring 2024 What-I’m-Watching Summary – Week 5” →

Nana – 3/4 [Nana K. and Shoji, Love’s Whereabouts/Nana K.’s Love, Nana O.’s Dream] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Nana, Throwback Thursday

Welcome all, to another (late) week of Throwback Thursday! In this weeks episodes we continue to dive into Nana’s past, seeing how she overcomes her trauma with Asano and eventually gets together with Shoji. We also get a peek into Ozaki’s past as well, a welcome change in my book. There’s a fair amount to talk about so lets jump right into it!

Lets kick things off right away with episode 3, “Nana K. and Shoji, Love’s Whereabouts”. We’re still in the flashback here, which was a tad unexpected to be honest. I’d have thought we would spread this out across the show but it looks like we’re frontloading the exposition. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing, it frees up a lot of time in future episodes for other stuff. Nana just needs to avoid having even more flashbacks down the line. Getting back to the episode, this one is all about how Shoji and Nana get together, and overall it was… fine? Shoji and Nana finally get to talk candidly and Nana gets to confront her time with Asano directly by happening upon him in Tokyo, there’s plenty to do. But I have one big gripe with the episode: It’s treatment of men.

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Guest Post: Unearthed Treasure with Firechick – Ashita no Nadja (88/100)

by Lenlo, posted in Anime Reviews

(According to MAL, this is my 570th completed anime!)

I say in a lot of my reviews that it often times doesn’t matter if a piece of media’s tropes and premises are cliche or overused, as these days, nothing is truly original anymore. There’s really nothing inherently wrong with cliches in and of themselves. It’s the execution that counts, and if you actually care about what you’re making and manage to create interesting characters and a solid, engaging premise, people will like it regardless of how cliche its premise is. After the end of the fourth Ojamajo Doremi season, Toei needed something to fill the timeslot up for the next year, and they decided, rather than another magical girl series, that they’d do a historical shoujo adventure instead, in line with stuff like Hello Sandybelle and Lady Georgie. That anime was Ashita no Nadja, which was an oddity in the year 2003, as by that time, according to Justin Sevakis’ article about the World Masterpiece Theater here, Japanese-produced shows that were set in Europe were going out of style. Which is honestly a shame, as even with the context Justin mentioned, a lot of these shows were quite amazing and made the most of what they were given. Nadja as a show is an original anime, not based on an existing property, making it even more of an oddity in 2003, and it did get admittedly low ratings from what I’ve heard, but the people who did stick around to watch it really liked it and have fond memories of it. I myself didn’t even know this show existed until I came across this review of it here on the site, and I did watch the first episode and liked it, but couldn’t finish it due to other obligations and because at the time of the blog post, the final quarter of the series didn’t get completed fansubs. This is no longer the case, thankfully, and I finally found time to watch this. And yeah, I agree, Ashita no Nadja has no business being this good and this well-written. More series should aspire to be like Nadja.

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Spring 2024 What-I’m-Watching Summary – Week 4

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Weekly Summary

Dungeon Meshi – 18 [Shapeshifter]

To absolutely no ones surprise, Dungeon Meshi continues to be great. This week it brought us the classic Doppelganger encounter, but with the usual Dungeon Meshi twist. Not content with just one Doppelganger, we had nine, three for each of our cast members. And as if that wasn’t enough, each Doppelganger’s appearance was based on the mental image another party member had of that person, which Dungeon Meshi so helpfully drew in slightly different styles and details so a perceptive viewer could pick out the real one on their own. So for Laios? Each of Marcille, Chilchuck and Senshi view him as some brand of moron or weirdo, leading them to easily pick out his fakes. Meanwhile for the others we have poor attention to detail resulting in inaccurate clothing and tools, as well as a complete misunderstanding of magic resulting in a silly spell book. There’s a lot of good stuff in here, all of it leading to a fun finale where Laios figures out who the real ones are by their awareness of the dungeon around them, as well as how they talk. Of course Chilchuck wouldn’t sit on a box that might be a mimic, he hates them, and of course Senshi would never disrupt an ecosystem so carelessly by stealing and egg, and of course Marcille would be so stubborn as to not eat a humanoid egg even if it might save Falin. All of that culminating in Laios barking like a dog to face down a monster, only for Marcille to blow it up since she was completely dun with the situation, made for a fun episode. I’m not sure about this Ninja girl or why she’s following them, was she ordered to kill Marcille or something? I don’t know, but I’m looking forward to finding out. Dungeon Meshi hasn’t lead me astray yet, somehow staying fresh and fun for two whole cores, I’m not going to start doubting it now. Oh and one more thing, Laios barking was hilarious and exactly the kind of comedy I’ve come to expect from this utterly ridiculous show.

Continue reading “Spring 2024 What-I’m-Watching Summary – Week 4” →

Nana – 1/2 [Prologue: Nana K. and Nana O./Love Friendship Nana K. and Shoji] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Nana, Throwback Thursday

Welcome all, to the new season of Throwback Thursday! For the next few months we have Nana, the 2006 romance from Studio Madhouse! This is our first week so we have a lot to talk about, a lot of characters to meet, so lets dive right into it.

Starting off, lets talk visuals. To say Nana looks dated would be an understatement. I don’t know what it is with y’all but you keep picking series produced during that awkward age of animation between Cel and Digital, and they all suffer from that same visual fuzz that comes from upscaling for Blu-Ray. That’s not Nana’s fault, I actually think it looks pretty good so far. Different, the character designs are nice but very thin, and while I enjoy the wide range of emotions the characters have sometimes their faces almost look like Ascii emotes. Overall though, I like how they generally emote with their entire body, not just an awkward sweat drop or cartoonishly exaggerated face. I would say the most striking thing about Nana so far though are the outfits. They change every scene, always matching the characters personality, and it’s pretty cool.

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Ranger Reject – 4 [The Soldier With Love, Hibiki!]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Ranger Reject

Welcome all, to another week of Ranger Reject. A lot happens this week, not all of it necessarily good, so lets skip the pleasantries and dive right into the episode!

Starting off, this was a really fast paced episode, and not necessarily in a good way. Ranger Reject covered a lot of ground, 5 entire chapters from what some friends have told me, and there were a lot of concepts in this episode that don’t feel like they got the attention they need or deserve. Take the Rangers and their power structure for instance. We get a small scene early on revealing their 2nd-in-Commands, as well as an introduction to the idea that the Rangers can be replaced and how little they care for each others lives. This was our chance to really dive into the internal politics of the Rangers, to show us they weren’t a unified force, using Suzukiri as our point-of-view character. Instead it’s a rather quick scene only showing us how ruthless they are, something we really already knew.

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Spring 2024 What-I’m-Watching Summary – Week 3

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Weekly Summary

Lots of drops this week as we enter Week 3 for the Spring Season! Mostly just me cleaning house with a few of the lesser series of the season, nothing to extreme.

Dungeon Meshi – 17 [Harpy/Chimera]

Dungeon Meshi took a break for a few weeks there, letting other shows strut their stuff, but this week it returns with a vengeance for that first place spot. Seriously, what a great episode. From Shuro confronting Laios over the consequences of his actions, berating and criticizing him for the use of Black Magic and how blasé he is about everything, to Falin showing up and wrecking house. And holy crap, did she show up. Dungeon Meshi has always been very emotive, from facial expressions to how the characters move, it’s always been good at conveying emotion. But this week was… It was on another level. I can’t get over how incredible Falin’s new design is, from the feather coat and draconic torso to her new eyes and how her expressions can turn on a dime. One minute she’s almost cute, smiling and blushing as she crushes Maizuru’s skull beneath her foot, the next crying out for her brother as her true self takes control for but a moment. And the way the music tied it all together, just fantastic stuff. Not to mention the actual narrative of the episode, how Dungeon Meshi called Laios out for his hypocrisy regarding monsters after he had already gotten on Senshi for the same shit, or Shuro sticking to his word and reporting them to the authorities but still giving them an opportunity to escape should they succeed. All around one of the best episodes I’ve seen in a long time. If I had any complaint it would be that no one actually died, there was no cost to the conflict, which feels like a missed opportunity. I get it, resurrection is normal here, I don’t begrudge Dungeon Meshi bringing back all the important ones. But I would have liked if one or two had stayed dead, just to hammer home the situation and what Laios/Marcille have done here. Even with that though, a stellar episode, I swear I’ve watched it like 3 times. I’m hyped for where Dungeon Meshi is going.

Continue reading “Spring 2024 What-I’m-Watching Summary – Week 3” →

Black Lagoon Seasons 1&2 Review – 71/100 – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Anime Reviews, Black Lagoon, Finished Series: Action, Reviews by Lenlo, Throwback Thursday

Dating back over 50 years, the legacy of Studio Madhouse is long and storied. From cultural touchstones like Death Note and Tatami Galaxy to old greats like Aim for the Ace and Treasure Island, they’re even responsible for modern epics such as last seasons Frieren. They’ve done a bit of everything, from sports and adventure to sci-fi and murder mysteries. Naturally, that also includes crime dramas, one of which we are here to talk about today. Originally created by Rei Hiroe, directed by Sunao Katabuchi and with music by Takayoshi Watanabe, Black Lagoon originally aired in 2006 where it was overshadowed (At least in my opinion) by a few of Madhouse’s other greats, like Nana and Hellsing Ultimate. One has to wonder, how does this mid-2000’s crime thriller stack up to the modern day? Well wonder no longer, because that’s what I’m here to answer. Now lets dive in!

Be warned, this review contains minor unmarked spoilers for *Black Lagoon Seasons 1&2. It also contains major spoilers in some sections however these will be heavily marked to avoid accidents. Continue reading “Black Lagoon Seasons 1&2 Review – 71/100 – Throwback Thursday” →