Fall 2021 Summary – Week 10

by SuperWooper, posted in Weekly Summary

Komi-san wa, Komyushou desu – 8

Wooper: This episode peaked early, as its funniest gag arrived just before the OP kicked in. It’s pictured above on the left – the “?!” represents the confusion of Komi’s ancestors at her claim that they’d had a nice graveside chat. In reality, she’s so awkward that even her internal dialogue earned a silent “…” when visualized on screen, which means even dead people are more expressive than poor Komi. That lack of expressiveness continued with diverse results, as she was able to play a board game with her cousin for the first time, and even got out a full (if fragmented) sentence to Tadano during their time at the Bon festival. It’s interesting to note that while a lot of anime treat matsuri as climactic events, Komi-san inserted its festival into the middle segment in one of its middle episodes. That’s probably an indicator that it’s on a different schedule than most romcoms, which typically aim for a confession at a fateful moment in their finales. Komi-san is on another sort of journey, it seems: pushing its heroine to the point where she’s comfortable around others (not just the guy she likes). I can appreciate that mission, just as I appreciated the perfect deployment of side characters Yadano and Nakanaka in this episode. Each girl had a tiny appearance at just one booth during the festivities, both of which made the most of their competitiveness and delusion, respectively. A fine episode on the whole, even if its sappy final segment was a bit much for me.

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Kimetsu no Yaiba S2 – 9 [Infiltrating the Entertainment District]

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

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Kimetsu no Yaiba! Last week kicked off our new content but this week is what sold me on it. I have a lot of positive things to say so lets jump right in.

First the obvious: Kimetsu no Yaiba look good. I normally have a lot to say about Ufotable’s dependency on post-processing and after-effects, not all of it positive. They actually really over due it at times if I’m being frank. Just look at some of the recent Heaven’s Feel movies. But that very same love of after-effects and lighting lends itself really well to the nightlife of the entertainment district. The glow of the lanterns contrasting with the night sky, the colorful yukata, makeup and accessories everyone is wearing. I think it’s really nice, a veritable treat after the CGI tentacle fest of the last arc where the only light came from the train! That the entire arc is going to take place here is exciting and I’m looking forward to whatever bombastic fight they have planned.

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The Vision of Escaflowne – 9/10 [Memories of a Feather/The Blue-Eyed Prince] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in The Vision of Escaflowne, Throwback Thursday

I know, I know, I’m late for another post again. And yes, it’s still Endwalker. But… I just finished the MSQ and it was one of the best pieces of media I’ve experienced in a long time so I regret nothing! I’m sorry that the Escaflowne posts had to suffer while my game of the year came out but such is life. My questionable priorities aside, lets dive into this weeks The Vision of Escaflowne.

I have a lot of positive things to say about Escaflowne this week, I quite enjoyed it. So to save my reputation I thought it best to start off with something negative: The production. I’m afraid to say that we’re starting to see some cracks in Escaflowne. In these two episodes the colors seemed muted often, as if they had lost a lot of their vibrancy. This may be due primarily to the night scenes but it was noticeable. Additionally the layering seemed to have a lot of issues. There were multiple scenes where I could clearly make out what parts of the image were layered from different cels. And then there’s the falling animation! Escaflowne must really like it because they’ve reused the same sequence… 4 times now? I don’t even mean with edits, just the same raw scene! Are these deal breakers? Of course not. They’re simply noticeable.

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Kimetsu no Yaiba S2 – 8 [Sound Hashira Tengen Uzui]

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

It’s here, it’s here, the next Kimetsu no Yaiba arc has arrived! Finally some new content. Sorry this took so long, I’ve had to tear myself away from Final Fantasy 14’s new expansion to get this out. Enough about fantastic RPGs though lets talk demons!

First up the obvious: This is a double feature! And it really didn’t have to be! Now to be fair, had this season started with this episode then I could see the argument. The movie released over a year ago and it’s been awhile, a small refresher to get us back into the mood is warranted. So I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt to Ufotable that they originally planned for that to be the case. But sadly it isn’t. Instead we got the entire movie in TV format, yes I know MAL and Anilist have it as separate entries and its stupid because the first episode is original content, for the first half of the season. So we’re already caught up. We don’t need a lot of this and the episode probably could have been condensed. That said? I did like some of the original content.

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Fall 2021 Summary – Week 9

by SuperWooper, posted in Weekly Summary

Wooper: Another week, another solo appearance. I might as well retitle these posts “What’s Wooper Watching?” (Not a bad idea for a separate column, actually.) The three shows discussed below are getting regular coverage at this point; Stone Ocean would have been a great one-off addition, but I’m hopelessly behind on JoJo’s. I’ll surely throw in a few words about Aggretsuko’s fourth season when it drops in mid-December, so at least there’ll be something new to read in a week or two. See you then!

Star Wars: Visions – 7

“The Elder” is the second of Trigger’s two contributions to the Visions anthology project, as well as the driest of the seven I’ve seen thus far. Dry isn’t an adjective commonly applied to Trigger works, but it’s appropriate for the way this dialogue-heavy story was laid out. A drifting Jedi Master and Padawan sit in their spaceship for a while and discuss which planet they should explore next, eventually settling on an exceedingly gray and rocky one, which they explore for a bit. They stumble upon an old Sith, the last of his kind (an inversion of the light/dark balance in “The Ninth Jedi”), and have a brief lightsaber duel resulting in his death. And that’s it! Notice how the story opens on two men with no goal or destination in mind. They’re only motivated to visit a particular planet because one of them senses – you guessed it – a disturbance in the Force. Their Master/Padawan dynamic created a lot of opportunities for sagely sayings from the former, which seemed to be the aspect of the production most attractive to the director. Even after his opponent was defeated, he went right back into sage mode, talking about the inevitability of time and the proper mindset for strengthening oneself. I don’t mind a little philosophy in Star Wars stuff, since the Jedi are essentially a religious organization, but all ”The Elder” managed to depict here was a day in the life of a long-winded, lightsaber-wielding patrolman.

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Eighty Six S2 – 8 [Stay This Way Forever]

by Lenlo, posted in 86 - Eighty Six, Currently Watching:

Hello everyone and welcome back to Eighty Six! It’s been two weeks since our last episode and its going to be two more weeks until our next. Suffice to Eighty Six is starting to fall apart and its easy to see in the episode. Don’t believe me? Then lets dive in to this weeks episode and see if I can’t convince you!

And what better place to start doing that than with the visuals! Whooo boy this episode had some issues, where do I even begin. How about the falling scene right at the start, that’s a good place. This looked like someone shaking action figures in front of a camera, it was that bad. Maybe if they had stuck to wide shots, or internal shots of the characters, they could have sold it better. But by showing the mechs at the angle and closeness they did but with absolutely no movement they just looked so… wooden. Same for the Nachzehrer going down in the background to, I couldn’t even tell it was “going down”. And then we have the blurred still frames during the big explosion later as well. Aside from a view landscape shots Eighty Six just did not look good this week. And I fear it won’t get better.

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Ousama Ranking – 7-8 [Prince’s Apprenticeship/Sacrifice of Dreams]

by Amunchet, posted in Currently Watching:, Ousama Ranking

This week’s Ousama Ranking comes as a doubleheader – for an unusual reason.  Normally, when I don’t get around to writing for a week, it’s a personal issue of time management.  In this case, our double feature comes because I just didn’t feel I could fairly judge episode 7 “Prince’s Apprenticeship”, without seeing the following episode.  Let’s take a look!

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The Vision of Escaflowne – 7/8 [Unexpected Partings/The Day the Angel Flew] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in The Vision of Escaflowne, Throwback Thursday

Welcome everyone to another week of Escaflowne! These episodes see our time in Asturia come to an abrupt but eventful end. Once again a king flees a burning city! Knights are thrown in prison, then broken out! And all the while a Princess just cannot seem to get some poon. Sad days indeed. So without further ado lets dive into it!

To start, I’ve come to a realization with these two episodes. A reason for why I like Dilandau way more than I should: He gets all the best faces and lighting. His particular brand of insanity is just so… expressive. From faces of anguish and rage to cruel delight, all of it cast in stark lighting. You know, the kind with heavy contrast between light and shadow? I love that shit and he gets a lot of it. Dilandaou may be comically extreme at times, just look at how he treats his soldiers. And we may not yet know the reason behind his insanity, making it feel like a bit much. But by god does he have great faces. Escaflowne please, I’ll take as much Dilandau as you can give me if this is how he is presented.

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Heike Monogatari – 11 (END)

by SuperWooper, posted in Anime Reviews, Finished Series: Slice of Life/Drama, Heike Monogatari, Reviews by SuperWooper

Heike Monogatari’s TV finale contained just its second substantial portrayal of armed conflict, following episode 5’s Battle of Uji Bridge. One might think it a bit strange that a military epic would be so light on big battle scenes, but then, Heike Monogatari was never really about action or strategy. It was about family – a family doomed to extinction by its patriarch’s pride, but which still experienced closeness during its brief time on earth. It was about fate, and one girl’s journey to accept that although she could see it, she could not change it. It was about death, and the ways that humanity grapples with its inevitability: succession, spirituality, storytelling. It was a series with some structural problems, but which occasionally rose above those problems to deliver transcendent moments, with the greatest moment of all arriving during its final minutes.

It was a fine animated series – one of my favorites of the year. But before we discuss how fine or favorable it was, we’ve got to talk about how mightily it struggled to depict naval combat.

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