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!
Continue reading “Ousama Ranking – 7-8 [Prince’s Apprenticeship/Sacrifice of Dreams]”
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.
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.
Wooper: I went into Super Crooks completely blind, so I had no idea it was a superhero – or more accurately, supervillain – series. Turns out it’s a “mature” take on the genre in the same vein as The Boys or Invincible, which in this case means comically large-scale violence and implied sex. The violence showed up in episode 1, a high school origin story for newbie hero Johnny “Electro Boy” Bolt, with all the Spiderman theft that entails (the “hero” even has a crush on his bully’s girlfriend). Compulsory scenes of Johnny confiding in his nerdy best friend and trying on his first costume had my eyelids drooping, but the over-the-top carnage of his superhero debut (which ended with a bunch of dead pigs in a public swimming pool) managed to wake me up. Cut to episode 2, set in the present day, where an adult Johnny is released from prison and the exposition begins to flow. Tales of powerful enemies and a shadowy villain organization were all over the second script, but they were neither illuminating nor tantalizing enough to hook me. For all the show’s clunkiness, it’s amusing to see Bones tackle this material, even if its stiff visuals tell us it was hardly a priority. The substudio that produced it is also working on Mob Psycho 100’s upcoming third season, but hey, I doubt anyone would protest that Super Crooks was sacrificed at the altar of Mob’s wondrous animation.
We’ve done it everyone! We’re finally done with Kimetsu no Yaiba: Mugen Train TV extended edition! Do you know what that means? That next week we finally get some new content! Before that though I need to do my due diligence and finish up this arc. So without further ado lets dive in!
Starting off: This episode should have been a double feature, merged with last weeks. Why? Well I’m going to use the P-word everyone probably hates, and I promise this is the last time but with Mugen Train ending I have to, pacing. This episode once again suffers from being cut into a weekly schedule. Its content, this long sustained fight, was not designed for a weeks break in-between. Like… I enjoyed this fight! Rengoku is great and once you get into the swing of things the hype is real! But because of the week long break, every episode of Kimetsu no Yaiba starts cold. We have to be re-introduced, re-heated, before we can really get into the fight and I think this episode is one of the clearest examples of that. Surely this isn’t just a me thing right? I’m not alone in how sudden the opening feels… right?
Continue reading “Kimetsu no Yaiba S2 – 7 [Set Your Heart Ablaze]”
Hello everyone and welcome to the third “I’m back” catchup post of the week! This time I lucked out because Eighty Six is skipping another episode, letting me take my time with this one. What that says about the production I don’t know! But it probably isn’t anything good. Enough about that though, lets dive into the episode!
Starting off, Eighty Six had some fun shots this week. Nothing as ground breaking as the week before sadly but still some good shot direction. I’m talking stuff like the President meeting with the General, showing us most of the conversation through their reflections rather than their faces. It sounds like a pretty straight forward trick right? Tell us, the audience, that something is off, make us feel like someone is lying, by not showing us their face. And it is! But so many series fail to something even as basic as this. Then there was also the long held final shot in place of an ED, really letting the battlefield comms sink in. It’s simple… but effective. And it does a good job of hammering home just how much is riding on this mission without repeating it over and over “Everyone will die if you fail”. I like that.
Hello everyone! Apologies for being late on this, Thanksgiving will kinda do that to a man. Food coma’s are dangerous don’t ya know? This week we finish up our conflict with the Zaibach Empire and make our way to Allen’s home of Asturia. We have a lot to talk about so lets dive in!
This week picks up where we left off, with Van leading Dilandau and co away from everyone else. And you know what? He gets caught! I should have expected this but I really didn’t. I was prepared for a half episode long chase sequence where we get to see what the dragon can do. Something that culminated in Van proving himself superior to Dilandau and flying off into the sunset! Instead he gets captured almost immediately and has to be rescued. And I’m into that for a lot of reasons. Not only does this curb Van’s power, giving him something to grow into, it also gives the rest of the cast room to flex. From Hitomi and Allen all the way to the individual soldiers, everyone get’s a small moment to shine. And the best part? The villains get to have personalities!
I’m back from New York City everyone! That was a fun trip. Got to see the city, hang out with some friends, go to a weeb convention and spend way to much money on food. Even got to see Pompo the Cinephile! Alright movie. But that isn’t what you’re here for, oh no. You want some Kimetsu no Yaiba! So lets dive into last weeks episode that I’m many days late on.
This was always my favorite part of the Yaiba movie. It has issues, especially in the TV format which we will talk about. But at it’s core this section is just unadulterated hype. It’s one big fight that they poured their everything into. From big fire and wind effects to flashy lighting and large CGI environments, this is everything Yaiba is good at. And we are only half way done with the fight! There are some issues, sure. The camera gets a little wild and Ufotable completely ignore the 180 degree rule making it a bit of a mess to follow. On top of that the CGI fire lion was a bit to much if you ask me. These are both relatively small complains though and by and large I think this scene shows us what Yaiba does best: Set piece battles.
Wooper: Black Lotus is yet another of Sola Digital Arts’ CG reimaginings of classic sci-fi properties. Kenji Kamiyama (who also directed the Star Wars: Visions episode discussed below) and Shinji Aramaki have been pumping these out for a few years, and now it’s Blade Runner’s turn to get the Barbie treatment. So what’s the verdict, setting aside my distaste for the primitive 3D art style? After two episodes, I’d call it a passable replication; the rainy neon streets, murky lighting, and Vangelis-inspired soundtrack evoke the original film, but only superficially. (I haven’t seen 2049, so it may be that Black Lotus’s vacant streets are a more accurate reflection of Villeneuve’s sequel, but they certainly can’t hold a candle to the bustling exteriors of Ridley Scott’s version.) The story is a wisp of a thing with an amnesiac protagonist (Elle) and a handful of fight scenes to mask the absence of atmosphere. Most of the characters lean too far in one direction or another – the friendly black market trader is too helpful, while the corrupt senator is too evil. Episode 2’s final moments served as a pretty good hook, though – the show skillfully cut between Elle being hunted in both the past and the present, leading to a cliffhanger that honestly surprised me. I wouldn’t recommend this series to many people, but Blade Runner superfans can rest easy knowing it’s got a shade of promise.
This week was certainly an episode of Ousama Ranking. It was not an episode I’ll remember for long.
“King of the Underworld” was a bit of a chore to watch. With several flashbacks and a fighting sequence that we had basically seen before, there wasn’t the series’ usual heart in this one.
Continue reading “Ousama Ranking – 06 [King of the Underworld]”