Tag: anime

Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 11 [Scale of Hope]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Kaina and the Great Snow Sea

Welcome everyone, to the grand finale for Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! Or at least the most finale we are going to get until the movie in October. I won’t lie, this week was a bit of a disappointment for me. Kaina really screwed the pooch at the end. There’s a lot of reasons for that though, so lets dive into them!

Starting off, more then anything Kaina’s ending felt rushed. It resolved more plot points in the last 3-4 minutes, from Valghia’s surrender to visiting the Canopy to convincing Ririha’s father of the Great Canopy Tree, than the other 20 minutes of the show combined. Considering Ririha lost the map in a fire, which apparently didn’t matter at all, it feels like an entire episode is missing from this finale. Some kind of “This is done, where do we look next” sort of epilogue. Knowing there is a movie coming softens this blow a bit, sure. But as a standalone season of TV, Kaina’s ending doesn’t feel that good. Considering the potential it had at the start of the season, that’s what I mean by disappointing.

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Vinland Saga S2 – 11 [The King and the Sword]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Vinland Saga

Welcome everyone, to another week of Vinland Saga! This week sees Canute and Thorfinn enter onto a headlong collision course, meanwhile Ketil runs into an old friend of ours and Canute shows he’s a bit of a baddass. Without further ado, lets dive into it!

Starting off, with Thorfinn in such a good place it’s not surprising that we got another Canute episode this week. And much like last weeks, Canute continues to show just how much he’s changed from that young man all those years ago. Case in point, despite still hating swords and violence, as seen by his reactions and his complete disdain for his armaments, he still trains with them, publicly, to reassure his warriors and gain their approval. As with so many things we see this week, such as his resolution to requisition farms to pay for his army of believing he needs an army at all, it’s a microcosm of Canute’s new attitude. Simply put: He’s become a Utilitarian. The ends justify the means, so long as an action results in more people being safe/happy then those who suffer, it’s worth it. And unsurprisingly, it’s kind of hypocritical.

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Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 10 [The Builder]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Kaina and the Great Snow Sea

Welcome everyone, to the penultimate episode of Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! This week sees some questionable decisions, both in universe and out. What am I talking about? Well lets jump right in and talk about them.

Right off the bat, I have to ask… did the people of Kaina not know you could… melt… snow? Into water? Is that going to be how the Sage made as much water as he wanted? He just knew how to put a pot over some fire? I really hope that isn’t what just happened this week, because that would be a massive disappointment if so. Not only does it directly undermine the main conflict of the world, IE resource scarcity, it makes every character in the show seem like a moron. Especially when they have steam baths/saunas, which they presumably use… Snow… for. At least I hope they aren’t using their precious water resource for that. Suffice to say, if Kaina doesn’t give us a justification for what happened and what this means next episode, I will be massively disappointed.

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Wolf’s Rain – 7/8 [The Flower Maiden/Song of Sleep] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Throwback Thursday, Wolf's Rain

Welcome everyone, to another week of Wolf’s Rain! This week is a bit of a lore dump, but it’s an interesting lore dump, which is how it should be. We learn more about Darcia and Cheza while Cheza finally meets up with the wolves, all things I wasn’t expecting to happen for a while yet. So without further ado, lets dive into the episodes!

So starting off, the visuals. This is the first week that I really felt some cracks in Wolf’s Rain‘s production. Not due to any scheduling issues yet, more just the limitations of the time in which it was made. I’m of course talking about the CGI airship fight at the start of episode 7. It felt… off to me. The ship moved weirdly, the lasers didn’t look very good, and the whole sequence moved in a confusing manner. Once we got past that Wolf’s Rain was back to its old self for the most part, but this sequence definitely took me out of it after an otherwise stellar start. Beyond that, I also found the way Cheza fell through the air to be kinda silly. I get it, she’s spinning like a flower in the wind, it’s funny and fits how she’s styled. But it was also a little silly.

P.S. Apologies for the delay by the way, I had some trouble getting images this week.

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Vinland Saga S2 – 10 [Cursed Head]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Vinland Saga

Another week, another episode of Vinland Saga! This week sees a timeskip, the return of Canute, and the first signs of conflict for the farm. Lets jump right into it!

Starting off, time skip! That’s right, 3 years have passed. 3 years on the farm, 3 years of cutting down the forest, 3 years for Thorfinn to figure his shit out. Does this skip over a lot of stuff, is it an excuse for Thorfinn to progress off screen? Yes, a little bit. But do I think it will enable a greater story because we can see these changes through Thorfinn’s actions to future events? Also yes. This sort of time skip, where a character truly comes into their own and changes substantially, are only a problem when a series fails to show us how said character has changed. And I don’t think that Vinland Saga will have that problem. Not with how much focus it’s already given to Thorfinn. What I’m saying is, to anime-onlies watching Farmland Saga for the first time, don’t worry. The time skip is good.

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Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 9 [Insignia of an Ancient Castle]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Kaina and the Great Snow Sea

Welcome everyone, to another (late) episode of Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! I really need to get my shit under control, these are taking way to long. Let this be a lesson about doing 4 shows in a season, you just get to busy. Speaking of busy, Kaina has a lot going on this week, so lets just jump right into it!

Starting off, lets talk about the war. So far? It’s fine. A pretty standard affair if I’m being honest. The most I can say is that it’s nice Kaina is actually trying to use tactics. Setting up a beach head to prevent ships from landing, cannons to whittle them down from afar, Orinoga planning a surprise attack on their command. I like that it’s all based on imperfect information. Orinoga doesn’t know that Valghia is kind of a tyrannical dictatorship at this point, nor that there really isn’t a command structure. Of course they won’t care if he attacks the capital, there’s nothing of value there. The more people he kills the less mouths there are to feed later. It’s a decent way to add tension to the fight while giving him and Amelothee some one-on-one time while the ships duke it out. Not bad really.

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Wolf’s Rain – 5/6 [Fallen Wolves/The Successors] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Throwback Thursday, Wolf's Rain

Welcome everyone, to another week of Wolf’s Rain! This week we arrive at a new city, meet some new wolves, and see some dead dreams. All in all a pretty cheery episode if you ask me! But enough jokes, lets dive into the episodes.

This week I wanted to start off by taking a look at the music. After 6 episodes I feel like I have a decent idea what it’s like, of what the legendary Youko Kanno of Ghost in the Shell and Cowboy Bebop fam is going for. And you know what? I think it’s just as good as her previous work. She doesn’t restrict herself to any one style of music, picking and choosing what would work best for each track/purpose. In particular I love the sheer amount of vocal tracks in Wolf’s Rain’s OST. Stuff like this episodes “Strangers“, playing as they run in the snow past a train, or “Amore Amaro” as they all reconcile and recover from the night before. There were a few others in previous episodes as well, but I don’t want to look through the whole OST and spoil myself on anything coming.

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Vinland Saga S2 – 9 [Oath]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Vinland Saga

Welcome everyone, to another episode of Vinland Saga! This week is one giant gut-punch as it takes everything about Thorfinn, throws it on the ground, and steps on it for good measure. Is it the most healthy thing in the world? Probably not. But it makes for damn good television. Now lets dive into it!

First up, the visuals. Vinland Saga is not a particularly animated show. And it never needed to be! Action is nice, but this isn’t a battle Shounen, it’s not what is important. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t nice to have when it steps up, and that’s what happened this week. Just the entire visual experience of Thorfinn’s “Valhalla”, the way the warriors moved and fought (When not CGI at least), the color direction and detail on Thorfinn’s hands. It was beautiful. In a dark, deeply traumatic sort of way. Now was it particularly subtle? No, not really. Vinland Saga has never been very subtle with its themes. But is it still effective? I would say so. Sometimes punching someone in the face leaves a better impression then politely asking asking them. And that’s what Vinland Saga did here.

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The Fire Hunter – 8 [Garden of the Gods]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, The Fire Hunter

Welcome everyone, to another week of Fire Hunter! This was an interesting week, lots of lore drops, and a possible shake up of the status quo. Was it good? Will it save the series? I don’t yet know. But at least I have plenty to talk about. Now lets dive right into it!

Starting off, credit where it’s due, Fire Hunter has some incredible lore. We learned so much this episode. From the Flickering Flame being a satellite in space put there by the previous civilizations to the Treefolk being experiments created by the Divine Clans, with only the “successes” being sent out into the forests to act as benevolent helpers to the villages. Meanwhile the failures are left to rot inside the city, unloved and uncared for by their creators. There’s even some backstory regarding how humans came to be this way, along with the Flame Fiends! It’s all pretty interesting stuff. Which makes Fire Hunter’s ability to deliver it in the most dry, uninteresting way imaginable all the more egregious. Despite the lore being inherently interesting, all I could think of while watching the episode was if I could get away with skipping forward or not. And that sucks.

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Kaina and the Great Snow Sea – 8 [Lost at Sea]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Kaina and the Great Snow Sea

Welcome everyone, to another week of Kaina and the Great Snow Sea! This is a slow week all thing considered, which is weird when you realize it’s also the week of their great escape. Still slow doesn’t mean bad, just that it was nice and relaxing. So without further ado, lets dive into the episode! And apologies for the delay, I had some computer troubles this week.

Getting into the episode, this week was a bit of a disappointment for me. As far as escapes go, it was barely an escape at all. Resolved almost immediately, they used a small raft already made by those they had befriended. While it was sweet seeing them come to an understanding and inspire the downtrodden, it wasn’t the most engaging way to leave Valghia. It becomes even more disappointing when you see what they give us after that: Recaps. A bunch of recaps. Well I say a bunch, it was more like 5 minutes. But 5 minutes of recaps in a 22 minute episode is still a sizeable chunk. Regardless of specifics, it simply wasn’t the most exciting way to spend the episode for me.

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