Tag: anime

Dance Dance Danseur – 4 [I Can Do Ballet Now]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Dance Dance Danseur

Welcome back everyone, to another week of Dance Dance Danseur. This week we follow up with Luou on the bullying, Jumpei embraces ballet and the show becomes just a tad bit more Shounen. What does that mean? Read on to find out.

Right off the bat I want to, once again, praise Danseur for its visuals. The eyes still look off in wide shots sadly. I think the lines just do not look good without the proper tapering and details provided by the closeups. There was also an issue regarding Miyako’s tutu just being a static image moving across the screen rather than any kind of animation. But I find both of these to be ultimately small, almost irrelevant, issues. Neither of them changes how good the character movement is. Especially the legs! Oh how I love the legs in Danseur. The attention to detail on their form, the way the joints move, the careful way they must be posed and walk during a ballet… I find it beautiful. I haven’t been able to fill hunger for dance since the Princess Tutu Throwback Thursday series, so this has been a welcome find.

And as for the narrative? Well that was pretty damn good too.

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Now and Then, Here and There – 11 [Eve of Destruction]- Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Now And Then, Here And There, Throwback Thursday

Welcome everyone, to what is inevitably going to be a late post about Now and Then, Here and There! How do I know it will be late? Because I’m off traveling for work all day Thursday and I haven’t started writing this until Wednesday. So if I somehow manage to get it up on time make sure to tell me I did a good job. No please, Pavlov really works. Enough with the intro though, lets dive into the episode!

This week is a strong one. To lay it out in plain terms, this week was all about children and whether or not it is just to bring them in to a dying world. Now and Then poses this question to us through two different sets of characters: Lala and Sis, as well as Sara and Shu. With the answer to both of those being an unequivocal “yes”. On the surface, I think this is a pretty interesting question for the series. Especially when you look at how Now and Then has treated children, the future, prior to this in the show. As you dig deeper into it and look at the situations surrounding how Now and Then answers this question… It’s starts to get a little bit concerning. Even, dare I say it, a tad political. That’s right everyone, strap in, it’s time to talk abortion politics in anime.

This is gonna suck.

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Spy X Family – 3 [Prepare for the Interview]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Spy X Family

Hello everyone and welcome to a (very late) episode of Spy X Family! Some of you might be wondering why this took so long. My answer? I actually struggled to write this post. The episode was just so milquetoast, I had very little positive, or negative, to say. Why? Well lets jump on in and see if I can explain.

The best way to explain it is this: I’m not a fan of slice of life. As a genre, I find it incredibly boring. Very little happens. And, regretfully, slice of life is kind of what Spy X Family gave us this week. It was just a normal day in their new lives. Yes, it was all very important. This episode established their family dynamic and overall relationships with each other. The whole thing was about them spending time with each other, that was the point. It’s necessary that this stuff is established now so that things to come make sense and flow naturally. To make a long story short: It has to happen. I acknowledge that. But it doesn’t change that I, by and large, found it boring. I’ve even prepared a few specifics after the break to help explain it.

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Dance Dance Danseur – 3 [What Does It Mean to Be Manly]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Dance Dance Danseur

Welcome everyone to week 3 of Dance Dance Danseur! This one is simultaneously the most interesting, and concerning, episode yet. Why? Well lets jump in and find out!

Now normally I start these posts talking about the production, but you know what Danseur looks like. It looks good! So instead lets skip straight into what happened this week: Bullying. Conceptually I rather like it. This episode went all in on Jumpei struggling with being “cool”, being “masculine”, and that’s exactly what I wanted from Danseur. Not just some glossed over “I dance, everyone is cool with it”, but an actual full on look as to why Jumpei feels this way. Why he’s concerned and insecure about it and why there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. And I got that! By the end, Jumpei has started down that road. He has begun to figure out that being a “man” isn’t about being a fighter or whatever. It’s about being true to yourself and your beliefs. The only concerning thing about it is how Danseur got there.

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Now and Then, Here and There – 10 [Prelude to Chaos]- Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Now And Then, Here And There, Throwback Thursday

Welcome back everybody, to another (late) week of Now and Then, Here and There! This week Hamdo starts to go on the offensive, Lala Ru gets found out and Sara finally returns to the screen. We have a lot to talk about so lets jump right in!

Off the bat, there were some cool set pieces this week. I was not prepared for Hellywood to take off into the air, not for the underground cave of water in the desert. Now and Then truly does have some great locations and scenery! On top of that, Hellywood also had some good animation behind its flight. A lot of work went into the detailing and selling us on the weight of the structure, plus the debris falling off of it. The weakest part was just the interior shots being largely stills with some shaking, but I don’t begrudge them those. Now and Then has never been a “sakuga” shown in my opinion, so it’s managed my expectations well there. All I ask is that it keep up this picturesque style of visuals for the last remaining episodes to come.

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Spy X Family – 2 [Secure a Wife]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Spy X Family

Right away I want to apologize for the lateness of this, Easter Weekend played havoc with my schedule. Excuses out of the way though, welcome to my 2nd show of the season, Spy X Family! This week continues the adventures of Anya and Loid as the search for the perfect wife to round out their dysfunctional little family. So without further ado, lets dive into it!

Before we get into all the good stuff Spy X Family gave us this week, and there’s a lot, I want to mention my only real negatives with the episode: Production. The show doesn’t look bad by any stretch of the imagination. There are much blander, much less animated series airing right now. However this is a step down from the first episode in my opinion. Part of that has to do with with darkness in Loid’s harbor scene. I harp on this a lot with Now and Then, Here and There as well. You have to light these things properly! The other issue though is that a lot of the models this episode felt… off? Not massively so, I want to be very clear when I say these are not huge problems. It’s just in places like the party scene Yor and Loid’s overall designs felt a tad stiff.

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Dance Dance Danseur – 2 [I Can’t Be Friends With Someone Like Him!]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Dance Dance Danseur

Hello everyone and welcome to the first post of the first covered show of the new season! What I have here is Dance Dance Danseur, MAPPA’s latest attempt to make me like them as a studio. And you know what? It’s working. Lets dive on into it and talk about why!

Starting off I want to praise MAPPA for the visuals in this episode. I rag on them a lot, mostly because it’s amazing just how low their production can get at times. But in others, like here, it looks fantastic. From both an animation, background and direction standpoint, Dance Dance Danseur was gorgeous. I loved how creative Munehisa Sakai got with some of the scenes. His willingness to go wide to better show off the ballet, how it completely switched color pallets, lighting and editing style when the lead dancers came out in Swan Lake. Or the way Jumpei’s legs moved in his alleyway ballet scene, or Miyako’s almost ephemeral quality in the forest, or, or, or, etc. There were to many good scenes this episode to list. And while that may result in Dance Dance Danseur burning out later on, for now? I love it.

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Now and Then, Here and There – 9 [In The Chasm] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Now And Then, Here And There, Throwback Thursday

Welcome everyone, to another week of Now and Then, Here and There! This week Lala Ru stumblse upon paradise, Hamdo escalates the situation and Shu learns that war is complicated. So without further ado, lets dive in!

This week Now and Then’s overarching theme really begins to unveil itself. What do I mean by that? Up until now, Now and Then has cast a wide net with its theming. We’ve seen how the older generations problems and actions can trickle down and effect the younger generations, perpetuating the troubles that came before. How war damages and brings down everyone, even those at the very top like Hamdo, benefiting no one. Even how it can destroy the land! And while all of these revolve around war in some way or another, I’ve been curious where Now and Then would choose to go with it. Would we get an idealistic, but ultimately naïve and hollow, happy ending? After this week, with the nuanced way Now and Then presents both sides of the argument, I don’t think we will. And I’m kinda excited for that.

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Now and Then, Here and There – 8 [Two Lone Souls] – Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Now And Then, Here And There, Throwback Thursday

Welcome everyone, to another week of Now and Then, Here and There! This is a big week for me. Not because the episode was pretty good, though that did help, but because something I’ve long awaited for finally happened. What was it? Well lets dive in and find out!

The big news of course is this: Lala Ru talked! And did stuff! And it was good! I know some think that I’ve been a tad harsh on her recently. That she’s supposed to be withdrawn and quiet after everything done to her by Hamdo and others. But this episode is proof of what I was saying before. About how you can animate and emote withdrawn or quiet characters without making them emotionless dolls. Just look at all of the subtle movements Lala Ru takes throughout the episode. Clutching on to Shu as they drive, the way her voice sounds when talking about her past or how she reacts to Shu’s proclamations. Just the fact that she responds when he asks her questions but not when talking about himself is, alone, a sign of her mental state. This episode is everything I wanted now that she was free of Hamdo.

And I loved it.

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Now and Then, Here and There -7 [Night of Flight]- Throwback Thursday

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Now And Then, Here And There, Throwback Thursday

Welcome back everyone to another week of Now and Then, Here and There! There’s a lot of posts coming, what with the new season, so glad you were able to find this one. We have a fair bit to talk about this week so lets jump into it!

Starting off, and god do I hate to bring it up again but its just so obvious, the visuals. Now and Then is wildly inconsistent here. When properly framed, lit and contextualized, Now and Then looks gorgeous. Just look at Nabuca confronting Boo, Shu breaking the glass or Nabuca finding Shu at the end. All of these are beautiful shots! The background and foreground contrast nicely, I love the colors they use, it’s great! And yet in the exact same episode, right before some of these shots even, we get pitch blackness. I’m talking about Shu climbing out of the pit, or running through Hellywood, etc. This isn’t just darkness, it’s… advanced darkness. I literally cannot see a thing and that’s just not acceptable. I don’t know what happened with Now and Then, if it’s just my copy or what, but it could look something special if it fixed this.

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