Tag: Fall 2022

Spy X Family Parts 1/2 Anime Review – 71/100

by Lenlo, posted in Anime Reviews, Finished Series: Slice of Life/Drama, Reviews by Lenlo, Spy X Family

Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: A spy, an assassin, a telepath and a dog walk into the most prestigious academy Fake East Germany has to offer in an effort to prevent a war. No? Well how about the one involving the Secret Police’s sister? Still no? Not even the one about M. Bison’s kid in a dodgeball tournament? Huh. Well strap in, because you’re about to. Originally created by Tatsuya Endou, directed by Kazuhiro Furuhashi and animated as a joint effort by Wit Studio and CloverWorks, I give to you this seasons Slice of Life darling, SpyXFamily. This review covers both Parts 1 and 2 because they are a split cour single season. I don’t care how MAL and Anilist split them up, that’s what they are. Now buckle up, because we’re going to dive right into this.

Be warned, this review contains minor unmarked spoilers for SpyXFamily. It also contains major spoilers in some sections however these will be heavily marked to avoid accidents. Continue reading “Spy X Family Parts 1/2 Anime Review – 71/100” →

Mob Psycho 100 S3 Anime Review – 85/100

by Lenlo, posted in Anime Reviews, Finished Series: Action, Mob Psycho 100 III, Reviews by Lenlo

The year is 2016. My Hero Academia has just aired its first season, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is in the middle of my favorite season, and Yuri on Ice is enthralling the world with Cute Boys Figure Skating, among many others. It is a good year for anime. And in the middle of all of this is a new show from an a small studio, neither of which you have probably heard of. That show is Mob Psycho 100, that studio is Studio BONES, the director Yuzuru Tachikawa, and that previous line a joke. Please don’t crucify me. Fast forward 6 years to 2022 and Mob Psycho 100 is finally coming to an end. It feels rare for adaptations to actually get an ending these days. Most don’t even make it to a 2nd season. But Mob Psycho 100 has done just that. And it was glorious. Lets jump into it!

Be warned, this review contains minor unmarked spoilers for Mob Psycho 100. It also contains major spoilers in some sections however these will be heavily marked to avoid accidents. Continue reading “Mob Psycho 100 S3 Anime Review – 85/100” →

Spy X Family – 13 [First Contact]

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

Welcome everyone, to the grand finale of SpyXFamily! This week was a massive surprise for me. The jokes were minimal, the pacing slow, the subject matter serious. This episode is perhaps the most serious across its 26 episode run. And for me, that’s a good thing. Now lets jump into it!

So in case it wasn’t obvious, this was a serious episode and I loved it. I’ve long wanted SpyXFamily to treat it’s premise with the severity it deserves. Even just a one-off side episode would have been enough! Just anything to remind us, and to make use take seriously the fact, that the backdrop of this cutesy family friendly Slice of Life is the freaking Cold War. And what I got wasn’t just some random side episode with wacky tennis spectacle. Instead it was 20 minutes of Loid finally meeting the central villainous figure of the series: Donovan Desmond. And you know what? I loved it. This was easily my favorite episode of the season, which is funny considering how little actually happens in it. It’s just a meeting, a first contact if you will. Nothing more. But I loved it anyways. Lets talk about why.

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Mob Psycho 100 III – 12 [Confession ~The Future~]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Mob Psycho 100 III

This is it everyone, welcome to the grand finale of Mob Psycho 100. Not just of this arc, or this season, but of the entire show. There will be no season 4. No special. No movie. This is it. Lets dive into it.

Overall I thought this was a great finale. It’s all about Reigen and Mob, it was their episode, going so far as to even cut out Mob’s confession to Tsubomi so that it could focus on just them. A good decision I think! Their relationship is sort of the bedrock for the entire series. Mob came to Reigen to get help understanding himself and his powers, and ever since then its been a slow progression of coming to accept himself. For it to culminate in them both having a heart to heart talk, no more subtext just getting it all out in the open, was good. I think that ??? Mob got a bit shafted in his presentation, not going to lie. The sense of dread surrounding him was diminished compared to his earlier appearances like in Season 1. But Reigen’s run (Give me 100% Reigen cowards) made up for that.

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Spy X Family – 12 [The Role of a Mother and Wife]

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

Welcome everyone, to a super late SpyxFamily episode! Apologies for that. I didn’t get back from a wedding until Monday, and then had to get the Seasonal Preview and Hikaru no Go review out. Not to mention the end of year Anime of the Year post we have coming up. Suffice to say, this is a busy time of year in every sense. Now without further ado, onto the episode!

Starting off, the first half of this episode was all about Loid and Yor, and it was great. My big issue with SpyXFamily has always been how few and far between its moments of character progression are. How the same jokes become stale and it becomes afraid to change the status quo. And in a way, even with this segment, it still isn’t changing the status quo. The very end of the segment has Yor saying she forgot what happened because she was drunk, though it did sort of walk that back by saying they had the conversation again. But it doesn’t change that, on some small level, progress did happen in these two’s relationship. Loid opened up and let Yor in, telling her about his own childhood. Not some WISE story, his actual parents and his experience growing up in a war. It’s slow, glacially slow, but still progress.

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Mob Psycho 100 III – 11 [Mob 3 ~Trauma~]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Mob Psycho 100 III

Welcome everyone, to the penultimate episode of Mob Psycho 100! I apologize for this delay, I’m attending a wedding right now so writeups had to go on the backburner a bit. No idea when this will be out but I will try my best. Excuses aside though, lets dive into the episode!

Starting off, lets talk about the only real problem with the episode first: Suzuki. I was not a fan of him in Season 2. I thought him very simple, very dull, and generally not a great foil for Mob. And that carries over to his portrayal here in Season 3 as well. I am predisposed to not enjoy him. And this becomes a pretty big problem when you consider just how much of this episode was about him. Suffice to say, I wasn’t particularly engaged with him. Yet despite that, I think Mob Psycho did a good job of correcting its past mistakes and making me care about him. It focused on his relationship with his son. His family. The things he gave up for his power. It was… surprisingly poignant, and brought a lot of depth to his character that I wasn’t expecting. So good job Mob Psycho!

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Spy X Family – 11 [The Unwavering Path]

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

Welcome everyone, to another episode of Spy x Family! This week is another example of the perfect Spy x Family episode experience. We got great action, incredible wholesomeness, poignant spy moments and fantastic animation. Despite my criticisms of some of the recent episodes, this is the stuff I watch this show for. So without further ado, lets dive into it.

Right off the bat, it’s obvious that this episode looked fantastic. Not just in it’s wild full-body movements during the tennis match, though those were great as well, but also the interesting camera angles used to frame them as well as the great effects work during Yor’s scene at the end. Touches like angling the shot through the sniper scope, closeups of the racket as we follow the balls path, etc etc. Simply put, this was one of, if not the most, visually engaging episodes Spy x Family has had across it’s 24 episode run up to this point. I know it’s not good to hope for this on every episode, it’s just an unreasonable demand. But god damn when Spy x Family wants to it becomes just as much a visual treat as Chainsaw Man and Mob Psycho this season.

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Mob Psycho 100 III – 10 [Mob 2 ~Rival~]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Mob Psycho 100 III

Welcome everyone, to another week of Mob Psycho! This was an interesting week, a rather contentious one in fact. Looking around I seem to be the only person with a lukewarm impression of it. Why am I not super hyped? What could possibly have hurt it for me? Lets dive in and talk about it.

Starting off, this episode really isn’t what I was expecting. Now that doesn’t have to be a bad thing! Surprises can be very good in fact. If everything goes the way the audience suspects all the time, you will start to lose their interest. The issue here is more that Mob Psycho surprised me not by tackling something in a completely different way, but by avoiding it all together. What does that mean? Well we’ve known Mob was going to explode, it’s in the previews, the title of the show, it was obvious. The question was only ever why. I expected, and hoped, it would be because of Tsubomi. And that his final emotional hurdle would be dealing with rejection when he has faced acceptance by the rest of the cast across the season. I thought that would be really poignant. Instead? Instead he gets hit by a car.

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Spy X Family – 10 [The Underground Tennis Tournament: The Campbelldon]

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

Welcome back, to another episode of SpyxFamily! This is late, I know, I’m really slowing down this holiday season and I apologize for that. Lots of irons in the fire at the moment. Still, the show must go on, so lets dive into it!

First up, the animation. SpyxFamily is a very… inconsistently animated show. Some episodes look absolutely gorgeous, from how they are directed down to the individual cuts. I’m talking stuff like Yor running through town to the dog park with Bond. When it wants to, SpyxFamily can be one of the visually strongest anime of the season. But only when it wants to. The rest of the time it looks simply average, with nothing particularly impressive to catch the eye. Luckily for us this week they cared. Because these tennis shots look great. The direction it pretty standard, but the way Fiona and Loid move, the posing, the effects work on stuff like the rocket rackets, it all more than makes up for it. This isn’t the best looking SpyxFamily episode, not by a long shot. But it’s definitely a good one.

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Mob Psycho 100 III – 9 [Mob 1 ~Moving~]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Mob Psycho 100 III

Welcome everyone, to the beginning of the end for Mob Psycho! That’s right, this episode is the start of the final arc in the series. A lot is getting set up and a lot is about to go down, so lets jump right into it!

So. The final arc. It’s core is exactly like I guessed, though I won’t act like it wasn’t obvious: Tsubomi is moving and Mob wants to ask her out and it clearly won’t go the way he want. Personally? I found the entire thing incredibly cute. I loved seeing just how much Mob had grown up, how he handles this sort of thing and how different he is compared to the 1st season. Just look at the soccer scenes for instance, taken straight from the first few episodes but now with an entirely different outcome. No longer is Mob the wallflower, the third wheel, that useless kid on your team no one cares about. Now he can contribute! He can reach out, ask for advice, talk to people. My little boy is all grown up! The only surprising part of it all is why Mob’s confession failed.

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