Tag: Summer 2022

Yofukashi no Uta Anime Review 68/100

by Lenlo, posted in Anime Reviews, Finished Series: Romance, Reviews by Lenlo, Yofukashi no Uta

Vampires. Anime absolutely loves vampires. From Monogatari to Jojo, Mars Red to Vlad Love. Something about this western monster has captured Japan’s imagination so much that we see it absolutely everywhere. Some try to play it straight, going for a horrific, tragedy stricken tale. Others lean more into the romantic side, the tragic and highly sexualized monster. It is in between these two that we find Yofukashi no Uta. Brought to you by the same mangaka who created Dagashi Kashi, Kotoyama, animated at “LIDENFILMS” and directed by Tomoyuki Itamura of Monogatari fame with Tetsuya Miyanishi overseeing as chief director, Yofukashi no Uta straddles that vampire line. It tries be about the romance while letting the horror peek in around the edges. To be both an exploration of humanity through the monster, as well as a sweet romantic treat. The question is: Does it achieve both? Or neither? Lets find out.

Be warned, this review contains minor unmarked spoilers for Yofukashi no Uta. It also contains major spoilers in some sections however these will be heavily marked to avoid accidents. Continue reading “Yofukashi no Uta Anime Review 68/100” →

Yofukashi no Uta – 13 [Call of the Night]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Yofukashi no Uta

Welcome everyone, to the big finale of Yofukashi no Uta! Well… I say big finale, it’s barely even a finale. For all that Yofukashi has built up to it, it feels like barely anything has happened and I’m just sitting here wonder… is that it. Why? Well lets dive in and talk about it!

In case it wasn’t obvious, my reaction to this finale was very lukewarm. In a word, it was anticlimactic. And the best reason I can give for that is it feels like, with this finale, that Yofukashi has only just started. It took 13 episodes of meandering about to figure out where the show wanted to go. And right when it figures that out… it ends. Right when Ko has finally resolved that yes, he wants this relationship, its done. That’s fine, it needed to happen with how long the show took to get here. But personally? I was really hoping for some kind of confrontation to go with it. Something that would set up the future of the story, to make me excited to either go read it or for another season. Maybe Anko and Nazuna could’ve met, since both are already aware of each other. Something like that.

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Yofukashi no Uta – 12 [My Mom’s Out Tonight]

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

Welcome all, to the penultimate week of Yofukashi no Uta! Remember how I said last week was an important week because Yofukashi had split itself in two directions? Well this week is Yofukashi’s answer, and it’s a damn good one if you ask me. So let’s jump right into it!

Like I said, my immediate reaction is that this was a really good episode for Yofukashi. Up until now, I was concerned about what kind of finale Yofukashi would have. Would it lean more into the relationship and be a romance, or pivot to a more serious vampire narrative? Both are solid choices, but sticking in the middle would accomplish neither. It had to pick a side, and this week Yofukashi did just that: It picked vampires. Not only that though, it worked hard to fully transition us from a goofy romance into that choice. Now sure, it did so in a roundabout fashion. The way it initiated this transition with the sudden introduction of Anko was rather awkward. But this week took everything she introduced and then focused on it as much as it could. No goofy romance, no jokes to break up the tension. Just dedicated thematic exploration.

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Yofukashi no Uta – 11 [Do You Know What a Vampire Is?]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Yofukashi no Uta

Welcome everyone, to what might be one of the most important weeks of Yofukashi yet. Why is it important? Because this week places us at a crossroads. Yofukashi can go down either one and be decent. Or it can attempt both, and achieve neither. So without further ado, let’s dive into it.

So, why do I say that Yofukashi as at a crossroads right now? Why is this episode so important? Well if you’ll remember back, waaaay at the beginning, I said probably something along the lines of: “Yofukashi will have to choose whether it wants to be about relationships or vampires”. And for the past few weeks, it’s chosen relationships pretty consistently. It’s brought vampires into them sure, we have a whole cadre of vampire waifus. But they all existed to examine relationships in one way or another, some more successfully than others. Well that changes this week. Because this week introduces the first thing that could be called an “Antagonist” to a series that’s otherwise not really had one. That antagonist would be the Vampire Hunter, Anko Uguisu. Or at least as close to a vampire hunter as Yofukashi is willing to take it so far.

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RWBY Ice Queendom – 11 [Light in Shadows]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, RWBY: Ice Queendom

Welcome everyone, to the penultimate episode of RWBY: Ice Queendom. This episode is the climax, the big finale, wrapping up the story and leaving us an epilogue for who knows what. Was it any good? Did I get the emotional high I wanted? Did Nagata make a return? To at least one of those, the answer is yes. Let’s dive in.

Starting off, the easy one: Nagata does indeed return. And it looks fantastic. It’s obvious that even he is struggling with the production, you need only look at his scenes to see they aren’t what they could be. But what we did get is still so far above the rest of the show, it’s enough to make you weep for what could have been. It’s like Shaft contracted him for one good scene per girl almost. With this week being Yang’s time to shine. And shine she did, as we got to see her semblance in all its glory. Watching her smash the giant robot was something I’ve been waiting for Queendom to do ever since they introduced it. You probably remember me complaining about the robot fights prior to this. Well we finally got it. And as for the rest of the show? As a RWBY fan, it works.

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Yofukashi no Uta – 10 [Enlarge the Peeping-Tom Photos]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Yofukashi no Uta

Welcome everyone to another (incredibly late) episode of Yofukashi no Uta! Apologies for the delay on this one, very busy Friday for me. Enough with that though, you’ve been waiting long enough for this episode so lets just jump right into it!

Starting off, lets talk about what Yofukashi is trying to be about this week. Like last episode, this one is trying to explore and humanize another of our new vampire side-ladies, Midori Kohakobe. And in doing so, it hopes to explore another facet human relationships and why we desire them so. This weeks topic? Attention. The desire to be desired, to be wanted, to have people look at you. This is a good topic, I think it’s something everyone feels at some point or another. That innate desire for recognition, to be seen. Whether it be for vanity or simple self expression, it exists in a lot of forms. On paper this sounds great. It’s right up Yofukashi’s alley and very similar to Seri’s episode. But in practice this week fell short for one very simple reason: Midori isn’t the main character of the episode.

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RWBY Ice Queendom – 10 [Mirrors of Darkness]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, RWBY: Ice Queendom

Welcome back everyone, to another week of RWBY: Ice Queendom! This episode continues the trend of “I like this narrative, dear god it looks like shit”. Sometimes I wonder what’s happened at Shaft that this kind of mismanagement has become their norm, but that’s outside the scope of this post. So without further ado, lets dive into the episode!

Like usual, this episode looked like garbage. And I’m not just talking about the regular jank Queendom has had throughout the season. Oh no, this week was extra bad. If you check the episode credits, you’ll find that they fused the 2nd Key Animation and Douga roles. For those who don’t know what that means, they basically merged the initial creation and cleanup steps for part of the process. On top of that, it’s like the compositing team didn’t even show up for work this week, so badly do the animation fit into their surroundings. All of this on it’s own isn’t anything to new, Queendom has looked like shit before. But what makes it worse is that this week, Hiroto Nagata and others made their return! So spliced between all this shit are moments that look great. And you’re just left wondering… Why can’t the rest look like that?

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Yofukashi no Uta – 9 [No Fair]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Yofukashi no Uta

Welcome everyone, to another week of Yofukashi no Uta! This is another decent week for our vampire waifu’s if you ask me. Remember when I said the new girls were just cardboard cutouts and I was hoping they got some development? Well this week sort of gives us that, though only for Seri, who was already the most fleshed out of them all. I’ll take what I can get though! Now lets jump in to the episode.

Production wise this week was just fine. There were some nice closeups, some interesting angles at times and one amusing slow mo shot. But most of the rest were rather dull wide shots of our characters in one of the like… 3 locations of the episode. And the only time Yofukashi really branched out and tried to do something different, it ended up flooding the screen in singular splotches of neon. It reduced all the nice shading and lighting I enjoyed into blobs of color and was just really off putting. To be honest, it’s kind of disappointing how uninspired Yofukashi has been with its color palette. Always playing things safe, with the few times it does anything else just being flooding the screen in color without any kind of nuance. This could have been one of the best looking shows of the season! Instead it’s just kind of… there.

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RWBY: Ice Queendom – 9 [My Dream, Your Dream]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, RWBY: Ice Queendom

I’ve tried my best to be positive about RWBY: Ice Queendom up through now. As a character study on Weiss, I still believe it’s not bad! But this week… This was not a good week, for a lot of reasons. Let’s dive in and talk about them.

Starting off, dear god did this episode look bad. I’m not talking about just bad or janky animation, that’s been present since the beginning. Though that does of course exist as well. No, rather what I want to draw attention to is just the half-assed, absurdly lazy direction and storyboarding of the episode. Stuff like Yang just standing in the center of the screen while the camera slowly pans upwards. Or the incredibly static nature of a train and its occupants sliding across the screen. Stuff like that. They even managed to make a train crash boring and unimpactful! And you can find this basically everywhere. From the small Ruby and Weiss fight to Yang’s motorcycle to Smol!Weiss and Pyrrha shooting out of the train cars. It all feels like the most basic, straight forward, lazy way the scenes could have been presented.

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Yofukashi no Uta – 8 [All of Us]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Yofukashi no Uta

Welcome back to another, delayed, episode of Yofukashi no Uta! while last week was a bit of a disappointment with its new cast, this week more than made up for it. Relationships progress, Nazuna and Ko have meaningful conversations, and we even get our first new male character. A lot happens! So without further ado, lets dive into the episode.

Like I said, as a follow up to last week I actually really liked this one. The introduction of a timer feels like it has kickstarted Nazuna and Ko a bit. They are finally starting to be proactive about this relationship rather than just languishing together and let it happen. I think that’s really important for a romance! If the leads are just standing around doing nothing, reacting to situations and letting that inform their feelings, then as a viewer it feels like no progress is being made. At least if they are actively trying to do stuff, even if they fail, it feels like things are moving. It’s effectively the difference between the characters being reactive vs proactive. And in a story like this, I feel that proactive is almost always better. So long as one of them is that way at least.

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