#also we have two (2) outright yuri shows here like. in one season?!

[mimikyuno]

oh the himejoshis are eating good this spring 🛐 🌸

[tieria-erde]

i finished rewatching gwitch! here are some of my final thoughts, broadly and in no particular order

~7.5/10 show. i enjoyed it a lot and i would recommend it to others even if i feel that it fell flat thematically in a number of places

suletta is an unbelievably good protagonist. i do not have particularly charitable opinions on the portrayal of women in the gundam franchise, so when this show was first announced i deliberately kept my expectations very low. i'm glad i did, but i really didn't need to, because holy shit they knocked it out of the fucking park with suletta

similarly, i still can't believe that they made a yuri gundam and the yuri is FANTASTIC. they got lesbian married and everything. no notes. when the finale first aired i saw a baffling number of people complaining online that gwitch was queerbait, ostensibly for not having an outright confession or kiss scene. to those people i have to say: GOD YOU ARE STUPID

i started this rewatch because this show's stance on parents has bothered me since i first watched it, and it made it hard to properly recommend it to people. i will, eventually, make a very long post about this, but i think i've successfully made peace with my grievances about this specific topic, for the most part

...however i still find the trajectory of guel's character arc egregiously disappointing

this show did not spend enough time on earth

when gwitch was first airing i saw someone point out how norea expresses a really potent grief over the idea that "earthian lives are cheaper than spacians'", and that line hits really hard, but then... the show proves her right by having earthian characters be basically the only deaths in the cast by the end. that's always stuck with me. i mean, it's fucking true, jesus

i said something midway through season 2 along the lines of "the rest of this show is too heavy to have earned the ending it got" and i don't know if i still believe that. for one, i've said this before and i'll say it again: the lesbian gundam show ending with a literal rainbow light show is FUCKING FUNNYYY

for two, i do think it became kind of hard for this show to kill its characters off at a certain point because they REALLY wanted to drive the point home of "you can't run from your past mistakes, you have to move forward" and a character kind of has to be alive to move forward... oops!

i ALSO said something about "run and gain one, move forward and gain two" being a "flawed adage" or something, and that was kind of me misremembering certain aspects of the story... i thought they condemned prospera's little motto at some point, but it actually continued to in fact basically be the message of the whole show...

i found it kind of hard to connect whatever prospera was doing to the political goings-on of the plot... to be honest, throughout the whole quiet zero thing, i kept thinking to myself, "god, i wish we were looking at the political situation on earth instead right now"

I Should Read The Tempest BTW

this show's character writing is straight up fantastic. i feel like almost every single character was memorable and charming in some way

for some reason, though, ojelo's name is only said once in this entire show. i'm not kidding. they tell you his name when they introduce him and then never say it again. i know this because i heard his name in his first appearance, forgot it, and then spent the rest of the show waiting for them to say it again so i could remember it. it never happened. do you know who ojelo gabel is? no, you don't. because they ONLY SAY HIS NAME ONCE.

also, unpopular opinion, but i don't really care for prospera. i don't know if i'm insane for this, but after watching it multiple times i STILL don't understand that scene where all the ghosts from the prologue are talking to prospera and suletta's like "you chose eri's future over revenge, and i can't fault you for that!" like, holy shit, i genuinely don't get it. she didn't do that at all. she killed people? she actively declared that she wanted to get revenge on delling rembran and Kill Him? am i missing something. this scene doesn't make any sense. if this scene makes sense to you legit please explain it to me

i had fun yay ^_^ ok thanks for reading

[novarasalas]

Second Look Review: Launch Date

I’m back!

Yeah, it’s been almost two months since the season dropped, but I think that’s how long it took me to get around to post my S7 reviews too.

I’m not gonna lie, one of the reasons this has taken so long is that I was so upset in the aftermath. I knew there was no point in trying to go back and have another look until I calmed down. 

And I have calmed down. And here we are.

So we start with my thoughts on episode 1, categorized into sections to cut down on the rambling. 

- - - - - 

Old school Voltron

-

The old school Voltron gag was a welcome surprise. Hunk's run down was perfect.

Hunk: Did you watch it, Lance? Ah, it’s so cool! It’s so cool! 

They got you spot on, but Coran is like, he’s all superserious and stuff. And Allura is a little....I dunno, she’s different. 

Keith is friendly! He’s happy all the time.

I mean, they got it so wrong.

For all its flaws,  let's agree on one thing:  this run of Voltron was a definite improvement over the original.

-

Girl Time

-

First, Romelle says this:

Romelle: She has a date...with pointy chin!

And I’m like...which one?

And I still love Colleen.

In fact, I’m in love with all of the girls. There’s so many of them, and they’re all so different. The great diversity of characters really did become a strong point in the show. It’s all very natural, not forced or stereotyped. These could be real people that you meet in your everyday life.

And how about the mall? I’d briefly forgotten that we’re in the post-apocalyptic stage on Earth.

Once again, we’re not really given a time frame on all of this. In my mind, it’s been nearly a year since their last battle. And in that time, Earth hasn’t rebuilt much. It’s to be expected, but I found it a bit jarring. Points for realism, I suppose.

Here's the episode spanning gag again:

Pidge is a terrible goblin child and I love her.

I gotta say, I love the outfits they all chose for Allura.

This one:

It’s very 1980s female-power-executive. I remember this style well; I still have nightmares about mandatory shoulder pads. It was...not a good look.

And this:

This was the exact outfit my mom stopped me from wearing to the 1st grade, c. 1993. Actually, though, it looks very familiar, like it’s a callback to something I should remember outright, but I can’t for the life of me recall. It’s very 80s/90s, though.

-

Keith

-

Now, before I get into the meat of this, I wanna travel back all the way to Season 3.

Season 3 is where I started watching the show. I’d been hearing that it was good, but I hesitated before trying it out. After all, it was Voltron. Probably just made to sell toys like the old show, and it was for kids anyway.

But I started hearing something more, something about...Klance? A bedroom scene?

I’m perpetually late to the game when it comes to media. I had just come off of my Yuri on Ice high (holy shit they did that!), and with as much as I was hearing about these two boys getting together, well...I just had to investigate.

I started out with the first episode, as one does, and I was hooked. So I watched the next, and the one after that, and the one after that. After the fourth episode, I took the internet to find the exact moment of the aforementioned Keith and Lance interaction. Because if these two pull it together in such a short amount of time, I said to myself, I will be very impressed.

…...haaaaa…..

Well, that was not as advertised. Lance goes to Keith for reassurance, and Keith can’t deliver because he’s awkward as hell. It showed me two young men insecure in their roles – roles that they were now set up to grow into.

This scene in this episode? That’s a callback.

Lance comes to Keith for reassurance, not because he’s the leader, but because he’s a friend. And Keith delivers, because now he’s grown and matured.

I was very, very happy to see these two interacting this way. To be honest, I was so sick of their stupid rivalry. It was overdone in the first episode, let alone the rest of the series up to this point. So this was a very, very welcome change.

And the way the conversation goes? This tells me that they’ve talked about this before. Even though Keith is much better as this sort of thing now, he’s still not that great. Yet, here he is with the exact right words for Lance. Not only is he remembering an unseen-to-us conversation, but he’s remembering “the bedroom scene”, that one moment before that he couldn’t help Lance.

They’ve both had such good growth throughout the series.

…..seriously, y’all had me thinking they kissed in S3. Or at lease a confession. I still have no idea which show y’all were watching.

Now, I want to talk about Keith himself.

Shiro said to “spend time with the ones you love.” And here’s Keith, alone. Again.

When I watched this the first time, I just kind of rolled my eyes. He’s back on his loner bullshit, I see. And as much as I loved his talk with Lance, I was disappointed when he showed up. I thought it would either be Shiro, or Krolia.

At the time, I put it aside. I'm and introvert like Keith, so to see him enjoying some solitude in a familiar setting wasn't off-putting for me. He's been running around the world, checking up on defenses and being, generally,  a good leader. He's gotta be exhausted from all that, right?

As for no one besides Lance coming to see him,  well….I mean, after all, Krolia and Shiro are going back into space with him. And Shiro is a damned workaholic that probably has a lot of stuff to oversee before take off. I figured at the time that the rest of the season would fix this.

Welp.

-

The Date

-

We have to talk about this.

I don’t want to, thought.

This is the part that tripped me up. I would start this review, then stop when I got to here, and I did that several times.

It just hurts.

When I first watched this whole sequence, my heart was full. They look so good, all dressed up. Everything was soft and sweet, and it was all so tender and loving.

And it wall happened the way I figured it would, with Allura talking about family, and feeling alone. And then Lance offered to be her family.

He kinda...that’s kinda….he proposed, really.

Lance: Allura, I love you. I have for a long time. I wanna be your family.

And then they kissed and it was all so great. I say that as someone that usually doesn’t care about romance in media at all. It’s usually so cheesy and out of character for both parties and completely unrealistic. But this got me feeling some kinda way, and for once, I was into it.

Then the scene ended with Allura returning to find out about the Altean and Haggar, and I actually said out loud to myself “Jesus...they’re not gonna let her have anything, are they?”

And how.

Watching it now, my heart is hollow.

Of course, I see that the moment of her healing the tree and the rest of the garden was foreshadowing, and I picked up on that the first time.

It didn’t have to be like this, though.

I’ve consumed a lot of media in my time, from books and comics, to movies and video games. Every story has it’s ups and downs, it’s happy and sad. If it’s a story that I love, thought, I deal with the sadness and press on, such is my enjoyment of it. And if one of these stories gets me down too much, I know how to back off and let myself process the situation. When I come back to them with a fresh mind, I can view the happy times in a bittersweet way.

It didn’t happen this time. I love Voltron, but this still feels like a bridge too far.

Allura was on her way to finding happiness in this new world. It was healing, to see a character that had lost so much find people to support her, people that would be there for her no matter what.

In the end, I wish this had never happened. I wish this date had been left out.

The saying is “better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

Fucking try it, then get back to me.

-

Other Things

-

As best I can, I’m going to try to leave these reviews on a happy note.

So here’s a few good things that I didn’t make room for in the review proper.

1. Hunk is the best wingman.

And so is Romelle:

2. Coran is a big damn troll.

Also...what the hell?

In summary:

It was still one of those episodes that gives you emotional whiplash,  going from happy to depressing all too quickly. But in all, it was a strong opening.  

Up next:  gather round for Honerva's learn-along.

[animesavior]

"What the hell am I doing? I’ll tell you. I'm here, and in the moment I've lived for."

-          Joe, Megalo Box (ep. 13)

The Toonami Trending Rundown for March 23-24, 2019. Megalobox ends its run with a bang as Joe and Yuri have their highly anticipated rematch at the Megalonia finals. Meanwhile, the League of Villains begin their surprise assault at the UA’s hidden campsite, Asuna learns about the Soul Translator and the Underworld as Kirito recovers from his injuries, and Meruem wishes to spend his last moments with Komugi, among other great moments.

On Twitter, Boruto and every show from Sword Art Online to Shippuden on the schedule would successfully trend in the US. #MyHeroAcademia and #SwordArtOnlineAlicization would also trend alongside these shows, but not outright.

Several character trends were also spotted from JoJo’s, Black Clover, and Hunter x Hunter, with Josuke and Rohan (As Josuke somehow cheats his way into winning a dice game), Asta (as Ladros gets back up and proceeds to pummel everyone, forcing Asta to unlock a hidden power), and Meruem (as he spends his last moments with Komugi before both succumbing to the radiation).

On Tumblr, #Toonami would trend alongside #BNHA and #Hunter x Hunter. The full list including statistics and tweet counts from the twitter app and Amr Rahmy’s Fan Screening analytics app can be seen below.

This week's feature was an inspirational speech promo titled "Stay True To Yourself". You can check it out below.

Following the success of My Hero Academia: The Two Heroes in theaters, Studio Bones and Toho Animation have announced that a second film of the hit franchise is in the works, scheduled to premiere sometime in Winter 2020. Funimation has yet to reveal plans for a theatrical release this side of the Pacific at this time.

Netflix has announced that they will be putting up the original Evangelion series up on their streaming service on June 21. Unfortunately, it has been revealed that Netflix will be doing a completely new re-dub with a new cast as Amanda Win-Lee, the show’s original ADR Director and voice of Rei, has revealed that she and the original crew will not be invited back by Netflix to reprise their roles.

Toonami creators Jason DeMarco and Gill Austin recently talked with our friend and media partner Joshua Mathieu (@jmb70056) from Toonami Squad, including how Toonami will remain competitive in this golden age of streaming, its new partnership with Crunchyroll, and the 30th anniversary of DBZ, among other things. Check it out by clicking here.

Sports anime has historically been a tough sell for the Western anime fandom. During the mid-2000’s, Toonami saw IGPX and the Prince of Tennis stumbling and Slam Dunk and Eyeshield 21 ended up pretty much DOA. While the sports genre of anime has seen a resurgence this decade thanks to the likes of Free, Yuri on Ice, and Haikyu, due to the previously mentioned shows’ focusing more on the slice of life aspects rather than the action, it perhaps came as no surprise that Toonami wasn’t really interested, and thus a sports anime joining the better cartoon show in the modern era remained elusive. That was, until Megalo Box came.

A show created to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Ashita no Joe, this futuristic reinvisioning of the classic manga and anime in Megalo Box was a notable hit and fan favorite among Crunchyroll viewers during the spring 2018 season with its acclaimed music, animation, and story among other things. The series would become one of the most requested anime to eventually air on Toonami, especially when Viz announced that they had licensed and were producing a dub at Anime Expo, and I think it’s safe to say the requests were heard loud and clear by Toonami and Viz. During New York Comic Con, Viz had announced that Megalo Box would make its debut on the better cartoon show on December 8, and the rest is history.

13 weeks of Joe’s quest to reach the top, and Megalo Box’s run is in the books. During the show’s run, the show successfully trended on Twitter in the US every single Saturday it had aired during its 13 week run, and included a character trend in Mikio during week 9. The show also showed up in the top 30 Amr Rahmy’s Fan Screening app during all 13 weeks.

Whether we will see more of Joe’s story in the future is hard to say, but overall Megalo Box overall was an enjoyable ride and it was great to see Toonami commemorate the golden anniversary of this historic franchise. Thanks for the memories.

Due to the glitch that preempted SAO last week, and with the next acquisition apparently not ready to go just yet, SAO will premiere both Episodes 7 and 8 from 12:30 to 1:30am ET. In addition, we’ll also see the conclusion of Hunter x Hunter’s Chimera Ant arc, while Boruto begins the School Trip arc, and Naruto begins The Taming of Nine-Tails and Fateful Encounters arc, among other moments. Until then, see you again next week as always.

Legend: The shows listed are ordered based on their appearance on the schedule. Show trends are listed in bold. The number next to the listed trend represents the highest it trended on the list (not counting the promoted trend), judging only by the images placed in the rundown. For the Twitter tweet counts, the listed number of tweets are also sorely based on the highest number shown based on the images on the rundown.

United States Trends:

Toonami/#Toonami [#5]

#Boruto [#15]

#MyHeroAcademia [Trended alongside #Toonami and #MegaloBox]

#SwordArtOnline [#9]

#SwordArtOnlineAlicization [Trended alongside #SwordArtOnline]

#MegaloBox [#6]

#JoJosBizarreAdventure [#6]

Josuke (From JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure) [#19]

Rohan (From JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure) [#14]

#BlackClover [#5]

Asta (From Black Clover) [#17]

#HunterXHunter [#2]

Meruem (From Hunter x Hunter) [Trended alongside #HunterXHunter]

#Shippuden [#9]

Tweet Counts:

#Toonami [6,115 tweets]

#DragonBallSuper [3,202 tweets]

#Boruto [3,823 tweets]

#SwordArtOnline [2,325 tweets]

#MegaloBox [2,212 tweets]

#JoJosBizarreAdventure [3,908 tweets]

Josuke (From JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure) [2,720 tweets]

Rohan (From JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure) [3,792 tweets]

#BlackClover [1,438 tweets]

Asta (From Black Clover) [5,159 tweets]

#HunterXHunter [2,885 tweets]

Fan Screening Counts:

#DragonBallSuper [#7 with 2803 tweets]

#Boruto [#5 with 4910 tweets]

#MyHeroAcademia [#7 with 2851 tweets]

#SwordArtOnline [#10 with 1836 tweets]

#MegaloBox [#11 with 2386 tweets]

#JoJosBizarreAdventure [#7 with 2931 tweets]

#BlackClover [#21 with 1134 tweets]

#HunterXHunter [#9 with 3018 tweets]

Tumblr Trends:

#Toonami

#BNHA

#Hunter X Hunter

Notes and Other Statistics:

#swordartonlinealicization: @WhoTrendedIT reported that @FUNimation started the trend in the US.

#MegaloBox: @WhoTrendedIT reported that @KaijiTang started the trend in the US.

#BlackClover: @WhoTrendedIT reported that @shonenjump started the trend in the US.

#AttackOnTitan: @WhoTrendedIT reported that @GoodSmile_US started the trend in the US.

Special thanks to @blanco-journey,  @coreymbarnes , @sdurso5 and others I forgot to mention for spotting some of the trends on this list.

Goodnight. Only Toonami on [adult swim] on Cartoon Network.

[kihocrystal]

Summer 2017 - Final Impressions

I may have skipped writing opinions up for Spring season (due to computer issues...), but I’m back for Summer season! I even fell behind this season because of school (hence why this is half a month late), but nonetheless, here are my thoughts on the animes I finished this past season! 

The list of shows is in the tags, and are ordered alphabetically under the cut!

Boku no Hero Academia S2 - 8.5 / 10 ( B+ )

This was another really fun season of Boku no Hero Academia! This season was twice as long as season 1, which meant double the action! Most of the action this season was actually more on the light-hearted side, as two of the main story arcs of this season were the School Tournament, and the Final Exams. These arcs got to see the cast work together and face off against one another, which helped us learn more about their characters in the process! Almost everyone had their time to shine (which was great!), but the one who had the most prominent character arc was Todoroki; we learned about his troubled past with his family, and how he changes his mindset and attitude throughout the tournament, which was great to see! Character development was definitely a big aspect of this season (as seen through both of those arcs), but there was also a good amount of overarching story set-up as well! The main arc showing this off was the Hero Killer Stain arc (which included the Internships), which was definitely my favorite part of this season! Seeing Midoriya, Todoroki, and Iida face off against him was super fun and interesting, and also kicked off some plot progression that should go towards future arcs! Midoriya has improved his super power usage over the course of this season, and we also learned about All For One, which will surely be the Big Bad of this series as a whole. The finale also teases more things about upcoming conflicts, which included Midoriya having an interesting interaction with villain Tomura (and a ship might be sailing with Ochako and Midoriya)! It’s a good thing a season 3 has already been confirmed, because an open ending like this would’ve been bad otherwise! As it stands though, it’s a really good lead-in to the next season! Season 2 was great set-up for things to come (and good fun action on its own, of course!); I probably would’ve enjoyed this season even more if there was more interactions with the villains, but that will surely come in the upcoming season 3!

Isekai Shokudou - 7.5 - 8.0 / 10 ( B- )

This was a cute little show that was a good pick for “comfy show of the season”! I enjoyed meeting the wide range of characters and seeing them try out different types of food. I also appreciated how the food reactions were very downplayed, in comparison to more over-the-top fares like Shokugeki no Souma. That being said, they go into just as much detail describing why the food is so good (at least in the earlier episodes). I also liked seeing the patrons interact with each other, including getting into fights about who’s favorite dish is better. Each character’s story about how they discovered the diner (and the occasional backstory) was enjoyable to watch; we didn’t learn much about them outside of that, but we learned more about their interests and relationships via how they interacted with others both inside and outside the restaurant. It was also nice seeing how the restaurant has been a recurring thing for years, going back to the chef’s grandparents! The story is episodic, but each individual story was a nice, occasionally heartwarming, and “comfy” thing to watch once a week. The art-style complemented the easy-going pace as well; it was warm-toned and drew the food quite nicely (even if the animation itself was standard fare). This may not be a super in-depth slice-of-life show, but it’s a good watch if you just want to relax and see some good food!  

Kakegurui - 7.5 - 8.0 / 10 ( B- )

This was the most popular show of the season on MAL (in terms of amount of people who watched it), and it’s easy to see why: high stakes (and over-the-top) gambling, the extreme reaction faces, and VERY sexual characters who get off on gambling (with yuri overtones to boot!). The more sexual scenes kind of got old for me over time, but I enjoyed all those other aspects! The crazy gambling games and characters were fun to watch (as someone who enjoys YuGiOh so much, that’s right up my alley!), and the crazy reactions added to the over-the-top appeal. Yumeko was an enjoyable lead, since she’s got just the right amount of insanity behind her also-enjoyable sweet facade (plus her seiyuu, Saori Hayami, did a great job performing her!). Many of the other main girls got some time in the spotlight too, both student council members and eventual Yumeko allies (though some student council members got more time than others, for sure). The main male lead, Suzui Ryouta, was definitely just there as an audience surrogate though, since he’s pretty bland (though he had some involvement in some gambles too!). When you get down to it, the appeal of this show is the characters and the gambling events themselves; all the story in-between just feels kind of lacking in comparison. Even the finale, which to be fair was anime original, kinda felt like a non-ending; the outcome kind of made that final gamble pointless and didn’t leave me with a good sense of conclusion (but hey, at least it’s better than a full-on cliffhanger or abrupt stopping point!). This show was far from my favorites of this season, but it was still an fun time during the gambling parts (which thankfully there’s a lot of here!). If you enjoy over-the-top gaming action and don’t mind the more sexual aspects (which can get somewhat explicit at times), you might like this one!

Made in Abyss - 9 / 10 ( A )

This is easily my pick for AOTS, no contest! It’s just a great adventure show from top to bottom, with a great sense of adventure and mystery! It also helps that the setting is one of the most unique and mysterious we’ve seen in anime for a long time! The Abyss is full of many different elements that not even the in-universe cast know of, which lends itself well to majestic scenes, along with terrifying secrets (it’s a lawless place, after all). Not to mention that the background art captures it extremely well; the huge amount of detail is a good contrast with the more square and cartoony character art-style! The soundtrack is used wonderfully, as it really gets a grand sense of ambience, mystery, and scale all at once! (Especially that one insert song they use a couple times, but first in the premiere!) The Abyss has been a cool place to learn and see more about over the course of the show, but it can definitely rear its ugly dangerous head from time to time, too. Meaning, this show can be VERY gruesome at times; there’s quite a few scenes involving large amounts of blood, and even body mutilation. It’s definitely not for the squeamish. If you can handle it, these scenes just add to the raw emotion this show has, and will have you on the edge of your seat! As for characters, Riko and Reg were a really good duo to follow in their journey! Their personalities (plus abilities and awareness of danger) balance each other well, and I enjoyed seeing them grow closer over time! Riko’s definitely an odd case since she has no fear of the Abyss despite never being able to return home, though (^^;). My other favorite was Nanachi; she was (unfortunately) only in the *last four* episodes, but her character and story really makes up for it! I enjoyed the rest of the cast too, including the cynical and crazy Ozen and her maid assistant Maruruk (she was so sad when Riko & Reg had to leave ;~;). The only real gripe I have about this show is its… inappropriate jokes at times. Lets just say there’s quite a few penis mentions (and yes, they say that word outright). However, the (double-length!) finale was crazy good; incredibly intense, fucked up, emotional, and with a hope cherry on top (including the balloon scene! I just wish I knew what was written inside!) Just learning the full details of Nanachi (& Mitty)’s backstory was REALLY fucked up… and the whole buildup and execution (I’m sorry…) of Mitty’s death brought a few tears to my eye (and I don’t cry easily when watching stuff!). The story definitely isn’t done yet (which impacts its score as a standalone season a little bit), but it had as good of a conclusion as it could’ve had. It sets up an easy-to-hate antagonist really well too, all within the span of one (double-length) episode! This show is definitely the best of this summer season (and one of my top picks for this year!), so this is a very easy recommendation! (Unless you don’t do well with gore, of course).

New Game!! S2 - 8.5 / 10 ( B+ )

I really enjoyed this second season of New Game! It definitely took a slightly different approach, as there was a bit more emotional and dramatic moments (which personally, I think is a good thing!) I also can relate to this show quite a bit, as I’m now a game design student at a community college; so as a result, seeing the girls work on a game in a variety of ways (along with the working process in general) is very interesting to me! Of course, that’s not to say this show is the most realistic portrayal of the industry, per se, but it’s still cool to see more of this slice-of-life comedy about working in a game company! This season shows the team work on a new IP from start to finish, and all the trials that happen along the way. The girls are challenged a lot more as well, especially Aoba as she gets her first go at being the main character designer (with help from Yagami-san)! The concept art contest was definitely the biggest moment for her character arc; seeing her do her best on an art piece, despite knowing she’s going to lose by default due to a sales decision, was bittersweet to see for sure (but she came out much stronger in the end)! That even tied into Yagami’s character arc as well, since she realizes she’s holding back the growth of her younger employees (;~;). Aside from that, the programming aspect got a bit more spotlight this season! Watching Nene make a game by herself, then see her as a programming intern was great to see! Speaking of interns, we got two new girls this season: Momiji and Narumi! Both of them served as good “rivals” for Aoba and Nene, even if there wasn’t fierce competition between them; I just liked seeing their different (more cynical) viewpoints and how they interacted with the other girls (and learned from them + vise versa!). This season ended on a strong note as well; seeing Yagami leave for France and all the girls going to see her off (plus Aoba’s tearful goodbye to her!) was a great emotional end to the season (and heck, it could be a good end to the series in its own right!). I definitely liked this season even more than season one, as the increased emotional depth added a lot to this cute and fun series! If you like slice-of-life comedy shows, this is a really good one to check out!

Princess Principal - 8.5 / 10 ( B+ )

This show is my runner-up for AOTS, so you know this show is a fun time! It’s always fun to see a new spy anime, and this one really delivers on the spy action! The action scenes are really well done, with fluid motions and well-choreographed fight scenes! Add in the steampunk / early 20th century-style, and you’ve got a really cool spy show! The characters’ art style (for the girls) are definitely more on the moe-side, but they were fun to watch the whole way through! The main girls’ personalities were a good mix, and really interesting to see play out (especially Ange’s deadpan shtick). They all have their own skills to contribute too; even Beatrice, with no spy training, can use her mechanical neckpiece to perfectly imitate other people’s voices! The story is mostly episodic; while there is an overarching premise of an England-esque country being torn apart by war and regimes, each episode focuses on one specific spy case. I liked this approach, as each case told a nice little story than could range from action-packed & tense, to somber & heartbreaking. Each of the main girls get some spotlight time too in at least one story, meaning we get more insight into their personal histories and personalities, which is great! The main character focus though is definitely on Ange and Princess, as they swapped places when they were kids and reunite in the spy team during the present timeline. This story is kept vague (which added a good sense of mystery to these two!) until slightly past the halfway mark; it was great finally seeing their backstory when it came time! Their relationship had a big part in the final two episodes as well; speaking of that finale, it was yet another action-packed good time! But it also was very open-ended; The main villain hasn’t been defeated, and the anti-hero spy (Zelda) in the final two episodes got away as well. At least the main group is back together, and hopefully we’ll see them in a season 2, because the ending makes this season suffer a little bit as a stand-alone show. That being said, this was one of my favorite shows of the season for sure, and you should check it out if you like steampunk-style or spy stories!

Re:Creators - 8.5 / 10 ( B+ / A- )

What a solid show! It’s not every day we see a modern anime have a definitive and satisfying conclusion, but here we are! The first episode might not have won me over initially, but it definitely grew on me over time. Exposition was a bit more heavy-handed in earlier episodes as well (which is the most common complaint I’ve seen), but it’s not as bad later on. Re:Creators had lots of themes and messages about the act of creating things and what can come from it, which was really cool to see, especially since I’m an aspiring artist myself. This show may have had a lot of action, but the characters (both creations & creators) and how they interacted with each other was one of the most enjoyable parts for me. I definitely related to the main character (Souta) quite a lot, as he had a hard time creating things (& enjoying it) due to negative circumstances (albeit his reasoning was guilt-related, via mine being self-confidence). Not to mention he admitted to having negative bitter feelings towards his friend Setsuna due to her success (which I admit I also relate too…). Seeing this kind of character reflected in an anime, in addition to seeing a variety of different creators, was definitely great to see, since I could relate to it so much! The creative process is a big part of plot progression & magic-power-logic as well, which is super unique! Seeing a bunch of different genres being represented was cool as well, including a magical girl! (though I wish Mamika was the first to die & last only 8 episodes… at least she was a great character in that short time!) Magane was probably the other standout character for me, as she had a fun personality and was a real wild card in terms of what she could do (though she took a liking towards Souta, in the end). The villain, Altair, was also a great concept for a villain, since she was a Hatsune Miku-type who could use endless material from fan-works as her powers! Each character got at least a decent amount of development/screentime, and like I mentioned before, the conclusion to Altair’s story was really well done, and even left room for an epilogue episode at the end… I love when they do that! The ride that was Re:Creators was full of action, funny moments, heartwarming and heartbreaking moments. In the end… it’s a really good original action series that’s actually complete!

Sakura Quest - 8.5 / 10 ( B+ / A- )

P.A. Works does it again with another really good “working women” series! Like Hanasaku Iroha and Shirobako before it, this show follows a group of young adult girls working to try and revitalize a small rural town. As I’m getting older, I love seeing anime with characters closer to my age range, as they try to find their place in a working adult world, just like I am! The “revitalizing a rural town” aspect was also interesting to see play out, as there’s a lot that goes into that, like trying to get your name out there (either through the web or through TV) or organizing and planning events! The story plays out over the course of the year, but there’s lots of 1-2 episode-long stories that show off all these aspects, along with highlighting certain characters (which I always love to see!). It’s definitely a slice-of-life show that has a lot of character growth, and seeing the team accomplish things and the town slowly-but-surely come together was great to watch! The cast of characters was also really nice, both main and supporting! Most of the supporting cast were elderly or adults, so seeing them bounce off the young adult main group (& seeing their ideologies clash and work together) was cool to see too! Each of the main girls had their own realizations and journeys to make while working for the Tourism Board, whether it was learning the value of small towns (Yoshino) or finding your own way to do what you want to do, even if you fall short of your dreams (Maki). By the end, all five of them definitely show off some good insight towards adult life! The finale was nice as well, showing their classic festival finally coming together and the Dragon Song showing up again (which was one of my favorite mini-arcs back during the first half). While it’s left unclear whether Manoyama gets absorbed or not, it definitely ends on a happy, conclusive ending for our characters, and the town is definitely better off than at the show’s beginning. This was an enjoyable, down-to-earth show to watch, and you should give it a try too if you like slice-of-life shows (or if you enjoyed Hanasaku Iroha or Shirobako)!

Senki Zesshou Symphogear - 7.0 - 7.5 / 10 ( C+ )

This fourth(!) season of Symphogear was a big, fun action fest, just like the other seasons! The strong points of this series have always been the bombastic fight scenes, the insert songs, and the characters, which continues to be true here too. This was the first season that I stopped trying to focus on the story, and I think my enjoyment actually improved because of it! This series’ story has always been silly and tries to top itself with every iteration, which happens again in this season; it likes to pull explanations out of thin air, and have situations work out for our heroes at *just* the right time so the show can have a cool “badass” moment. I will give AXZ credit though for at least trying to pull elements from past seasons into this season’s weapon upgrades and logic reasoning, even though it still kinda feels like an ass-pull to me (then again, other people disagree with me on this, so YMMV!). The story is definitely this series’ biggest weakpoint for me (which is why I tend to rate these seasons relatively low), but its strongest aspects are in top form and a lot of fun to watch! The fight scenes and power-ups keep finding new ways to one-up themselves, and the main Symphogear girls continue to have an enjoyable dynamic together! The new antagonist group was mostly just okay, but the core three alchemist girls (Saint-Germain, Cagliostro, and Prelati) grew on me after they turn on their master (even though I liked Cagliostro the entire time, really~). The final episodes were a fun time, as always (including Hibiki being an evil god-monster at one point!); it’s notable though that they set up some things here for the already-confirmed season 5! Symphogear definitely grew on me this season, as I realized it’s the epitome of a popcorn-action show; just shut your brain off, and enjoy the spectacle!

Shingeki no Bahamut: Virgin Soul - 8.0 / 10 ( B )

This was another fun and action-packed season of Shingeki no Bahamut! While I’m not sure whether I liked season 1 more than this one, it was still a very enjoyable watch throughout! One of the main reasons for this was the main new addition to the cast: Nina! She’s such a fun character to watch, as she’s strong, goofy, and jumps into action right away! I wasn’t the most fond of how “horny” she was for other guys, but that settled down a bit once she finds the guy of her dreams…. Which by the way, is also the main antagonist of the show, King Charioce. She falls in love with him when he’s in disguise, but even after his reveal, she still doesn’t give up her love for him (while simultaneously trying to stop his evil crimes). It’s definitely a unique approach to this type of romance for sure, but it was still a bit odd to me that she still stayed in love with him despite all the tyrannical things he did… At the very least, the execution of this subplot was pretty good, as were all the other story beats! This show has strong execution throughout (the prison escape arc was a highlight), with high quality animation (especially those dance scenes!), swelling music, and the right emotional notes. The problem for most people then will be some story beats themselves, mostly at the show’s end. A couple notable characters seem to get killed for no good reason, Charioce’s motivations try to spin him as “a good guy all along”, and his punishment at the end seems too light (as he merely just loses his eyesight); plus it feels like the people being oppressed by his rule turn right around and he gets praised as a hero for defeating Bahamut (which btw he himself summoned)! And oh yeah, Bahamut isn’t actually dead for good (leaving things open for a possible continuation). Oh well, at least the bittersweet aspect of a voiceless Nina and a sight-less Charioce being together is a nice touch. (I may sound mad here, but I didn’t hate these episodes at all ^^; ) In any case, the whole journey was fun to watch, and was full of engaging action the whole way through. I enjoyed seeing all the returning cast come back, and seeing them interact in both the upbeat and darker moments. Even though the ending won’t win over everyone, if you enjoyed the first season, you should have a good time here too!

[darkzorua100]

So after the long wait, Yu-Gi-Oh Vrains is finally here and with that, the return of my...whatever the heck I do with this blog. Impressions? I guess that’s the best word I can use for this.

So with the start of Vrains, I wanted to make this seem more professional in a way. When a new episode comes out, I’m going to give my overall thoughts in a single post, kinda like a review, and then I’m going to make fun of it/rant if I have to (hopefully not as much as ARC-V or anytime soon for that matter) in other ones if I find something to add. So to put it in a nutshell, this post is going to be the review post/my thoughts and the others that follow after it are going to be other things related to the episode. Since we also got the Opening/Ending, I’m going to give my thoughts on them too but that’s going to be in its own post as well. 

So with that all out of the way, let’s drive into the Vrains!

Episode 1: My Name is Playmaker!

So we start off the episode with Revolver in what we can assume from what he says to be the world within Link Vrains, Cyverse, which he is outright about to destroy (well that was fast). He has seemed to have sealed away the lifeforms, similar to the one we know about already but in different color, that live/protect this world. There are five of them in total, six if you want to count the AI. Speaking of the AI, he was the only one to not be captured since he seemed to not be in area at the time of the attack because he’s hated by the other ones (looking forward to know more about that). Our little AI ends up sealing the access code for Cyverse into him, affectedly kicking out Revolver, along with himself, before he could destroy the world but in the process, Revolver ends up destroying the AI’s body (does that count as a death?) and turns him into what Revolver calls a “Ignis” which btw is what this AI program is called apparently. So yay, we finally have a name for him!

So after that whole ordeal, we have a time skip to five years into the future (geez, how old is Revolver then if he looks the exact same or does he just not age because he never leaves the VR world? Also, Yusaku would have been 11 when this first happened (and what is the deal with protagonists being 11 when everything goes to hell with them?) After getting a short tour of Den City, we cut to a shot of Yusaku as Playmaker dueling against a Knight of Haoni (and kicking his ass) with the Knight questioning who Yusaku is and why he would get in their way with Ignis watching from an gargoyle statue’s eye. Yusaku (who btw I didn’t expect to have such a deep voice after being used to Yuya’s for so long 0-0) calmly answers that he’s basically a superhero that will stop the Knights whenever they should appear and that his name was Playmaker.

So after the opening, we cut to a 11-year-old (I think he’s 11 because of the timeskip) Yusaku in a field of grass. A voice of a character I think we have yet to meet yet tells him to wake up and he does so to find himself in his classroom (wow, even Yusaku falls asleep in class XD)

So to summarizes this in a nutshell, Naoki explains to Yusaku about Link Vrains and calls him out about not having any friends (you’re nice) but Yusaku just doesn’t give a crap and it is hilarious to watch how many f*cks he gives about Naoki and whatever the heck he is saying (I love this guy already). Oh and Naoki starts fanboying over Playmaker as well in front of Yusaku (cross that one off for the Vrains bingo already). But the best part would have to be when Yusaku is leaving and Naoki offers to teach him how to duel, Yusaku gives him three reasons for why he would say no to this like such a smartass and Naoki’s reaction to this is golden LMAO. However, he also gives him three goods reasons to why he could say yes as well which I really like about Yusaku’s character right away. He’s rude but he’s not doing it to be mean. He’s just thinks from a statistical point of view which I can see character development for that right away (and I’m sticking to the fact that he could be a computer program even more from this because he really doesn’t show much human emotions).

So after cutting to a scene of Ignis being chased, we now go over to the SOL technology with Akira talking to...a chess piece. I’m not even kidding, he’s talking to a chess piece which apparently is Bishop...an actual chess piece bishop (well I honestly wasn’t expecting that of all things). We also see five other pieces before they disappear so I wonder if we are going to meet the “Pawn” or the “King” piece in the future? Are they a royal family that run SOL? It has got me thinking.

Anyway, the Bishop and Akira are talking about capturing Ignis as well, their reason being that they need him to reopen Cyverse since Link Vrains was only created because of the data gathered from there and with it closed off now, their company is slowly dying because of Link Vrains slowly dying (foreshadowing to a major crash maybe?) 

We now go back to the Knight’s hideout with Revolver and his right-hand man, Specter who is telling his boss man that they found Ignis and want to keep him away from SOL so they can’t bring back Cyverse. Specter also informs Revolver about Playmaker and he doesn’t appear to know the name (I’m still hoping that he does know Yusaku though). He tells him to just ignore Playmaker for now and focus on capturing Ignis. 

Now that we know why our two other groups want Ignis, we go back to Yusaku who is just hanging out now at his partner in crime, Shoichi, work place. Yusaku is asking who those people on the billboards are and Shoichi tells him about Blue Angel and Go along with telling Yusaku about the Data Storm along with Speed Duels. It is interesting to note that when Shoichi said Speed Duel, Yusaku almost looked to be getting a flashback to that grassy land (I’m REALLY starting to think he came from Cyverse and that would explain his deck choice).

So after apologizing and Yusaku telling Shoichi he’s doing this on his own free will, he asks him if he has found out any new leads which he has being Ignis and I just find it funny how Yusaku, after hearing this, just casually outright closes up the food truck for the night XD I would have died of laughter if someone just went up to the truck at that moment, about to ask for a hot dog, and Yusaku just says “sorry, we are closed” and just slams the door on them.

So after figuring out that SOl and Hanoi want Ignis, Yusaku plans to capture the AI to use as his “trump card” (I still love the OP FYI) against them. And like freaking bosses, they are able to do this in a matter of seconds (geez, Yusaku is a freaking genius 0-0) It is also interesting to note that Yusaku seems to be able to sense it...(the foreshadowing to him being an AI as well is so easy to notice now after all the ARC-V foreshadowing). 

But before that actually happens, Akira and Bishop talk about lowing the security to be able to find Ignis which Akira refuses to do because he’s afraid of the Knights attacking while their defenses are down while at the same time, Go and Blue Angel are about to have duels for the public. Naoki is watching from the crowd with fans for Blue Angel and Go and fanboying some more. 

So regardless, SOL does a massive city wide scan for Ignis and knowing that Vrains’ defenses will be down now, Revolver, being the smug bastard that he is (I’m loving this guy already too) goes to unleash an attack with one of his knights and to find Ignis. 

But seriously, I love how smug he looks when he finds this out. I really hope he will be my new Yuri to Yusaku’s Yuya (and yes, I do still hope they are brothers but I can’t help but ship it almost...don’t judge me...)

So yeah, in a matter of seconds, the Knight and his Cracking Dragon broke through the firewall and out right just starts murdering everyone it comes across. I mean, after the whole Zarc thing and with me currently watching season 2 of Attack on Titan, I seen worse but damn, the first episode and we already have a death count? Nice Vrains. I’ll give you that.

Okay, I’ll admit, this part annoyed the hell out of me but knowing who the writer is, I’m not even surprised. So to put this into another nutshell, Blue Angel is in trouble and Yusaku goes into Vrains and saves her as Playmaker (I really hope to god this is only a one time thing for Aoi’s character -_- (same with the rest of the females but I know for a fact it isn’t and I expect Aoi to gain a crush on Playmaker from this while Aoi might hate Yusaku in the real world knowing this troupe).

So after that annoying ass save, Yusaku threatens to delete Ignis if the Knight doesn’t stop his attack (damn, that is dark for a Yu-Gi-Oh  protagonist (told you guys he was going to be an anti-hero and a major one at that from the looks of things). He also tells the Knight that Ignis is now a dueling program (Decode Talker theory is coming closer to being real) and that he will only give the Knight Ignis if he beats him in a duel. 

So they are about to start a duel and Ignis out right tells Yusaku he can’t beat the Cracking Dragon so he uses his powers to unlock the Data Storm and gives Yusaku his hoverboard and the episode ends with Ignis declaring this as a Speed Duel. 

So yeah, that was episode one of Vrains. No actual duels, unless you want to count that one at the beginning, but a lot of set up in terms of story. I honestly love what they have done this time around with their protagonist. After the whole Egao mess, it is nice to see this show become dark, super dark from the looks of things, and to have someone like Yusaku as our new lead. I also love the foreshadowing we have got right off the bat in terms of Yusaku and I can’t wait to see what actually he is in the late future. However, I admit I stopped enjoying the episode a lot when the whole “Playmaker saying Blue Angel” bit happened. Again, I shouldn’t be surprised but god, it is still annoying regardless. I’m really scared for Aoi now honestly.

So, on a scale of 1-10, how do I score this episode (in my opinion):

Episode 1: My Name is Playmaker! : 6/10

I wish I could give this episode a higher score for being the first episode but with this episode being pure plot, it was hard to understand what was going on when I first watched it raw and the first viewing is always what makes me enjoy the episode more or not in the long run and I enjoy episodes more if I have an idea of what is going on. There was also the fact that there was no dueling in this episode which took out some of the main action for the series (and I’m just honestly surprised that they let this happen since they are trying to sell cards after all). Also, like I’ve stated, the Blue Angel part REALLY left a bad taste in my mouth. However, I did enjoy the first half a lot. I love Yusaku not giving a sh*t throughout the beginning XD

Now onto the courts:

Death Count: 0 - 5.5 (I saw at least five people getting blasted by Cracking Dragon and Ignis’s body was destroyed but he wasn’t killed so I’m counting that as a half death I suppose).

Damsel in Distress Court: 0 - 1 (Yes this is going to be a thing and Aoi might be on here a lot). 

So yeah, that about does it. After resting my eyes for a bit, since this took a while to write, I’m going to be doing my thoughts on the opening and ending and then I’m going to do what I like to do the most, making fun of the episode. I hope you guys like this new system I guess you can call it that I’m trying out for Vrains and yeah. 

[fencer-x]

All-night Yuri!!! on Ice marathon + talk event report

Okay! It's now a full 12 hours after the event ended, and I've finally woken up lol So here I come bearing a report!

I'm sure several people will be posting their own reports, and I doubt any of us will have captured EVERYTHING that happened, so it's best to read multiple accounts for the greatest coverage XD

As expected, the event started with the talk portion, which involved Toyonaga, Suwabe, and Uchiyama (the podium family's seiyuu) along with creator Kubo-sensei. We were treated to the new visual, which has been making the rounds now and features the whole cast in their FS costumes taking a selfie with Phichit's selfie-stick, and were told that the marathon/event was being streamed to FIFTY theaters across the country--the largest anime streaming event EVER.

Something else that was also really great to me: there were quite a few people who were there seeing the show FOR THE FIRST TIME. Can you imagine how great that would be? Getting to see this entire series, for the very first time, on a huge movie screen surrounded by fans?? I'D KILL FOR THAT EXPERIENCE.

The talk event was divided into three corners.

1) SP - A "look back" talk, reflecting on what they'd done, how their performances had changed over the course of the series. Both Toyonaga and Suwabe reflected that they had no real memory of their performance from around halfway through the series, everything just coming through them and going directly into the character, and it was only on watching the final versions that they were like, "Oh wow, this character is actually that kind of person huh?"

Toyonaga also brought up the very first line of the opening scene, where Yuuri is doing a voice-over, talking about Victor. He'd wondered to himself WHEN that Yuuri was from--as it sounded like it was reflecting on the past. He asked the director, who told him when it took place, and he used that to guide the performance. "...So when DID it take place?" you ask? Toyonaga said he would never tell.

Suwabe went on to describe when he felt Victor "changed", when his feelings toward Yuuri shifted, and that he had a good idea of it himself and put it into the performance, but that he didn't want to share that with others, because he felt that seeing that evolution was a very personal thing for each person watching and didn't want to push his ideas onto other people (this is a very Japanese thing to do--and is also why Kubo-sensei does not want to outright say that Victor and Yuuri kissed in episode 7, because a) it should be obvious lol and b) it's a personal experience when watching the show how you understand different scenes to have unfolded and the emotions and thoughts felt therein)

2) FS - Topics they can discuss now that the show is over

Here, Kubo-sensei talked about her recent trip to Europe, something she and the director had planned to do while the series was being created once it finished. She talked about going to see a Czech competition, and there...she saw Victor and Yurio cosplayers! She was absolutely tickled to see cosplayers at such an event (something that would NEVER be allowed in Japan; though the cosplayers were just wearing wigs, apparently), and they noticed her as a Japanese person near them. They didn't recognize her as Kubo-sensei, but she slyly mentioned that she did know YOI and was a fan. The cosplayers got excited and told her that she was allowed to take a picture of them XDDD Not knowing she was the person responsible for their cosplay.

To top it off, only moments later, she posted to instagram that she was in Czech Republic doing some sight-seeing, and a Czech commenter excitedly offered, in the replies, to show her around. She clicked on that person's profile.......and it was the Victor cosplayer she'd just been offered a picture of XD

On other topics, the final episode had LOTS of cuts and retakes, apparently, and was only finished at the VERY last-minute. Stephan Lambiel's performance, even, wasn't taped until Monday--and the show aired Wednesday.

3) Post-skate interview - this section included responses to questions gathered from Twitter.

[(for Kubo-sensei) "What points do you pay particular attention to when drawing the characters?"] She only drew characters for the storyboards, really, so she did very simple versions but made sure that it was easy to tell in an instant which character was which, to make it easier for the character designers and animators to work from.

She also mentioned that she was drawing a short manga that would be included with purchases of the box-set (this isn't new info; it was announced ages ago), but got inspired for the content by the recent trip she just took to Europe. When asked about that content, all she said was that, "Fans of Yurio will be happy" and that not every character would appear.

["Who would you like to be your coach if you were a figure skater?"] Toyonaga wanted Victor, for sure, but after thinking a little longer on it, he thought JJ's parents would be really nice as well, since they're family. Suwabe wanted Yakov, and Uchiyama wanted the Yakov-Liliya combination like Yurio.

["Who is that man with Chris?"] Ah, the question on everyone's mind. Kubo-sensei didn't really offer any new information aside from what we'd already recently learned--that he's affiliated with the Swiss Skating Federation and was probably a former ice dancer; he also looks after Chris' cat while he's gone. He doesn't have a name, but she'd taken to thinking of him as "Masumi" based on his design's resemblance to the character of the same name in The Glass Mask:

Geez, she wasn’t kidding XD

She then asked everyone to be kind to "Masumetti" (a namesmush of Masumi and Giacometti).

["What figure skating move do you most want to try?"] Toyonaga wanted to do hydroblading (like JJ does), Suwabe liked the jumps and wanted to do a centuple (100 rotations) or maybe at least the quadruple axel that hadn't been achieved yet in competition. Uchiyama loved the spins.

The event closed out with some announcements--there's a YOI-themed lecture on figure skating to help fans get into the sport to be held March 3 (I'm gonna try to go, but I'm betting it'll be difficult to get tickets!), the April 29th talk event with the full cast and then some (which is where I'm thinking a Season 2 announcement will come). They were also selling the two DVDs out so far plus the soundtrack at the theaters, and it was here that the unaired tracks came up. Kubo-sensei was EXTREMELY suggestive about "Welcome to the Madness", the song meant to be used for Yurio's Exhibition piece. She repeatedly needled the audience in a teasing manner with, "Everyone wants to see Yurio's exhibition piece, right? Everyone wants to see it yeah?" This tells me that we will definitely get to see it, as it wasn't delivered in a sympathetic way like "oh wouldn't it be nice..." but in a teasing, taunting way that would only be said if there was inherent promise in it, so get excited to see that somewhere soon!

For the marathon event itself, well that was just amazing, what can I say? It's an indescribable experience, being in a huge room of VERY excited and enthusiastic fans like that. Everyone was cheering and applauding and offering endearing color commentary as well. In episode 2, for instance, when Yuuri scrambles away from Victor and Victor asks innocently, "Why are you running away?" one girl piped up with, "REMEMBER THE BANQUET!!" and everyone burst out laughing XD

It looked like perhaps up to episodes 5 or 6 had used the DVD/BR remastered versions, as many points had been fixed as on the DVDs. Yuuri's "JARAN" on his jacket seen in episode 5, for example, had been fixed to read JAPAN and been replaced with a new serif font. The later episodes, though, did not seem to have been changed, as the font was not consistent in later episodes, and other changes (like changing Yuuri's ugly necktie from sky blue to stripes with shades of light blue) were not reflected in later episodes. We also got to see the endings of episodes 5, 9, and 10 without the credits marring the beautiful scenes, so that was really great!

And speaking of the credits, we only saw the OP and ED once; the OP was played for the very first episode, and the ED was played after episode 7; other than that, the episodes blended seamlessly together.

On that episode 7 note, I thought my heart was gonna burst with happiness when the entire theater shrieked with cheers and applause and cries of "congratulations!" when Victor jumped into Yuuri to kiss him. The same happened when Phichit announced that his friends had gotten married--everyone was just totally into the moment, and it really left you with this weird feeling of comaraderie even though you were surrounded by strangers. Each and every person was so invested in this relationship, so happy, so moved. I felt really emotionally drained by the end, coming down from that high.

These bursts of applause were also repeated throughout the series whenever skaters landed their jumps cleanly, as if we were actually watching them in real time, in real life. It was just so nice??

tl;dr - 1000% would absolutely do that again. I've never done a marathon with a huge theater of fans before, for various reasons, and I'm so glad I had such a great experience my first time. I cannot recommend it highly enough if you have the chance yourself to take part in such a thing!

[deltaengineering]

Winter anime 2017 in retrospect

I watched too many shows this season and new stuff is already dropping, so let’s keep this short.

ACCA - 13-ku Kansatsu-ka

ACCA is certainly a weird one. It’s a complex political intrigue told with the tone and urgency of an Aria or Flying Witch. It’s hard to tell what the “core” is even supposed to be here, but you’ll spend most of your time watching stylish people eat cake while idly scheming because they have nothing better to do. But hey, it’s really stylish, really cute, and when it gets to the plot that part of it is really cool too - if you don’t expect shit to “get real” in the sense that it gets dark, because ACCA really likes its consistent tone. And so do I, ACCA’s great. It’s one of those bizarre shows that seem to be made just for me.

Demi-chan wa Kataritai

Oh, Demi-chan. It had a pretty cool thing going for the first couple of episodes, when it seemed like it would be a thinly veiled disability metaphor. But in the end it just decided that a taste was enough, and what everyone really wanted to see was yet another chillout with the cuties anime. And in that crowded space, Demi-chan just ends up looking very mediocre. In the end, it has about an interesting idea per episode, but that idea is usually not worth talking about for 20 minutes, which is what inevitably happens. So it’s often a pretty tedious experience, with the occasional highlight moment.

Hand Shakers

Yeah, i watched Hand Shakers. All of it. Here’s the complete and comprehensive list of things that it does right:

• A few of the establishing shots look cool.

I could make the joke that Hand Shakers is some subversive parody of bad anime again, but really, what’s the point. Everything sucks. I can only guess that they thought an unique visual style would make up for the content being the most tired clichees you can imagine just kinda haphazardly thrown on to a pile, but that runs into the slight problem that the visual style is itself so horrible that you start questioning the sanity of everyone involved. I suppose that in a way that gambit actually works: There are many anime shows that look so cool it makes up for bad content. Hand Shakers is not always badly written in a fun way and can often be pretty boring, but it does always look ridiculously bad.

Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon

I can’t even bring myself to talk about this anime itself since it’s just so lame. The only fascinating thing about it is that, apparently, people with Serious Anime Opinions will absolutely love an incredibly stupid fanservice comedy if it 1.) is gay, 2.) has some sappy, repetitive and shallow family message tacked on and 3.) is made by their sugoi senpai KyoAni. In short, it’s Yuri on Ice all over again, except Maidragon would get torn to shreds if the above didn’t apply. I won’t even fault KyoAni this time, I have to admit they did the absolute best with the source material they were given. It’s just that this is a negative as well because if Maidragon had the low-budget adaptation by 8-Bit it deserved, it would be significantly worse but I wouldn’t have watched it. I guess people loved Ah! My Goddess and Tenchi Muyo back in the day too, and some things never change. They just get gayer.

Onihei

Onihei makes no excuses for what it is: lurid 70s pulp genre fiction. However, one thing makes it stand out: There are many episodic show that have that one really good episode that manages to elevate the material. Onihei is one of those shows, except every episode is that one episode. It’s just extremely solidly written, all the time, and main character Heizo is a pretty interesting take on the memetic samurai badass: He’s basically Kenshin if Kenshin had grown up to be a chill family man with a weird sense of humor. If the production could keep up with that, Onihei would be great, but sadly it can’t. It’s not an outright disaster, but a lot of it looks distinctly janky. But if you want to see a bunch of gritty true crime stories set in old Edo with a cool detective up front, you won’t go wrong with Onihei.

Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu: Sukeroku Futatabi-hen

The first season of Rakugo Shinjuu was amazing and only let down by its lack of an ending. Well, now we have that ending, which makes for a flawless show overall. I’ve heard it floated as the single best TV anime of all time, which seems like a bold claim at first but in actuality I can’t think of anything better. There’s really not much more to say; If you are even remotely in the market for a character drama, just fucking watch this.

Urara Meirochou

So why was I so salty about Maidragon earlier? Because the reception of Urara was pretty much “get outta here with this problematic fanservice”, and Urara turned out to be a much better show that did not in fact have subplots about titty dragons molesting 10 year old boys. That’s not to say that Urara is squeaky clean, because it’s not; it sure does love to show a lot of skin. But that added spice, while hardly in itself a selling point for me, is a plus in a Kirara cute girls doing cute things show, since these always tend to be too harmless and bland. Urara also has, believe it or not, an actual plot that goes somewhere (even if it doesn’t fully resolve and never will), and a setting that’s colorful and pleasant to look at. And of course it still has the default Kirara strengths of likeable characters and general kawaiiocity. So yeah, Urara Meirochou is pretty cool, the best basic bishoujo anime of the season and y’all can fuck off with your dragons. Here’s a show that went the extra mile to get better and better as it went on, not just put out two half-decent episodes and then put on cruise control.

It’s pretty gay too, by the way. Imagine that.

[tl-notes]

Flip Flappers Director Interview Translation

“‘I don’t understand what’s interesting about it, but I can’t help but watch anyway’ is the highest praise.” An Interview with Director Kiyotaka Oshiyama   Challenging Difficult Subjects Feeling Through his First Work as a Director 1—First can you please tell me how it is you came to be involved in this work? Oshiyama: The original catalyst was my meeting with the CEO of 3Hz, Yuuichirou Matsuya, and Hideaki Kubo, who ran the production desk for us [for Flip Flappers]. Back when they were at [the animation studio] Kinema Citrus they kindly said they wanted to work with me on a certain project. That ended up not happening, but later, after they left to start up 3Hz (around March 2013), they said “Hey we’d like to do something with you at 3Hz some time.” Sort of the idea behind 3Hz as a company is “we want to make original works,” and that’s something I wanted to try too, and so that’s what got the ball rolling. I guess things started moving in earnest around the summer of 2013? Matsuya, Kubo, Takayuki Nagatani, Kunihiko Okada, and myself all holed up together for a few days to brainstorm, and by the end we’d pretty much decided on “passing through a hole to have adventures in another world” as the concept. 2—Who proposed that “go through a hole to another world” idea? Oshiyama: By the time they came to me about directing it, two themes already decided for the project were “space opera” and “the protagonists are two girls.” But they were also saying “instead of a space opera with spaceships broadsiding each other, or aliens popping up, why don’t we try to do one like nobody else is doing?” Using that as a jumping off point, I proposed the idea. 3—When did it change from the original space opera to a road movie-esque thing about exploring Pure Illusion? Oshiyama: From when we decided to go with the idea about the hole. From the beginning of the project there was this thought that “if the developments of the story put too much stress on the viewers they won’t stick with it.” Like if something bad happened and we didn’t resolve it within that episode, viewers’ interest in following the show would drop. So we decided very early on that for the first half, we would try as much as possible to have each episode have sort of a happy ending, and then put a hook for the next episode in the C Part [after the credits/ED] and pass the baton that way. 4—You put a lot of work into the visuals of the battle and action scenes, yes? Oshiyama: That was to help make this show by some no-name director stand out among all the other shows going on (laughs). Most of my career has been as an animator, and I don’t have much experience directing, so to some extent I felt like if we couldn’t put up a fight on the animation front at least, we’d get buried by other shows of the season. Despite that, it didn’t really occur to me to make Flip Flappers into an action anime. That came from the producer side, who requested adding things like “making the girls transform,” “having them fight using big weapons,” “having them transform once every two episodes,” etc., and as we included those aspects during creation, it ended up being a show with a lot of action. Fortunately action scenes are one of my relative strengths as an animator, so I tried to make the storyboards with just enough symbolism/implicit meaning so as to ensure a good animator wouldn’t feel restrained. Action scenes won’t look good without a dynamism to the animation, after all. Also, since we had the chance to explore other worlds here, it would be a shame to not have the characters move around a lot in them. So yeah, in the end adding flashy action like that helped widen the field of what the anime was able to do, and became an important aspect of what made the show what it is. 5—There’s a lot of flashy animation even in the OP, isn’t there? Oshiyama: It sounds like you’re saying it’s a show with lots of flashy animation, but in my mind neither the OP or the body of the show have that much animation to them (laughs), so it makes me happy to hear people say that about it. Compared to my past works it’s relatively still, and I’d bet my animator friends were thinking “Oshiyama, it’s episode one and you’re hardly moving anything!” while watching (laughs).   Creation of a Mystical World Messages Embedded in Visuals 6—Does that mean you’d say you put more focus on Pure Illusion, and the events surrounding it, than the action, then? Oshiyama: I’d say so, yes. I felt like using the multifaceted nature of human thoughts and perception to add some variation to the story would be something a lot of people would find interesting, but at the same time, there’s so much you can do with Pure Illusion that it makes things difficult. I knew going in that it would be a risky theme to tackle from a business/financial standpoint as well, but I figured “hey I’m still young, and if I screw up this director thing I can still make a living as an animator” (laughs), so I decided it would be worth the risk of trying something challenging. Things seems to have worked out well enough, so I’m glad now that I didn’t back down early on. I don’t feel like these 13 episodes were enough to do everything with Pure Illusion that I’d have liked to though (laughs). 7—There are a lot of parodies and metaphors packed into this work; are you yourself very knowledgeable about these sorts of things? Oshiyama: I just filled it with stuff I liked, I wouldn’t say I’m very knowledgeable about this stuff in a broad sense. You can blame me for most of the things like that added to the visuals, though (laugh). Generally we made it such that you’d understand the story even if you missed these visual elements; they were mostly something I wanted to add that would just be supplementary. Also, because “illusion” is one of the themes of this work, figuring out what I could do with the visuals to hit on that was also one of my personal challenges. And partially it’s just simply that I like this sort of stuff in my media. Originally most of my knowledge just came from reading this book by behavioral scientist Toshitaka Hidaka that did a good job of talking in easy-to-understand terms about stuff like the Umwelt (a concept that every animal has it’s own perception of the world based on the senses it possesses (sight, smell, echolocation, etc.), and that it exists as the primary actor within that individually perceived world), behavioral sciences, and analytical psychology. Later, the works of the famous psychologist Hayao Kawai about the field of psychology, myths, folktales, and such were very helpful as well. Pure Illusion is fairly similar to the idea of the Umwelt, and one of the themes of the show is the multi-faceted nature of the internal world we each have, so I felt like psychology would be pretty relevant. From there I just included various references or symbols that came to mind. There’s actually a lot of that sort of stuff included in episode 18 of Space☆Dandy too (Oshiyama was the episode director, storyboarder, and animation supervisor for that episode), but nobody noticed (laughs). It’s not mentioned in the story who’s world each of the different episodes’ Pure Illusions are, but if people watching were thinking “I wonder if this world is that character’s?” then that’s just what we were aiming for. Of course, as the creators we have some sense of which is which, but we’d prefer to not say it outright. There are various hints mixed into the visuals, so hopefully people will try to puzzle it out themselves. However, there are a lot of people nowadays whose position is “I want to enjoy a show with a minimum of stress” or “I want to just relax in front of the TV after a long day’s work,” so in order for people to be able enjoy the show as a fluffy story about some middle school girls, we focused less on the story and more on creating appealing characters, included yuri aspects, etc. Ideally we wanted people to find the show enjoyable in whichever way they pleased, whether that be relaxing with brain turned off, digging into all the details, or whatever else. So when I saw people on Twitter saying things like “I don’t understand what’s interesting about it, but I can’t help but watch anyway” or “I don’t get why I like this show” I was very happy. 8—Speaking of visuals, can you tell me about the appointment of tanu? Oshiyama: The hiring of tanu was something the producer side suggested, but I was the one who asked them to do the concept art. Originally people were saying “How about having them do the character design?”, but that was something I wanted us to have control of ourselves. I was much more interested in having someone think up the image of the world as a whole, and when I asked tanu about this they said “I’d prefer it that way too.” Also, I didn’t want to have this be too similar to any existing works, and there’s another original anime out there—one that shares a lot of staff with this one—that tanu also did the character designs for (laughs). 9—What exactly did “doing the concept art” entail? Oshiyama: At the start, it was mostly us asking tanu to “draw us an illustration of this Pure Illusion world,” in parallel with the progress of the script writing. In the second half though, after the script was largely finished, I’d say to Matsuya “let’s leave this part to tanu,” and we’d bring tanu in for the meetings. There were a few times we’d get some general ideas about the characters from them, but for the most part it would be things like “there’s going to be a location like this that comes up, give us your idea of what it would be like.” Basically I would tell them my general idea of what the place was, tanu would make a visual of it, and if we could use it we’d hand it off the background people to clean up and put on the art board (used to maintain consistency in the backgrounds etc.). It was useful as one tool to help describe the atmosphere/feeling of scenes. 10—When asking them to do a particular piece, did you explain to them background/setting of the characters/world? Oshiyama: Depending on the specific thing, I changed how I explained it. In general I was afraid that explaining everything in detail would lead to them producing something not very different from my own mental image, so I would leave a lot of things vague when making requests for concept art. Later, when time was short, I wouldn’t have a solid image myself yet, so I was kind of creating it in my head as I was explaining it to tanu. They really provided me with a lot of ideas that were very different than what I would have come up with by myself.   Playfulness and Pickiness Freedom of Choice 11—Was there anything you found caused you difficulty in creating the show’s visuals? Oshiyama: It being an original anime, for one. Without a base to work from it was tough to get all the staff together, so there was a huge amount of work that all had to be left to me. I was given time to work based on schedule estimates from other projects, but it ended up not being enough. I do think I did everything I could though. One of the good things about it though, especially being the director, is that I was able to include all sorts of things that I wanted to do. In a different position, even if I’d come up with an idea I would first have to consider “does this fit with the original work?” or “what does the director think about this?” which kills a lot of ideas before they get a chance to go anywhere. But since I was the director, from the storyboards on I had a lot of freedom to do whatever I wanted and was thus able to include all sorts of things. Had I not been able to be so indulgent, the visuals would certainly have been lighter on content. 12—You did the scriptwriting for episode seven, but did you have any influence on the direction of the story as a whole? Oshiyama: I did, yes. Once the general concept was established and we brought Yuniko Ayana in, we worked together to get the framework of the story built. In the second half of the show we had (Naoki) Hayashi come in to take over the script writing, but by then everything that was supposed to happen was already decided on and it was just a matter of making a script to match it. The schedule was very tight at that point, so having Hayashi there was a huge help. For the first half, I would decide on the core things to have happen each episode, and the script writers would add whatever they wanted on top of that. For example, the yuri elements that Ayana is so good at. That’s something a lot of viewers nowadays find easy to hook into, so it was especially important I think. 13—Is there anything you’re particular about with regards to yuri? Oshiyama: I’m actually not very knowledgeable about it. However, in talking with Ayana I think I got a good grasp of “things you shouldn’t do” and “lines you shouldn’t cross” when it comes to yuri. That said, I maybe broke the rules a little on episode seven. That episode features various personalities of Papika, and some of them are rather boyish. Thinking about the yuri perspective, I figured it wouldn’t be good to pair Cocona with a boy her age, so originally I had Papito and Papiya with female bodies too... but Takashi Kojima wanted to make them boys (laughs), so they ended up more male in places. My initial sketches of Papiwo, too, included a sarashi wrapped around her chest as a “definitely still a girl” signal. Also, in episode 8 there’s a boy their age, Occhan, who shows up; I made him a little shorter so he wouldn’t be at eye level with Cocona and the others. 14—Is there any episode that you feel you especially left your mark on as a director? Oshiyama: Every episode, really. Many storyboards were outsourced, but as the work’s themes were rather firmly set, by the time the requests were sent out the visuals were mostly already decided. So I’d say the me-ness of each episode is quite thick. Not to say there wasn’t a lot added to each episode by the episode directors as well though. But things like the Fist of the North Star or Dragon Ball parodies in episode three are mostly me (laughs). The people in charge of the storyboards each added their own parodies and such too, but the ones that people of my generation are familiar with were mostly added by me during the storyboarding step. The robot in episode eight is another example. From the very beginning of this project I’d wanted to have a robot episode, but considering the calories (man-hours) that would take I wasn’t sure we’d be able to do it up until the last minute, and even if we were able to do it I wasn’t sure what kind of robot it would be. There were talks of doing a (Masami) Obari-style mecha for example, but without the right staff we’d never be able to pull it off, so that didn’t really go anywhere. There were definitely places where we had to adjust what we were doing to match the staff that were available. Fortunately, the episode director for episode eight, Hayao Shun* Enokido, was a young powerhouse that I felt safe trusting to pull off something cool, and we went with a Choushinsei Flashman-style robot, since I figured that’s one that probably hadn’t been done much in anime before. *(Apparently the correct reading of his name is Shun, though many online databases incorrectly list him under Hayao.) 15—Were you a Flashman fan? Oshiyama: When I was a kid I made doodles of it all the time. For me personally, Flashman, or maybe the series before it, is the real start of Super Sentai Series stuff. One of my oldest memories is the image of Flash King being broken into pieces, so I guess it was burned into my brain at the time (laughs). The boxy silhouette of Great Titan definitely left a big impression on me as well, and that’s also something I wanted to try using here. At the scriptwriting stage there was no robot action at all, it all came in during storyboarding. The insert song I’d actually wanted to play in three different, but decided that was just too many for one song. I regretted not having three different songs made, but since that train had already left the station I was forced to cut the one song down to being played twice instead of thrice (laughs). 16—You show up as a voice actor in episode five, correct? Oshiyama: So, “illusion” is a big theme of this work, and I wanted to include an auditory illusion with the female students’ voice at some point. You know how sometimes you can listen to a voice recording and have no clue what it’s saying, but as soon as someone tells you you can instantly make it out perfectly? That’s what I wanted to go with. At first I figured maybe we could use a mouth harp I happened to have as a hobby to pull off something like that, but when I got up to do it in front of the cast, heart pounding, it sounded way too silly to actually use and I resigned myself to having the sound people digitally edit something instead. However, later on in production I was practicing circular breathing (a technique that allows for uninterrupted tone when playing a wind instrument) with my didgeridoo (a wind instrument), another hobby of mine, and it hit me that we could totally use this (laughs). At a later episode’s recording I got them to record me again using the didgeridoo this time, and that’s what we ended up using. 17—Is there a character in the show you’re particularly fond of? Oshiyama: I’m fond of all of them really, but if I had to say, probably Papika and Yayaka. Yayaka feels very human and also suffers from bad luck (laughs), so I get a painful feeling like I’m sort of watching myself that makes her very relatable. On the flip side, Papika is in some ways an ideal figure. The magnificence of innocence maybe you’d call it? A girl with her genuineness, honesty, purity, it’s just nice. I don’t want to forget that authenticity even after becoming an adult, I want to think there’s value in that, so I admire that part of her. Also she’s got great survival skills, so she can go out adventuring whenever she feels like it. She’s got something modern people have lost, an important something that we used to have as animals, that’s the kind of character she is. Though, since she lost her memories once before she has fewer experiences than her visible age would suggest, so her vocabulary is sometimes lacking and her personality is childish in some ways. She was basically the same even before the incident though, so it might be hard to tell (laughs), but she’s by no means dumb. 18—Finally, do you have any words for the viewers eagerly awaiting the last episode? Oshiyama: I think it’s easy for people to see this show as something you either get really into, or find not engaging. To figure out all the deepest parts of the show certainly does require a lot of mental energy, which has led some people to label it as trying to hard or pretentious. However, to the people who haven’t watched it yet or those who dropped it early on, I would encourage you not to succumb to a feeling of “oh this show seems like it’s hard to watch.” I think if you continue watching you’ll come to feel that a show like this can be good sometimes too. I would be honoured if you might spend some of your winter break, or other time, giving Flip Flappers a try.