Sakamoto continuing to be awesome. This show is entertaining as is. It might not be the most innovative comedy of the season, but the fact it's various skits ala Nichijou or Nichibros means it doesn't need to stretch out jokes so it has been quite enjoyable so far.
Oh Hanekawa. While not a complete conclusion to her story, this was an excellent arc with interesting theme and thought provoking conversations. No matter how much I like the other girls, I can't help but give credit to Hanekawa for being the way she is.
There ends my rewatch, I am so glad I did this. There were many details and meanings I noticed. I'm a bit hesitant to start Nisemonogatari but I guess I might.
You know what, the more I think about Mayoiga episode 6 the worst it gets. Those back stories are absolutely terrible. The characters don't react in any way a human would. The minute the show dropped its pretences and gave us straight horror all the other issues that had been building up just burst out at once. Pretty sure I'm not going back now, and if I do it'll be when it's completely finished.
However, skimming these last few pages has convinced me to try Hyouka, so let's see how this goes.
You know what, the more I think about Mayoiga episode 6 the worst it gets. Those back stories are absolutely terrible. The characters don't react in any way a human would. The minute the show dropped its pretences and gave us straight horror all the other issues that had been building up just burst out at once. Pretty sure I'm not going back now, and if I do it'll be when it's completely finished.
However, skimming these last few pages has convinced me to try Hyouka, so let's see how this goes.
KIZNAIVER Episode 5 Wahoo, It's a Training Camp! Let's Step in Deer Poop and Have Pillow Fights! Go, Go!
Yuta's part with the food and his internal struggle was the more intriguing part of the episode. Chidori and Kacchon continues to be the worst pairing and I greatly get turned off whenever they have any sort of action to try to move that ship along.
Kamaishi and Yoshizawa had the more interesting character action going on and hearing all of Kamaishi's struggles through being friends with him but still sticking with him through it all was compelling. I hope they stick around more as they are easily the better Kiznaivers.
Thinking about it, the reason Chidori is the millstone of Kiznaiver isn't just that she is molded out of the most annoying of obnoxious anime tropes. It is also she is the only one here that is being played straight here while the others are starting to develop more and more into their own characters and it isn't help by how much screen time she is monopolizing right now. To wit, everything she does is in service of this awful one sided forced romance bullshit that tends to typify anime complete with the requisite "misunderstanding" spots.
Even somebody like Niko, who is still kind of lacking in the character department at the moment is still vastly more layered with the revelation that her being a headcase is a front for her insecurities. Meanwhile, Chidori has not evolved one iota past designated childhood love interest and is still pulling the Tusndere act even after the love confession was forced out of her. Not helping things is Katsuhira hasn't shown any romantic interest in her and they have no chemistry together.
Continues to probably be my favorite show of the season. Yeah, the message is being laid down pretty thick, but the characters are all very entertaining. Even Nico, and I usually can't stand her character type.
I think I'll hit a point where it feels formulaic and I lose interest as I typically do with this sort of show but I like to think that on the adaptation side, they're doing a much better job than just flat out offering up the manga like it felt in ep 1.
Continues to probably be my favorite show of the season. Yeah, the message is being laid down pretty thick, but the characters are all very entertaining. Even Nico, and I usually can't stand her character type.
Tenga remains the King but I'm starting to like what Honoka and Yuta seem to have going
especially if she really does have Kuato under that shirt
There were two technical moments that stood out to me that I particularly liked, the blending between Honoka and Yuta's faces as Honoka was propositioning him at the 10:00 mark and the way they emphasised
Katsuhira's
emotional awakening by bringing colour back into the scene at dawn.
We'll see how the show progresses but this is the first time where I feel I have a grasp on what the show wants to do and how it'll get there. This episode probably gave the most character background and depth out of all the episodes. As I mentioned earlier, the show seems to be about bullying and the coping mechanisms people tend to deploy as a response. A good chunk of this episode was showing the damage bullying causes in different forms as well as what happens when a per.
For example we see that Yuta has to actually work hard at maintaining his figure. He takes pills instead of eating and is pretty much always on a constant diet. The show hasn't directly brought this up, although I imagine it will, but it's probably due to people laughing at him and bullying him about his weight when he was younger. As a response he tries everything to fit in, whether it's being slim or flirting. That was the other aspect revealed about his character in that he seems to flirt more as a way of pretending to be just like everybody else rather than an actual enjoyment of the process or wanting to get laid.
I thought Maki reversing the dichotomy between the two was a fantastic scene. I was expecting something like Maki beginning to trust him and sleeps with him and him throwing her aside but instead it looks to be rather she might end up having the control in the relationship dynamics
. Yuta's eyes were more open this episode as well which is probably reflective of the audience seeing the honest side of him rather than his public persona.
In regards to Maki, it's clear that she has some sort of complex in regards to her body. I'm also thinking that she was bullied possibly due to having large breasts and so never really fit in. She was that perfect person that Nico didn't want to be and as a result, she was turned into an outcast. It's also making me wonder whether that line last episode refuting Nico's attempts at being friends is due to a prior incident when somebody pretended to be friends with her. You can tell though that she's a ticking time bomb.
There wasn't much insight into Sonozaki, Nico, Hisomu, and Tenga. However I did think it was kinda interesting when
Tenga tried to assault the homeroom teacher and got wrecked
. It's noteworthy for a few reasons. The first being that this is the first time we've really seen Tenga be outclassed in fighting in the show. A lot of this episode was about reversing the power dynamics of characters and so we know now that Tenga can't just punch his way out of everything. Since so much of this episode was about bullying, I wonder if Tenga was bullied when he was younger and so learned how to fight as a result. The dog fear and scar (most likely from a dog biting him or scratching him) are probably related to the bullying as well. It also raises the question about the background of the homeroom teacher.
Chidori's stuff this episode was an expansion of episode 2. Her breakdown isn't really that interesting on its own but I do like how it delves into the side effects of bullying in that a bullying isn't just harming an individual but also the people that care about the victim. There's a ripple effect to actions like these. Seeing somebody you care about getting demeaned, wears on you as well. In addition, the whole strong emotions being connected too is something I'm sure will be exploited later. I'm now curious as to whether Katsuhira in the beginning actually did mind being bullied but had learned to just accept it as a way of life. I still don't think Katsuhira is that engaging of a protagonist but this episode did mark some development on his front. It's just that we're also almost half of the way through the show's run. I see what they're trying to do but I think he would have been a better fit for a two-cour run.
I think what I said earlier about the direction still holds true. The comedy is helping to offset the dramatic moments such as the
homeroom teacher intruding on the tryst or the group overhearing Chidori bitching about Sonozaki
. So far it helps to dial things down while still hitting most of the emotional points. The surreal situations have been pretty entertaining to watch and they're animated in a fun cartoony sort of way and it works well with the heightened character drama. There was some good use of color this episode as well as a cool transition between two characters' faces. This episode was also the first time I was really impressed with the soundtrack, it reminded me of the more dramatic tracks in Haikyuu. I thought Hayashi did a really good job with the song during Chidori's breakdown in particular.
I thought there was potential for an interesting mystery/suspense show that would inevitably end on an unsatisfying conclusion as they do. Maybe I just misread it but so far it's been way more silly than suspenseful.
I don't quite see, how one could not see the signs. First episode begins with an introduction of dozens of brain dead characters and ends with the bus driver suddenly trying to kill everyone for most absurd of reasons and then getting puked on. That doesn't sound to me like a very promising suspense show.
Is it me or the character art was much more polished then in the previous 3/4 episodes ?
There were few moments where it felt like the show was slipping into, what I imagine to be the famed Okada territory, and with Honoka it went too far to my liking but other than that it was another very enjoyably ep with a neat mini conclusion to Chidori's tribulations.
Whilst I can't say I've heard a ton of super-great things about Harmony (a shame, because the book is great), do bear in mind that Itoh died having written only around 30 pages of Empire of Corpses - the vast majority of the book was actually written by Toh Enjoe, and even then, I gather the movie isn't that great an adaptation of that.
I'm basically just saying that the narrative and thematic qualities of Empire of Corpses probably have very little bearing on the quality of the other two Itoh movies, it's not like he was the one who actually wrote most of it.
Interesting didn't know it was published posthumously, which maybe explains why you can see seeds of good ideas in the set-up but it just never comes together. Maybe ill be tentatively excited for the other two movies.
Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha Movie
"DIVINE BUSTER...STARLIGHT BREAKER!!!!" aw so hype.
Compilation movies for tv shows are quite often lazily shoved out nothings imo, but man you can tell this had a lot of effort put into it to retool the series as a movie. Everything is bumped up great action, super-elaborate transformations, better designs, getting rid of some of the needless side characters and a tighter script than what i saw of the TV series.
Its obviously geared more as an action show(they really cut a lot to get to Fate as quick as possible) and probably the only downside is that it skips some of Nanoha's characterization. She is almost the odd man out in the movie, as its way more about Fate and Precia. Precia, i actually found a lot of her backstory really heart-breaking despite the fact that she's so irredeemably horrible that you can't really sympathize with her.
So all in all great movie and thanks to everyone who recommended it.
The Lost Village ep.6
I see crazy people all over the place with crazy backstories. I guess we are finally starting to get into the "mystery" of the story next week... Poor MC is falling for a
Mayoiga 6
BREAST SILICONE MONSTER!
okay, other than that one, the other monsters design was creepy.
So, all of them definitely has fucked up past. And Silicone head implant is real!? WOW!
Nearly every group shot on Kiznaiver is killing it. The variety on the reactions is really good.
About Nico, while nothing huge has been revealed about her since episode 2 and that small scene about friends on the last episode, she had two particular scenes that stood out on this episode. First, the bathing scene with Chidori. While I may overthink it, her reaction seems to imply low self-esteem. Which ties to the whole personality of hers and her quest for attention. The second one was a bit before that, during Tenga's overpraising for Chidori. A close-up of a jealous(?) Nico. I'm not sure if they're hinting on Tenga x Nico, but I believe she was jealous of Chidori and how she got the attention on her. Maybe the first scene I mentioned was sort of a backlash.
Basically, what I want to say is that Nico seems pretty greedy on her quest of attention. It's been hinted that she's smart and capable, so I'm not sure what drove her to being like that. She doesn't seem to have a bad personality though, so it's not like she's entirely egoistical.
Ahh the beach episode not even girls on a warship can resist the siren song of cliché and goddammit they really are going with the
psychic hamster
route here. At least the Musashi has shown up, I was afraid that was to be a season long tease but someone needs to talk to the sound effects team as there is no bass in these 460mm cannons at all.
Good action again with nice touches such as trying to get the Musashi to list in order to disable it's guns but the Harekaze using it's new 100mm for C-RAM to shoot down Musashi's shots stretched credulity especially with the counter shots being manually directed. I know it's a show with
psychic hamsters
(now with bonus ECM capabilities) but prior to this the show had kept the crazy quarantined away from the battles, now I'm worried we'll see less naval tactics and more mcguffins. With effective C-RAM Harekaze could wind up invincible in a very boring way indeed (as opposed to the usual 'main character' powers of invincibility).
Shiro on point, as Akeno continues to behave like Kirk, Picard et al, subordinates exist for a reason dammit!
No appropriate results for the "Imagawa bingo" image search. Dissapointing. I could use one about now.
This episode certainly didn't waste any time getting into the thick of things and I can't begrudge it for that. The first half positively surprised me a bit with how "dark" for want of better it was, relatively speaking, compared to the other shows and I hope that vibe will return in the coming episodes. I don't quite have a grasp on the plot yet, since there seems to be quite of backstory I'm unfamiliar with but my first impression of it and the characters is pretty favorable. Good beginning overall.
No appropriate results for the "Imagawa bingo" image search. Dissapointing. I could use one about now.
This episode certainly didn't waste any time getting into the thick of things and I can't begrudge it for that. The first half positively surprised me a bit with how "dark" for want of better it was, relatively speaking, compared to the other shows and I hope that vibe will return in the coming episodes. I don't quite have a grasp on the plot yet, since there seems to be quite of backstory I'm unfamiliar with but my first impression of it and the characters is pretty favorable. Good beginning overall.
Getter Robo Armageddon, while having awesome robots doing awesome things, actually gets pretty damn bleak later on. That vibe certainly won't be going away any time soon.
I, too, watching Captain Animerica 2 yesterday and that was a pretty darn good example of dumb action movie done well. Under scrutiny the plot is pretty damn shoddy and contrived but otherwise it's serviceable enough for all the great action. That character bloat is bothersome though, and I say that even though this movie managed to juggle almost everyone really well.
I'm not sure I can watch any more of Mayoiga. It's always been something of a cruel show, but so far it's mostly been showing cruel idiots so I didn't mind much. This latest episode feels like it's gone too far into being mean-spirited. I know it's over-the-top and all that, but still, if I'm supposed to be laughing at weak people getting physically abused and psychologically tortured, I can't do that.
I'm not sure I can watch any more of Mayoiga. It's always been something of a cruel show, but so far it's mostly been showing cruel idiots so I didn't mind much. This latest episode feels like it's gone too far into being mean-spirited. I know it's over-the-top and all that, but still, if I'm supposed to be laughing at weak people getting physically abused and psychologically tortured, I can't do that.
Has it really wandered into that kinda territory? Crap. I started it on the hilarious premise of a bunch of internet weirdos being idiots to each other as they go to live in the middle of nowhere, but if stuff like that's happening I don't think I want to continue it either.
Mawaru Penguindrum - 1
So this is my first Ikuhara show, and boy was it something.
This episode certainly was a rollercoaster of emotions, that's for sure. Ranging from sad, to slightly comedic, to...well all over the place in that transformation scene.
Directing was great, with a good use of colours, lighting, and camera angles to set the appropriate moods. This was definitely a good way to start the show.
