This week’s theme was “Ether”. So many harsh, harsh burns last night. It was a mix of amazing to average episodes except for Shitpuden, which was just terrible. On to the reviews:
Dragon Ball Z: Kai - A lot of surprises in this episode. Once Vegeta dodged the Spirit Bomb (so typical), it was actually kinda nice to see the scrubs come back and put up a decent fight. I just expected them to be knocked around for a while until Goku recovered but instead Gohan was actually getting in some good hits. Yajirobe even contributed! I’m also surprised Krillin can actually hold half a Spirit Bomb. Looking forward to next week.
Rating: One less giant ape
Kill la Kill - I think Grant George, the English voice of Sanageyama, might be my favorite English voice in the dub. He’s got such a swagger and confidence in his delivery and yet can sound equally sullen and emotional other times. I much prefer this dub voice to the original Japanese, for sure. By the way, the reason Nonon keeps calling him “monkey” is because the Elite Four each have an animal nickname based off the first character in their surnames.
Gamagoori,
Sanageyama,
Inumuta, and
Jakuzure mean "toad", "monkey", "dog", and "snake" in Japanese, respectively. Next week is definitely one of my favorite episodes in the series. If you like Mako (and who doesn’t) you can’t miss it!
Rating: 5 out of 5 beatdowns.
Naruto: Shippuden - I honesty can’t even remember what happened. Something about grave robbers or something? This was boring as hell. The bad attempts at slapstick comedy only made the pain worse. The icing on this crap cake was the laughably bad animation.
Rating: 0 fucks given. I mean, just look at this garbage:
InuYasha: The Final Act - Not a bad episode but only mildly interesting. We saw confirmations to all the stuff that happened two episodes ago. Sango’s weapon now has demon hurting poison and Miroku can’t feel pain from “My Asthma”, just as expected. I just can’t take Rin’s voice seriously. She sounds like a fully grown woman (which her VA is now, I know). It would have been better to cast another child voice than keep the same one who doesn’t fit anymore. I do hope Sess turns into a good guy before the series ends like they are hinting. Also, it was nice to see Naraku actually get his ass handed too him by the entire team for once.
Rating: Small. So very small.
Gurren Lagann - Arguably one of the greatest episodes in all of anime. The climax is next week. You better be here.
Rating: Kamina
One Piece - These filler episodes aren’t bad but they aren’t great, either. They are just sorta there. I found this one to be more boring than than last week’s, unfortunately. Buggy was stealing rice cakes or something. I was actually more interested in just watching the characters interact in this setting and enjoying the look of things than understanding the plot (which is ultimately pointless). The character animation was rather nice. Anyway, I’m ready to go back to Ennies Lobby now please. That’s next week, right?
Rating: 2 out of 5 rice cakes.
Deadman Wonderland - Ganta continues to wimp out but thankfully starts to grow a little courage before the end of the episode. Then things got weird. And a little rapey. Turns out voice-box guy is more coo-coo than anyone realized and now he’s going to kill everyone? Shiro, who we’ve already seen as crazy powerful, hasn’t really done much. I expect we’ll see her explode next week. Rock star wannabe just acts cocky and now that little girl is suddenly back? I guess she didn’t die. All in all, this was a very mild penultimate episode that hasn’t answered any real questions. I don’t expect next week’s finale to be all that satisfying to be honest, but here’s hoping.
Rating: 3 out of 5 Ganta Gun bullets
With next week’s series finale of Gurren Lagann and one of my favorite Kill la Kill episodes, I’m pretty hyped. It should be good. After that, we see what SAO II is like. I’ll probably skip out of AoT reruns. Twice was enough.