So plenty I've watched a bunch of anime this week without really commenting on it. Time to rectify the situation:
[Yuri Kuma Arashi] - 5
While this episode contains the distinct scent of 'rushed character development' it was certainly better than the first three episodes of the series. I can't really recommend anyone picks this series up or continues to watch it because until it ends I can't say whether it has succeeded or failed in it's goals. Obviously, no matter how it concludes, the series is clearly flawed.
Nevertheless, despite all that I've said above, this has entertained me every week.
[
Yatterman] (Original Series) - 1
I felt like I couldn't really appreciate
Yatterman Night without any greater context so I had to check this out. While it wasn't very good it did have some really fun and creative robot action, so that's a thing I suppose. The strangest thing is that the 'heroes' basically have no motivation.
They run a toyshop (theoretically, because all we see them doing is building robots and fighting 'evil' and one day Gan completes this old robot his father was working on. Upon completion of the robot he proclaims "Well now I have a robot I need a secret base so that I can become a superhero and fight evil!". I mean, even comic books explain why heroes are born better and this. Just because this was a 70's show is no excuse for having such lazy writing!
At least I have an understanding of what
Yatterman Night is a response to.
[Shirobako] - 17
This show continues to be good. This episode didn't do anything exceptionally different to the norm so I find it hard to comment on.
[Death Parade] - 5
I'm slightly confused about this show's identity. I had assumed it was going to be essentially a series of short stories about people living different lives and what that meant, but this week I witnessed a shonuen-esque fight scene between "Water Dude" and "String Dude":
Which was unexpected, to say the least. During the first episode of this series I basically assumed that all the other levels of this 'Other World' and the various other Arbiters that inhabited them was essentially background dressing that would never really be explored. You know, kind of like how in
Haibane Renmei/B] there's all these rules and organisations that are never fully 'explained' but imply a much greater world than what the audience is explicitly told.
However, it now looks like we're actually going to see what different Arbiters actually do and what the rest of the organisation is actually up to. This feels kind of unnecessary but I suppose they might take it in an interesting direction? It's hard to say at this juncture.
Either way, it looks like the show has a 'core focus' which will be the journey of the assistant to recover her lost memories. The problem with focusing on that is that her character really hasn't been fleshed out to this point and, due to the strucuture of the show, there really isn't much room for her to do so. But we'll see I guess.
Either way, now all those shots of ice staking in the OP make much more sense:
