I guess it’s that time again—three weeks into the season—for the weekly rundown. At least for now, while I’m still trying to cut shows from my schedule, the individual entries might be a little shorter (at least I’ll try to keep them so). I’m down to 15 shows, which is manageable for watching, but not for blogging. So far, nothing’s stuck out like Zankyou no Terror last season as worthy of weekly posts, but we’ll see…

Anyways, wow, week three already? It feels like the season just started to me.

Your Lie in April, Episode 2: This should have been the “Oh, yes, I’m keeping this show” episode. But instead…I am so so pissed that some idiot thought it was a good idea to cut to the whiny judge in the middle of Kaori’s performance. Put that stuff at the END, instead of wrecking the impact of the moment for the viewer! And then I want to dish about the awful attempts at comedy in this show. They are 1) not even funny, and 2) totally trivialize the weight of the drama. Like the jump into the pervert joke after Kousei’s beautiful monologue as he leaves school? The direction there said, “See all this interesting, touching emotional stuff we just contacted? Yeah, none of that matters because WE’RE FUNNY HA HA!” How am I supposed to take your serious moments seriously, show, when you won’t even do it yourself? Very annoying stuff, and I hate that it’s so annoying because I really, really like a lot of the other stuff going on. But it won’t get out of its own way and right now I’m unable to ignore that.

Shirobako, Episode 2: Lots of people thought Shirobako‘s first episode could have been a fluke. I was not one of them. This show has pretty much consistently exuded confidence, competence, and solidity to me. It’s simultaneously grounded and silly, and exists on the thin boundary between outright satire and whimsical ditziness. Stuff like the moe girls appearing before the staff in their meeting is downright hilarious, but that’s played across the proud realism of the show in which the director is wanting to redo an entire character and the composer just asks, “So, do we keep the music as is?” I have to wonder if some of these staff conversations were just recorded by P.A. Works staff and then reworked into a script with a bit of editing, because I believe every moment of this show.

Amagi Brilliant Park, Episode 3: Still on the fence with this one, but episode 3 did some work to keep me and some work (fanservice, duh) to lose me. Moffle is starting to get on my nerves a little bit and I don’t find him funny, just annoying. He seems determined to do everything he can to keep Kanie from succeeding, even if it means bringing down the park and his own life. I’m a bit worried about the inbound drama next week. If it falls flat, AmaBri might end up a drop after all. But the OP’s full version is out this week and oh my gosh harpsichords.

Garo, Episode 3: A bit more of a pedestrian episode from Garo this week, although it seems like Ema is unofficially joining the Makai Knights’ party? Getting the ring was probably important, but this felt like a one off episode to me. Did we really need to spend the full 25 minutes on it?

selector spread WIXOSS, Episode 3: We’re kind of teetering on the edge of diving headlong into the morass of love drama that was Yuzuki and her brother last season, this time in the form of Akira and Ulith. Ulith doesn’t work for me at all as the pseudo-loving psychopath who put Akira back together and Akira’s emotional convulsions over Ulith are just as unsympathetic and difficult to buy as were Yuzuki’s. Apart from that, of course Tama ends up in Ulith’s hands—we could expect no less from Mayu’s grudging promise. Her conversation with Tama finally gave us some hints as to how the WIXOSS system came to be, although in a cloudy fashion. I still like that Iona is baffled by the Ruko-Yuzuki-Hitoe trio and Ruko’s feelings about Tama, and I especially appreciated that Ruko finally got sat down and talked to about her tendencies to do everything on her own. Now, whether or not she actually retains that lesson…

Rage of Bahamut: Genesis, Episode 3: Something finally clicked for me this episode, and I think it’s mostly thanks to Kaiser dumping his backstory on Rita. We finally got to see both what makes him tick and how that influences his behavior in extreme circumstances. At this point, I think he and Rita are a more interesting pair than Farvaro and Amira. The rest of the world spins on, too, and I’m pleased to see that Jeanne d’Arc (whom the Japanese seem to be quite fascinated with) is an appropriately competent and awesome character here. Maybe most importantly for the rest of the plot, Amira being the God Key herself holds some interesting implications going forward. It’ll be interesting to see how that element of the story is used.

Akatsuki no Yona, Episode 3: Chihayafuru vibes, anyone? Despite the cute flashbacks to the kids, the episode actually felt kind of disjointed (in a Glasslip kind of way) to me. Like the pieces weren’t very well connected together. Additionally, the music seemed a bit off this week, too. I usually don’t notice soundtracks, but the rhythms of the music just didn’t seem to match the scenes. Don’t get me wrong—I liked the episode and I thought it was good for a lot of reason (backstory, characterization of both Hak and Yona, a nice bit about King Il), but it all came across as oddly pieced together.

One Sentence Summaries

Twintails, Episode 2: Some funny stuff, but the joke might be getting stale for me already.

Argevollen, Episode 15: I thought the choice to focus the camera away from the actual battle made the effect of Tokimune’s out-of-control screaming even more discomforting and hard to listen to.

RWBY, Episode 10.5: Another recap episode where nothing happens between full episodes of nothing happening.

Inou Battle, Episode 3: This show might have some actual substance and I’m comfortable with the archetypes and the redtsun has cute hairclips, so I’m happy.

Log Horizon, Episode 3: DEEN might actually have a budget for this show(!?), because there was a lot of animation during Shiroe’s long monologue about what a raid is.

Sora no Method, Episode 3: Noel is a cooking dish, are you surprised?

Hitsugi no Chaika, Episode 2-3: Chaika, blurring lines of good and bad? Akari, good joke!

Kokkuri-san, Episode 3: Pedo jokes aren’t funny, and that’s all we’re getting. Dropped.