The Winter 2016 season of anime was a weird one for me—one where the unexpected winners of the season were shows I had fully intended to ignore from the start and one where old standbys didn’t manage to impress me the way they had in the past. That all being said, I’m pleased with this season, even as I look forward to the bounties of spring.
The end times approach.
I’m always sort of amazed how just watching one show can trigger a series of thoughts that tie a bunch of disjointed ideas together in my head. Thus it was with Hanayamata, and now here we are with a new Aniwords column on slotting in character archetypes into genre shows and why it all actually works.
As I promised, here’s my full review of Hanayamata. Or… a close to a full review as you’re going to get, because I honestly didn’t have a ton to say about the series. I have most definitely seen shows in this genre before (I was even thinking about how Love Live!‘s structures follow many of the same patterns), and I honestly don’t think Hanayamata does much to rise above the general motions of the genre. That doesn’t mean it’s bad; in fact, I quite enjoyed most of the show. But it did mean that the show was very reliant on the effectiveness of its characters within the larger superstructure—aka Yaya is good.
In which things, aside from one prominent outlier, stay mostly the same.
ERASED may have fallen in my esteem as of late, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still things about it that I like. In fact, the first part of the most recent episode is probably as much as I’ve liked the show since the end of episode three. And it got me thinking about director Tomohiko Ito’s other work that I’ve seen, Sword Art Online, which is of course a dangerous path to go down. But I walked it nonetheless, and what follows are my conclusions. I hope you guys enjoy it!
Whew, it’s been a while, huh? Apologies for the delay—weekend trip and video games have a bad habit of messing up my routines so thoroughly that I can’t get other things done even if I have the time.
Growing up is hard, especially for media franchises steeped in nostalgia. Digimon Adventure tri succeeds with exceeding grace.
Konosuba was oft-categorized as “mean” during its airing, but I saw a fundamentally kind-hearted show at its core.
Mage in a Barrel 