Yuki Kaji (eh…) and Saori Hayami (yay!) take the stage this week—as does stage fright for everyone involved in the Maihou Music Competition and one intensely green-eyed cat.
Fall 2014, Week 7: Highlights of the Week
This is going to be one of the shorter highlights posts I’ve ever done because I wound up dropping one show this week, but compensated by writing episodic posts for three shows. So this is what it’s like when you get to the level of being an ANN reviewer…yikes.
Oh, and on Friday I finally discovered what WIXOSS is really all about.
Akatsuki no Yona, Episode 7
We traded out sakuga for great character work and one heckuva a fascinating conflict this week, and I’m totally okay with that.
Inou Battle, Episode 7
I tried to fit this all in a paragraph for my highlights of the week. I couldn’t do it. The pain of watching good cartoons is real, guys. I’ll try and keep it as short as I can.
Is it Okay to Like Your Lie in April?
If you’re dialed in to the anime fandom, particularly the simulcast-watching, blogging segment of the fandom that I inhabit, you’ve probably heard at least some hints of the controversy that’s been surrounding noitaminA’s new show, Your Lie in April, a 2-cour anime produced by A-1 Pictures and based on the Kodansha Manga Award winning manga by Naoshi Arakawa.
Near as I can tell as someone standing apart from those who are decrying the show, the bulk of the outcry surrounding KimiUso is derived from the show’s treatment of protagonist Kousei’s traumatic-abusive childhood at the hands of his now-deceased mother.
Now, I’ve always tried to form my own opinions of a show divorced from the complaints and praises of other, but KimiUso has been something of a special case for me. This is, partially, because I’m hearing these complaints from other bloggers whom I personally like and respect, but also because the criticism seems not to be directed towards KimiUso‘s technical aspects so much as it targets ethical concerns, excepting cases where the two merge together.
Anime Artwork Adventures #9
Hmmm…what to talk about today? Well, I do have one announcement coming up soon, but I don’t think I’m quite at liberty to release it yet, so y’all will have to wait on that until next week at least.
I finally finished up Revolutionary Girl Utena, which was a brilliant series. I stuck it at #15 on my top shows list, but it will probably sneak slowly upwards the longer it remains in my consciousness. And, since I’m writing a paper on it due at the beginning of December, it will remain so for at least another 3 weeks or so. For those of you who haven’t seen Utena yet, get out there and watch it. It’s a superbly crafted show. Even if you don’t have the same love for theatrical, dramatic, and Shakespearean elements as I do, it’s still an amazing anime.
Now for some pictures!
Your Lie in April, Episode 6
Well, it took me a while to really warm up to Your Lie in April (abbreviating it as KimiUso), but I’m finally there with episode 6—which mostly kept up the visual pace set by the past couple episodes and finally added in some much needed nuance to its thematic wanderings. I’ve said in my past highlights of the week that the thing I feared most was that KimiUso would oversimplify everything, from the story itself to the sorts of thematic entanglements it was setting up.
If KimiUso continues to develop along these lines, I might even find something to talk about each week!
Desho~!?
Fall 2014, Week 6: Highlights of the Week
Another long week, except somehow this week I was caught up early in the weekend and got behind again at the beginning of the week. But, overall, it was a really good week! Two shows (Shirobako and Akatsuki no Yona) impressed me enough to merit their own episodic posts, Your Lie in April pulled me back in and everything else pretty much held steady. Twintails and YuYuYu are the shows that I’m still not sure about.
Akatsuki no Yona, Episode 6
I like writing about good episodes, and this episode of Akatsuki no Yona was a very good episode indeed. From the beginning of the show, I’ve felt Yona had the potential to take a recognizable story form and mold it into something more compelling than a reverse harem set in a fantasy world, and this episode stood on the shoulders of the episode before to start to make that suspicion a reality. That’s not to say that Yona has shed all its flaws, or that the anime has turned into a deeply impactful piece, but being on that path is about all we can ask from the show at this point.
We ended last episode with Hak poisoned and Yona’s eyes burning with more spirit than she’s had all season—this episode both got them out of that particular bind and allowed Yona to regress a little, a natural and (I think) important decay for her character.
Anime Artwork Adventures #8
Hey, guys! It’s been a long week—I applied for two different jobs today—and I’m sitting in the back of a trivia night feeling exhausted, with a surprise birthday part to go to in a couple hours, so this is going to be a bit shorter than normal, for which I apologize.
There’s a lot of cool stuff going on in the fandom right now, not the least of which is this great season of anime. So, yeah, sorry, that’s all I’ve got right now. Let’s get to the pictures! Lots of originals this week!
Mage in a Barrel 