New Game! has kind of sneakily become one of my favorite shows of the Summer 2016 season, but it’s not just because of the great character designs or the pretty colors. Instead, I think there are some elements to the show that really ground it in a semi-reality and make it feel much more substantial (even if it’s only softly so) than your normal cute girls doing cute things anime.
Shows like Absolute Duo have shown I’m weak to anime where the central relationship is solid, and Konobi falls into that category. And so I wrote about what makes Usami’s crush on Uchimaki better than your average anime blushing.
I was reflecting on my drive home about anime that have made me legitimately angry. I think I cut out of Re:ZERO before I got to that point.
This season is full of good things to write about!
So, we’ll kick things off with Amanchu! Going from Princess Tutu, the only other Junichi Sato I’ve seen aside from a single episode of Aria, to Amanchu! is a bit of a shift and certainly not an equal one, but Sato’s reputation with this kind of show precedes him despite a lack of personal experience and thus far in I can understand why. Amanchu! glows. I really like that, and I hope I’ve articulated with some grace how I think this comes about.
It’s Love Live! It’s back, it’s here, I’m happy, Hanamaru best girl after one episode (disclaimer: best girl decision not final). And so, because I’m not quite over the girls of μ’s yet, I wrote up a little something about what Sunshine!! has inherited from the original series: namely, a spirit of joy. It’s a topic I’ve sort of written on before, but it’s neat to see how these sort of things can crossover so strongly from shows not in direct continuity with each other. It’s like the Macross effect, except much more 1:1.
The Lost Village wasn’t the best anime that aired this season, nor was it anywhere close to being my favorite, but darn it, it was sure a heckuva a lot of fun to write about. I’ve long since passed by my formalist fan days (I remember telling one of my college professors that I was a formalist LOL), but talking about The Lost Village‘s formal qualities is very nearly the only way I can think to approach the show—as should be clear since this is the third post I’ve written on its formal elements. In any case, I hope you guys enjoy this wild post!
I read things, which make me think of other things—which make me want to write things. Thus goes the cycle of my Aniwords columns. Speaking of which, I’m actually at my one-year anniversary writing weekly columns for Crunchyroll, which is a pretty exciting thing! That’s a lot of consecutive weeks of writing (although there were two weeks where I didn’t write anything because of work), and I don’t know if I ever would have imagined I would have lasted this long—let alone still be coming up with new ideas of things to say each week.
(More exciting news after the break, by the way!)
I don’t know how many of you guys are watching Kiznaiver (mostly because I’ve been very poor at writing up those weekly posts this season due to the volume of stuff I’m watching), but episode 7 was really, really good. Good enough to motivate me to devote an entire post to detail how it, and the rest of the show, uses visuals to communicate beyond what the writing says.
I didn’t write that title just for the clickbait; I wrote it because I actually believe it’s true.
It takes a lot for a show like The Lost Village (Mayoiga) to succeed as well as it does, and analysis of things that are well-crafted in non-traditional ways is nearly always rewarding. Having a chance to spill out everything I’ve been thinking about why The Lost Village is as consistently funny as it is was almost as fun as watching the show itself, and I’m rather pleased with how my arguments for and analysis of it turned out. It’s not often I try to analyze things purely on a craft level, but Mizushima and Okada made it easy for me. Hope you guys enjoy (and maybe decide to check out the show if you haven’t)!
