Review

First Impressions: Summer 2014 Anime

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Summer 2014 anime are rolling in, which means it’s time to decide how right I was about some shows and realize how miserably wrong I was about others. Fortunately, I don’t pollute my blog with those abominable season previews (I recently wrote a post that tackles more generally why you can’t judge a show’s quality without having seen it), so you’ll never know exactly what I was expecting. Instead, you get my generally unfiltered thoughts on the new shows of the season, based on what’s actually aired.

That’s the way I like it, and that’s the way I’m gonna keep it. And anyone who doesn’t like it—you can talk with my new best girl Sakurai.

Not included, but will be watching: Terror in Tokyo, Tokyo ESP.

Rail Wars!

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Mekaku City Actors Review

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Sometimes it’s really easy to point to a specific part of a show and say, “This is where it went wrong.” Sometimes, a show is just bad from top to bottom, making it even easier to categorize a show’s flaws. Mekaku City Actors [SHAFT, 2014], appropriately for the studio from whence it hails, is not such an easy case to deal with. Straight up confusing at times, genuinely emotional at others, and just plain weird frequently, it feels like a classic case of misused potential. Even after twelve episodes of generally feeling ambivalent about the show as a whole, I still think Mekaku City Actors was trying desperately to tell an important story, and to be different enough that people would listen. Good intentions aren’t always enough, but for what Mekaku City Actors tried to be and for what it was, I’m giving the show a 6/10 (Ranking).

Mekaku City Actors

Do you like SHAFT? SHAFT likes SHAFT, too.

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Ping Pong the Animation Review

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There are some shows that I consider “moments” shows. They’re shows you watch for the few seconds or few shots of brilliant beauty interspersed between a lot of reasonably good, but not great material. Ping Pong the Animation [Tatsunoko Productions, 2014] is what happens when you take a “moments” show and bring all the in between moments up to the level of the moments. It’s an unreservedly ambitious, glowingly creative and masterfully executed show worthy of the rating I’m about to give it. For all of the above, and everything I haven’t said yet, I’m giving Ping Pong the Animation a 9/10. (Ranking)

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Monogatari & the Extinction of the Harem (Part 1)

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With my completion of Monogatari Series: Second Season (Monogatari), I have watched over 50 episodes of Nisio Isin’s Monogatari franchise. That’s a lot of time to spend with the same group of characters, and yet my experience of watching Monogatari Series: Second Season (SHAFT, 2013) was utterly unlike my previous encounters with Bakemonogatari, Nisemonogatari, and Nekomonogatari: Kuro. Part of the tag for Monogatari Series: Second Season was as follows:

 “Their soliloquies, confessions—and goodbyes.”

If the previous entries into the franchise were beginnings, Monogatari Series: Second Season was most certainly a story of seperations, of departures, and of change.

Monogatari Series: Second Season
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