Your Lie in April

Winter 2015, Week 4: Highlights of the Week

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Cuts are finally complete at 11 shows for the season. With the end of the week bearing the bulk of the season’s weight, this is a manageable schedule for me with everything that’s going in real life and with all the project I’m hoping to do in the coming months with the blog.

It’s been a tough week-ish for the blog in terms of page views as it looks like my SEO ranking were pretty much reset with the new domain fully taking over. That’s…kind of a disappointment after it took literal months to build up my rankings to what they were before the crash, but I’m trying to look at this as a new challenge for me as I continue to hone my content creation and digital marketing skills. I’ve got a plan to work my way back up the list and a big part of it is continuing to create new, interesting content! Hope you guys enjoy!

Absolute Duo

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Your Lie in April, Episode 15

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How many different narrative threads does KimiUso think it can handle at once?

I’d be lying if I said I’m a little ambivalent about the introduction of Hiroko’s new student, Nagi. We’ve already got plenty of different stories going on in this show right now with most of our mainstay characters in some sort of flux, so to have an entirely new character introduced…well, it both excites me and irritates me. I like Kousei, Tsubaki, Watari, Kaori, Takeshi, and (former Best Girl) Emi quite a lot, so taking more time away from them to spend it on another character makes me wonder if we’re ever going to actually deal with everyone else’s storylines.

Your Lie in April

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Winter 2015, Week 3: Highlights of the Week

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More shows dropped this week (including Isuca‘s premier managing a paltry 51 seconds before I gave up on it), meaning my schedule for this season is more or less set. There are still a few shows that could get knocked out, but I’m pretty happy with everything on a daily basis, so there would have to be some serious stumbles for any of the remaining bubble shows to get dropped.

Cute High Earth Defense Club LOVE!

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Winter 2015, Week 2: Highlights of the Week

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I wasn’t sure about this after the first week, but now…I’m sure. I have too many shows on this schedule, especially in the later half of the week. What’s killing me are the five ongoing shows, but none of them are even close to drop territory. Here’s what did bite the bullet this week:

  • Koufuku Graffiti fell victim to both “not really feeling inspired to go back to this one” syndrome and the “schedule too full” curse despite a warm premiere.
  • Military! basically sucked for three whole minutes.
  • Junketsu no Maria was sadly dropped—best wishes to Maria!
  • Assassination Classroom is getting close to drop territory, but isn’t quite there yet.

Cute Earth Defense Club LOVE!

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Your Lie in April, Episode 13

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Well, it certainly wasn’t KimiUso‘s best, but it landed much closer the show’s good side than last week’s episode did. As I’ve said before, KimiUso is an impressive show in its ability to oscillate between episodes that leave me unimpressed and episodes have a profound emotional impact—going from last week’s episode to this week’s was a classic case of this weird dynamic between Good KimiUso and Kind of Meh KimiUso.

And, the thing is, KimUso can have moving episodes while still faltering in some technical aspects. There were places in this episode that my brain was chirping at me, but my heart was still being worked on. To me, that’s an accomplishment, and I think KimiUso can do this when it leans on its strengths to compensate for its weakness. It’s perhaps not the best model to follow, but it’s the one that’s working for the show.

Your Lie in April

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Winter 2015, Week 1: Highlights of the Week (Ongoing Shows)

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With the premieres of new shows taking up most of my writing time lately, the five ongoing shows I’ve carried over from the fall have taken something of a back seat. Which, you know, is kind of a shame considering how good these five shows are. I didn’t want to let a whole week go by without talking about them at all, so we’ll have a short Highlights of the Week this week to chat about Garo, Shirobako, Your Lie in April, Log Horizon, and Akatsuki no Yona.

My schedule for this season is still coming together, but I’m hoping to aim for ~4 posts/week: Yona and KimiUso episodics, Highlights of the Week, and some kind of craft/editorial piece over the weekends. We’ll see how that goes. But, for now, on to this week!

Shirobako

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Your Lie in April, Episode 12

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Man, this was a weird episode for KimiUso. For something like this to follow the beauty of episode 10 and the solidity of episode 11…it was like an entirely different show, even from what I felt were the weaker episodes at the beginning of the first cour. While KimiUso has always struggle with executing its comedy and doing so in a manner that didn’t interrupt the flow of the episode, this episode was an almost shocking departure from the general level of competency KimiUso typically exhibits—the flow, simply, was horrid.

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Your Lie in April, Episode 11

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I wasn’t expecting this episode of KimiUso to stand equal with the sheer emotional heft of last week’s episode, but it was a pretty freaking stellar episode even in comparison to episode 10. If I had to describe it quickly, I’d just say that this week’s KimiUso ticked a whole lot of boxes for me of things I didn’t know I wanted from this show and of things I did want. For a cour ending episode, this was both an impressively efficient and impactful wrap-up to the events of the first ten episodes and admirable preparation for what’s still to come.

Your Lie in April

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Fall 2014, Week 11: Highlights of the Week

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Well, I’m on break from school, but that also means I’m back to my part time job, so fitting in blogging around that is going to mean a few less timely posts than before. Ah, the irony that being on break is going to interfere more with my blogging schedule than being at school. Something about not be able to control your own schedule is so…lovely.

Argevollen

Thank you for this gem, Argevollen.

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