Ahiru no Sora – 04

I gotta say, I got some serious heebie-jeebies watching the start of the game between Kuzu and Maru High this week.  Halfcourt shots right off the opening tip are hardly the stuff of realism – that was a Kurobas moment if ever there was one.  And c’mon – the tip-off isn’t that big a deal, honestly.  It’s one possession.  If that’s all it takes to unmake your team psychologically, you have bigger problems than leaping ability.

All this probably means more to me than it would with most sports series, to be honest, because the absence of any remotely realistic basketball anime in recent years bothers me a lot.  If nothing else fairly believable basketball is pretty much my hand-stamp for entry with Ahiru no Sora.  Things did get better after that distressing moment, but the jury is still very much out in the department as far as I’m concerned.

Other than that it was another pretty solid, entertaining if unspectacular episode.  I’m still having a bit of a struggle relating to Sora as a protagonist both because of the performance and how familiar the archetype is, but Momoharu has possibilities.  Even more, Chiaki remains the one that really interests me and I’m quite interested in seeing what happens when he steps on the court.  He looks like a back to the basket, old-school center to me, but I suspect he has more than a few tricks up his sleeve.  As to covering future episodes, we’ll see – I may need to buy-in a little more to feel motivated, but I’ll be watching at the very least.

Radiant 2nd Season – 04

There’s a chance this will be my last write-up on Radiant too, though it likewise airs on a slow anime day so the bar is a little lower.  I’m enjoying the second season but it’s not wowing me, and I don’t think we’ve seen anything on the level of the best parts of the Rumble Town arc.  We also haven’t seen Dragunov for a couple of weeks, and his considerable screen presence is missed.

I’m noticing that the pacing this season is strikingly more deliberate than it was the first.  I suspect this all ties back to it being much more faithful to the manga, and in general I’d say this is a positive change.  It does require a bit of an adjustment though after the jackhammer plot progression of S1.  Caislean Merlin has been rather a leisurely stroll so far, despite the tumble Seth took at the close of the last episode – things are being allowed to develop at their own pace.  Speaking of that fall – is it me, or is the Draccoon totally like something out of AtLA?

My favorite part of this ep, I think, was that odd and strangely captivating conversation between Seth and Grimm.  Grimm isn’t exactly the life advice sort of adult, but I was struck when he responded to Seth’s expression of his envy over Grimm’s ability to hide his presence by noting the cost – the “distance” between he and society.  He was clearly trying to teach the boy a little lesson there, and that’s definitely the softest moment we’ve seen from Grimm – who’s quite an interesting and mysterious character on the whole.

No Guns Life – 03

Of the three shows in this post, I think No Guns Life is probably the one I’m most likely to continue covering.  That said, it’s still on the bubble.  It’s pretty distinctive and quite well-made, and I find myself more or less engaged by both the plot and characters at this point.  Madhouse has a lot going on this season and I do worry whether they’re still up to that production-wise – and that weird extended run of CGI in the middle of the episode did nothing to allay my concern.  But apart from that most signs point to “yes”.

Given the obviously sci-fi nature of the premise, the execution of NGL is actually pretty realistic.  That’s one of the things that gives the show its appeal I think, and it’s clear not only but most obviously through Juuzou that the extended surrender none of their innate humanity (for better or worse) when subjected to the process.  They behave more or less like regular people in highly irregular circumstances.  That applies to Tetsurou, who’s simply trying to do the best he can to fight the evil he’s immersed in, and Mary – who seems like a pretty empathetic soul for the most part.

We see both sides of Juuzou here.  He refuses the Yakuza’s job “offer” on the grounds that everyone should wipe their own ass (though he had ulterior motives, I suspect he really does believe that), and he declines to take a “charity case” be helping the kids Berühren is attacking to try and draw Tetsurou out.  That leaves the boy (still unable to walk unaided or speak) no option but to Harmony Juuzou himself, and set about trying to root out the problem.  It all goes rather badly given Tetsurou’s lack of practical experience, and I suspect Juuzou is going to be rather salty about all this when he’s back in control of his body…