Haikyuu!! To the Top 2nd Season – 05
At least it’s over.
So help me, I just don’t care much about Nekoma. Among Haikyuu opponents they just don’t strike me as all that interesting, not even Kenma (who’s the obvious narrative centerpiece). Whenever the match is not in doubt a sports series really has to mine its drama from elsewhere, and I just don’t have the buy in with this group of characters to make that to work with me.
An eventual Nekoma-Karasuno showdown (to close the season, presumably) certainly seems like the endgame here. It could be a feint but if so, the series is really pushing it hard. That makes anything that comes beforehand filler, basically, and the margin for error goes down by a lot. The show is on safer ground when the Crows are the focus, as they seemingly will be again next week – even the lesser characters on this team are at least somewhat engaging.
Jujutsu Kaisen – 05
I’m still kind of in a grey area with Jujutsu Kaisen. It’s not bad by any means – competent and reasonably articulate in its storytelling. I just haven’t anything that really grabs me about it. At least with Kimetsu no Yaiba you had Ufotable’s shiny visuals to keep you engaged when it bogged down. On the other hand, at least this series doesn’t have Zenitsu or Inosuke.
Yuuji isn’t dead of course, so the suspense part of this episode isn’t too suspenseful. Sukuna’s plan is certainly a logical one – literally ripping Yuuji’s heart out to prevent him from switching back. That puts the onus on Megumi to try and deal with him, and that goes about as well as you’d expect. I’m not sure exactly how Megumi was able to survive stuff that would normally have killed a person ten times over, but I guess we’ll chalk it up to his jujutsu powers. Or something.
As for the new characters, first impressions didn’t really impress me. Seki Tomokazu (using his Daru voice) as a talking panda has the potential to be amusing, if nothing else for the explanation of how a panda manages to be a student at a high school. But the abusive girl and the guy who only says rice ball ingredients were lost on me. I guess we’re getting a tournament arc next, which seems kind of forced, but we’ll see how that plays out.
I’m probably pretty close to a decision on this one. I could see myself dropping it after this week, or even deciding to commit to it if the next ep really wins me over, but I’m not going to stay stuck in-between for an extended period. That makes Episode 6 pretty important.
Elia Notari
October 31, 2020 at 7:29 pmA Shonen Jump Weekly Digest, ah?
Like I said, I’m expecting that motherf*****g CSM announcement by the end of the year
Guardian Enzo
October 31, 2020 at 7:37 pmDid you hear the rumor that the manga was ending?
Elia Notari
October 31, 2020 at 10:50 pmA big “climax” yes (Neverland announced three big climaxes in a single year tho). Then again, considering the selling numbers, it would be stupid not to proceed with an animated series, on that field I’m still pretty confident
bennydelon
October 31, 2020 at 9:21 pmI hear Jujutsu Kaisen has a great power system, people even compare it to Nen. I’m assuming Megumi survived by using some kind of “ten” equivalent for jujutsu users.
Honestly I just keep watching because I’m curious about this power system that people praise so much. Even if the story stays formulaic, it could make the show entertaining enough to watch for 2 cours.
Endscile
November 1, 2020 at 10:17 amWell it is nen, jujutsu over all rule is soft enough to introduce whatever ability it wants from nowhere like nen and just give the said ability later to put a cap/limit so the user can get creative with it like nen.
Gado
October 31, 2020 at 11:26 pmI think the ability to enjoy Jujutsu is closely related to how much you are into battle shonens with their tropes and conventions. Competent really is the best way to describe it for the majority, it never turns sour and avoids all the obnoxious traps of the genre, almost always entertaining and somewhat inspired, but not particularly inventive.
The action is pretty damn good and I’ll say I really appreciate the very fast, passing by nature In the character moments inbetween. All those moments, at least for me, pile up and turn small interactions and characters more meaningful with time. Dramatic stakes are definitely not immediately satisfying and not the focus of the series, it kinda grows alongside the flashier stuff, but it does bare fruits, just tough to get to those moments if you aren’t into the WSJ Battle Shonen DNA.
Also, I’ll second the comment about Chainsawman, that one and Fire Punch are just straight up absolutely great series, hoping for the not-quite-as-good-as-the-manga adaptation so author gets even more leeway to do whatever he wants in the future.
Bnk
October 31, 2020 at 11:28 pmIn the manga Sukuna only throws Megumi once and he softened the landing using Nue. Mappa added all those extra throwing around probably because they think it looked cool or something.
Yukie
November 1, 2020 at 1:32 amJJK’s competent indeed, but I personally found this episode’s writing fairly clunky (not sure if it’s the adaptation or the manga). Like you said, I also found the tournament arc incredibly forced, and my suspense of disbelief was extremely challenged when after last episode’s display of Sukuna’s ruthlessness, this episode it was severely undercut by his fight with Megumi. I’m also not a big fan of how Megumi’s backstory was delivered; as with Nobara’s, it felt like the character was directly explaining their motivations to the audience. Megumi’s was even worse, considering it felt like he was abridging all of this complex backstory just to hit some kind of emotional punch line. I’m not sure if this is the fault of the adaptation or the source material, but I am kind of worried since GoH also had some similar (and many worse) moments.
Your comparison of KnY and JJK has got me thinking about the similarities between the two:
-zipping through the plot to get to the major set pieces (actually, I feel like this might be an inevitable result of trying to keep hold of the modern audience’s shrinking attention span)
-the brutality that is underlined by the worldbuilding (can’t say I’m surprised that the new gen. enjoy darker shounen)
Thus, it makes me wonder if the popularity we’re seeing is the result of a wave of new gen. anime/manga fans. They didn’t grow up with the old Big 3, so after BnHA, these titles are also quite enthralling to them. Kind of like the same hype way back when an entire generation got into Naruto, I speculate.
-Sadly, another similarity I found (though I’m not 100% sure since I’ve only watched the anime of both so far) is the lack of great female characters. I had hopes that we might get more diverse female characters with female mangaka but was sorely disappointed (Nezuko was literally “silenced” and relegated as moe character for most of KnY, while Nobara’s character feels kind of all over the place rn and serves mainly as a gag character).
Personally, I did find elements in these titles that have grabbed my interest. For KnY, I found the setting incredibly refreshing. Not a lot of shounen take place in the Taisho era, and that period coupled with the demons really gives the series a gothic vibe. I’m also intrigued by the motivations of the main villain and Tanjiro’s growth. As for JJK, I’m still interested in how Itadori will grow into his new life. I guess it just really comes down to whether the flaws outweigh your interest.
Sorry for going off on such a long spiel in the comment section (looking at it a lot of it seems rather redundant). All these thoughts just hit me when I read your post
Guardian Enzo
November 1, 2020 at 7:21 amWhy apologize for an excellently reasoned comment like that?
Rean
November 1, 2020 at 7:06 pmYukie, if you hate Nezuko’s current state in KnY (which I wasn’t too fond of), then I think you may hate the ultimate ending even more than I did. Which in itself was a shame because it ruined what was a very enjoyable, if not particularly transcendent final arc. The setting, as refreshing as it, also works against it there too. I will refrain from saying more as I feel I’ve already blabbed too much.
And I fully agree about the similarities between KnY and JJK.
But I would add that while it has a much better grip on its world and how it works, JJK’s weakness is probably its characters, none of them are really annoying, but a lot of them only really exist to further the plot or facilitate fights without much memorable characterization (as much as I like it, I find it surprisingly difficult to even remember the characters’ names at times!), though I am hoping the current arc will solve a lot of this in a variety of ways, it’s easily the best arc of the series so far, and a culmination of most everything that preceded it.
On the other hand, KnY succeeds more in making you care about most of its characters, but it also rarely strays away from the tried and true, and as a result, doesn’t really surprise you too much with its plot or fights.
Both series are created with a similar mindset in play, but they take very different routes to get there.
Guardian Enzo
November 1, 2020 at 7:55 pmThis seems to be pretty much the broad consensus about KnY. Which makes me ask, yet again, what is it about this series that’s allowed it to become the biggest hit in anime-manga history? Not only do I not get it, no one seems to have any possible explanations to offer. In the immortal words of Harry Caray, I just can’t figure it out…
Rean
November 5, 2020 at 9:03 pmIf I had to venture a guess, it’s probably the big budget adaptation. Eye candy can go far in masking the series’ flaws and makes recommending the series as easy as showing them a hype moment or two. I sense that there’s a similar strategy going with JJK too, in fact as a manga reader, I anticipate that episode 6 or 7 could very well be “the moment” that takes the series into a truly viral sensation. If they land that moment, then JJK is going places too.
Peak TV state is beginning to seep into the manga/anime as well, and we are seeing more and more series rushing through to get to the good stuffbecause otherwise they lose out in the narrative arms race. The days of say, Eiichiro Oda taking 100 chapters to worldbuild and create meaningful character relationships in One Piece’s “weakest sea” before starting any real hype trains are just over.
And it honestly makes me a bit sad.
Guardian Enzo
December 15, 2020 at 7:40 amI wonder if we’ll look back on HeroAca as the last of the old school, slow build action shounen. Or at least in WSJ.
Barran Nugraha Kodri
November 1, 2020 at 11:58 pmProbably the same reason why Utada Hikaru’s debut album managed to become the best selling album in japanese history even though I didn’t find it to be anything special: people giving a shit into something you don’t
Guardian Enzo
November 2, 2020 at 6:56 amAnd again, no realistic theory can even be proposed. It’s a fascinating mystery.
Pho
November 2, 2020 at 5:44 pmDid anyone else find it funny that they were casually setting up a tournament arc just minutes after the main character “died”? I’m assuming it didn’t happen this way in the manga and the show runners are just tacitly acknowledging there’s no way anyone watching *really* believes Yuuji is dead.
Earthlingzing
November 2, 2020 at 9:06 pmYeah, this episode felt like a bunch of shonen elements were just crammed in for no real reason. Hoping the next one gets it back on track.