To take the familiar and make it fresh is a rare ability, and one which Space Dandy has demonstrated over and over. We’re on familiar (you might even say hallowed) ground with this episode of Space Dandy, both in general and series-specific terms. Parody is the bread and butter of […] Read more
Wait – so those guys were there the whole time? It’s pretty hard to go wrong when you build an episode around Mikorin, and Gesshounoku certainly didn’t this week. But I have to confess that Nozaki-kun himself is starting to grow on me as a purely comic character. He’s one […] Read more
Life – and anime – goes on… Diamond no Ace – 44 Really, the Sensen game has from the beginning been a process of them sliding over and making way for the teams that matter. It’s all about Tanba and Eijun and how they perform, and Sensen was just the […] Read more
No doubt about it, Tai sashimi is the most delicious sashimi there is. This episode very much represents Barakamon the anime in its elemental form. Pleasing idyll, cute girls being cute, the occasional razor-sharp gag, great distorted faces, and cap it off with a life’s lesson to take home with […] Read more
By my reckoning, this makes Puck the Joker. If you didn’t look too closely you might be forgiven for mistaking this for a breather episode, especially in the A-Part, but there was an awful lot happening up there on the Tenkaidou. Captain Earth continues to scream headlong towards a mighty […] Read more
I love Baby Steps. I haven’t mentioned that, have I? I admit I was a little puzzled by the tepid reaction to Nat-chan when Baby Steps’ anime adaptation was in its early stages. The truth is I felt as if people weren’t really understanding her character the way I was, […] Read more
The end of Obon, and the end of summer break. I already talked about the Japanese tradition of Toro Nagashi when I posted about the version at Ueno Koen (held in July because much of Kanto schedules Obon based on the old lunisolar calendar) so no need to do so […] Read more
Could we be headed for another “Han or Greedo” controversy? Han shot first. That was certainly a lot to take in, in a good way. Mostly we got an episode delivered over to some of the best action of any series this season, but it finished by unzipping an enormous […] Read more
Here’s the word from Megumi Han: This news is not unexpected, of course, but it still marks the end of an era. And with anime in such a state of creative stagnation, the timing – though purely coincidental – is all the more heartbreaking. I’ll obviously discuss this in more […] Read more
Argevollen continues to be resolutely idiosyncratic if nothing else. While other interesting things happened, the episode is certainly overshadowed by the ridiculous moaning in the massage scene. Talk about awkward. A man named Quasimodo who calls Samonji “Marshall”? That’s certainly significant. I liked the dreary realism of the Argevollen firmware […] Read more