That really hit the spot. The timing for watching the Yowapeda “Special Ride” OVA was perfect – which is odd, considering it was originally released (though never subbed) some months before the anime began. It works much better now, not least because it’s set in the days after the Souhoku […] Read more
This show is starting to give me whiplash. Every time I’ve started to wonder about Inari Konkon it’s done something to convince me it’s a keeper, and every time I’ve been convinced it’s done something to make me doubt it. Inconsistency is a staple of the majority of anime, of […] Read more
Even in the wake of possibly the best anime episode in the last year, the rest of the schedule does soldier on… Tonari no Seki-Kun – 6/7 Honestly, an episode like this week’s Hunter X Hunter pretty much ruins me for other anime for a while. It’s so completely on […] Read more
Do I really need to say anything? I needed some time after watching that episode before I could even begin to give order to my reactions. Not least of which because I was physically shaking when it ended – even now I’m still trembling a bit. It’s truly astonishing that […] Read more
Yes, it’s already blossom season in Tokyo. I paid a brief visit to the small but pretty Ushi Tenjin Shrine today, about a 20-minute walk from my apartment near Chuo University. The snow hasn’t even melted yet (in fact it flurried while I was there) but the shrine’s Ume Matsuri […] Read more
That blush can only mean one thing… This episode could easily have been titled “The Burdens of the Strategist”, because that was the essence of the message it conveyed. It all comes back to that hostility thing Meng Tian talked about, I suppose – that, and the fact that no […] Read more
Well, that was odd. I’ve made note of the somewhat unorthodox approach to storytelling of Toaru Hikuushi e no Koiuta – “quite an unusual narrative style” was how I put it past week – and that was certainly in evidence here. Again we have an episode that was quite good […] Read more
Low-key, that was not. No question about it, sports can be a brutal lesson in the unsentimental nature of fate – just ask Tom Watson. That, and a reminder of the hard truth that more often than not, talent wins out in the end. That said, I was never too […] Read more
And back off the grid we go… Turns out last week’s trip to relative normalcy was a short-lived one for Space Dandy, which is squarely back in surrealist mode this week. Episode 5 was certainly a pleasant interlude and the positive response (though rather Pavlovian) not underserved. But that […] Read more
The course we seem to be on is not at all an unexpected one. The slow turn of Noragami to the dark side is actually not a turn at all, since that darkness has always existed side-by-side with the very effective comedy. Nevertheless it’s been impossible not to pick up […] Read more