Whatever else I may ultimately decide I feel about it, watching Watamote is undeniably a powerful experience. If it were strictly a question of how good the first two episodes of the series were, the decision about whether to blog Watamote would be easy. They were really wonderful – very […] Read more
How much bigger can this plot possibly get, I wonder? One thing I’ve noticed about Mushibugyou is that it has the latest eyecatches in the anime business – they usually hit somewhere around the 18-minute mark. It’s almost as if there’s so much going on that the show can’t afford […] Read more
Like Uchouten Kazoku, Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi offers up a second episode that surpasses the first in every way. This season is showing promise, especially by the normally low standard of summers past. No series has yet managed to burst through the gate with two outstanding episodes, but there are […] Read more
Let the raging begin. There are obviously reasons to be interested in Kimi no iru Machi above and beyond the series itself. It’s hard to think of another manga that inspires the level of sheer venom from the readers – yet something keeps them coming back for more. Above and […] Read more
No letdown here – Blood Lad follows up a very good premiere with an equally good second episode. I’m quite pleased with this series, which is shaping up as the most interesting work from Brains Base since Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun. It’s not lavish, ultra-fluid or spectacularly detailed but it does […] Read more
In a season where second episodes haven’t always lived up to the promise of premieres – so far – it’s nice to see the opposite effect with Uchouten Kazoku. Of my top tier of shows going into the season, Uchouten Kazoku and Gatchaman Crowds were the ones whose premieres were […] Read more
Now that’s more damn like it. While enduring the seemingly endless Groundhog Day that was “Defense of Trost”, I couldn’t help but think of the succession of chapter titles Togashi-sensei used during the “Greed Island” arc of Hunter X Hunter: “To Masadora! Part 1” “To Masadora! Part 2” “To Masadora! […] Read more
There are very few places in Tokyo that I’ve intentionally avoided, but tonight I finally visited the most prominent of them. Yasukuni Jinja has quite an unsavory reputation, certainly in the West and in certain circles inside Japan too. It represents a kind of litmus test for what your politics […] Read more
Madhouse continues to illustrate what happens when brilliantly written shounen is elevated to high art. Of late, Hunter X Hunter has taken on that peculiar quality that great anime sometimes does, where a 22-minute episode seems to last about five minutes. It’s a product of not-wasted time, I suspect – […] Read more
A new season begins with the return of an old (very old) face. OP6: “Crater” by Merengue It’s a new cour, and that means a new OP and EDs for Uchuu Kyoudai (I especially like the ED “animation” this time, even if it’s basically still frames). As I speculated, the […] Read more