When they were handing out the clueless, Kataoka must have stood in line twice. There are very few anime – and even fewer sports anime – that alternately compel me and drive me around the bend the way Diamond no Ace does. We go through cycles where things are exciting […] Read more
Two steps back here, big-time. Charlotte – 03 To be honest, Charlotte always had to pull a bit of an inside straight to make the cut with me – there’s just so much about it that I normally just don’t find appealing. The second episode was pretty good, but this […] Read more
Before the invention of the text message, a person really needed to be creative… If you’re looking for high drama, Akagami no Shirayukihime just may not be the series for you. Even when there’s danger, somehow things don’t quite feel all that dangerous, and I think to some extent that’s […] Read more
OK, so I’m just going to pretend I didn’t see that end card… Sooner or later, the sneaky bastards in this series are going to realize that it’s just not smart to fool with Narsus. But for now, his genius continues to be the driving force in the narrative, and […] Read more
Would it kill those three to cheer a little louder? Opposite styles almost always make for interesting matchups in a sport like tennis. Most of the great rivalries have featured two players who go at the game in very different ways. In the old days that usually meant a serve-and-volley […] Read more
Wowzers. Did that really just happen? My apologies, but I’m going to be running way behind for a few days (see sidebar) so I’ll be briefer than normal here. But don’t mistake my brevity for commentary on this week’s Working!!!, which serves as a glove-slap across the cheek to everyone […] Read more
That was a great day for shounen (and Koyama Rikiya). Shounen really is a great demographic, for its versatility as much as anything. It’s not a “genre” of course – folks often get those two terms mixed up – but i’s certainly as broad a collection of genres as any […] Read more
Nothing I say could improve on simple perfection like that. Ushio to Tora makes a perfect companion piece with Kyoukai no Rinne, Jitsu wa Watashi wa and Gangsta (and I’ll even add a bit of Joukamachi no Dandelion) as a quartet. They provide a kind of sampler platter of old-school […] Read more
Man – we’ve really lost some ground these last two weeks. It’s not too often that I regret a quick trigger with the whole label thing, but I’m beginning to fear I might have jumped the gun with Ranpo Kitan. I liked the first episode an awful lot, the second […] Read more
One think about Worick – everyone he goes, people know the part he’s playin’. I’m not a fan of every trend in modern anime by any means – I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think the medium’s overall body of work since the start of 2013 is […] Read more