Hot damn, is there any anime that doesn’t instantly get better by adding Tomatsu Haruka? Yet another hard show to blog, this one. There’s really nothing fancy going on here – just very good comedy that gets the details right most of the time. Between the machine-gun pacing and the […] Read more
Damn, this show is hard to blog. You know the drill by now. Lots of good stuff happening on-screen, but not a lot of interpretation necessary. In the episodes where politics and strategy don’t play a big part (this was definitely one of those) Kingdom is one of the most […] Read more
It’s taken us quite a while to get here, but the journey was certainly rewarding. Episode 12 I have to give full credit to Shouwa Monogatari, because episode 12 really felt like a penultimate episode should. It ramped up both the drama and emotion, and managed to recall all of […] Read more
“Who Cares About Meisei?” Well, Adachi has given us another excellent chapter – but in the process, also a reminder of just how frustrating it’s going to be to read Mix as a monthly manga. And even that’s assuming he doesn’t lapse into the irregular updating schedule that’s been his […] Read more
So long Narihira and team: it’s mid-Heian now, and time for a new cast of characters. Utakoi kicks off its mid-Heian arc with a return to squarely romantic themes, and the two-chapter format that opened the series. The two stories featured are fairly low-key and both feature poems that broach […] Read more
As much as I enjoy the comfortable familiarity of Tari Tari, there are times I wish it would surprise me a little more. But then, “to thine own self be true”… I was really hoping TT wasn’t going to go in the direction it always seemed most likely to go […] Read more
Even if it had never done or will do anything else of consequence, Hyouka would go down as a worthwhile series based on the strength of the Kanya Festa arc alone. Hyouka is a good show, and pretty much has been from the beginning apart from a couple of hiccups. […] Read more
This series is one of the most exquisite mind-benders in recent anime history. We’ve certainly seen time loops, cloning, temporal paradoxes and such used as themes in anime before. But somehow Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita has a way of making the pieces fit together that manages to be intellectually dense without […] Read more
Manly tears dammit, manly I say… That was another great episode for Space Brothers, but it’s hardly surprising. This show is the one I take for granted, the one that simply delivers in quiet but brilliant fashion week after week. This entire arc has been a striking example of the […] Read more
If the Whale Island mini-arc was the Yin of Hunter X Hunter, this episode definitely marks the beginning of the Yang. This may about as straightforward a H x H writeup as I’ve done so far, because that episode pretty much spoke for itself. No Gon, no Killua, no Leorio […] Read more