The last of the semi-hiatus posts, back next week with a full post! Hit the jump and let’s see my thoughts over the last two weeks!
The shows that I am watching are in bold, shows my wife and I are watching together are in bold italics, and strikethrough marks dropped shows.
Attack on Titan 3 / Shingeki no Kyojin Ep 6 (Ep 43) – Ep 7 (Ep 44)
That was…. wow. In two episodes, they’ve pretty much taken everything we thought we knew about their world and tossed it out. Everything we knew was wrong, or at least based on bad information… What the h_ll is going to happen next?
I don’t know – but I do know this: Titan just got a hell of a lot more interesting than it’s been in a very long time.
Cells at Work / Hataraku Saibou
Ep 8 – Lacked platelets, but it was very cute seeing Red work so very hard. :)
Ep 9 – Also lacked platelets, and as a bonus didn’t really add anything to the story line… We already knew Killer-T had been a wimp as a wee sprout, and frankly Helper-T wasn’t an interesting character and we had no reason to care about him.
Encouragement of Climb 3 / Yama no Susume 3 Eps 9-10
Quite the storm brewing…. The last few eps have highlighted Aoi’s growing independence and self-confidence. They’ve also shown that Hinata feels more and more left out and left behind. Knowing her, she’s about to do something monumentally stupid.
Is it bad that I have more feels for this minor friendship drama than some of the bigger ones in other shows this season? Or is it just a mark of how invested I am in this show?
Grand Blue Dreaming
Ep 7 – The tennis match didn’t go quite as I remembered… Or maybe my memory is out of whack. Either way, funny as heck.
Ep 8 – Both of these chapters were definitely cut short. The bar scene was still funny, but harassing Yu wasn’t as nearly funny as I remember.
Four episodes left to go… I don’t think they’re going to make it to Okinawa, or that arc is going to be cut short or overly compressed. Which gives me a sad.
Hanebado!
Ep 9 – To quote Cactus Matt… Connie, if you want Ayano to be part of your family so badly – why have you been treating her like sh_t? Also, the whole Wei-Wei thing comes entirely out of left field. But then that’s practically Hanebado‘s trademark.
Ep 10 – Once again Hanebado spends a good chunk of its time on side characters. The sad part, is that chunk was better executed than the stories of some of the main characters.
But I loved Nagisa, especially at the end… Nagisa best girl, hands down.
Harukana Receive Eps 8 – 9
I think these two episodes are the first time I’ve been less than entirely pleased with Harakuna. They’ve skipped and time-compressed practically an entire calendar year to reach next summer’s tournament.
Anyhow… Onwards to Harakuna Vs. Eclair for the Valkyrie Cup! I doubt they’ll get so far as the Nationals this season, so already looking forward to S2!
My Hero Academia 3 / Boku no Hero Academia 3
Ep 20 (Ep 58) – An anime original meant to tie the movie into the anime timeline. A right mess that added little to the story.
Ep 21 (Ep 59) – An unsatisfying conclusion to the Provisional License Arc… Way too much time spent on Todoroki and windy guy’s bone headedness. OTHO, Deuku’s gasp at the cliffhanger! Was that a hint that someone from Class 1-A actually failed the test?
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Whew! It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. First busy as heck with the County Fair… (I’ve got a photography related post on the Fair in the hopper, maybe this weekend.) Then sick as a dog for the better part of a week. That really sucked as it meant I couldn’t attend the SCA event I’ve been helping to plan for six friggin’ months. I was so looking forward to hanging out with my friends.
Crunchyroll is finally getting with the program and rolling out a HTML5 player. I had it for a couple of days (now back to Flash) and was mostly pleased. It was way smoother and faster than the Flash player. OTOH, the subtitles sucked (and couldn’t be turned off) and trying to take a screenshot brought the controls back into visibility. You can see both in the screenshot above.
That’s it for this post, drop me a comment and share your thoughts!
Apprentice Mages Lounge. 
@Hanebado: The elements of a really great show are there, and some of them even work in isolation, but generally it just doesn’t come together. I mean Ayano has been a petulant child since episode one (her plaintive “Eleeeenaaaa!”, for example), and it makes sense that she’d be regressing the more she thinks of mom, and its consistent with the way she both rejects and emulates her, but simply making sense is just not enough. You don’t really feel it – there’s no connection. You skip, you focus on the rest of the team without any rhyme or reason… And it feels like a lot of small things that you’d really need fall by the wayside. It feels like a subtle story retold in a not so effective way… I did like the way the show worked with the boys and Yu in ep10, that one’s fairly selfcontained, and also a bit more straightforward.
@Yama no Susume: I’m not watching it, but I wouldn’t be suprised if it handled those issues better than any other show this season. It’s always been good at characterisation (and I’m not only talking about the writing, but also about the animation, sotryboarding etc.).
Also, Crunchyroll has finally acquired Jikken-hin Kazoku (Shiyan Pin Jiating, Creature Family Days, Frankenstein Family or whatever other name it may have been going by), so I’ll be able to watch it. What little I saw was actually quite good, so I’m looking forward to watching this one (but I’ll probably only start once a few episodes have accumulated).
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Re: Hanebado It’s just so d_mm frustrating because there’s the bones of a very good show in there… But the execution is so freakin’ bad.
I await your comments on Frankenstein Family, it looks kinda interesting.
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So I’ve watched the first two episodes of Frankenstein Family and I really like it. The backgrounds are nice and the colours are good. The story seems pretty well written and the characters are all likable. The first episodes sets up the problem of the youngest brother (a child genius) wanting to live a normal life, but his siblings either don’t understand what that entails (because they’ve been isolated, and unlike him, never prepared for the eventuality) or don’t care. The second episode then focusses on our genius child being a little full of himself and – well – still a child (and all his siblings are a little older), which is a dynamic I really didn’t expect: the older siblings being slightly more mature but forced to rely on him because they’re all clueless. My favourite character is the telepaht, followed by the dog boy. Next episode, it seems, will highlight the telepath. (Looks like they’ll be releasing two episodes a week.)
I might be a little overexcited right now, since this was one of my top picks for its season and then nobody picked it up. I’m just really happy it’s finally here, and it certainly doesn’t disappoint.
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This is an interesting arc for YnS. It feels like an obstacle that on the surface should be simple enough to resolve if Aoi and Hinata would take a few minutes to actually talk to each other instead of at each other, and yet it’s really not that simple. Hinata’s having it shoved in her face that Aoi’s changing and growing up. Many people don’t like change, and Hinata’s obviously struggling with that right now. She needs to learn that just because some things change, doesn’t mean everything will. No matter how much confidence Aoi gains, she’s still the girl who likes to knit, hates heights, and loves Hinata. Getting a chance to spend that time with Kaede and Yuka could be an object lesson for Hinata if she takes it to heart; Kaede has obviously changed in some ways since she committed herself to attending college, but mountain climbing is still her first love and probably always will be.
I was also disappointed with this part of Harukana, for largely the same reasons. The New Year’s episode was okay, but I’ve never been a huge fan of the “racing to catch someone right before they leave on a trip” trope, whether it’s here or in Love Live or in a Hollywood movie, and this version felt even more pointless than usual. And then this last episode just felt way too rushed, between the massive timeskip and already speeding through most of this tournament. I’m curious about how the manga handled this section, because it felt like the anime suddenly skipped 10 chapters or something. The last time we saw Akari she barely knew the other four girls, so when she’s suddenly all anxious about the club breaking up, it didn’t feel earned to me, it felt jarring.
And so much for falling behind on Yuuna-san – I’m caught right back up on it again, and still having fun with it. It’s total anime comfort food, especially for an old-timer like me.
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We’ve seen several conflicts between Aoi and Hinata that could be trivially resolved… But neither one is exactly open with their feelings, especially Aoi. Hinata has a bit of a streak of possessiveness and self centeredness that isn’t helping either.
This isn’t the first time we’ve been down this road, and any other show would have me throwing things! But as Dawn said, they handle this so well.
Re:Harakuna I did some poking about in various forums and manga scanalation sites, and there’s no real hint of that happening. It’s not impossible the manga timeskipped too. And I agree WRT Akari.
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I agree with you regarding AoT. They literally threw out what we knew and put everything up for question which actually makes everything a lot more interesting.
Regarding Grand Blue, the tennis match was hilarious and so was the bar scene!
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Re:Aot The real question is where do we go from here? Can’t wait to find out!
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That’s true. Same here! Can’t wait to watch the episode later on today! :)
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@Shingeki no Kyojin: I find myself experiencing a weird time-dilation effect over the last few weeks. The episodes themselves feel like they go quickly, maybe ten minutes, but I check my clock afterward and yup, it was a full 24. And then the week-long wait for the next episode feels like two or three. WHAT IS THIS ALCHEMY!?
I’ve been binge-re-watching SnK during the 2-3 week wait between episodes and am constantly amazed by how well the plot twists (most of them, anyway) were foreshadowed. Sometimes subtly, sometimes not. It’s the little details that give this series high re-watch value.
@Grand Blue: Can’t wait for the Okinawa episode!
@Hataraku Saibou: Episode 10… finally… platelets! Hope that’s not a spoiler.
@Chio-chan no Tsuugakuro: The comedy is getting uneven in patches but the best gags are still good for a belly laugh. @Asobi Asobase may pass them up for best comedy of the season if they don’t watch out.
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Re:AoT – I’ve noticed that time compression a little bit too. I don’t think I could rewatch because then I’d have to watch Eren again and that is far from enjoyable for me. Aot is one of those shows that succeeds despite having an unlikeable MC.
Re:Grand Blue – Okinawa should be an arc if I recall the manga correctly… And it’s a funny one.
Re:Cells at Work – Not a spoiler for me! Our prayers were answered!
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