Another week in the books… And more than a few really good episodes this week. All that and more after the jump.
The shows that I’m watching are in bold, shows my wife and I are watching together are in bold italics, strikethrough marks dropped shows and (*) marks shows that are watched but not regularly reviewed.
Akebi’s Sailor Uniform Episode 8
Akebi-chan no Sailor-fuku
Friendship via competition, that’s new ground for Akebi-Chan, and the series is much the better for it.
I swam competitive backstroke in a city league in high school – and Riri makes as sweet a flip turn as I’ve ever seen. The whole scene is beautifully animated, and this sequence just nailed it.
It’s also when I knew Akebi had lost. She’s pretty physically active, but her turn was clumsy and slow… (She doesn’t know what she doesn’t know.)
Fortunately both girls were good sports about it. Not that Akebi is ever going to leave us with characters pissed at us.
Attack on Titan Final Season Part 2 Episode 8
Shingeki no Kyojin: The Final Season Part 2
jawdrop.gif
I mean seriously, that was… so well done. Normally Titan goes for One Big Reveal, but this was more like a card game. Slowly and deliberately revealing one card at a time – building towards a royal flush.
Politics makes for some mighty strange bedfellows – but this coalition against Armageddon Eren is one of the strangest ever. Eldians, Marleyans, and the poor Volunteers whose only crime is to be caught up in the middle of the war between the other two. (And between them accounting for the Cart, the Colossal, the Female, the Armored, and the Jaw Titan. Five of the Nine…) It’s a not inconsiderable force, but I’m not sure what they can do. Eren isn’t going to be amenable to reason, and I don’t think Ymir will be either. Not that I can see how they’d get in contact with either in the first place.
Once again Titan leaves us on the edge of our seats.
(Jorge, now I understand why you couldn’t write anything in last week’s comments.)
Lupin III: Part 6 Episode 20
Not bad, but not their best? Seemed to be floundering, and the major plot beats were telegraphed all to hell and back. Ah well, “not their best” Lupin is still pretty darn good.
My Dress-Up Darling Episode 8
Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru
The first part, about cosplay photography, was a bit eye-glazing… But that’s mostly just me. I’m a photographer and I know this stuff already. I think they oversold the cost a bit, but then I’m not familiar with Japanese prices. At least here in America you can get a decent starting setup under $1000, maybe even under $500-750 if you catch something on sale.
I should post some of my cosplay photography some day…
The second part confused me. I thought they were renting a studio – so why the sudden pivot to location scouting and an abandoned building? I’m just not following.
The third part… all about Marin. While Gojo remains blithely clueless about what’s going on, Marin gets ever closer to being open about what she wants. And honestly, I’m loving it. Marin is usually all about her passion-of-the-moment, but now she wants something more. Not commitment, not yet, but definitely more time and more closeness.
I think along with her cosplay, this is really the first time she’s encountering something “bigger than herself”. I’m not saying she’s self centered or anything, because she decidedly isn’t.
(*) Police in a Pod
Hakozume: Koban Joshi no Gyakushuu
Airs on Wednesday, and by Friday Funi had not gotten English subtitles published. (Though they had released Spanish and Portuguese!) I have not been motivated to go back and check if they’re out yet.
Salaryman’s Club
Ryman’s Club
Not watched this week due to scheduling issues.
Slow Loop Episode 8
Another quietly good episode… It was good to see Hiyori coming out of her shell and the two of them growing ever closer (as siblings).
And no. I am NOT damming this show with faint praise. It’s just good.
=========
In other news… the chair has arrived! It’ll be the weekend before we get the chance to assemble it though.
And the darn thing is going to end up costing a couple hundred bucks once we get a new desk to match, and new glasses for me. But the end result will be the less stress on my back when I’m sitting at the computer (which I spend a lot of time doing), and hopefully reduce the aches and pain. So it’ll be worth it.
=========
Big news this week… The Crunchymation merger finally gets underway with Funimation moving huge chunks of extant content and all future streams to Crunchyroll. For all intents and purposes Funimation is pretty much dead.
Which I’m not liking very much. Crunchy’s Roku app sucks, which means I’m stuck paying for VRV… whose Roku app doesn’t suck quite as much. But at least it consistently works, which is more than I can say for the Funi app.
And of the horror show that it Crunchy’s website, the less said the better.
But they pointed out Crunchy’s manga section in the FAQ, which is a good thing. Means I don’t have to pay for a different service to continue reading Grand Blue Dreaming.
=========
So, that’s my week. How has yours been? What’s your thoughts on this weeks anime and/or the progress of the merger?
Drop a comment, let’s chat!
Apprentice Mages Lounge. 
@Akebi: I think I noticed a problem I have with the show: I don’t like Akebi. I don’t dislike her, to be sure; I’m neutral on her. I find her type of positivity a tad annoying, but so little that it took me until now to realise. The thing is, she’s the protagonist and it’s a cumulative effect, and it spills over into the series. That said, I do still enjoy the show, and while I know nothing about swimming, they did animate the turns well enough that even a total know-nothing like me could tell they had a different style. (And I assumed that Akebi’s style is the less “professional”, but – well – I’m a know-nothing.)
@Dress-up Darling: I was wondering about the studio, too. Do they rent out space and equipment in abandoned places? Didn’t mind much. What annoyed me most about this episode was Juju being bad with “creepy” stuff; it’s such a cliché. Yeah, it’s valid characterisation, but they introduced her with rom-com shenanigans and so on. Everything that’s happening is perfectly fine; it’s just that the framing evokes genre in all the wrong places and leaves me out. It’s still my favourite new show this season, though. A slight downwards trend from a very high place, so to speak. The problem is that what’s good about the show is… nothing new this week, and there are diminishing returns on that. The beach scene didn’t connect to what’s come before for me, either, so it felt a bit like a re-tread (insert treading water pun). On the whole, this was my least favourite episode so far.
Not much to say about the fishing show, but yeah it’s good.
LikeLiked by 1 person
re: Dress Up Darling
I think there’s a certain ‘childishness’ to her characterization? Not quite tsundere, but the same kind of attitude. I think that’s where the dissonance comes from. Or at least it does for me.
LikeLike
@Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru:
I’m not quite onboard with the “older sister with loli body/younger sister with adult body” bit either. I still love the show but it’s grinding on me a bit, like the meme Derek posted last week about particular kinds of “anime bullshit”.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@Shingeki no Kyojin: The Final Season Part 2:
Your questions last week were all valid but (obvious now) I couldn’t come up with any particular insights without spoiling this week’s ep.
I think I can say now, I don’t think Armin was thinking quite that far ahead when he decided to save Falco. The guy’s a genius but he tends to freeze up under pressure (and to be fair, he’s quite aware of his limitations). He hadn’t decided, in that moment, to team with the Warriors. His decision was part moral, and part knowledge that whatever plan “future Armin” might come up with after his brain unfroze would be harder to execute if the Warriors sought vengeance for Falco.
BTW, this was the manga chapter that pretty much split the fandom, but again, I find myself unable to go into more detail.
LikeLike
I think he’s also having a hard time disentangling himself from his previous (and more cautious) “cleave to/support Eren” mode of operation that goes practically back to S1E1.
Now, to stop Eren (saving the world as Step 1 in Saving Eren)… He’s gone from Little Brother to being on his own sans anchor and compass. That’s a lot harder and takes a lot more confidence. Armin is no shrinking violet, but self confidence and independence ain’t his long suite.
(And I first read that as “the chapter that split the fandom, again.”)
Also not making the “save the cheerleader, save the world” comments that somehow my brain keeps trying to make.
LikeLike
Akebi. You know that expression “The camera loved (for example) Elizabeth Taylor” referring to how her looks and acting ability made her particularly photogenic? i get the feeling when watching Akebi some times that the camera comes close to loving her a little too much, and there are times as a result where the series dances a little right on the borderline of good taste. However I would be very surprised if Akebi ever really crossed that line. it would really go against what the show portrays it stands for. I’m very impressed with every episode and love this beautifully shot and excellently composed series. However there is one thing about it I can never accept. Akebi’s damn gingerbread house!! I know it’s probably the best drawn gingerbread house in all of anime but why does she have to live in one anyway? And inside its like Dr Who’s Tardis – it seems much bigger inside than it looks outside and perfectly modern to boot. It’s just weird haha.
Cue report: Cue has made it to episode 9 and the four sub groups are mostly set (including the fourth “Industrial Waste” group who seem a bit surplus to requirements. The best scenes revolve around the first group working in the cast of a new popular anime series – that’s when Cue shines best. Only in this most recent episode did it give us a somewhat silly plot line for one of the crowd funded idol group which grated against what the show has achieved so far.
Salaryman’s Club grabbed me with the product development episode. I’m liking it so far, The badminton action is solid and the side characters have been fleshed out enough so far to make them interesting. Another reason I’m interested in it is that it is a Liden Films production. I like Liden. They make competent and sometimes left of center series that are usually worth a look, and at best turn out to be very enjoyable.
LikeLiked by 1 person
re: Akebi
You aren’t the first to make that observation… Even though it always stops short of going too far, the series has some definite voyeuristic tendencies. It’s kinda uncomfortable sometimes.
I kinda like the house though!
re: Salaryman
Now that I’ve broken the habit of watching it, I’m finding it hard to get back into the groove. It’s not bad or anything, just not as compelling as I’d like. (And it airs on the weekend, which is already crowded.)
Looking at my experience with Linded, it’s almost perfectly balanced between shows I’ve finished and shows I’ve dropped. But, TBH, that’s as a good a record as it looks because the ‘finished’ includes a couple of shows I wish I’d dropped in retrospect. (Hanebado!, jeez – strong first ep, went to hell shortly thereafter and never recovered.) Also, half the finished are Miss Monochrome, which I love.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hanebado! That was a show I found very hard to watch. It featured maybe the most abusive mother character I’ve ever seen in an anime. I guess I could give Liden kudos for bringing her to the screen but I doubt I would (could) ever watch it again. Still there have been quite a few other series Liden have produced I’ve liked a lot from the (still unfinished) Heroic Legend of Arslan to the deliberately trashy but fun Killing Bites.
LikeLiked by 1 person