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Feb 4, 2022
"The words in shoujo manga and love songs...
They're always sparkling brightly.
I don't need a dictionary to understand the meaning...
But I've never felt them for myself."
Bloom Into You is a beautiful yuri (lesbian) romance and coming of age. Yuu knows what love is supposed to feel like, but has never felt anything that's made her heart flutter. Nanami is a seemingly perfect girl campaigning for class president that takes an interest in Yuu.
"I can only be like this with you"
What does it mean to hide?
What does special mean?
Bloom into You is an exploration of oneself and figuring out who we are. About characters who have to
...
grow into their feelings when they're looking away. It's a light, tender, heartwarming book and a slow romance. A piece about being able to state what you really want and need and being the person you are beyond your fronts.
"You always put up with me" (skip this paragraph for light spoilers)
Nanami hates the person she is and wants Yuu because Yuu can't love her. She can be herself around her without fear.
Yuu avoids taking steps in what she wants. She's afraid of crossing a boundary that could push Nanami away, but because of that, she can't be true to her feelings.
Who should I choose to be?
How do you really understand a person and be your unguarded self for them? How do you figure out that the world is better with a genuine you? And how do you find your own form of love when love seems so elusive that it's blinding?
This is my favorite yuri. It's slow and sweet and personal. It's healing and and grasping. It's pages are lovely and simple and it's artwork is beautiful. It's an easy, breathtaking read.
While it is romance, it's almost just as much focused on the characters growing into themselves. The side characters also really shine. The manga by Nakatani Nio is on Rightstuf & the anime on HiDive. Also, a sidenote, but the music in the anime by Michiru Oshima is just lovely and goes really well with reading the manga.
- Caroline Sophia Hamel (she/her)
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Jan 10, 2022
Aldnoah.Zero is an anime with a lot of potential for a morally gray plot and characters that goes beyond simple action. It has an exhilarating, tense, and gripping premise from the first episode and the second and third continue this premise with seemingly high stakes and a war that looks complex, misguided, and morally gray.
After those three episodes though, it becomes increasingly apparent that there are no stakes and hardly any complex characters. The anime sets up an interesting plot and high tension, only to show mostly shallow characters and a more black-and-white conflict than it seems to want to portray, all with action that's
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meant to be tragic, but that comes off as mindless fanfare. That's not to say this anime has strengths and I'll get to that, but let me just say that Slaine completely carries this anime and the themes of the show. This honestly is a show I normally wouldn't have watched and would have dropped it if not for Slaine (I'm not really into war/action heavy shows and mechs).
As I said earlier, Aldnoah.Zero relies on the stakes of the first three episodes, as well as its morally gray war plot, but fails in the execution, when nearly all of one of the two sides are portrayed as clearly evil, cartoonish villains. Pretty much all the characters are bland and lacking depth. Any plotlines and characters with more complex and morally gray intentions are dropped about a quarter of the way through the show, with the exception of Slaine, who honestly carried this show.
The themes of the show are personified in Inaho vs. Slaine - its central rivalry and creates a very clear contrast between them: fighting for different things, but ultimately similar reasons, setting up an interesting enough distinction. They're more alike than not, but what separates them is their choices, a meaningless war, misunderstanding, and continuously taking action against each other. Personally, I think Inaho is boring, monotone, and too perfect. This somewhat works to set up a contrast between the very emotional Slaine to the more controlled Inaho. That said, I've heard arguments that Inaho could be autistic, which would make me like him better, because in that case, I think that would make me understand (or try to understand) his characterization more (though I can't claim to know whether or not it was intentional or executed well, since I'm not autistic myself).
I'm going to focus a section on Slaine because he's the only character with any consistent depth and in my opinion, the only salvageable part of this anime.
Slaine is an amazingly active protagonist from the first few episodes, despite all the odds (on both sides) literally being against him (and he does fail a lot). He's sympathetic and morally gray, but he's trying his best to do what's right against basically everyone in the show. Slaine carried this show (at least for me) and was the most developed, one of the few complex and morally gray characters, and an incredibly tragic, sympathetic character and an underdog. He makes his decisions and decides where he stands and what's right very early in the show. He makes several impulsive decisions in the heat of the moment and you'll either love him or hate him for it. He's emotionally expressive and driven largely by his emotions. Granted, he could easily be seen as obsessive and you could argue his intentions (and the consistency of his character in season 2, which honestly, I can see both sides). It's definitely interpretable whether he was a good person or not. I don't think he's a completely healthy person in some ways, but I don't think he's a bad person. I think he's an empathetic person with good intentions, trying to do the right thing, even if his choices are questionable sometimes.
I want to bring it back to stakes, tension, and threat of loss and failure. Again, they're only present in the first three episodes. The end of season one was to me a peak moment in the show and part of me really hoped they ran with that and did something that would have been so unpredictable, interesting, and new.
I did cry a bunch on this series, but for me, it was only emotional because of Slaine.
While I'm not the biggest fan of Hiroyuki Sawano, his music really fits to large, war-heavy action shows that are grand in their scope. Despite personal preference, he's a great composer. The score was heavy, tense, epic, and adrenaline-heavy for much of the anime and he excels in an epic sound that suited the anime. I don't think I've figured out how to critique him yet, but I can clearly see why people love his style. What I loved were the tragic, emotional pieces, which really hit me hard in the emotional scenes, especially the two versions of Harmonious associated with Slain and Assailum and Lemrina's theme. I think he's underapreciated for that really.
I also loved the first opening (Heavenly Blue), sung by Kalafina and composed by Yuki Kajiura. It's a very interesting mix of beautiful vocals and a more thumping, lower, pronounced, almost gritty feel - like the ideals and tragedy of the war and the beauty of what could and should have been, alongside it's warped reality. It's a really creative piece and I always love Kalafina's vocals.
I found the production and animation to be high. This anime does look nice.
Season 1 Rating: 5
Season 2 Rating: 4
Review by Caroline Sophia Hamel (she/her)
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Dec 17, 2021
"Noir. It is the name of an ancient fate. Two maidens who govern death. The peace of the newly-born, their black hands protect."
Noir is the first in studio Beetrain's "Girls with Guns Trilogy," a tragedy and thriller, with a slow pace and a focus on a small cast of characters. It's an emotional, exhilarating series with an underlying sadness and an amazing dynamic between its main pair.
Mireille is a professional assassin, taking up the mythical name of Noir for a job and promptly receiving a message and sequential meeting from Kirika, who asks her to take a Pilgrimage together to discover their respective pasts. Kirika
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is a girl suffering from amnesia, upset with and trying to understand her ability to kill and her lack of perceived feeling in doing so with ease. Mireille joins her to find out more information about and avenge her parents' death.
From the start, there is an underlying tension to their partnership. This tension and the shifting trust in the relationship between them makes this anime. Kirika and Mireille work amazingly well with each other, in spite of the very clear contrast in their characters, dispositions, and reactions. Their growing relationship working as partners is what makes this anime, more than any other aspect.
The story provides creative, intricate, and realistic gunfights that are amazingly choreographed and exhilarating and have high tension and stakes. Both Kirika and Mireille are frequently in trouble and far from averse to danger.
This series has no blood, but it is very violent and the main characters especially, are ruthless in their killing, even with reservation and internal conflict occasionally complicating their kills (which in certain episodes can have the emotional weight built up incredibly, knowing that they don't want to do it). I'm not one for gunfights and intense violence and frankly, I was incredibly hesitant about starting this series, but I found myself incredibly invested anyways.
The plot is intricate, engaging, and constantly makes you second guess the workings of the cult-like religion of the soldates - the center of the mystery propelling Kirika and Mireille's motivations, and the mysterious, tragic pasts of the two.
Kirika was a character I instantly related to. There's a prevailing sadness to her and it aches. Mireille, I found harder to connect with, but she was equally compelling, and while I didn't always understand her, I empathized with her. She's more closed off and up front than Kirika. I won't get too far into character, because that's one thing I really love about this series.
Chloe, while a bit out-of-sorts with the rest of the cast, is an amazing addition, which complicates and shifts the chemistry and relationships of the main cast about midway through and poses as a compelling attachment to Kirika's character and her past and a very interesting contrast to Mireille. She's a fun, mysterious, and threatening character, but equally tragic in her own right and provides her own emotional weight to the character dynamics.
I watched this series because of Yuki Kajiura, my favorite composer. And oh my god, is it some of her best work! This is one of her most hauntingly beautiful and memorable scores she has ever worked on. It's lush and vivid and tragic, personal, and creative, but just so haunting in its choir. She used Italian in Kirika's theme for what I consider her magnum opus and her most hauntingly beautiful piece (and one of her most tragic). Noir was effectively what kickstarted her career, made her famous, and cemented her signature style. Salva Nos is the piece that plays the most during the gunfights, similarly haunting, but with heavy techno and metal layered with a hauntingly catchy and blood pumping Latin choir. Kajiura's compositions are incredibly layered, with so many diverse styles that she mixes together perfectly, all with its underlying haunting feel. It's a mix of orchestral pieces, techno/electronic sounds that seem almost magical and incredibly diverse next to the orchestra, haunting choir, slower soft instrumentals, religious feel, and an abundance of different cultural sounds and styles outside of that that really bring the locations, action, characters, emotions, and underlying tragedy to life.
This anime also has some incredibly beautiful hand-painted backgrounds. The story takes place across the world in various countries (mainly European) and the anime takes advantage of that in art and music.
Noir is a tragedy, feeling heavy, emotional, contemplative, fast-paced in its action, but slow and steady in its plot and character development.
If you love slow, character-driven shows in a tragic, beautiful storyline with hauntingly beautiful music by Yuki Kajiura, then Noir is for you. This really is such an overlooked anime and it most definitely deserves more praise and attention.
After Noir, the other two entries in the "Girls with Guns Trilogy" are Madlax and El Cazador de la Bruja. If you like Noir, you'll like them both. Madlax is more whimsical and the character writing is far below Noir's (the voice performance is also incredibly bland and monotone compared to Noir's). If you're really into this series and only then, I'd recommend Madlax, but otherwise I'd recommend skipping it and instead watching El Cazador de la Bruja. El Cazador de la Bruja is a more fun, lighthearted adventure, still with the tragedy of the other two, but far more optimistic and upbeat throughout, while being honestly pretty emotional and with a pair with similarly amazing chemistry. It's closer to the quality of Noir than Madlax is, but I don't think either series can really get there. I also feel like El Cazador de la Bruja is the perfect way to close the trilogy and its themes with its more optimistic tone that feels right in line with the hopeful/optimistic points found interspersed through the tragedy of the other two. Noir and El Cazador de la Bruja are available to watch on Funimation and all three are available for physical purchase from Rightstuf.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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