December 22nd, 2016
Top 10 of 2016
Anime Relations: Durarara!!x2 Ketsu, Boku dake ga Inai Machi, Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu, Kiznaiver, Boku no Hero Academia, Mob Psycho 100, Kimi no Na wa., Orange, Haikyuu!! Karasuno Koukou vs. Shiratorizawa Gakuen Koukou, Yuri!!! on Ice
And for a third year running, it's that time of year again--time for my top 10 anime of 2016. I don't think I'm gonna be watching anything else that came out this year before 2016 ends (I'm currently trying to finish the Fruits Basket manga by New Years'), so it's time to compile the list.
First off, it was extremely difficult to rank these. Not only was this an excellent year for anime, there were a lot of shows I loved for various reasons. Regardless, I'm gonna try my best here.
Also, I'm gonna follow my rule from last year of movies counting (only because last year I wanted to end up with 10 on my list), even though I wasn't going to until I reread my post from 2015.
So the rules are:
-Finished airing in 2016 (some stuff carried from last year)
-I finished watching it in 2016
-Movies count
-Multiple seasons/cours count as one
All in all, I came up with 14 things that satisfy this requirement. 14 may not sound like much, but keep in mind many of these were across more than one cour. If you separate individual cours (which I won't do for the sake of clarity), I watched a grand total of 18 seasonal shows (and one movie) this year. More than ever before.
Here's everything:
-Big Order
-Erased
-My Hero Academia
-Bungou Stray Dogs (seasons 1 + 2)
-Durarara!! x2 (Only Ketsu aired this year, but I'm counting all of Durarara x2 on this list as it was split-cour)
-Haikyuu!! (seasons 2 + 3; 2 carried over from last year)
-Joker Game
-Your Name.
-Kiznaiver
-Mayoiga
-Mob Psycho 100
-Orange
-Re:Zero
-Yuri on Ice
Finally, without further ado, here's the final ranking.
10. Re:Zero
Score: 6
Kicking off this list is probably something that will be much higher on everyone else's. Like, look, sorry. I tried to love this show. I really did. Everyone was flipping out about how messed up it was that I decided to give it a shot midseason. And the result was.....disappointing. I couldn't find myself on board with the hype. I thought maybe once I got caught up on the show I would be more excited. But I wasn't. So maybe I thought it'd be related to something that happened in the novels only. But the show ended underwhelmingly, without much emotional impact.
This series is a nice slap in the face to those who expected a more traditional fantasy storytelling, but as someone who's seen far better series, it wasn't particularly impressive. Still not a bad show though! There were some good moments in it, like how Subaru realizes his flaws and spends the better part of an episode ruthlessly dragging himself through the dirt. And Emilia is super pretty and badass, though of course her final awesome moment in the series got overwritten because letting the female protag save the day is a bit too much. Thanks, Return by Death.
Honestly, though I seem to be bashing this show left and right, once again, I did enjoy watching it weekly, honest. It had good animation and some interesting characters. It just lacked depth, and was still a mile better than the four things I crossed off this list.
9. Orange
Score: 7
I signed on for this show hearing that it was so sad it had people crying right away even though it was a short series. And, honestly, I was pretty disappointed. The series wasn't as extremely sad as everyone made it out to be. That said, I did still think it was a moving story, and I loved how there was a big friend group supporting each other through a crisis. Most of me watching it was mocking the animation quality, since there were so many sideways faces I couldn't help but laughing even during emotional moments. In the end, I feel like it was pretty forgettable show all around. I don't remember most people's names (besides Naho and Kakeru), or really what they were like.
The time travel twist just seemed like that, a twist. It didn't add as much to the story as I thought. It's not centered around the paranormal like Steins;Gate, it was just a way to get the shoujo aspect to be a little more interesting.
8. Kiznaiver
Score: 7
I really liked Trigger's attempt to tell an emotional story. I thought the banter between the kids worked well in the beginning with the wild concept, and their bond was strong even when others were attempting to tear it down. As you would expect from Studio Trigger's reputation, it's a really weird idea that tells a surprisingly deep story. Also has a unique and fun art style, and a good opening to match. The reason this ranks above Orange is primarily for visual reasons (no sideways faces here, and lots of gorgeous visual symbolism), but also because the emotional moments packed more of a punch than in Orange. The kids running into the ocean during a storm, crying in the rain, Katsuhira finding his friends from childhood, etc. were way more charged in this series. My main problem with this is that it should have been 24 episodes to go more in-depth with working out everyone's problems. Either way, it's a good start for Trigger, and I hope they make more shows like it.
7. Erased
Score: 8
This show was a trip. Rushed beginning, trainwreck ending (though I hear on both counts the manga did a much better job), this show still rises above the other ones because of its unflinching portrayal of child abuse. I also liked the lack of romantic undertones between Satoru and Kayo (since he is, after all, a thirty-year-old man in his eleven-year-old body). It was a touching yet suspenseful story--I remember holding my breath on more than a few occasions. Add to that the remarkable visual symbolism (the red eyes, the opening), and you have a really, really strong middle. Same as with Kiznaiver, I wish they had given it a bit more than 12 episodes to fully explain the story. It wouldn't have needed 24, but maybe 14 or 15. Unfortunately, anime studios and TV networks don't make shows in those odd-numbered blocks afaik so it had to be constrained to 12. Regardless, if this show had stuck to its manga (provided the manga handled these things as well as people said; I haven't read it), it'd be a few spots higher on this list.
6. Mob Psycho 100
Score: 8
I liked OPM quite a bit last year (second season yay!) so I figured I'd sign on to another show written by the same guy. And I was busy on vacation and stuff for the first half of this show's runtime, so I fell behind after the first couple of episodes, not really impressed enough to catch up. I was expecting this to be a comedy like OPM, which is why the beginning felt so mediocre. The jokes weren't funny and the episodes seemed all over the place. But I caught back up after returning from my vacations, and got really, really blown away by how deep the story was. Word of warning, if you watch this, don't be expecting a comedy even though the art style looks kinda goofy. It's a pretty dark show, and it went in directions I wasn't anticipating, which kept it interesting to say the least. I hope Bones follows Madhouse's move and makes another season of this too. Better than more Bungou Stray Dogs (cough cough make me more Noragami with that money cough).
This is a really good show, and the only reason it's not higher on this list is because of the seriously intense competition. Regardless, this show is definitely great, and I loved every episode once I learned to shift my point of view.
5. Your Name.
Score: 9
Here's where things get complicated. Everything from here on out was stupidly amazing, way more good than it had a right to be, making it extremely difficult to rank.
So to start off my top 5, we have Kimi no Na Wa./Your Name., one of the most touching stories I've ever seen. Just thinking about this movie gives me the chills, man. I started taking notice of it because of all of the gorgeous fanart for it on Pixiv, then decided to watch it.
It was perfectly paced, perfectly animated, perfectly acted, perfectly everything. The people working on this movie had a great sense of their medium and were able to do some truly remarkable visual storytelling in the allotted time. It was just all-around stunning and really captured a dream feeling better than most other stories I've seen or read. Dreams can be really weird and abrupt for no good reason, so trying to portray it accurately is really hard, but this movie did it superbly.
The only suggestion I have for Your Name. is that I'd have absolutely loved to see it as a 12-episode anime instead. That way, they could have stretched it out a bit and expanded on the story (and give us more of a fluffy beginning before we dive into the angst), but really, that's more of a personal preference. Like I said, the people driving this movie understood their medium and how much runtime they'd get, so they still did an excellent job pacing it.
If you've ever had that feeling of meeting another person in your dream and waking up wanting to find them, this movie tells that story in one of the most beautiful ways possible. I can't wait for the English release next year--if it's in a theater near me, you bet I'll be going to see it (also can't wait for it to be officially released on DVD because the version I watched had watermarks all over it and I want to suffer in full HD).
4. Durarara!! x2
Score: ???
Look at me swallowing my pride and not topping this list with season 2 even as I heavily speculated it last year.
The reason being, I think my expectations for the finale got too high, so it could only disappoint me. I don't think my expectations were entirely unreasonable though. Just more of an attention to detail and an overarching plot than Narita was willing to give.
Anyway. I did thoroughly enjoy the last couple of episodes at the time, though. And there was some knockout visual symbolism throughout that really sold it for me. I still enjoy the show and love it to bits, don't get me wrong, but I'll also never waste an opportunity to drag it through the dirt. My opinion on the ending, either way, is mixed; I loved parts of the way it ended, and severely disagree with others--I think for certain characters, Narita conceded too much to fans' demand.
The reason the score for this is unknown is because while I love it, I feel like, to properly judge it once and for all, I need to rewatch the whole series from the start and try to erase my bias as much as possible. Only then will I be able to see how good this show truly is.
And now we move to the top three, where it gets even harder.
3. Yuri on Ice
Score: 9
Easily the biggest hit in terms of popularity all year, Yuri on Ice has dazzled fans worldwide. And it's not hard to see why. A canon gay romance (that's handled VERY well) as well as a charming and diverse cast of characters combined with spectacular animation all come together to make this twelve-episode knockout.
Ice skating is an unusual sport, and while most people enjoy it as something pretty or as a nice hobby, it's not as well-known as the other sports in popular sports anime (volleyball, basketball, swimming, baseball, etc....). Yuri on Ice tried and succeeded to be great for both hardcore ice skating fans (even many real life figure skaters watch and love the show!) as well as those who know nothing about skating at all.
You don't really need to understand the terminology (and there aren't many rules like in other sports) to feel the drive burning behind all the characters. On top of that, the pacing is lightning fast but never seems to leave you behind. With a vague, hopeful "See you next level" leaving us at the finale, it's highly likely a season 2 is on our way next year sometime. This show has been so overwhelmingly well-received that MAPPA would be missing out on a lot of profit to not make more of it.
Really, the one problem I have with the show is that with 12 episodes and so many figure skating routines to cover, character development was skipped over. Victor and Yurio missed out on some development (and EVERYONE wants to know Victor's backstory), but I feel confident a season 2 will bring that to them. I trust Kubo based on how well she resolved everything in the last episode, so I have faith that she will help give the characters what they need in the future.
But on its own, Yuri on Ice is a great show. It's a fresh perspective on a sport most of us don't really give thought to, and is incredibly well-researched and choreographed. This series could have been a risky play, considering the relative unpopularity of ice skating as well as it being from a rather unknown studio (MAPPA's only other work I recall watching is Shingeki no Bahamut, which was fantastically animated but quite obscure), but it worked out for the better, something I'm really happy about.
Hopefully the success of Yuri on Ice will demonstrate to anime creators that we want more stuff like this (though not TOO similar); since it's the start of something entirely new for sports anime and anime in general. It's a very genuine show with a lot of heart, and I eagerly await whatever future seasons we will get.
2. Haikyuu!! Seasons 2 and 3
Score: 9
Coming up to the end of my list, here we have the next two seasons of Haikyuu. Season 2 was a welcome break in the beginning, focusing on our favorite boys training and growing stronger, before returning to the most stressful match yet as they rematch against their old foes, Aoba Johsai. Season 3 dives us right back into the action with Karasuno versus Shiratorizawa, and if you thought the Aoba Johsai matches were stressful, this one is far worse. The third season lasted for ten episodes only, but it was the most intense ten weeks of my life. Also, unpopular opinion, they should have waited for more of the manga so they could give us 25 episodes instead. I'd have been willing to wait longer for it. Anyway, judging by the sudden end of season 3, we'll be getting a season 4 announcement fairly soon down the road.
Regardless, both seasons 2 and 3 of Haikyuu were still among some of the most solid presentations I've seen yet, for anything. The show is really funny--like, it's so hilarious that many times I had to pause and laugh out my tears. Not only that, it's also so suspenseful--will Karasuno win? Who will get the point? How will the team grow from here? Haikyuu is a very wholesome series that really hits all my buttons in terms of what I like to see, so bring on the next season. I'm ready for it.
And finally, the top, surprising no one,
1. My Hero Academia
Score: 9
I'm gonna be honest, I had a ton of difficulty placing this one since I caught up on the manga only a couple of weeks after finishing the show (a record for me). So my love for the anime tied together with my love for the manga, resulting in a very powerful love for the two combined. I think the manga is better only because there's more to the story--the anime is a picture-perfect adaptation; suprisingly, I have no complaints there, but the manga continues onward. I'm really highly anticipating season 2 in April, with the adaptation of the sports festival and hero killer arcs (and I'm PRAYING for All for One) as next up.
However, this anime was love from the first episode. And boy did I fall hard. By the time the show finished, I was itching to read the manga.
I've seen people complaining that the pacing is too slow, but it's the beginning of a long-running series, so what else did you expect? Not to mention, the anime picked a good stopping point, albeit one that was only 20 chapters in, so they had to slow the pacing down a bit to fit it reasonably in 13 episodes. It still never felt like it was dragging, though. Above all else, this was an absolute pleasure to watch each week, and I'm really glad I'm caught up on the manga as well. Come at me, season 2. I can't wait to die over everything again.
-----------------
And that's it.
You know, last year I said I was gonna read more manga this year, and that didn't really happen. I did catch up on the chapters of HXH that came out after the anime ended, finished Pandora Hearts, caught up on MHA, stuttered through 50 chapters of Magi, and am reading Fruits Basket, but I didn't get through everything. I'm gonna try to make more progress on that next year.
I also didn't watch as much non-seasonal stuff this year as I'd have liked, mostly because from June-December I was busy a lot of the time. Vacations and being out of the country, slammed with schoolwork, and getting back into writing creatively took up most of my free time, so I'm afraid I neglected my duties as a weeb in the latter half.
However, I did binge-watch HXH 2011 in April, and that ended up being my favorite show I watched in 2016 that didn't come out in 2016. Really good, exactly my type, and an instant favorite, HXH is definitely something I'd love everyone to try out. I'm gonna rewatch it eventually and totally lose it all over again.
On the topic of rewatching, I did rewatch two of my other favorite series this year, FMAB and Steins;Gate. FMAB took a few weeks because of school, but Steins;Gate took exactly two days right before I went to Japan. I feel bad for not rewatching as much as I said I would though, and not watching as much new stuff either. Ah well
Next year I'll try to lower my standards a bit more and set my foot in the water with shows I previously avoided. And I will definitely be more productive with manga. Blue Exorcist has a new season out next year, so I want to read the manga before that comes out, and I need to catch up on Magi before it ends, as well as read Ouran. I also want to catch up on Silver Spoon since that should be ending soon....yeah. It's a lot.
That aside, it's been a great year for anime and I can't wait to see what 2017 will bring my for my top 10.
First off, it was extremely difficult to rank these. Not only was this an excellent year for anime, there were a lot of shows I loved for various reasons. Regardless, I'm gonna try my best here.
Also, I'm gonna follow my rule from last year of movies counting (only because last year I wanted to end up with 10 on my list), even though I wasn't going to until I reread my post from 2015.
So the rules are:
-Finished airing in 2016 (some stuff carried from last year)
-I finished watching it in 2016
-Movies count
-Multiple seasons/cours count as one
All in all, I came up with 14 things that satisfy this requirement. 14 may not sound like much, but keep in mind many of these were across more than one cour. If you separate individual cours (which I won't do for the sake of clarity), I watched a grand total of 18 seasonal shows (and one movie) this year. More than ever before.
Here's everything:
-Big Order
-Erased
-My Hero Academia
-Bungou Stray Dogs (seasons 1 + 2)
-Durarara!! x2 (Only Ketsu aired this year, but I'm counting all of Durarara x2 on this list as it was split-cour)
-Haikyuu!! (seasons 2 + 3; 2 carried over from last year)
-Joker Game
-Your Name.
-Kiznaiver
-Mayoiga
-Mob Psycho 100
-Orange
-Re:Zero
-Yuri on Ice
Finally, without further ado, here's the final ranking.
10. Re:Zero
Score: 6
Kicking off this list is probably something that will be much higher on everyone else's. Like, look, sorry. I tried to love this show. I really did. Everyone was flipping out about how messed up it was that I decided to give it a shot midseason. And the result was.....disappointing. I couldn't find myself on board with the hype. I thought maybe once I got caught up on the show I would be more excited. But I wasn't. So maybe I thought it'd be related to something that happened in the novels only. But the show ended underwhelmingly, without much emotional impact.
This series is a nice slap in the face to those who expected a more traditional fantasy storytelling, but as someone who's seen far better series, it wasn't particularly impressive. Still not a bad show though! There were some good moments in it, like how Subaru realizes his flaws and spends the better part of an episode ruthlessly dragging himself through the dirt. And Emilia is super pretty and badass, though of course her final awesome moment in the series got overwritten because letting the female protag save the day is a bit too much. Thanks, Return by Death.
Honestly, though I seem to be bashing this show left and right, once again, I did enjoy watching it weekly, honest. It had good animation and some interesting characters. It just lacked depth, and was still a mile better than the four things I crossed off this list.
9. Orange
Score: 7
I signed on for this show hearing that it was so sad it had people crying right away even though it was a short series. And, honestly, I was pretty disappointed. The series wasn't as extremely sad as everyone made it out to be. That said, I did still think it was a moving story, and I loved how there was a big friend group supporting each other through a crisis. Most of me watching it was mocking the animation quality, since there were so many sideways faces I couldn't help but laughing even during emotional moments. In the end, I feel like it was pretty forgettable show all around. I don't remember most people's names (besides Naho and Kakeru), or really what they were like.
The time travel twist just seemed like that, a twist. It didn't add as much to the story as I thought. It's not centered around the paranormal like Steins;Gate, it was just a way to get the shoujo aspect to be a little more interesting.
8. Kiznaiver
Score: 7
I really liked Trigger's attempt to tell an emotional story. I thought the banter between the kids worked well in the beginning with the wild concept, and their bond was strong even when others were attempting to tear it down. As you would expect from Studio Trigger's reputation, it's a really weird idea that tells a surprisingly deep story. Also has a unique and fun art style, and a good opening to match. The reason this ranks above Orange is primarily for visual reasons (no sideways faces here, and lots of gorgeous visual symbolism), but also because the emotional moments packed more of a punch than in Orange. The kids running into the ocean during a storm, crying in the rain, Katsuhira finding his friends from childhood, etc. were way more charged in this series. My main problem with this is that it should have been 24 episodes to go more in-depth with working out everyone's problems. Either way, it's a good start for Trigger, and I hope they make more shows like it.
7. Erased
Score: 8
This show was a trip. Rushed beginning, trainwreck ending (though I hear on both counts the manga did a much better job), this show still rises above the other ones because of its unflinching portrayal of child abuse. I also liked the lack of romantic undertones between Satoru and Kayo (since he is, after all, a thirty-year-old man in his eleven-year-old body). It was a touching yet suspenseful story--I remember holding my breath on more than a few occasions. Add to that the remarkable visual symbolism (the red eyes, the opening), and you have a really, really strong middle. Same as with Kiznaiver, I wish they had given it a bit more than 12 episodes to fully explain the story. It wouldn't have needed 24, but maybe 14 or 15. Unfortunately, anime studios and TV networks don't make shows in those odd-numbered blocks afaik so it had to be constrained to 12. Regardless, if this show had stuck to its manga (provided the manga handled these things as well as people said; I haven't read it), it'd be a few spots higher on this list.
6. Mob Psycho 100
Score: 8
I liked OPM quite a bit last year (second season yay!) so I figured I'd sign on to another show written by the same guy. And I was busy on vacation and stuff for the first half of this show's runtime, so I fell behind after the first couple of episodes, not really impressed enough to catch up. I was expecting this to be a comedy like OPM, which is why the beginning felt so mediocre. The jokes weren't funny and the episodes seemed all over the place. But I caught back up after returning from my vacations, and got really, really blown away by how deep the story was. Word of warning, if you watch this, don't be expecting a comedy even though the art style looks kinda goofy. It's a pretty dark show, and it went in directions I wasn't anticipating, which kept it interesting to say the least. I hope Bones follows Madhouse's move and makes another season of this too. Better than more Bungou Stray Dogs (cough cough make me more Noragami with that money cough).
This is a really good show, and the only reason it's not higher on this list is because of the seriously intense competition. Regardless, this show is definitely great, and I loved every episode once I learned to shift my point of view.
5. Your Name.
Score: 9
Here's where things get complicated. Everything from here on out was stupidly amazing, way more good than it had a right to be, making it extremely difficult to rank.
So to start off my top 5, we have Kimi no Na Wa./Your Name., one of the most touching stories I've ever seen. Just thinking about this movie gives me the chills, man. I started taking notice of it because of all of the gorgeous fanart for it on Pixiv, then decided to watch it.
It was perfectly paced, perfectly animated, perfectly acted, perfectly everything. The people working on this movie had a great sense of their medium and were able to do some truly remarkable visual storytelling in the allotted time. It was just all-around stunning and really captured a dream feeling better than most other stories I've seen or read. Dreams can be really weird and abrupt for no good reason, so trying to portray it accurately is really hard, but this movie did it superbly.
The only suggestion I have for Your Name. is that I'd have absolutely loved to see it as a 12-episode anime instead. That way, they could have stretched it out a bit and expanded on the story (and give us more of a fluffy beginning before we dive into the angst), but really, that's more of a personal preference. Like I said, the people driving this movie understood their medium and how much runtime they'd get, so they still did an excellent job pacing it.
If you've ever had that feeling of meeting another person in your dream and waking up wanting to find them, this movie tells that story in one of the most beautiful ways possible. I can't wait for the English release next year--if it's in a theater near me, you bet I'll be going to see it (also can't wait for it to be officially released on DVD because the version I watched had watermarks all over it and I want to suffer in full HD).
4. Durarara!! x2
Score: ???
Look at me swallowing my pride and not topping this list with season 2 even as I heavily speculated it last year.
The reason being, I think my expectations for the finale got too high, so it could only disappoint me. I don't think my expectations were entirely unreasonable though. Just more of an attention to detail and an overarching plot than Narita was willing to give.
Anyway. I did thoroughly enjoy the last couple of episodes at the time, though. And there was some knockout visual symbolism throughout that really sold it for me. I still enjoy the show and love it to bits, don't get me wrong, but I'll also never waste an opportunity to drag it through the dirt. My opinion on the ending, either way, is mixed; I loved parts of the way it ended, and severely disagree with others--I think for certain characters, Narita conceded too much to fans' demand.
The reason the score for this is unknown is because while I love it, I feel like, to properly judge it once and for all, I need to rewatch the whole series from the start and try to erase my bias as much as possible. Only then will I be able to see how good this show truly is.
And now we move to the top three, where it gets even harder.
3. Yuri on Ice
Score: 9
Easily the biggest hit in terms of popularity all year, Yuri on Ice has dazzled fans worldwide. And it's not hard to see why. A canon gay romance (that's handled VERY well) as well as a charming and diverse cast of characters combined with spectacular animation all come together to make this twelve-episode knockout.
Ice skating is an unusual sport, and while most people enjoy it as something pretty or as a nice hobby, it's not as well-known as the other sports in popular sports anime (volleyball, basketball, swimming, baseball, etc....). Yuri on Ice tried and succeeded to be great for both hardcore ice skating fans (even many real life figure skaters watch and love the show!) as well as those who know nothing about skating at all.
You don't really need to understand the terminology (and there aren't many rules like in other sports) to feel the drive burning behind all the characters. On top of that, the pacing is lightning fast but never seems to leave you behind. With a vague, hopeful "See you next level" leaving us at the finale, it's highly likely a season 2 is on our way next year sometime. This show has been so overwhelmingly well-received that MAPPA would be missing out on a lot of profit to not make more of it.
Really, the one problem I have with the show is that with 12 episodes and so many figure skating routines to cover, character development was skipped over. Victor and Yurio missed out on some development (and EVERYONE wants to know Victor's backstory), but I feel confident a season 2 will bring that to them. I trust Kubo based on how well she resolved everything in the last episode, so I have faith that she will help give the characters what they need in the future.
But on its own, Yuri on Ice is a great show. It's a fresh perspective on a sport most of us don't really give thought to, and is incredibly well-researched and choreographed. This series could have been a risky play, considering the relative unpopularity of ice skating as well as it being from a rather unknown studio (MAPPA's only other work I recall watching is Shingeki no Bahamut, which was fantastically animated but quite obscure), but it worked out for the better, something I'm really happy about.
Hopefully the success of Yuri on Ice will demonstrate to anime creators that we want more stuff like this (though not TOO similar); since it's the start of something entirely new for sports anime and anime in general. It's a very genuine show with a lot of heart, and I eagerly await whatever future seasons we will get.
2. Haikyuu!! Seasons 2 and 3
Score: 9
Coming up to the end of my list, here we have the next two seasons of Haikyuu. Season 2 was a welcome break in the beginning, focusing on our favorite boys training and growing stronger, before returning to the most stressful match yet as they rematch against their old foes, Aoba Johsai. Season 3 dives us right back into the action with Karasuno versus Shiratorizawa, and if you thought the Aoba Johsai matches were stressful, this one is far worse. The third season lasted for ten episodes only, but it was the most intense ten weeks of my life. Also, unpopular opinion, they should have waited for more of the manga so they could give us 25 episodes instead. I'd have been willing to wait longer for it. Anyway, judging by the sudden end of season 3, we'll be getting a season 4 announcement fairly soon down the road.
Regardless, both seasons 2 and 3 of Haikyuu were still among some of the most solid presentations I've seen yet, for anything. The show is really funny--like, it's so hilarious that many times I had to pause and laugh out my tears. Not only that, it's also so suspenseful--will Karasuno win? Who will get the point? How will the team grow from here? Haikyuu is a very wholesome series that really hits all my buttons in terms of what I like to see, so bring on the next season. I'm ready for it.
And finally, the top, surprising no one,
1. My Hero Academia
Score: 9
I'm gonna be honest, I had a ton of difficulty placing this one since I caught up on the manga only a couple of weeks after finishing the show (a record for me). So my love for the anime tied together with my love for the manga, resulting in a very powerful love for the two combined. I think the manga is better only because there's more to the story--the anime is a picture-perfect adaptation; suprisingly, I have no complaints there, but the manga continues onward. I'm really highly anticipating season 2 in April, with the adaptation of the sports festival and hero killer arcs (and I'm PRAYING for All for One) as next up.
However, this anime was love from the first episode. And boy did I fall hard. By the time the show finished, I was itching to read the manga.
I've seen people complaining that the pacing is too slow, but it's the beginning of a long-running series, so what else did you expect? Not to mention, the anime picked a good stopping point, albeit one that was only 20 chapters in, so they had to slow the pacing down a bit to fit it reasonably in 13 episodes. It still never felt like it was dragging, though. Above all else, this was an absolute pleasure to watch each week, and I'm really glad I'm caught up on the manga as well. Come at me, season 2. I can't wait to die over everything again.
-----------------
And that's it.
You know, last year I said I was gonna read more manga this year, and that didn't really happen. I did catch up on the chapters of HXH that came out after the anime ended, finished Pandora Hearts, caught up on MHA, stuttered through 50 chapters of Magi, and am reading Fruits Basket, but I didn't get through everything. I'm gonna try to make more progress on that next year.
I also didn't watch as much non-seasonal stuff this year as I'd have liked, mostly because from June-December I was busy a lot of the time. Vacations and being out of the country, slammed with schoolwork, and getting back into writing creatively took up most of my free time, so I'm afraid I neglected my duties as a weeb in the latter half.
However, I did binge-watch HXH 2011 in April, and that ended up being my favorite show I watched in 2016 that didn't come out in 2016. Really good, exactly my type, and an instant favorite, HXH is definitely something I'd love everyone to try out. I'm gonna rewatch it eventually and totally lose it all over again.
On the topic of rewatching, I did rewatch two of my other favorite series this year, FMAB and Steins;Gate. FMAB took a few weeks because of school, but Steins;Gate took exactly two days right before I went to Japan. I feel bad for not rewatching as much as I said I would though, and not watching as much new stuff either. Ah well
Next year I'll try to lower my standards a bit more and set my foot in the water with shows I previously avoided. And I will definitely be more productive with manga. Blue Exorcist has a new season out next year, so I want to read the manga before that comes out, and I need to catch up on Magi before it ends, as well as read Ouran. I also want to catch up on Silver Spoon since that should be ending soon....yeah. It's a lot.
That aside, it's been a great year for anime and I can't wait to see what 2017 will bring my for my top 10.
Posted by Leopah | Dec 22, 2016 6:59 PM | 0 comments
June 26th, 2016
Spring 2016 Anime: Thoughts, etc.
Anime Relations: Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu, Joker Game, Bungou Stray Dogs, Kiznaiver, Big Order (TV), Boku no Hero Academia, Mayoiga
I signed on for five spring anime, and somehow ended up watching seven! So here I'll be giving my thoughts on all seven (with some abbreviated reflections on Re:Zero, as that is two cours), in order from worst to best.
Spoiler warning for these shows! I will also be comparing other anime and manga, and spoilers for these other comparisons will be marked with a spoiler tag (the main anime will not be marked with a spoiler tag).
Big Order
Score: 2
Big Order was.....awful. I regret ever signing on to watch it. I thought I might like it because when I first watched Mirai Nikki, I really liked that! Of course there were unavoidable flaws in a battle royale type of story, but the author did his best to overturn those by
However, Big Order had almost none of the things I liked about Mirai Nikki included in it. On top of that, it had just a lot of plain BAD plot elements. Let's go down the list: Incest, pedophilia, unehealthy/abusive relationships, tropes such as "I'm doing this for you!" while never actually talking to them, a very OP protagonist, EXTREMELY fanservicey and sexualized designs for UNDERAGE characters, a harem for the protag, and a character who gets pregnant if a man touches her. I'm sorry, who the FUCK is writing the plot here. Once again, Mirai Nikki had some of the same elements as above, but at least I could ignore it and focus on the thriller element. Whereas in Big Order, this shit was overwhelming. The plot itself was bad anyway--as mentioned above, the protagonist is way too OP. He can use his Order whenever he wants, and for whatever purpose, since his wish to rule the world is so general. Air pressure manipulation? No problem! Bending a character to your will? Anytime!
Point being, Code Geass had a similar plot element of the main character being given a power to control people. In Lelouch's case, he could make them do anything, and it lasted until death. However, the difference between these shows is that Lelouch's power had a condition: He could only use it on a person ONCE. Eiji could redominate people at will. So why was it such a big deal when Rin and Sena got subjugated by his dad? He could just use his Order again and bring them back to his dominion. Jesus Christ. The author should have set some sort of condition for his protag, or SOMETHING to limit his power. That's what makes a good story. It's not interesting to watch a character beat the shit out of everyone and face no repercussions, physically or mentally. Also, he says he's not smart, but he's somehow always able to outmaneuver the enemy. The fuck do you call that then.
I'm not going to even get into the sex scenes (featuring Eiji's 12 year old sister! Banging HIM!) or the plot "twists" that made no sense and were not good enough to try to follow anyway. This has dragged on enough as is.
So, why did I rate it a 2 instead of a 1? Well, believe it or not, there's a bit of a silver lining.
The first reason is that I'm almost positive nearly the entire show was anime original. My reason for believing this is that the manga is still ongoing (and has been for several years), and the show was only 10 episodes and ended the story. However, I didn't care enough for the story and characters to give the manga a shot (also Eiji would still be OP as fuck and banging his little sister). Sorry. Maybe someone who DOES care about the manga can tell me how much of the anime was made up.
The second is there was one plot element that could have been cool if it had been handled at all properly, and that was the twist that Sena was actually way smarter than a helpless little "Onii-chan" girl. Of course, that went nowhere and she ended up being helpless anyway, but if this anime had been in competent hands, Sena as the villain would have been a good way to subvert said trope. But it wasn't, so oh well.
The third is that there were two things about the series I actually did like, the character designs and the music. Rin has a really good character design, as do the group of 10. Eiji looks too much like our old friend Yuuki and the Rock God girl looks like a grown up and very busty MurMur, but other than that, I like most of the designs. The background music was pretty well-done too, though I wasn't the biggest fan of the opening and ending.
I've dragged this rant on too much. On to the next show.
Mayoiga
Score: 3
Another shit show, quite frankly. So why is this ranked higher than Big Order? Well for one thing, this didn't have any of the incest or pedophilia or fanservice that that did, but for another, from the first episode, it actually seemed like it could be pretty good. It was all downhill from there, but the potential was there, if it had been written by someone who wasn't a complete fool. Naturally, when you start a show with like 30 characters, you're expecting Danganronpa to happen where they get killed off. But that didn't happen. No one died, and the complete overabundance of characters was just used to divide them into multiple groups, and have background characters explain the plot to each other. Like, they could have accomplished the same feat much better by only using 10 or 15 at most. 30? Way too fucking many. Almost none of them contributed to the plot significantly for me to bother remembering their nicknames, either. Surely they couldn't have expected us to bother with EVERY character's name in such a short series.
Along with that, it seemed like only a few random people on that tour got selected for backstory analysis. If you're going to give us all these characters and not kill them off, why not give the backstory treatment to all? It'd have been a bit better to see history only from those who were plot relevant (such as Mitsumune, Hayato, Masaki, etc.), but instead, characters like Valkana and the nyan nyan BB gun girl were given backstories despite not being important to the plot.
There were also characters who deserved some explanation but were given little to none, like Lion and Nanko. Lion was implied to be some sort of psychic beforehand, but all we really got was a 30-second flashback and her claim that she can see those who are about to die. Okay, interesting, where's the rest? Lion was pretty important to the plot, as important as she could be with so many others. Nanko wasn't given any backstory, but her tough motherly nature and her absentmindedly pinching her stomach implies she lost a child. It would have been cool to see what the deal was with that, since the subtle implication doesn't work in that case. It could have just been a nervous tic for all I know.
There was one backstory that I actually thought was good, even though it was slapped into an ill-fitting spot and about a character not very plot-relevant. And that was Lovepon's. The "preacher who is devoted to his work but is actually a horrible person at home" trope is something we see a lot in Western shows, but I've never seen it in anime before, so it was interesting to see it being used in this different framework. It also explained why Lovepon was always chanting "execute, execute."
Anyway. The overall message of Mayoiga was for one thing, bad, and for another, weak. They say that your traumatic past is a part of you that is kind of always there, which is true, but then they say it's a bad thing to move on. Like, what? If you have something really bad in your past then you're going to be trying your hardest to move on and forget about it. Maybe if they had actually tried to sell this in a psychological and not literal manner (with accelerated aging and hyper-realistic boobs chasing after you) it would have been more convincing. Like, you tell me I shouldn't try to let go of my past. Okay, why? Is there any reason at all??
My last gripe is what I mentioned in the above paragraph, and that's the use of CGI to make some of the monsters too realistic. It looked very out of place, especially when it was combined with the 2D animation of the characters. And some of the Nanaki designs were downright ridiculous, like Mitsumune's demon penguin being a very obvious knockoff of the Penguindrum penguins, Hayato's amalgamation (why was everyone else able to see it? Just cause), and the hyper-realistic boob mentioned before. Bro, if you're going to design a silicon-based monster, then don't go for the most obvious choice, especially if your monster is going to be overly rendered in CG anyway. Who wants to see a disembodied, way-too-lifelike boob (nipple included) chasing after a guy in an anime? Fucking nobody. (On that note, that guy was given a backstory, then tossed aside. Nice one.)
Okay, rant over. Next show.
Joker Game
Score: 4
Talk about not following through with your premise. The first two episodes seemed pretty interesting, albeit confusing. I liked the idea of a military guy who is used to being honest trying to fit in with the deceiving and backhanded spies. Unfortunately that katana-wielding ex-soldier doesn't appear again for the rest of the show. Aaaaand you've already lost me.
But no, there's still 10 episodes after those first ones, so we're forced to sit through episode after episode of how Yuuki is the best spy in the world, again and again and again. The characters starring as the spies per episode aren't even the same ones as the introduction, so why the fuck should I bother with them? I don't need to know their (fake) names, I don't care about their (fake) pasts, the missions aren't even exciting enough to cause suspense, so why does this show even matter? It doesn't.
There's no clear protagonist in Joker Game. And if you're running a show like Baccano, that works fine. Baccano has no clear protag because each character takes turns through the years and novels, and the plot is so chaotic but all connects together that it all works out. Also! A very important difference is that Baccano has good character design so you don't really worry about remembering who's who, since their personalities and looks are very different. In Joker Game, all the spies in the intro and the episodes following look way too similar to another, so it was impossible to tell who's who. They all wear suits and have short and conservative hair. I get that this is the 1930's and they're all supposed to blend in, but like, Baccano did the same thing, and did it way better--as I said, characters like Firo and Czes don't really stand out, but are still recognizable to the audience. So if all the characters look the same and there's no clear protag, then I don't fucking care about any of it. If you haven't seen the show you might think from my ranting that Yuuki is the protagonist, but truth be told, he's not. He's just the boss of these spies and it's all about how he's trained these men in his ways and he's just so amazing and no other spy can compete with him. Thanks for some fucking drama!
All in all, the episodes were too hard to follow anyway. Episode 3 I was still too jarred by the fact that we didn't seem to be going back to our introduction to even pay attention to what was going on, and it just got worse from there. Episode 11 seemed to be going a different direction with a dead spy, and he might have been one of them from the intro, but then in the last episode all those spies are back. And alive. So what the fuck.
This confusion is in part due to the bad character design I mentioned previously, but also the lack of not following through with your initial concept.
So to recap, the first two episodes were good (aside from the bad English), and the last episode was a bit of an improvement from what we had been watching previously, but the middle episodes were frankly boring and poorly written. The music (opening and BGM) was good, and that's the only thing that was consistently good through the show.
Now just let me wipe this show from my memory so I can forget I ever watched it. Let's move on to some shows that are better; the bad ones are over with.
Bungou Stray Dogs
Score: 5
"Wait, this show is much better? Then why did you only score it a 5?" you might be asking.
Well, while this show may not be very well written, it's at least a hell of a lot more enjoyable to watch than the ones mentioned above. It follows a pretty typical trope of "Character gets thrown into group of people with superpowers and must learn to find his footing in this strange new world." Actually, the same base concept as Big Order, but miles better. I would say there's no sister-banging in this show, but.......
Anyway. Atsushi is a pretty fun protag, since he's a scaredy-cat (literally), and makes a lot of good faces. I also like the designs of the detective agency, since you can easily tell them apart, and there isn't fanservice going on either. They seemed to have pretty enjoyable personalities, even if they do follow strict tropes and aren't very flawed as humans, and their interactions with each other felt mostly superficial and not very dynamic.
As I implied, there is unfortunately an incestuous relationship, to which I have to ask, why. The thing about this show over Big Order is that the incest is treated as comedy (like a lot of things in this show, actually) so it's definitely more bearable. I still wish it wasn't there though.
So while I like the characters, the plot is pretty weak. Atsushi's power isn't very well explained (If he can only transform under moonlight, why is he able to do partial transformation at any time of day? That kinda negates the limitation of "only nighttime." And why does he have crazy regeneration all of a sudden? Way to explain that in the beginning), and there's way too much comic relief for a show that seems to be presenting itself as more dark and edgy. There's a time and place for comedy, and I can't help but making an obligatory plug for Noragami here (it was bound to happen at some point in this article). In the Noragami manga, the comic relief never ruins a dramatic moment. It only happens in scenes that were lighthearted to begin with, or in the recent chapters, a brief respite. However, between its painful arcs that have only a dash of comedy, Noragami takes a chapter or two to lighten up the mood and show the characters having fun and hanging out. I wouldn't want every show to be this way, but it works well for Noragami's storytelling, and I wish the manga's author would find a balance that works for their story instead of just slapping comic relief in whenever you don't feel like explaining something properly (How did Dazai escape? Who the hell knows).
Anyway, Noragami comparison over for now. Back to the series in question.
Like I said in the previous paragraph, for a show that seems to be going for an overall edgy tone, there's way too much comedy going on. That makes the actual dark moments seem cheapened and less impactful. Episode 3 was pretty cool, with Mikado guy and his lover/sister getting shot to hell while Atsushi can only watch. Nice twist, to catch us off guard by brutally murdering two characters right in the beginning of the show! You've got me hooked.
Aaaaaand they proceed to completely ruin that the following episode--Both of those characters are completely fine! The tears and sacrifice and all the blood was for nothing, since we have a woman who can heal any wound! Yay! Now let's go back and treat all the drama and injury as comedy, so that the characters can laugh it off without any side effects! Wait, what? Who the FUCK is writing this? I'm okay with a story not having characters die, but when you turn around and make it into a joke in a show that's trying to be dark, it just doesn't work.
Time to compare to other manga.
In FMA,
Likewise, in Noragami,
And Pandora Hearts did it a little differently, but kind of the same.
And while not a manga, Steins;Gate
And I could go on, with Magi, Soul Eater, Baccano, etc.
Point being, by making these other comparisons, it shows that there's a way to have character death meaningful and impactful, even without actually killing them off. Even if it's rare, that doesn't mean it's not doable, or hell, the author could kill off one of the detectives or make a character just to kill, and it'd still be better than just treating serious injuries as comedy later.
It wasn't all bad; after all, it did get a score of 5. I liked the special effects of the transformations, particularly Dazai's and Atsushi's. Light Snow and Demon Snow looked pretty cool too, and Lucy's alternate reality in the last episode was amazing. I also liked the opening, both in the song and that it seemed to present Dazai's suicide attempts as dark and edgy, when in reality it's just for comedy, since it's a pretty good parallel to the show itself.
I was complaining about Kyouka only being shoved into the last few episodes, but I didn't realize it was a split-cour series. And normally I'm pretty on top of these things, so you got me there. I'll probably have to rewatch this series when the second half comes back later this year, and this time not have the mentality that they're screwing themselves over, since I thought they were too far from a conclusion.
Okay, last complaint before I close things out for this series. And that was the villain reveal. It was WAY too obvious, and there's a difference between presenting your reveal as obviously obvious, and something that's supposed to be a surprise but is totally called by your audience because you didn't hide it well enough. Mysterious character with his face always in shadows? Okay, nice. Random labcoat guy looking for a girl, who ONLY APPEARS in the finale at a VERY STRATEGIC POINT and is in a situation that is HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS? Well, now I know who the villain is! He was revealed not long after so it's not all bad, but it would have been cool to see him appear in episodes PRIOR to his actual reveal, as a background character, or even someone associated with the Agency.
One last plug for Noragami (spoilers for Aragoto and the manga), as I compare its villain reveal.
Regardless, I feel like this score will go up with the second cour in the fall, so don't take my word on this as final!
Kiznaiver
Score: 7
Kiznaiver is Trigger through and through. It shares a lot of the same elements as Kill la Kill, such as starting off goofy and weird and turning darker and dramatic later on. I'm going to come right out and say that my biggest problem with Kiznaiver by far is that it was too short. It should have been 24 episodes like Kill la Kill, because the emotional journey of the kids would have been much more impactful that way.
What do I mean by that? Well, take a look at the whole conflict involving Honoka and her friend from middle school. That spanned multiple episodes, and had a lot of time in it for the characters to dig deep into this conflict and try to resolve it with her. It was difficult, and took a long time, but they were able to get her to see them as her friends, while helping her out in their own way. I wish it had been 24 episodes because I would have liked to see the depth of that journey repeated with all of the characters. Katsuhira got a bit of that toward the end, but I wish each character had had several episodes devoted to them the way Honoka did, so that they could all grow stronger together.
In judging the show for what it is though, it was still quite good. Like I said, some of the inner conflicts were a bit rushed, but there were some really powerful scenes. The kids crying in the rain, Katsuhira's conversation with Chidori (example of using your background well!), Katsuhira seeing the kids from his past and breaking down completely, six of the kids playing in the stormy ocean to try and cheer Honoka up, Nico insisting that Hisomu and Katsuhira were her friends as Tenga looked on condescendingly, Chidori's hypocritical statement to Tenga, etc. Those moments were standouts and all handled really well. From there, the rest of the show is still pretty good, if not as much.
With this type of story you're bound to have these unavoidable tropes and limitations, and I saw someone mention in a review that if you liked the story synopsis, you would see the show as a 10, whereas if you didn't, it'd be more like an 8. While I slightly disagree with it due to Trigger's nature of producing wacky and unconventional shows, it is mostly true in that the story could be pretty predictable if you thought down the pipeline of this framework. It's a matter of how well it's handled despite those, though. And with this show, it was.....pretty good.
My Hero Academia
Score: 9
And finally, my favorite show of this season! I was recommended this by someone on Tumblr some months ago, and I figured I always needed more seasonal shows so I decided to watch it. And boy did I fall hard at first sight. From episode 1 this show captured and held my attention far more than anything else this season. The characters are really well-developed, the story has great writing, the concept is interesting, the designs are beyond amazing, the music was awesome, the animation great, and it's an absolute pleasure to watch. Holy hell did this show get me pumped.
I'm thinking of writing a review on this, so I won't go too much in depth on the basic stuff, but I will talk about the later-on things.
First off, All Might's detective friend is totally the villain, or in cahoots with him. He was ringing alarm bells all over my head, but he wasn't revealed in the anime so I'll have to see what happens when I read the manga. I'm totally reading it, by the way. It's too good not to.
Second of all, Midoriya was able to avoid the cliche of "being able to control your power at the most convenient point." He spent the entire show struggling with learning to use One For All, and in the end was able to throw one punch without destroying his arm. However, in this episode he broke both his legs, showing that he still has a lot of work to do before he can control his quirk. Just because he did it once does not mean he can magically use his power now, and I really like that.
Third, while I'm not entirely sure how the warp villain and the hands guy escaped UA's custody, I liked the ominous "Sound only" screen and the crackled male voice coming from behind it. It instantly showed that the "League of Villains" was only a cheap facade, that hands guy was only an underling, and that the guy they were speaking to wasn't even the boss, or maybe they were both at the top. Point being, there's a LOT of villains we haven't yet seen, and I'm super hyped for season 2. I'm definitely going to get caught up on the manga before then, though.
I saw some complaints that "nothing was happening" for the middle section of the show, before we got into the fight with the League of Villains. But, guys, this is adapting a MANGA and it's always better to pace your introductions than to throw it all in there hodgepodge and jump right into the action. Mangas are allowed to take time introducing everyone since they aren't constrained by episode/chapter count like anime. Not to mention, even while "nothing was happening," this show still managed to be miles more enjoyable and better handled than anything else I was watching at the time. Interesting, right?
So why give it a 9 and not a 10? Because the story isn't over! There's still a lot left to explore, as we saw from those last few minutes. Midoriya is still far from learning how to use One For All, All Might has even less transformation time left but still has to teach, and the kids have only barely started at UA (mfw you realize this horrible fight took place, like, a week after school started).
And that's it for shows completed in spring 2016! I have a few thoughts about Re:Zero next, but as that's only halfway through its airtime, it's not final.
Re:Zero
Score: Undetermined as of yet
I'm not entirely sure why this show already has such a high score, or why it's topping MHA in all the ratings. I started it because people were talking about it and how good it was, and the fact that it's scored high on MAL. But, I'm not really seeing what everyone is loving so much about it. It's interesting, yes, and enjoyable, sure, but it's not better than MHA for me (and for the record, it's not really bias speaking since I didn't hear about the hype comparison till after I caught up on this show midseason). It's very similar concept-wise to Steins;Gate, except it's death that turns back time, not science fiction. It also seems like a way to keep killing your main character without him actually dying, and earlier in this article I went over why that's a bad idea and how there's ways to handle it better. Subaru also hasn't had much emotional impact from his countless deaths and returns, though there were a couple of times where he said that he was feeling sick, and of course since he can remember the pain, he doesn't want to die again. Makes sense.
One of my favorite things about Subaru is he should stay inconspicuous and not give away that he's from another world. But he loudly says embarrassing things and introduces modern technology to this medieval period, and the other characters just kind of ignore him. They just think he's crazy, which is more how this would go, I think.
I still want to know HOW he got zapped into this world in the first place, but I figure that will be endgame. I also wonder if he will stay in this world in the end, or return to Japan. And if all these deaths are leading up to some big thing that he was brought here to stop.
Also, why do they even have an opening and ending if they just skip one or the other or both most of the time?
So all in all, while I'm not entirely sure why this is being treated as the top anime of the spring season, I definitely enjoy it! I'm looking forward to how this story will resolve over summer, and we'll also see how my thoughts on it change.
Thanks to everyone who read this word vomit, and be sure to leave a comment with your thoughts! Peace out~
Spoiler warning for these shows! I will also be comparing other anime and manga, and spoilers for these other comparisons will be marked with a spoiler tag (the main anime will not be marked with a spoiler tag).
Big Order
Score: 2
Big Order was.....awful. I regret ever signing on to watch it. I thought I might like it because when I first watched Mirai Nikki, I really liked that! Of course there were unavoidable flaws in a battle royale type of story, but the author did his best to overturn those by
However, Big Order had almost none of the things I liked about Mirai Nikki included in it. On top of that, it had just a lot of plain BAD plot elements. Let's go down the list: Incest, pedophilia, unehealthy/abusive relationships, tropes such as "I'm doing this for you!" while never actually talking to them, a very OP protagonist, EXTREMELY fanservicey and sexualized designs for UNDERAGE characters, a harem for the protag, and a character who gets pregnant if a man touches her. I'm sorry, who the FUCK is writing the plot here. Once again, Mirai Nikki had some of the same elements as above, but at least I could ignore it and focus on the thriller element. Whereas in Big Order, this shit was overwhelming. The plot itself was bad anyway--as mentioned above, the protagonist is way too OP. He can use his Order whenever he wants, and for whatever purpose, since his wish to rule the world is so general. Air pressure manipulation? No problem! Bending a character to your will? Anytime!
Point being, Code Geass had a similar plot element of the main character being given a power to control people. In Lelouch's case, he could make them do anything, and it lasted until death. However, the difference between these shows is that Lelouch's power had a condition: He could only use it on a person ONCE. Eiji could redominate people at will. So why was it such a big deal when Rin and Sena got subjugated by his dad? He could just use his Order again and bring them back to his dominion. Jesus Christ. The author should have set some sort of condition for his protag, or SOMETHING to limit his power. That's what makes a good story. It's not interesting to watch a character beat the shit out of everyone and face no repercussions, physically or mentally. Also, he says he's not smart, but he's somehow always able to outmaneuver the enemy. The fuck do you call that then.
I'm not going to even get into the sex scenes (featuring Eiji's 12 year old sister! Banging HIM!) or the plot "twists" that made no sense and were not good enough to try to follow anyway. This has dragged on enough as is.
So, why did I rate it a 2 instead of a 1? Well, believe it or not, there's a bit of a silver lining.
The first reason is that I'm almost positive nearly the entire show was anime original. My reason for believing this is that the manga is still ongoing (and has been for several years), and the show was only 10 episodes and ended the story. However, I didn't care enough for the story and characters to give the manga a shot (also Eiji would still be OP as fuck and banging his little sister). Sorry. Maybe someone who DOES care about the manga can tell me how much of the anime was made up.
The second is there was one plot element that could have been cool if it had been handled at all properly, and that was the twist that Sena was actually way smarter than a helpless little "Onii-chan" girl. Of course, that went nowhere and she ended up being helpless anyway, but if this anime had been in competent hands, Sena as the villain would have been a good way to subvert said trope. But it wasn't, so oh well.
The third is that there were two things about the series I actually did like, the character designs and the music. Rin has a really good character design, as do the group of 10. Eiji looks too much like our old friend Yuuki and the Rock God girl looks like a grown up and very busty MurMur, but other than that, I like most of the designs. The background music was pretty well-done too, though I wasn't the biggest fan of the opening and ending.
I've dragged this rant on too much. On to the next show.
Mayoiga
Score: 3
Another shit show, quite frankly. So why is this ranked higher than Big Order? Well for one thing, this didn't have any of the incest or pedophilia or fanservice that that did, but for another, from the first episode, it actually seemed like it could be pretty good. It was all downhill from there, but the potential was there, if it had been written by someone who wasn't a complete fool. Naturally, when you start a show with like 30 characters, you're expecting Danganronpa to happen where they get killed off. But that didn't happen. No one died, and the complete overabundance of characters was just used to divide them into multiple groups, and have background characters explain the plot to each other. Like, they could have accomplished the same feat much better by only using 10 or 15 at most. 30? Way too fucking many. Almost none of them contributed to the plot significantly for me to bother remembering their nicknames, either. Surely they couldn't have expected us to bother with EVERY character's name in such a short series.
Along with that, it seemed like only a few random people on that tour got selected for backstory analysis. If you're going to give us all these characters and not kill them off, why not give the backstory treatment to all? It'd have been a bit better to see history only from those who were plot relevant (such as Mitsumune, Hayato, Masaki, etc.), but instead, characters like Valkana and the nyan nyan BB gun girl were given backstories despite not being important to the plot.
There were also characters who deserved some explanation but were given little to none, like Lion and Nanko. Lion was implied to be some sort of psychic beforehand, but all we really got was a 30-second flashback and her claim that she can see those who are about to die. Okay, interesting, where's the rest? Lion was pretty important to the plot, as important as she could be with so many others. Nanko wasn't given any backstory, but her tough motherly nature and her absentmindedly pinching her stomach implies she lost a child. It would have been cool to see what the deal was with that, since the subtle implication doesn't work in that case. It could have just been a nervous tic for all I know.
There was one backstory that I actually thought was good, even though it was slapped into an ill-fitting spot and about a character not very plot-relevant. And that was Lovepon's. The "preacher who is devoted to his work but is actually a horrible person at home" trope is something we see a lot in Western shows, but I've never seen it in anime before, so it was interesting to see it being used in this different framework. It also explained why Lovepon was always chanting "execute, execute."
Anyway. The overall message of Mayoiga was for one thing, bad, and for another, weak. They say that your traumatic past is a part of you that is kind of always there, which is true, but then they say it's a bad thing to move on. Like, what? If you have something really bad in your past then you're going to be trying your hardest to move on and forget about it. Maybe if they had actually tried to sell this in a psychological and not literal manner (with accelerated aging and hyper-realistic boobs chasing after you) it would have been more convincing. Like, you tell me I shouldn't try to let go of my past. Okay, why? Is there any reason at all??
My last gripe is what I mentioned in the above paragraph, and that's the use of CGI to make some of the monsters too realistic. It looked very out of place, especially when it was combined with the 2D animation of the characters. And some of the Nanaki designs were downright ridiculous, like Mitsumune's demon penguin being a very obvious knockoff of the Penguindrum penguins, Hayato's amalgamation (why was everyone else able to see it? Just cause), and the hyper-realistic boob mentioned before. Bro, if you're going to design a silicon-based monster, then don't go for the most obvious choice, especially if your monster is going to be overly rendered in CG anyway. Who wants to see a disembodied, way-too-lifelike boob (nipple included) chasing after a guy in an anime? Fucking nobody. (On that note, that guy was given a backstory, then tossed aside. Nice one.)
Okay, rant over. Next show.
Joker Game
Score: 4
Talk about not following through with your premise. The first two episodes seemed pretty interesting, albeit confusing. I liked the idea of a military guy who is used to being honest trying to fit in with the deceiving and backhanded spies. Unfortunately that katana-wielding ex-soldier doesn't appear again for the rest of the show. Aaaaand you've already lost me.
But no, there's still 10 episodes after those first ones, so we're forced to sit through episode after episode of how Yuuki is the best spy in the world, again and again and again. The characters starring as the spies per episode aren't even the same ones as the introduction, so why the fuck should I bother with them? I don't need to know their (fake) names, I don't care about their (fake) pasts, the missions aren't even exciting enough to cause suspense, so why does this show even matter? It doesn't.
There's no clear protagonist in Joker Game. And if you're running a show like Baccano, that works fine. Baccano has no clear protag because each character takes turns through the years and novels, and the plot is so chaotic but all connects together that it all works out. Also! A very important difference is that Baccano has good character design so you don't really worry about remembering who's who, since their personalities and looks are very different. In Joker Game, all the spies in the intro and the episodes following look way too similar to another, so it was impossible to tell who's who. They all wear suits and have short and conservative hair. I get that this is the 1930's and they're all supposed to blend in, but like, Baccano did the same thing, and did it way better--as I said, characters like Firo and Czes don't really stand out, but are still recognizable to the audience. So if all the characters look the same and there's no clear protag, then I don't fucking care about any of it. If you haven't seen the show you might think from my ranting that Yuuki is the protagonist, but truth be told, he's not. He's just the boss of these spies and it's all about how he's trained these men in his ways and he's just so amazing and no other spy can compete with him. Thanks for some fucking drama!
All in all, the episodes were too hard to follow anyway. Episode 3 I was still too jarred by the fact that we didn't seem to be going back to our introduction to even pay attention to what was going on, and it just got worse from there. Episode 11 seemed to be going a different direction with a dead spy, and he might have been one of them from the intro, but then in the last episode all those spies are back. And alive. So what the fuck.
This confusion is in part due to the bad character design I mentioned previously, but also the lack of not following through with your initial concept.
So to recap, the first two episodes were good (aside from the bad English), and the last episode was a bit of an improvement from what we had been watching previously, but the middle episodes were frankly boring and poorly written. The music (opening and BGM) was good, and that's the only thing that was consistently good through the show.
Now just let me wipe this show from my memory so I can forget I ever watched it. Let's move on to some shows that are better; the bad ones are over with.
Bungou Stray Dogs
Score: 5
"Wait, this show is much better? Then why did you only score it a 5?" you might be asking.
Well, while this show may not be very well written, it's at least a hell of a lot more enjoyable to watch than the ones mentioned above. It follows a pretty typical trope of "Character gets thrown into group of people with superpowers and must learn to find his footing in this strange new world." Actually, the same base concept as Big Order, but miles better. I would say there's no sister-banging in this show, but.......
Anyway. Atsushi is a pretty fun protag, since he's a scaredy-cat (literally), and makes a lot of good faces. I also like the designs of the detective agency, since you can easily tell them apart, and there isn't fanservice going on either. They seemed to have pretty enjoyable personalities, even if they do follow strict tropes and aren't very flawed as humans, and their interactions with each other felt mostly superficial and not very dynamic.
As I implied, there is unfortunately an incestuous relationship, to which I have to ask, why. The thing about this show over Big Order is that the incest is treated as comedy (like a lot of things in this show, actually) so it's definitely more bearable. I still wish it wasn't there though.
So while I like the characters, the plot is pretty weak. Atsushi's power isn't very well explained (If he can only transform under moonlight, why is he able to do partial transformation at any time of day? That kinda negates the limitation of "only nighttime." And why does he have crazy regeneration all of a sudden? Way to explain that in the beginning), and there's way too much comic relief for a show that seems to be presenting itself as more dark and edgy. There's a time and place for comedy, and I can't help but making an obligatory plug for Noragami here (it was bound to happen at some point in this article). In the Noragami manga, the comic relief never ruins a dramatic moment. It only happens in scenes that were lighthearted to begin with, or in the recent chapters, a brief respite. However, between its painful arcs that have only a dash of comedy, Noragami takes a chapter or two to lighten up the mood and show the characters having fun and hanging out. I wouldn't want every show to be this way, but it works well for Noragami's storytelling, and I wish the manga's author would find a balance that works for their story instead of just slapping comic relief in whenever you don't feel like explaining something properly (How did Dazai escape? Who the hell knows).
Anyway, Noragami comparison over for now. Back to the series in question.
Like I said in the previous paragraph, for a show that seems to be going for an overall edgy tone, there's way too much comedy going on. That makes the actual dark moments seem cheapened and less impactful. Episode 3 was pretty cool, with Mikado guy and his lover/sister getting shot to hell while Atsushi can only watch. Nice twist, to catch us off guard by brutally murdering two characters right in the beginning of the show! You've got me hooked.
Aaaaaand they proceed to completely ruin that the following episode--Both of those characters are completely fine! The tears and sacrifice and all the blood was for nothing, since we have a woman who can heal any wound! Yay! Now let's go back and treat all the drama and injury as comedy, so that the characters can laugh it off without any side effects! Wait, what? Who the FUCK is writing this? I'm okay with a story not having characters die, but when you turn around and make it into a joke in a show that's trying to be dark, it just doesn't work.
Time to compare to other manga.
In FMA,
Likewise, in Noragami,
And Pandora Hearts did it a little differently, but kind of the same.
And while not a manga, Steins;Gate
And I could go on, with Magi, Soul Eater, Baccano, etc.
Point being, by making these other comparisons, it shows that there's a way to have character death meaningful and impactful, even without actually killing them off. Even if it's rare, that doesn't mean it's not doable, or hell, the author could kill off one of the detectives or make a character just to kill, and it'd still be better than just treating serious injuries as comedy later.
It wasn't all bad; after all, it did get a score of 5. I liked the special effects of the transformations, particularly Dazai's and Atsushi's. Light Snow and Demon Snow looked pretty cool too, and Lucy's alternate reality in the last episode was amazing. I also liked the opening, both in the song and that it seemed to present Dazai's suicide attempts as dark and edgy, when in reality it's just for comedy, since it's a pretty good parallel to the show itself.
I was complaining about Kyouka only being shoved into the last few episodes, but I didn't realize it was a split-cour series. And normally I'm pretty on top of these things, so you got me there. I'll probably have to rewatch this series when the second half comes back later this year, and this time not have the mentality that they're screwing themselves over, since I thought they were too far from a conclusion.
Okay, last complaint before I close things out for this series. And that was the villain reveal. It was WAY too obvious, and there's a difference between presenting your reveal as obviously obvious, and something that's supposed to be a surprise but is totally called by your audience because you didn't hide it well enough. Mysterious character with his face always in shadows? Okay, nice. Random labcoat guy looking for a girl, who ONLY APPEARS in the finale at a VERY STRATEGIC POINT and is in a situation that is HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS? Well, now I know who the villain is! He was revealed not long after so it's not all bad, but it would have been cool to see him appear in episodes PRIOR to his actual reveal, as a background character, or even someone associated with the Agency.
One last plug for Noragami (spoilers for Aragoto and the manga), as I compare its villain reveal.
Regardless, I feel like this score will go up with the second cour in the fall, so don't take my word on this as final!
Kiznaiver
Score: 7
Kiznaiver is Trigger through and through. It shares a lot of the same elements as Kill la Kill, such as starting off goofy and weird and turning darker and dramatic later on. I'm going to come right out and say that my biggest problem with Kiznaiver by far is that it was too short. It should have been 24 episodes like Kill la Kill, because the emotional journey of the kids would have been much more impactful that way.
What do I mean by that? Well, take a look at the whole conflict involving Honoka and her friend from middle school. That spanned multiple episodes, and had a lot of time in it for the characters to dig deep into this conflict and try to resolve it with her. It was difficult, and took a long time, but they were able to get her to see them as her friends, while helping her out in their own way. I wish it had been 24 episodes because I would have liked to see the depth of that journey repeated with all of the characters. Katsuhira got a bit of that toward the end, but I wish each character had had several episodes devoted to them the way Honoka did, so that they could all grow stronger together.
In judging the show for what it is though, it was still quite good. Like I said, some of the inner conflicts were a bit rushed, but there were some really powerful scenes. The kids crying in the rain, Katsuhira's conversation with Chidori (example of using your background well!), Katsuhira seeing the kids from his past and breaking down completely, six of the kids playing in the stormy ocean to try and cheer Honoka up, Nico insisting that Hisomu and Katsuhira were her friends as Tenga looked on condescendingly, Chidori's hypocritical statement to Tenga, etc. Those moments were standouts and all handled really well. From there, the rest of the show is still pretty good, if not as much.
With this type of story you're bound to have these unavoidable tropes and limitations, and I saw someone mention in a review that if you liked the story synopsis, you would see the show as a 10, whereas if you didn't, it'd be more like an 8. While I slightly disagree with it due to Trigger's nature of producing wacky and unconventional shows, it is mostly true in that the story could be pretty predictable if you thought down the pipeline of this framework. It's a matter of how well it's handled despite those, though. And with this show, it was.....pretty good.
My Hero Academia
Score: 9
And finally, my favorite show of this season! I was recommended this by someone on Tumblr some months ago, and I figured I always needed more seasonal shows so I decided to watch it. And boy did I fall hard at first sight. From episode 1 this show captured and held my attention far more than anything else this season. The characters are really well-developed, the story has great writing, the concept is interesting, the designs are beyond amazing, the music was awesome, the animation great, and it's an absolute pleasure to watch. Holy hell did this show get me pumped.
I'm thinking of writing a review on this, so I won't go too much in depth on the basic stuff, but I will talk about the later-on things.
First off, All Might's detective friend is totally the villain, or in cahoots with him. He was ringing alarm bells all over my head, but he wasn't revealed in the anime so I'll have to see what happens when I read the manga. I'm totally reading it, by the way. It's too good not to.
Second of all, Midoriya was able to avoid the cliche of "being able to control your power at the most convenient point." He spent the entire show struggling with learning to use One For All, and in the end was able to throw one punch without destroying his arm. However, in this episode he broke both his legs, showing that he still has a lot of work to do before he can control his quirk. Just because he did it once does not mean he can magically use his power now, and I really like that.
Third, while I'm not entirely sure how the warp villain and the hands guy escaped UA's custody, I liked the ominous "Sound only" screen and the crackled male voice coming from behind it. It instantly showed that the "League of Villains" was only a cheap facade, that hands guy was only an underling, and that the guy they were speaking to wasn't even the boss, or maybe they were both at the top. Point being, there's a LOT of villains we haven't yet seen, and I'm super hyped for season 2. I'm definitely going to get caught up on the manga before then, though.
I saw some complaints that "nothing was happening" for the middle section of the show, before we got into the fight with the League of Villains. But, guys, this is adapting a MANGA and it's always better to pace your introductions than to throw it all in there hodgepodge and jump right into the action. Mangas are allowed to take time introducing everyone since they aren't constrained by episode/chapter count like anime. Not to mention, even while "nothing was happening," this show still managed to be miles more enjoyable and better handled than anything else I was watching at the time. Interesting, right?
So why give it a 9 and not a 10? Because the story isn't over! There's still a lot left to explore, as we saw from those last few minutes. Midoriya is still far from learning how to use One For All, All Might has even less transformation time left but still has to teach, and the kids have only barely started at UA (mfw you realize this horrible fight took place, like, a week after school started).
And that's it for shows completed in spring 2016! I have a few thoughts about Re:Zero next, but as that's only halfway through its airtime, it's not final.
Re:Zero
Score: Undetermined as of yet
I'm not entirely sure why this show already has such a high score, or why it's topping MHA in all the ratings. I started it because people were talking about it and how good it was, and the fact that it's scored high on MAL. But, I'm not really seeing what everyone is loving so much about it. It's interesting, yes, and enjoyable, sure, but it's not better than MHA for me (and for the record, it's not really bias speaking since I didn't hear about the hype comparison till after I caught up on this show midseason). It's very similar concept-wise to Steins;Gate, except it's death that turns back time, not science fiction. It also seems like a way to keep killing your main character without him actually dying, and earlier in this article I went over why that's a bad idea and how there's ways to handle it better. Subaru also hasn't had much emotional impact from his countless deaths and returns, though there were a couple of times where he said that he was feeling sick, and of course since he can remember the pain, he doesn't want to die again. Makes sense.
One of my favorite things about Subaru is he should stay inconspicuous and not give away that he's from another world. But he loudly says embarrassing things and introduces modern technology to this medieval period, and the other characters just kind of ignore him. They just think he's crazy, which is more how this would go, I think.
I still want to know HOW he got zapped into this world in the first place, but I figure that will be endgame. I also wonder if he will stay in this world in the end, or return to Japan. And if all these deaths are leading up to some big thing that he was brought here to stop.
Also, why do they even have an opening and ending if they just skip one or the other or both most of the time?
So all in all, while I'm not entirely sure why this is being treated as the top anime of the spring season, I definitely enjoy it! I'm looking forward to how this story will resolve over summer, and we'll also see how my thoughts on it change.
Thanks to everyone who read this word vomit, and be sure to leave a comment with your thoughts! Peace out~
Posted by Leopah | Jun 26, 2016 12:10 PM | 0 comments
March 27th, 2016
Predictions, Predictions, and More Predictions! Debunking Time!
This is a follow-up to my VERY LONG blog posts about Durarara!!x2 Ten and Ketsu. In said blog posts, as well as on Tumblr, I made many MANY speculations and predictions on things I thought might happen in the series. Well, now that the series is over as of yesterday, it's time for me to have fun debunking and reaffirming these predictions!
In case you're not familiar with the literal novel I wrote on Ten and Ketsu, here's a link to each. I'm not requiring anyone to read the 18000+ words I wrote on each 12-episode segment, but if you want to then I applaud you.
Ten: http://myanimelist.net/blog.php?eid=772437
Ketsu: http://myanimelist.net/blog.php?eid=780522
(I updated the blog post weekly right after I watched the new episode)
Obviously, major spoilers will follow, so if you're not up to speed on Durarara, I highly recommend against reading this.
And if you're new to my experience, I have read volumes 1, 2, 4, and 7-9 but I read them after watching the corresponding episodes and did not read ahead (except with 7 and 8, but I stopped after that). So rest assured, I did NOT know what was coming even though I talk about stuff in the novels. I feel like I'm the only novel reader who didn't go all in, haha. But that's because not all the volumes were translated so I decided I'd rather wait to see it animated.
Anyway, this blog post will suffice as a way for me to skim through the words I wrote, pluck out predictions, and laugh about them a bit. It's not going to be nearly as long as the in-depth discussions.
Without further ado, here we go.
The original words will be written like this, and my new commentary will be written in bold.
Starting with my Tumblr posts, since I made those chronologically earliest. This first one is after I finished volumes 7 and 8, about a year ago.
Second predictions post, made about a month later and after discussing things with one of my friends who had not read the novels.
And now for the last predictions post, which I made after reading volume 9 in late August.
And now on to predictions mixed in with my blog posts. These will be quoted out of context but if something needs explanation I'll provide it.
And lastly, predictions compiled from my blog post covering all of Ketsu.
Well, that's it! And boy if you thought this post of predictions was long, the full blog posts are even longer.
Either way, it was a ride, and pretty amusing to look back at my naivete from this summer and beyond.
Thanks for reading!
In case you're not familiar with the literal novel I wrote on Ten and Ketsu, here's a link to each. I'm not requiring anyone to read the 18000+ words I wrote on each 12-episode segment, but if you want to then I applaud you.
Ten: http://myanimelist.net/blog.php?eid=772437
Ketsu: http://myanimelist.net/blog.php?eid=780522
(I updated the blog post weekly right after I watched the new episode)
Obviously, major spoilers will follow, so if you're not up to speed on Durarara, I highly recommend against reading this.
And if you're new to my experience, I have read volumes 1, 2, 4, and 7-9 but I read them after watching the corresponding episodes and did not read ahead (except with 7 and 8, but I stopped after that). So rest assured, I did NOT know what was coming even though I talk about stuff in the novels. I feel like I'm the only novel reader who didn't go all in, haha. But that's because not all the volumes were translated so I decided I'd rather wait to see it animated.
Anyway, this blog post will suffice as a way for me to skim through the words I wrote, pluck out predictions, and laugh about them a bit. It's not going to be nearly as long as the in-depth discussions.
Without further ado, here we go.
The original words will be written like this, and my new commentary will be written in bold.
Starting with my Tumblr posts, since I made those chronologically earliest. This first one is after I finished volumes 7 and 8, about a year ago.
- Something big involving most or all of the characters is coming soon Not quite; each section of characters had separately resolving stories.
- Namie is plotting her own agenda and I’m not sure what I'm still not sure. I thought she'd betray Izaya at some point but that never happened.
- Jinnai Yodogiri somehow is in almost every character’s life and that’s freaking me out just a lil Heheh, yup, though it's actually Kujiragi.
- There’s all these new people in the chatroom which is only going to make information spread further Could have been cool but it never really resulted in a bad thing.
- Now that Shinra has been exposed as Celty’s weakness they’re sure to use that in some way God dammit why did I have to be right
- That goddamn cat is going to lead to Anri being put in danger again Surprisingly, that didn't happen. Whatever DID become of Dokusonmaru?
- Izaya is gathering a whole bunch of people for……something To be his bodyguards, I assume.
- Masaomi and Mikado are both trying to protect each other and I don’t think anything good is going to come out of that Ha ha ha.....hoo boy. Honey you've got a big storm coming. Lack of communication is fun.
- Masaomi reforming the Yellow Scarves is not going to turn out well Does anything turn out well in this series? Honestly.
- Mikado and Masaomi are going to have a huge fight and falling-out and Anri will likely be caught in the middle That'd have been cool, but they stayed friends to the end surpisingly enough.
- Mikado’s pursuing an impossible dream [with purging the Dollars] and he won’t realize it until it’s too late Damn did I hit the nail on the head with this one. I said in a Skype call with my novel-reading friend that the only way for the Dollars to exist as he wanted them would be for him to disband them so they'd only be a memory, but I didn't think he'd go through with it as he loved them too much.
- Aoba may have some kind of connection to Yodogiri and I also think he’s the one pulling the strings because he said in Shou that he wanted Izaya out of the way and shortly afterward he was stabbed. Coincidence???? I think not. Once again, would have been cool, but Aoba just ended up being a punk ass bitch.
- Either that or Yodogiri is using Aoba in some way and considering how he knows everyone it’s practically canon Another thing that would have been cool, but Kujiragi and Aoba have no apparent connection.
- What happened between Aoba and Izaya???? MAN I STILL WANNA KNOW.
- Is Ruri a cross between an immortal from Baccano and a vampire?? She's part vampire, shoutout to Vamp volume 5 for confirming this months before they said it in the anime.
- Was the one who stabbed Izaya really Yodogiri? In the anime, he looked different from how Yodogiri appeared in previous episodes HAHAHAHAHAHA
- Plus, Yodogiri isn’t the type to get his hands dirty and we know that from previous characters’ statements Man I did NOT know how right I was about this
- In fact, in the anime he almost looked like Sloan…… Would have been cool, didn't happen. Nuff said.
- But Sloan was put out of action, I think. Plus he was hired by Izaya so why would he turn against him HAHAHAH OH MAN.
- Which brings me to my next point. Two Yodogiris???? Possibly?????? LMAO I was SO unsure of this fact.....I mean, I wasn't quite right, as it turned out there were dozens of Yodogiris.
- This is the shakiest part of my crack theories because it’s only based off episode 12 of Shou and the “difference” briefly mentioned in Volume 8 lol @ past me u did good catching onto that months in advance. Everyone else thought they just kept changing the character design, which only made me more sure that it was a plot point.
- Mikado working with Aoba is not going to end well for either person Once again, surprisingly, it seemed as though Aoba did actually care for Mikado as a friend in the end.
- The person who posed as Izaya to help Akane out is going to come back in some way Haha oh man I did NOT know about Nakura. #tbt to the time only me and one of my friends picked up on this.
- I don’t think that guy is Shiki because Shiki is with the Awakusu group and therefore Akane would know him Explanation: me and my friend thought Nakura looked a little like Shiki with the skin tone and the gold necklace. Turns out, Akane does know Shiki.
- Why are Varona and Akane fighting over who gets to kill Shizuo I don’t think either one is going to be able to Whatever happened to this conflict. Akane vanished in Ketsu.
- The fact that Mika has eyes and ears on nearly everyone is going to result in a huge mess when someone finds out and she’s probably going to find out things she doesn’t like All that really resulted in was her finding out that people were after her and Seiji.....disappointing
- Celty is going to eventually find out that Izaya has her head and shit will hit the fan Unfortunately she didn't seem to care much, though with the way things went later, I should be grateful she wasn't determined to get it back.
- At least one character is going to die Side-eyes Izaya Orihara
- Is Aoba one of the people in the chatroom? The chatroom person was mentioning talking to someone in jail, later on that same person was mentioned outside of the chatroom again, and we know Aoba’s brother is in jail–it’s implied, at least Ding ding ding, right on all counts.
- Who are all the new people in the chatroom; I know Saki is Saki, Chrome is Izaya under a different name, and Gaki is Akabayashi, so who are Sharo and 100% Pure Water and the others whose names I can’t remember Shoutout to a novel reader for confirming that Gaki is Akabayashi for me. Turns out, Sharo is the dojo guy (god damn his name is on the tip of my tongue) and 100% Pure Water is Aoba.
- There are people after Kadota and his gang and they can probably take care of themselves, but still, not good Eh, they'll be fine.
- We thought Izaya was the big bad guy manipulating everything but now it’s apparent that Yodogiri is the one we should really be afraid of Kujiragi, and even then, those two paled in comparison to what Mikado showed himself to be capable of.
Second predictions post, made about a month later and after discussing things with one of my friends who had not read the novels.
- First of all I can’t wait for the last chapter in Volume 7 to be animated because that’s the one where Shinra and Celty try to have a romantic date but every other character in the series fucking calls Shinra and he gets increasingly frustrated with them until he resorts to hanging up on Izaya and then Celty prank calls him I was so salty when this got cut out of the anime.....Luckily it got made into its own special and I cried real tears
- Anyway I love that chapter to bits and I’m not sure if they’ll show Shinra’s point of view as the characters call him or put it all in at the end either way it’s going to be awesome They only put very brief pieces of the calls in the main series. They also did both, in that they showed him getting calls in the special but you could only see a brief flash of him in the main series.
- Vamp Volume V has confirmed my suspicions about Ruri either being an immortal from Baccano or a vampire (from Vamp, presumably). The Hijiribe Clan is mentioned as an extinct vampire Clan, so maybe Ruri is a dhampyr like Watt? Or somehow distantly vampire Her grandmother is at least part vampire if not full vampire.
- There’s going to be a legit, full-on, all-out war in Ikebukuro I’m calling it now Nahhh, it was mostly like Nasujima's Saikas vs. everyone else while Shizuo and Izaya fight off to the side. Would have been cool to see a strategic turn-based move strategy as Mikado and Masaomi try to outsmart each other in this large chess game, and everyone is forced to unknowingly or unwillingly pick sides.
- Mikado and Masaomi are going to be on opposite sides because life sucks That duel between the Dollars and Yellow Scarves REALLY didn't last long, unfortunately.
- It’s going to be like the feud between the Yellow Scarves and Blue Squares but on a much, much larger scale Not quite, since like I said it was basically Nasujima versus everyone else.
- I also have a feeling that the bikers and the Awakusu Group and all those other gangs are going to get pulled into this Not bad, me. The biker gangs did get pulled into the brawl with Saikas though the yakuzas seemed to stay out of it for the most part.
- Izaya’s plan from the first season about how he wants to start a war (above war will be courtesy of this piece of trash) and then die and be taken up to Valhalla by Celty??? Well obviously this plan is going somewhere unless Narita forgets about it but I kinda doubt that he’s usually pretty good about this stuff going places. Anyway Izaya might not make it out alive and ngl that terrifies me even though he’s trash L O L also Narita forgot about that one pffff
- On which character is going to die (because I just KNOW it’s going to happen I haven’t actually read any spoilers but I can feel it), I don’t think Narita will kill off Mikado Laugh at the fact that I put this RIGHT after my speculation about Izaya. Anyway, Mikado didn't die but he came WAY too close to it, twice in the same damn episode.
- Partly because I’ve already been spoiled on something involving Mikado but I get the feeling he’s also our central protagonist and I just don’t think Narita will kill him The spoiler I saw didn't actually happen in the series.
- He’d probably kill off Masaomi, ass that he is. Not that anything in particular is foreshadowing this, but I’m just saying it’s a possibility, as much as I love Masaomi Well he came DARN CLOSE.
- There were only two beautiful cinnamon rolls in this series at the start and now there’s only one and that’s Celty Whoops......
- I don’t think Celty is going to go berserk and start mass-killing people but you just never know with Narita laughs sadly
- She might if he kills off Shinra (he bETTER NOT I WILL END THIS WORLD) Turns out, Shinra getting kidnapped was all she needed to fly off the handle. They didn't even have to go as far as killing him.
- I also really hope that Narita doesn’t let me down and that Celty is in no way calm about this because I really want her to flip her shit on Izaya and beat him up he needs it. I really really hope that Izaya doesn’t decide that it’s the time to tell her because then he could make her do anything since he has that power over her. Maybe he could use her head to remotely control her although that seems a bit unlikely since she’s grown distant from her head (like Val and his watermelon) "beat him up" lmao. God knows we got enough of that courtesy of Shizuo. And Celty was calm about it, but I didn't really feel let down by that fact. As for controlling her, could have been cool but didn't happen.
- Why didn’t Jinnai Yodogiri want Shizuo to be involved with the Awakusu Group? What do they have that Shizuo shouldn’t be mixed up in??? I'm still unsure on this one; I guess it's an unresolved plot point.
- Yodogiri is too OP pls nerf him Kujiragi is way too damn OP
- Mikado’s character arc is going to accumulate in the city being a giant mess and he’s going to turn around, eyes twitching, saying “Hahahah see??? I made it a better city, see????? I did it!!!” because he’s probably going to go insane and lose his head (not literally) HAHAHAHAA FUCK. Well, at least he didn't go THAT far. Also "lose his head" hah.
- I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED BETWEEN IZAYA AND AOBA. I thought it might have something to do with how Aoba’s brother ended up in jail but he’s one of the thugs behind Saki so I don’t think that’s quite it Yeah too bad we never find out :L
- Are they just the two masterminds of Ikebukuro because they’re both trying to start wars (though between different people) and getting irritated at the other for being in each other’s way Once again, it should have been Mikado I was keeping my eye on. Nice play, Narita.
- Actually Izaya hasn’t officially acknowledged Aoba yet which brings me to my next point: They need to meet and talk shit out so I can see what their deal is Next up in "things I really wanted to happen that never did"
- And if they’re the two polar masterminds then what the hell is Yodogiri Kujiragi is an interference.
- I remember a character, I think it was Namie’s uncle, saying “last time” and I was wondering if something like this has happened before??? It’d be awesome if something just like right now happened with all the characters’ parents but all the characters are too young to know about it. I feel this is unlikely but it’d be cool, especially since in the main character group, excluding Celty, the age range is ~15-24? Would have been cool but I doubt they'd keep something that big covered up successfully.
- Speaking of, I want to know about the characters’ parents because the only parental figures we know of are Shinra’s dad, and, briefly, Shizuo’s parents. Izaya did mention to Namie that his parents are super normal but I want to know more. And Mikado’s parents too Yeah honestly where tf were Mikado's parents while he was getting guns on the black market and shit
- I want to know what goes on behind the scenes of that kid because his dual personality frightens me and that was the main reason I went ahead with Volumes 7 and 8 in the first place His dual personality is really....um.....unsettling.
- My friend said Mikado is more like a certain character than I think. Is he gonna be the next Izaya??? Please no we already have too many sociopathic information brokers roaming this city we do not need another Unfortunately, my friend informed me that in SH he seems to take the role of cryptic information provider. God dammit Mikado.
And now for the last predictions post, which I made after reading volume 9 in late August.
- The scene with Mikado in the chatroom better be in the next episode….it seems really important and they shouldn’t have cut that (where he was venting his feelings to Izaya in private mode and then Masaomi came on and tried to talk to him but Mikado completely ignored him). Even for nothing else, they should add it for the sake of character development Honestly that was a really great scene why was it left out of the anime.
- SPEAKING OF CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. The reason I read Volume 9 was because this morning I came across a Reddit thread discussing the latest episode and someone pointed out something about the final scene with Izaya and his sisters and a couple of other people were like “Didn’t they leave out some REALLY important character development there” and Narita himself tweeted that you should read the novels if you noticed that Izaya was keeping his hands in his pockets the whole time and wanted to know why. Well needless to say that piqued my curiousity (because I did happen to notice that but thought nothing of it) and off I went to binge the novel In hindsight, that scene wasn't important to the central plot BUT still should have been kept in, as it gives Izaya's character more depth.
- Anyway now we know that Izaya is actually jealous of Shinra and as someone on that thread pointed out, he feels guilty that he’s hiding Celty’s head from the two of them and kind of had a breakdown. Which begs the question of why the FUCK did they leave that out of the anime it’d have taken like 30 seconds of screentime and the writers clearly love Izaya so I’m gonna be bitter about this until they give us some closure in some form or another Who needs defining character traits, am I right kids?
- So who knew that the trash was actually human amirite Not according to the anime......sorry, I'm salty
- Moving on, I’m not too terribly sad that they cut out the scene with Aoba and the twins in the pool because I just know that’d be full of fanservice, but Aoba did have an interesting thought and I wonder where they’ll go with that (where for a second his will almost broke and he wanted to just be a normal teen). I hope that line of reasoning goes somewhere, and I hope they find a way to put at least that in the anime somehow They did, in episode 1 of Ketsu. Though if that scene was in the novels, then it was basically a repeat of the same reasoning. Whatever, it made it in anyway.
- There was Shizuo and Varona shipteasing that got cut; I wonder if they actually will become a thing because I honestly can’t see Shizuo developing romantic feelings for anyone Yeah the end didn't make it seem one way or the other, though Varona definitely has a thing for him.
- So now that Celty knows that Izaya has her head, I wonder what she’ll do: Hunt him down, or not pursue the issue at this moment? Not pursue the issue.....
- I mentioned this in my blog post but I think the ending of this arc could be a really cool cliffhanger if it ended with the eyes on Celty’s head snapping open (whether or not that DOES happen, I have no clue, I just think that could make a rad ending), because they’re definitely more open now than they were in season 1 That would have been cool....too bad it never happened.
- You know what would suck though, if Celty became reunited with her head and her worst fear came true–that she’d lose her senses and return to being a “true” dullahan, but maybe ~the power of love~ would call her back because as sappy and cliche as that is I’d be a mess if they did do it because I’m a sucker for sappy and cliche stuff when it involves a pairing I care about Well fuck I was almost right on the money for that one. Shinra uses Saika so it's not so much "the power of love" as it is "the power I acquired six episodes ago."
- Since they pulled off Volume 9 in just two episodes, looks like they’ll attempt to cover all of Volume 10 in the remaining three episodes (so whatever the ending of 10 is will be this arc’s finale?), and that way Ketsu will be covering 11-13 Yep.
- I’m willing to bet they will cover those last remaining scenes in the next episode, since it said Erika making Anri try on cosplay was gonna change her life in a “big” way, and Masaomi coming back to Ikebukuro with a yellow scarf is in no way trivial Yeah both of those wound up in the next episode so no biggie.
- Someone on that Reddit thread said that the woman questioning Nakura in the beginning of episode 9 is going to be important later and I think I know why (something they mentioned very briefly in the novel) I suspected her of being connected to Jinnai Yodogiri; I didn't realize quite that she technically WAS Jinnai Yodogiri.
- Someone else on that thread said that also the cop that terrorizes poor Celty is going to play a role in the next volume….hmm…….. He really didn't, at least not in the anime.
- And someone ELSE on that thread pointed out that in a previous episode Yodogiri didn’t seem to have a shadow…..animation error or not, it makes for some interesting thoughts–as they put it, just what in God’s name are we dealing with? I mean the Yodogiris are humans, but I think the lack of a shadow was the anime's way of foreshadowing that Yodogiri isn't who you think he is. He's an organization, not a person.
- Are we going to get to find out what happened between Mikage and Izaya because that seems like a question they left rather open They never did explain that, did they?
- I’m still betting that Aoba is the 100% Pure Water guy in the chat since he said he knew Kururi and Mairu in real life–who else would they know well enough to invite, besides Sharo who is obviously already in the chat Heheh, yup. When it was revealed in the first episode of Ketsu I wasn't in the least surprised.
- Also I just realized that Izumii is Aoba’s brother’s name and Izumi means water…..interesting………..#confirmed
- Speaking of, Izumii is rather terrifying. Seems like a wild card to me. The biggest wild card in the fucking show.
- Why did Haruna have bandages around her neck? It was specifically mentioned in both the anime and the novels so obviously it’s important They never explained that in the anime. Someone help me out.
- At this point, I have a lot of my previous predictions where I’m just like “At this point I’m going to be so surprised if I’m wrong about this.” Such is life. Most of the ones I was like this for turned out true.
- I’ve had this next thought for a while but haven’t posted it in my other predictions posts so here goes: I bet the Dollars is going to become a criminal organization because even though Mikado is “purging” them, Izaya’s taking every chance he can get to add more bad people in, so I think that all the decent people are going to follow Shizuo’s example and bail while they can and then Mikado will realize he’s left as the head of this gang of criminals (poor kid) Would have been cool once again, but he seemed to abandon the idea of purging the Dollars once Ketsu rolled around.
- And as for my “two Yodogiris” crack theory that seemed totally off the wall from my perspective three months ago, I’m actually now sure that I’m onto something–my gut was right, there’s definitely something weird going on here Heheheheheh.
- I have my suspicions about a certain other information broker that they cut out of a scene from Volume 5 (which I haven’t read yet), but I’m not going to say anything until I get a chance to read that for myself and see what the deal is Explanation: I thought Shinichi might be doubling as Yodogiri but that didn't happen.
- Also this is kinda random and I mentioned it in another post but what if the ED for Ketsu was this really happy sweet song with happy group pictures of the characters in their squads enjoying life. Bonus points if it’s sung by the VA’s for the main trio since we know all of them can sing really well. I’d actually cry ngl I realllllly love Joker ni Yoroshiku but yeah I think a happy nostalgic song would have fit better. Ah well.
And now on to predictions mixed in with my blog posts. These will be quoted out of context but if something needs explanation I'll provide it.
- Why are Shinra's dad and Emilia doing the tango and pictured bigger than anyone else [in the ED for Ten]? I'm assuming this is a reference to the novels in some way (they do something big). Nah they're like that just cause. rip Shinra.
- In the episode [Mika] said "I don't think those three kids know each other's true nature," which I don't think she said in the novel, but regardless I'm pretty sure it's wrong. From what I've read, the anime added in a lot of hinting that they knew each other's secrets. So once I read volume 3, I'll be able to verify whether they do actually find out in the novels or not.
- I wonder if Ketsu will have a weirdly animated episode Man the animation quality in that cour just TANKED for the last few episodes.
- If they leave out Izaya's bunny slippers when he's plotting the downfall of the world in the end of Volume 8 then I will drop the show This was a joke, but still true. They didn't show his feet in that scene so I'm assuming he wore them and you can't convince me otherwise.
- I'm just putting this out there but there's definitely something weird going on with Yodogiri. Are there two of him? Is someone impersonating him? I have no idea but I maintain that there is something odd about this whole thing. Indeed there is something weird with him.....heh
- In the novels there's multiple stalkers Which is really weird because they later said there were multiples all giving alibis for each other but they only ever showed one.
- The narrator explains how Celty felt so depressed during the incident with Shinra that she couldn't even summon a single shadow, and that none of the pain she had been put through had affected her nearly as much as seeing Shinra on his deathbed. And Yodogiri and Yagiri know this. Anyone else worried? And this ends up being a plot point later on, so Kujiragi's pursuit of Shinra would have seemed far less random if they'd showed this scene in its entirety--the anime watered it down.
- In the finale scene as [Izaya's] making that grandiose speech, [the girl from the hospital] mutters, "Beware of getting shot." Spooky am I right. Well little did I know she was DIRECTLY foreshadowing something from volume 13. Apparently they changed/cut it out in the anime, but Izaya does get shot and she's the one who gets him out of there, though Celty is the one who actually saves his life. Man I forgot about that line.
- Also, is it just me, or are the eyes on Celty's head a little more open now? Uh oh I think this was a really cool yet subtle touch on the anime's part.
- Remember how in Shou there was someone calling himself Izaya that gave Akane advice on how to survive on the streets? That definitely wasn't him. I thought Nakura was the one being waterboarded. Sorry, but not quite, past me. Though Nakura was a thing.
- Since the anime has been putting a stronger focus on Yodigiri, skip back and take a look at the guy who stabbed Izaya but called himself Yodogiri. Does he look like the face you're now familiar with? No, right? I have my suspicions about a certain other information broker that was cut out of a scene in volume 5, but whoever went after Izaya, it's not Yodogiri. Whether it's someone posing as him, or working under him, I'm not sure, but considering how we're going back to the imposter (I think), I expect this to be addressed soon. Oh me from the summer, if only you knew.
- So, has [Izaya] had a twin brother all along? He did say their story goes back to when he was still in school, so maybe he just happened to find someone who looked quite a bit like himself. Or maybe he just forced him to get plastic surgery.....
- The fact that Celty feels killing intent for the first time in her (new) life? And they cut that? Really? Guess who's still salty about this
- I really hope this director manages to make [this show] seem coherent to non-novel readers by the time this whole train wreck is finished You know I honestly think reading some of the novels made Ketsu WAY less confusing to me, so I might have been totally lost without them.
- Apparently the narrator for this episode was Izumii? So if that follows, then he's the one who ran over Kyohei? Weirdly enough, though Ketsu seemed to imply that he knew something about that, he wasn't part of the hit-and-run, I think.
- Aoba basically revealed he's planning to undermine the Dollars using Mikado Too bad that never went anywhere.....
- Shinichi for whatever reason REALLY wants Izaya dead and also made fun of him for missing out on all the excitement of that day Oddly enough, he was cut out of the second season entirely, despite apparently playing a role in shutting down the Dollars sites in the end. Weird.
- The return of Yodogiri's secretary, who appeared last episode. I heard she gets into some shit. BOY IF ONLY YOU KNEW
- I actually think that Shinichi is the one who stabbed Izaya (and called himself Yodogiri) since we know he has a deadly grudge against him. But that doesn't explain the other two guys. Shapeshifting? Multiple identities? I have no clue. Who’s the REAL Yodogiri? Does he even exist at all? The last question is the right one......
- I think we'll be enlightened on this next week or the week after. 8')
- Masaomi wants to destroy the Dollars. I think he has good intentions for trying to save Mikado, but he's definitely going about it the wrong way. The Dollars have become Mikado's whole existence and if he tries to destroy them, he'll end up destroying his best friend. I shudder to think of what will happen when Mikado DOES find out. Yeah whatever happened to this plot point? Masaomi seemed to transition into being more concerned about his best friend and didn't really mention the Dollars.
- The problem is, I don't think Masaomi's doing the right thing but I don't know what IS the right thing to do. Destroying them completely will bring Mikado down too, but purging like Mikado is currently trying to do isn't the right thing either Turns out, getting rid of the Dollars very nearly DID get rid of Mikado as well--he was ready to go down with them.
- I just want Mikado to leave the Dollars and go on with his life like normal. But he doesn't WANT to shut down the Dollars. He loves the gang he created (at least his ideal image of it). OH MAN I WAS SO CLOSE.
- I really hope Shizuo goes to town on the guy who hit Kyohei Too bad he was too busy fighting Izaya to worry about that.
- [Kyohei's] in a coma. I wonder if/when he’ll wake up from that. On second thought, maybe he should stay in it until the off chance that this shitstorm blows over and everything is resolved happily. He wakes up CONVENIENTLY as this story hits its worst point. Nice going.
- One of the things I find especially worrying is that more and more people are finding out that Mikado founded the Dollars. Another plot point I wish had gone somewhere.....
- Celty and Shinra were adorable this episode. Though it was ominous when Shinra said, “Even if you antagonize the whole world, I’ll always be by your side.” In Baccano, Huey said a similar thing to Monica, and we all know how THAT went. I love the smell of foreshadowing in the morning.
- They’ve also been foreshadowing this whole season that the Awakusu group is going to turn on Izaya and I feel like that’s a likely event happening soon. Maybe not quite this cour, but next. I think it’ll happen though. Nope.....
- Yodogiri’s secretary. I knew she’d be important later, but I didn’t know in which ways. I think she’s going to be the one bringing the 3+ entities who have been referred to as Yodogiri together. Little did I know, she is the mastermind behind this.
- I actually wonder if “Yodogiri” is just a persona created by someone (cough cough the other information broker Shinichi) so that that’s the name that gets passed around instead of his real one. Aaaaand there it is. Though it's not Shinichi who creates the persona, but his secretary.
- I bet I know who stole Kanra's handle. Because my answer to everything is Shinichi. In hindsight I was attributing a lot of Kujiragi's actions to Shinichi.
- Related to the chatroom conversation aside from this, Izaya needs to stop fucking with people and manipulating them to do his bidding. This is getting out of hand. Shoutout to Shizuo for ending his reign of terror.
- For the past few episodes, there’s been a lot of symbolism of stuff burning. There should've been more things on fire in Ketsu, aside from just Izumii's face.
- I wonder what [Kujiragi's] real identity is though, since Izaya said that wasn’t her real name and the real Kujiragi is dead. Not that that ever ended up being important, unfortunately. Aside from the fact that she's related to Ruri.
- Kujiragi said you can also use Saika to replicate itself via dissection, so what if all the Yodogiris are just things she created using that method? Interesting theory, but dissection is just used to create copies of Saika and not actual people.
- [Mikado] wants to sever his and Masaomi’s connection and then rebuild it. Uh, dude? That’s not possible. Thankfully he didn't end up pursuing that line of reason.
- I wonder why [Izaya] didn’t use Niekawa to capture Kujiragi right then and there, because that ended up getting his ass in danger later on. Honestly though, that would have saved us so much time and suspense in Ketsu. But alas, the show must go on.
- Could Sloan possibly also be one of the fake Yodogiris? Back at it again with the incorrect assumptions. Twould've been cool though.
- Who was the guy in the back of Aoba’s van that totally wrecked the Yellow Scarves? They honestly skipped over his whole introduction in Ketsu....I guess he's just a strong-arm for the Blue Squares.
- I’m still keeping my money on [Kujiragi's] real name being Shinichi Why can't Narita double up on characters for once in his life.....he made such good use of that device in Baccano 2002.
And lastly, predictions compiled from my blog post covering all of Ketsu.
- There's the thing at the beginning [of the OP], where everyone is pulling a Mayuri and reaching up the sky. Symbolismmmmm. Someone else said they could be waving goodbye to us. A depressing thought.
- So it's raining in the city, and rain symbolism is never a good thing. NAME ONE TIME RAIN WAS A GOOD THING IN A SHOW.
- Mikado's name card was particularly the cause of my duress. He's running frantically through the rain, looking like he's going after someone to get them to stop something. The water splashing on his face at that part looks like tears and I hate my life. I'm so scared for Mikado. Well that sure is some foreshadowing if I ever saw it.
- [Shinra] appears in [Celty's] helmet and sort of looks peacefully up to the sky. To me, that looks like the face of a man about to die. They came TOO CLOSE to that coming true TOO MANY TIMES.
- [In the ED] there was a very brief flash of Celty with her head. I think that's what I saw. Uh-oh. Yikes is right.
- Kujiragi had [the officers] arrest Shizuo to keep him out of Ikebukuro for a bit. I wonder why. Another plot point I'm still vague on.
- [Kujiragi's] still managed to outmaneuver [Izaya] twice, so I don't expect it to be neat. Not to mention, if he escapes (I'm sure he will), she'll still be after him. Too bad she just.......loses interest in him and never mentions it for the rest of the series.
- I have my thoughts on what will happen to Celty if she finds her head--lose control and her memories of these last twenty years, most likely. Celty's line that she'd try to retrieve her head without touching it only drove that anxiety home. Right on the money, me of January. Except it turns out she was just pretending to lose her memories, but the show did lead you on, to be fair.
- Can we STOP with the "doomed couple" foreshadowing I see. It only makes it hurt more. I'm still hurting over this, quite honestly.
- Also I was totally right when I said Kujiragi was related to Ruri--the shade of brown hair and the red ribbons were what tipped me off. However, I thought she was Ruri's grandmother (which would make her at LEAST part vampire if not full vampire), but she's actually Ruri's aunt I'm still surprised I called that plot point based solely on hair color and ribbons.
- When did the real Yodogiri die and what of? I wonder if that's relevant. Apparently not....
- I don't think [Kujiragi's] Shinichi anymore, but I do think she has some connection to him. Doesn't seem that way, but since the anime eliminated Shinichi, there could have been something that I'm unaware of.
- Speaking of, I still don't think he's been eliminated from the anime altogether, though they certainly have been cutting his roles thus far. Yeah, cutting him to the point where he's not a character anymore.....forgive my salt.
- Honestly though, if they run the whole story without including one of the vital characters I'm gonna be pretty mad. Technically, he should be the one narrating the episodes since he does most of the novels' narration. Would have been so cool to have an omniscient narrator that turned out to be a character in the story the whole time.....just saying.
- Izaya was laughing that he wants to set fire to the hypothetical rope Mikado and Masaomi are walking (that metaphor was really, um, unnerving) Today's issue of intriguing plot points that didn't go anywhere.......
- I really want [Izaya] to get his comeuppance at the hands of someone he's tormented, but I'm also pretty sure this will happen at some point and I'll be very upset when it does. I was right on all those counts rip my emotions.
- Also, Izaya didn't get to talk with Kujiragi, which means she either suspected him escaping or got too caught up in something else. Yeah she totally fuckin forgot about him.
- Something tells me the three Saika wielders are going to battle each other. I actually got spoiled a bit on this from Reddit, where someone said the "Three Swords Arc" was coming up and implied there'd be a battle. But it never ended up happening.
- Shinra being like "I hope you don't turn into a monster ha ha ha!" I'm gonna fight Narita if he does anything to my happy couple I swear. Time to fight.
- Whether [Celty's] collapse was due to shock or some sort of physical reaction upon sighting her head, I'm afraid either way I'm pretty sure it was just shock.
- There was also symbolism in that setting--Izaya descending (his sliding down the rail), Mikado ascending. Then at the end Izaya leaves the underground area and Mikado remains where he is. shit.
- I noticed that [in the ED] not only are Mikado and Masaomi leaning on each other, a Saika strand is also very deliberately placed between them. Ugh. Welp.
- There was that talk about Anri not unlocking Saika's full potential. Something tells me she WILL unlock it Plot points......not going anywhere........cmon Narita you're killing me.
- Are we also finally going to find out who ran over Kyohei? The partner of the guy who did it showed up, so I hope so. I need to fight that guy, whoever he is How in the hell was I supposed to predict an obscure character from volume 2 would show up to be a major character in the show's endgame.
- Maybe once all this nonsense is over, and if Kujiragi's still around, Anri will actually relinquish Saika once and for all. Or maybe, since this series is all about poor timing and communication, she'll let go of it RIGHT as a situation arises in which she'd need it. Because we all know how that goes. Both circumstances would have been interesting.
- [Kujiragi's] probably here to negotiate for Celty's head Or maybe she's just in love with Shinra.
- I feel like they're wasting a bit too much time on side plots when the main conflict between the Dollars and the Yellow Scarves should be taking the spotlight Or they could just.....not have a conflict at all u feel. I'm so salty sorry.
- So I think [Celty's] gonna catch up to the car with both Shinra and her head in it, and Kujiragi is going to forcibly reunite her with her head and everything's going to go to hell The locale was different and it was Shingen who threw it back, but yeah.
- Shizuo to the rescue. I hope. More like, Shizuo gets distracted by everything except Izaya and forgets what he came there to do.
- I also think Celty's going to end up back with her head one way or another, as much as I don't want it to happen. It's funny too cause back in the beginning I was like "Yeah let's get Celty back with her head it's only right!" and as the series went on I was like "Let's NOT get Celty back with her head keep that thing far away from her." In other news, I hate my life.
- The chatroom reflects the story situation at the moment, and like how the plot and city are unraveling at increasingly faster speeds, the chatroom is no longer a place for privacy and secrecy This is also reinforced by the Orihara twins' closing commentary in the last episode--they speculate people will repopulate this chatroom eventually.
- I guess [Mikado's] pocket's big enough for a phone and a gun, but joking aside, I can only wonder what he's going to do with that thing. Ugh I got spoiled that he holds a gun to his head at one point so I thought that's what he was planning on doing.
- And if I'm reading my subtitles right, [Kujiragi] has the hots for Shinra? An honestly very unnecessary plot point that just made me uncomfortable.
- Kujiragi mentioned she'd probably lose her memories as the Headless Rider (don't you dare Narita), and then she'd sever the connection between head and body once more Interesting how this prophecy got fulfilled, but Shinra was the one who pulled it. I wonder if he had the same thought process as he was possessed by her Saika at the time.
- I'm guessing Shizuo's saying goodbye because he's about to kick Izaya's ass and Izaya knows he's toast get REKT
- I think the sole reason this fight [between Shizuo and Izaya] IS happening is because Narita figured these two characters should, for the sake of their popularity, duke it out before the series ends because they've been avoiding each other for most of it I still think that's a major part of the reason, also to set up Izaya being mortally wounded and fleeing the city. Goodbye, you piece of garbage.
- The only way to fix this mess is if Celty got her memories back. Ugh. Well....
- Mikado and Masaomi are probably going to end up in a fistfight or something. Masaomi DOES end up punching Mikado so yeah, called it.
- Maybe [Izaya] thinks the war he incited doesn't need any more of his direction. Hell if I know. Or maybe Narita forgot about all that foreshadowing and setup....
- Why IS [Shinra] able to resist Saika? Maybe his love for Celty overpowers Saika's love for humanity Kujiragi said he had a strong will so I'm going to assume this is the case.
- I assume [Mikado's] going to pop out at the worst moment and then Masaomi will see him and all hell will break loose. God damn it.
- If Anri summons her sword right in front of [Mikado], he's gonna lose it and deny her as well--the Anri in his mind is perfect and pure, not some demon with red eyes and a magic sword Would have been a cool plot point, but luckily it seems there's gonna be no room for angst after the happy ending.
- Who knows what Mikado is capable of. Murder? Couldn't put it past him Or suicide......
- Now [Mikado] has the yakuza after him The abandoned plot points are KILLING me.
- What happened to Izumii? Did Walker’s fire scare him off for good? It seems weird that he’d be introduced as such a thorn in everyone’s sides and then just…...not be shown at all after attacking their van Naritaaaaaaaa.
- I predicted months and months ago that a way for Izaya to realize his various fuckups would be for Celty to save his life instead of dying in a fight and being taken to Valhalla. And she did save his life. Not in the way I imagined, certainly (the scene in my mind was a lot more personal), but it happened and I’m glad I called that. The irony of that was not made clear enough in the anime though, unfortunately. It's just something you gotta get on your own.
- One little caveat I have about the ending is that it’s unclear whether Izaya lived or not Though apparently this is purposely left ambiguous in the novels too, just to make Izaya fans suffer. Your favorite character is Izaya? You're gonna have a bad time.
- [Mikado] should still be struggling with his slumbering sociopath, honestly. I don’t believe that that level of insanity could be cured by two failed suicide attempts within ten minutes of each other. But I guess that’s a story for SH From what I've read, it is indeed.
- One other thing I wish had gotten more closure is that it’s unclear whether the Dollars were disbanded or not So apparently they were in fact disbanded and Shinichi Tsukumoya shut down the sites, and they just chose not to mention the Dollars in the last episode. Okay Shuka.
Well, that's it! And boy if you thought this post of predictions was long, the full blog posts are even longer.
Either way, it was a ride, and pretty amusing to look back at my naivete from this summer and beyond.
Thanks for reading!
Posted by Leopah | Mar 27, 2016 5:45 PM | 1 comments
January 9th, 2016
Durarara!!x2 Ketsu Impressions
Anime Relations: Durarara!!x2 Ketsu
I ended up doing the thing this time around lol. Even though I'm going to be watching a lot of it with a friend, I'm probably going to very much need to discuss things later on.
Opening Notes:
-I haven't read the novels this time around, so I'm in the dark
-Did the same thing for Ten over the summer: http://myanimelist.net/blog.php?eid=772437
-I'll TRY to be more brief this time, so I don't end up hitting character limit, but no guarantees
-Not a review, more of an in-depth discussion of each episode. Also, predictions.
Episode One
What the fuck was that opening. I already hate it. The song was pretty good (I'm not a huge fan of the techno thing; could have been worse), but in terms of sequence. That is what I hate.
There's the thing at the beginning, where everyone is pulling a Mayuri and reaching up the sky. Symbolismmmmm.
So it's raining in the city, and rain symbolism is never a good thing. Last FMAB opening anybody? This one didn't have as much direct symbolism and foreshadowing as that one, but the rain thing alone is enough to make me worried. Particularly considering all the metaphors of burning we got last season. Also, Mikado's name card was particularly the cause of my duress. He's running frantically through the rain, looking like he's going after someone to get them to stop something. The water splashing on his face at that part looks like tears and I hate my life. I'm so scared for Mikado.
Then there was the Shinra and Celty name cards, where he appears in her helmet and sort of looks peacefully up to the sky. To me, that looks like the face of a man about to die. I'm very afraid.
As far as the ending, they did not do an emotional song nor picture characters in their squads, which I'm upset about, but the song was pretty good. But.There was a very brief flash of Celty with her head. I think that's what I saw. Uh-oh. Celty's head was also hanging behind her at the very end of the vertical scroll, and her and Shinra looked like they were about to kiss.
At least the art in the ED wasn't weird this time around. I'm also mad that Mikado and Masaomi seem to be leaning on each other. Symbolism, again.
The actual episode.
Finally, after three months we get some questions answered--what those people were doing in Shinra and Celty's apartment, how Namie escaped, who the woman Shizuo supposedly beat up was, and what happened to Izaya after being captured by Sloan.
I was right when I thought those people in their apartment would form a group dedicated to stop the Dollars and Yellow Scarves from fighting. At least, I'm pretty sure that's what their goal is.
And Namie escaped thanks to Shingen and some others intervening! Kujiragi looked majorly pissed off, but the funniest part of that scene was the three gas masks pulling a Toradora and spinning in a circle. I have to wonder how much Shingen paid them to do that.
The woman "Shizuo" beat up was Mimizu, or "Earthworm-chan" as Izaya called her in the novels. But Izumii was actually the one who did it, so what I got out of that scene is that Kujiragi had them arrest Shizuo to keep him out of Ikebukuro for a bit. I wonder why. I know she has plans for death and destruction as my friend put it, but I bet there's a more specific reason. It's not exactly like he was going to rush to Izaya's aid.
Speaking of rushing to Izaya's aid, we find after three months that he was actually just faking the whole time. Which makes my screaming "GET FUCKIN REKT" every time I watched him being thrown into a building false. Because he didn't get rekt. He was just pretending to be unconscious so he could wait for a chance to be rescued. What an asshole. Also, he's now planning on lying in wait for Kujiragi at the office he was supposed to be brought to. But she's still managed to outmaneuver him twice, so I don't expect it to be neat. Not to mention, if he escapes (I'm sure he will), she'll still be after him. She wants the info on Celty's head. She probably wants Celty's head, and to reunite it with her body. I have my thoughts on what will happen to Celty if she finds her head--lose control and her memories of these last twenty years, most likely. Celty's line that she'd try to retrieve her head without touching it only drove that anxiety home. I'm afraid. I've said that so many times.
That plotline is FINALLY coming back to being relevant. Not that it was ever irrelevant, but it kind of got swallowed up in a bunch of other stuff. And now we're gonna see how it's resolved. Fear.
There were a lot of Shinra and Celty moments (yay!), but a lot of their discussion unnerved me. Not that Shinra's a kinky mofo. We already knew that. It was more about Celty's "I'll defend you till your last breath" line. I mentioned the parallels to Huey and Monica in my Ten discussions, and this only continues down the line. Can we STOP with the "doomed couple" foreshadowing I see. It only makes it hurt more. I don't want them to be doomed. I want them to live happily ever after together and adopt a bunch of kids. Ugh.
All in all, this episode was basically an introduction to answer our questions and begin to set up the conflicts. Also that person who rekt the Yellow Scarves last time is getting introduced soon--Aoba wanted Mikado to meet him. Looks like next episode will feature Rocchi meeting Anri as well. I wonder how that will go down. Next episode is titled "Bell a Cat," presumably from the "Easier said than done" fable we've all heard where the mice propose to put a bell on the cat that terrorizes them. Interesting. Well, until next time!
Episode Two
Well. Interesting. So the first thing I want to discuss is ALL THE ANRI in today's episode. So much Anri. So much good. Also good friendship between her and Erika. We also see how worried she is for Mikado and Masaomi, and how she was ready to jump at Izaya for planning to harm them (meanwhile you have me sitting there like *Shia LeBeouf voice* JUST....DO IT). And then Erika jumped in in her defense and threatened Izaya, and knowing how her squad is, I wouldn't put it past them to go after him. She was totally savage with her line about his head "I bet your brain tissue is shaped like a fox's face!" or something. Good job Erika.
No Mikado or Masaomi this episode, but from the looks of the preview we'll see Mikado at least in the next episode.
Also I was totally right when I said Kujiragi was related to Ruri--the shade of brown hair and the red ribbons were what tipped me off. However, I thought she was Ruri's grandmother (which would make her at LEAST part vampire if not full vampire), but she's actually Ruri's aunt, Ruri's grandmother's child fathered by a different man than Ruri's mom. So she's half vampire, I guess. I wonder how old she REALLY is. But confusing family relations aside, we get to see a peek at her past--sold to Yodogiri at a young age, raised to run his business, and continuing it after he died. Which makes me wonder, when did the real Yodogiri die and what of? I wonder if that's relevant. And the narrator, Shingen this time, said that her real name isn't important. To me it is; I really wanna know. I don't think she's Shinichi anymore, but I do think she has some connection to him.
Speaking of, I still don't think he's been eliminated from the anime altogether, though they certainly have been cutting his roles thus far. I noticed recently he did appear briefly in Ten--Akabayashi purchased information on Mikado from him before going to Izaya. I'm pretty certain that was him anyway. How many information brokers could we have running around this city? Apparently, more than I thought.
Aaaaanyway, if his role in the story isn't much larger than resident narrator, then I wouldn't expect him to be in the anime that much, but something tells me he'll be important later, so I'm betting they want to keep him in the shadows and reveal him last-minute. Honestly though, if they run the whole story without including one of the vital characters I'm gonna be pretty mad. Technically, he should be the one narrating the episodes since he does most of the novels' narration. I like that they have the characters swapping it out since they each add different personality to each episode, but honestly, how cool would it be to have this omniscient narrator and then reveal him to be the overseer of everything in the end? Really cool, right? Sorta like how in FMAB they used the same voice in English and Japanese for Father and the narrator. Father wasn't the narrator, but them having the same voice brings an ominous meaning to it all.
I'm getting off topic here so back to the episode.
Izaya was a mega asshole this episode. Provoking Anri, laughing that he wants to set fire to the hypothetical rope Mikado and Masaomi are walking (that metaphor was really, um, unnerving), and just generally being a dick to people. I really want him to get his comeuppance at the hands of someone he's tormented, but I'm also pretty sure this will happen at some point and I'll be very upset when it does. Why is this trash one of my favorite characters. He has little to no redeeming qualities.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Izaya hasn't interacted directly with Anri since the end of the first season, when she attacked him with Saika. Aside from the chatroom, that is. But yeah, I don't think they've gotten a chance to duke it out before this, which explains why she's still so angry at him.
Also, Izaya didn't get to talk with Kujiragi, which means she either suspected him escaping or got too caught up in something else. I'm thinking the latter, since it showed her enjoying her freedom by....buying cat ears and sitting under a tree. Okay. But anyway, I think she still thinks she has him in her custody, and when she finds out he's not, she's going to be on the hunt for him once more. Unless she gets caught up in the inevitable Saika fight (I'll get to that in a bit) and defeated. I hope so; I don't want her causing any more mischief.
Then there's Niekawa, who bumped into Anri and told her they were going to fight elsewhere. Something tells me they're then going to come across Kujiragi and the three Saika wielders are going to battle each other. I wonder how it will go--the original vs. the copy vs. the copy of a copy. On a side note, Niekawa is so freaky with those dead eyes combined with a pink frilly dress. Still wondering why her neck is bandaged.
Last thing I want to talk about today is Celty, and Celty's head. So there was more cute dialogue with her and Shinra (his flirting made her really flustered, which I thought was ADORABLE), but then, just like last time, it turned to ominous. More doomed-couple foreshadowing, and Shinra being like "I hope you don't turn into a monster ha ha ha!" I'm gonna fight Narita if he does anything to my happy couple I swear. I'm already gonna fight him for this foreshadowing but this is another thing to add to the very long list of reasons I'm gonna fight Narita.
Then there's the really interesting part of this episode, where the girl who attacked Izaya in the beginning of Ten (can't remember her name, sorry. Was it Mamiya or something?) took Celty's head from Niekawa and threw it out into the open. Upon seeing it, Celty collapsed. Um. Yikes.
Whether her collapse was due to shock or some sort of physical reaction upon sighting her head, I'm afraid either way. I wonder if she's going to rush after it now, and run into some sort of bad news. God knows we have an abundance of that in this city.
Bottom line is, I'm very afraid. What else is new.
In the preview, we see Mikado at his computer, which I'm assuming means we're introduced to the guy with a ponytail and sweats (no, not Yato). Also, fun fact, I rewatched the first episode of Shou during the week and that very guy is there. He's in a group of Dollars roughhousing some civilians, and Aoba watches them calmly and then turns away. Curious.
Anyway. I don't remember much else from the preview (I'll probably edit this back when I see some more stuff), but I don't remember seeing any Shizuo or Masaomi. I wonder what those two are up to. Shizuo's being interrogated still I guess? And Masaomi is preparing for war. Oh no.
Episode Three
OKAY SO I'm late this week because I was gone until evening and couldn't watch the episode till then and then I had to Tumblr because I am trash but anyway. On to the episode.
So the first half was just explaining things; fairly straightforward. It flipped between Niekawa and Anri talking over to Mikado and Izaya, which I think is interesting because I'm almost certain those were two entirely separate scenes in the novel. Not that I've read volume 11, but I know how Narita writes and he doesn't mishmash scenes unless the events in each come to a head at the same time, which wasn't the case here. It was just....informational.
You know, come to think of it, I don't believe Mikado has communicated with Izaya aside from the chatroom since that Dollars meetup in season 1. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly sure their communication has all been online and usually discreet since then. So it was interesting to see Mikado call Izaya to ask him about Celty, but then end up getting sidetracked and talking about other things.
Izaya needs to stop riling people up ("You haven't changed at all"; FIGHT ME IZAYA) and telling Mikado he was messed up from the start. Maybe so, but Mikado back then was comparatively MUCH less harmful than Mikado now. There was also symbolism in that setting that I'm too tired to go into--Izaya descending (his sliding down the rail and scaring civilians was hilarious), Mikado ascending. Then at the end Izaya leaves the underground area and Mikado remains where he is. You figure out the significance. This show is pretty good about the subtle placing though; I still haven't forgotten the flickering light behind Mikado in the Ten finale. Fun stuff.
Also did we skip the intro of that guy in the sweats?? He was just hanging behind Mikado while he was on his computer and we don't have so much as a name or personality. Cmonnnn Shuka I need answers. Even if it's not important.
Anyway after Mikado gets seriously sidetracked he tells Izaya to check the news and then hangs up, leaving Izaya to make some rather funny confused faces. He seems a bit surprised that the girl (still can't remember her name sorry) chose that as her play. I wonder what kind of goal she had in mind for that anyway. It doesn't really do much aside from freaking people out?
Also someone (in Aoba's gang or??) noted how the eyes on Celty's head are flickering a bit. I'm definitely right when I said they're more open now, but I don't think this event is enough to cause an "awakening." Maybe that was the girl's goal idk.
I'm rather concerned about the lack of attention paid to Celty this episode. She collapsed on the floor and then???? I know we're going to get closure eventually but I just like.....need to know why everyone isn't extremely worried about her fainting spell or whatever it was because I certainly am.
Anyway, there's also the part of Niekawa talking with Anri. She freaks me out in general, and her leaning on Anri's boobs wasn't helping. She was also touching the bandage on her neck, so I still wonder what that is exactly.
That whole scene was just making me be like "WHEN IS KUJIRAGI GOING TO INTERVENE WHEN WHEN WHEN" and then she did and I was like "YAAAAS FIGHT" and we finally get to see her Saika's power! So the true Saika isn't necessarily a blade; it can be anything. Kujiragi used it as metallic strands and also catlike claws--her cat thing is, I think, her trademark. Anyway, it was certainly enlightening to see this. Now I know what the stuff in the ED is. I thought it was Celty's shadows for some reason, but it's actually Kujiragi's Saika encircling them all. It makes me go "Yikes" even though the meaning is pretty blatantly obvious. On the topic of the ED, I noticed that not only are Mikado and Masaomi leaning on each other, a Saika strand is also very deliberately placed between them. Ugh.
Back on the topic of Saika, it looks like the three are going to fight. Oh boy, it's going to be pretty fun to see. Methinks Kujiragi has an advantage with that ability, and she WAS able to shut down Niekawa pretty quickly with her Saika-taser combo (I FINALLY realized she has one in her glove; I have been stupidly wondering about this since Namie; I thought she just used Namie's against her). And then there was that talk about Anri not unlocking Saika's full potential. Something tells me she WILL unlock it and then her Saika will level up like a video game weapon equip. Exciting content!
Is it just me or was the animation a little off this episode? Not as bad as 7 of Shou and 3 of Ten, but the faces looked a little wonky and I felt the fight scenes weren't as well animated as they could have been (not that there was much, but Niekawa jumping at Anri seemed to just be a couple of barely-moving stills, in comparison to last episode where Anri's hair was jumping all over the place). They also didn't seem to be moving around as much.
I don't know if I mentioned this, but I get the impression the animation in Ketsu has definitely greatly improved compared to Shou and Ten. Probably finally the money from disc sales of those two parts is giving them a much-needed boost. Now if only the art style would stop changing so frequently. I almost feel like I'm the one noticing/being bothered by this, but the changes do feel pretty obvious to me.
Last thing I wanna talk about is, at the end of the episode we see Rocchi showing up with a frightening proposal for Masaomi--Would you rather see your gang destroyed or controlled by another gang? Something tells me he'll answer neither and Rocchi won't like that. He just needs to butt out tbh.
Are we also finally going to find out who ran over Kyohei? The partner of the guy who did it showed up, so I hope so. I need to fight that guy, whoever he is. He just made a huge mess even bigger.
So we have the aphorism "Blood is thicker than water" for the title of next episode, the typical family thing. I'm guessing that's a reference to Saika, since Kujiragi was throwing out the whole "familial bonds" thing to Anri and Haruna. Though, I wonder if the people titling the episode know the full quote is "But blood of the covenant is stronger than either water or womb" or something like that, meaning that friendships/non-familial bonds are stronger than either of those. Curious.
I don't remember much from the preview images because I was concentrating on the subtitles and episode title, but I do remember seeing Masaomi and Rocchi getting in a fistfight. Masaomi, he's out of your league pls don't.
Be back next week with hopefully some more answers! Things are heating up.....
Episode Four
MAL's updated layout made me confused as to where the edit button was at first lol....scared me for a sec
Anyway, the episode. Well I just finished watching it and to sum it up I'm very Afraid. If I'm counting my episodes right and they're being paced the same as Shou, then this was the end of volume 11 and next episode's moving into volume 12. Home stretch now; the end is near.
This episode saw Masaomi and Rocchi fighting, just as the preview last week showed us. If Masaomi wins, Rocchi will be his bodyguard in fighting the Dollars, and if Rocchi wins, Masaomi's gang will be swallowed up into Toramaru vs. the Dollars. But things don't go quite as planned when Rocchi throws himself off of a building and Izumii appears to join the brawl. Very interesting (and convenient) timing; wonder what Izumii was doing looking for Masaomi at this time. We then see Masaomi punch the guy who attacked his girlfriend, only to break his hand. Ouch. That didn't look very pleasant. And now Rocchi's gonna come back and be like "Who the hell is this guy." I hope they team up to take him down.
Then there was a section devoted to the three Saikas talking, and Anri explains she doesn't want to let go of her Saika just yet, and it's the "just yet" part that has me intrigued. Maybe once all this nonsense is over, and if Kujiragi's still around, Anri will actually relinquish Saika once and for all. Or maybe, since this series is all about poor timing and communication, she'll let go of it RIGHT as a situation arises in which she'd need it. Because we all know how that goes.
Also interesting how Kujiragi wasn't interested in Niekawa at all--she simply said there were no deals to be made with her, meaning she places no value in a copy of a copy. Something tells me that rubbed Niekawa the wrong way and she's going to pursue Kujiragi.
The part that made me kind of giggle was when Erika invited Kujiragi to join her cosplay group. I was like "ERIKA NO" because that's exactly the kind of thing we DON'T need. Could you imagine though. If Erika knew how much of an antagonist Kujiragi's been to Anri, she'd definitely rescind that offer.
After Haruna departs from this meeting, she's snatched up by her father working in tandem with the guy who helped hit Kyohei.....Takashi Nasujima. Still following? It's confusing to me too, and I just read volume 2 over this past week.
Anyway, looks to me like Nasujima is now in possession of a Saika of his own, and he's using it to control Haruna's dad and reobtain Haruna. What a creep. I thought he was disinterested in her after even she freaked him out, but apparently getting his hands on Saika's power bolstered his nerves.
Next there was a section with Shizuo, where one of the undercover Saikas in the police station wanted Shizuo to make a racket and allow the Saikas to bust out and grab Celty's head. Though that plan went down the toilet once they released Shizuo all of a sudden, and upon exiting the station, he sees Varona snatch Celty's head and take off. It just occurred to me Shizuo doesn't know that the woman he's hanging with is the same one that kidnapped Akane back in Shou. Or does he? He said "You're Varona, right?" to her right before she sped off. I'm thinking he's gonna chase after her, nab Celty's head, and try to return it to her, only for it to fall in Kujiragi's clutches after all--I'm very certain she's after Celty's head, considering the end of the episode.
So yes, lastly we have a section on Celty. She seems to be fine after she collapsed, which is good. What's not good is she had a rather freaky nightmare involving her head.
Anyway, after that Shinra explains how they had to sedate Seiji to prevent him from running to the police station for Celty's head, and then they had to sedate Namie too for flipping out over it. That part made me laugh a lot, and it was cute to see Shinra and Celty giggling over it too.
But then things all turn sour when a young woman in glasses appears to have a word with the two of them, they assume it's Anri, and then it's Kujiragi. She's probably here to negotiate for Celty's head, just like how she wanted to negotiate for Anri's Saika. Yikes.
Then there's the preview. We see Celty talking with Kujiragi, more of Izumii being a creep, et cetera. What's a bit odd is we didn't see any Mikado or Izaya this episode, nor in the preview. Even though every volume thus far has ended with a dialogue by Izaya. Though, that could just be the studio's decision to not include it this episode, like how with volume 9 they included the ending scenes in the episode starting to adapt volume 10. Anyway, either there wasn't one, or it's showing up next week. Either way, it's curious.
I feel like they're wasting a bit too much time on side plots when the main conflict between the Dollars and the Yellow Scarves should be taking the spotlight, but the only alternative in this case was to adapt even MORE material into Ten which was already rushed enough, so I'll let it slide. Since we appear to be moving into volume 12 though, I assume that the side plots are going to drop off pretty soon and let this war take center stage.
So with that, I'll be back next week to report on episode 5! We're already a third done, wow. And oh no, also.
Episode Five
First impressions: They sure as hell didn't waste any time this episode. Honestly, the first minute has got to be the wildest fucking first minute of any anime episode I've seen. They really should have ended the previous episode with that whole section; it would have been a much bigger cliffhanger. I didn't even have time to dwell on what had just happened or theorize about it before we were off into whatever the hell that was.
Mmkay so today's episode. Mostly it was focused on Celty and Shinra, with a good chunk on Varona too. Now normally I'd be happy that it was my two favorites getting the spotlight, but considering the circumstances, I was very not happy. Like I said in the above paragraph, they really didn't waste any time. I thought Kujiragi would propose a deal of some sort but she immediately grabs Shinra, kisses him, and now he is under Saika's control. I actually giggled a bit when she first did that because I was like "Poor Celty is going to be so confused." But no, they decided to make it far worse than that and um. Yeah. Then we have Kujiragi doing something that's a cross between Attack on Titan and Spiderman to maneuver across the city with Shinra. She's pretty strong to be able to lift him like that, but whatever. It's fiction. We have a man able to pick up a car with the effort it takes us to pick up, like, a notebook. Anyway, tangents aside, yikes. I've been saying for ages that the events of volume 8 are going to come back to haunt us, and they sure did. Mad they left out the fact that Celty was ready to kill Yodogiri (Kujiragi) for hurting Shinra last time, so I'm assuming this is just an escalation of that. I'm also worried anime-only fans are going to be put off by this--I'm sure this was handled better in the novels (it seemed rushed if you didn't know the context), since we already knew Celty had murderous intent. I don't think Celty knows that Kujiragi is technically the one behind Shinra's earlier assault, and it's not like she's up to reasoning now.
So what I think is gonna happen is she's gonna catch up to the car with both Shinra and her head in it, and Kujiragi is going to forcibly reunite her with her head and everything's going to go to hell. Not that everything hasn't already gone to hell, but we're just descending farther into the pit.
Next, the section on Varona. Mostly, her inner monologue being confused. So Shizuo did figure her out at some point--he knows she's the person who kidnapped Akane back in Shou, but he didn't feel inclined to chase after her for some reason. Wish he had because then Celty wouldn't be en route to her head. Anyway, Varona is confused on what to do, and for right now she's just going to follow her orders. She's also wondering about the connection between Saika and the Headless Rider, so I'm hoping against hope that she'll figure things out and save Shinra and keep Celty's head out of her reach. I can dream, all right?
There was a bit on Shizuo too. His conversation with Shooter was hilarious, and also how he was like "Yeah I can ride a bike" and then it fucking shoots him off at a ridiculous speed. The only time of the episode that was actually funny. So what I think is gonna happen there is he's going to arrive at Kujiragi's next rendezvous with Varona, and be part of the conflict. Maybe a choice between Celty and Varona or something?? Either way, Shizuo to the rescue. I hope. I don't think Saika can cut him, but then again Kujiragi's able to do wild things with her Saika so I'm not totally resting easy. I also think Celty's going to end up back with her head one way or another, as much as I don't want it to happen. It's funny too cause back in the beginning I was like "Yeah let's get Celty back with her head it's only right!" and as the series went on I was like "Let's NOT get Celty back with her head keep that thing far away from her." I would have been fine with it if there hadn't been implied negative consequences.
Then a small part focused on Masaomi and Rocchi's shenanigans. Honestly Masaomi's a pretty tough kid to take a hammer to the knee and still be able to stand. Hammers hurt. A lot.
So now Rocchi's chilling at the Yellow Scarves hideout, and Masaomi's going to explain the whole mess to him. I wonder how that will turn out, and if Rocchi is going to take Masaomi's side or instead believe the Dollars have more reason. Either way, I hope those two can put their differences behind them and work together to......I don't know. If Rocchi ends up on Masaomi's side he'll have a valuable fighting asset in the inevitable war. I just hope this conflict can be settled somewhat peacefully. I know in my heart of hearts that it's not likely, but like I said earlier, I can dream.
Finally, Saki's meeting with Anri. Not much happened with that yet. I wonder what Saki wants. I can only hope it's "My boyfriend's being dumb please come talk to him." But I doubt it.
So, the preview. I didn't pick up the episode title again haha. I was still too stressed about the whole Celty incident. Likewise, I didn't get much of the preview images. What I do remember is we're seeing Izaya and the dojo girl (god wHAT IS HER NAME I KNOW THIS ONE......Mikage? I think maybe) probably up to no good as usual, as well as Mikado meeting Izumii. Yikes. I think I also saw Aoba and Izumii arguing. I wonder what Aoba's deranged older brother wants with the Dollars. Probably to join their side in the war, and then the Dollars will have Izumii fighting for them while the Yellow Scarves have Rocchi. Though Rocchi was pretty easily able to wreck Izumii with a flying kick this episode so maybe he'll finally fucking be destroyed. I hate Izumii. If you've been following my blog posts at all you'll be aware of this.
I'm also assuming they're continuing with the tale of Kujiragi, Celty, Shinra, Varona, and Celty's head (soon to be joined by Shizuo). I really want to know what happens ugh.
Be back next week and hopefully I'll feel a bit better about the future!
Episode Six
We're halfway through Ketsu now. Oh no.......
These six weeks have flown by so fast. Six more to go!
A bit of rambling aside, the episode. We basically took some time this week to back up and explain things rather than continuing to leap ahead in the action.
First up, we have a small part of dialogue by Izaya. His dialogue is always so worrisome these days, this episode especially so. He had fun with lighting Tarot cards on fire while laughing about how the "non-humans" (Anri, Kasane, Celty) as well as Shizuo must make their exit. I wonder how exactly he's planning to go about that, but judging by the preview, I think I know. I'll get to that when I talk about the preview.
Mikage also pointed out that Izaya's whole squad has ditched him. He had dozens of people in Ten, and now they've all up and left except for her and that bald guy. They probably couldn't stand Izaya. Not that I blame them.
By far the most worrisome part of this section were Izaya's words on Mikado. He said that incredibly, this kid self-destructed without any intervention on Izaya's part. (Cough cough, yeah right.) The part that concerns me is the "self-destructing" phrase. Mikado is visibly unraveling and I'm really losing hope for him being able to fix himself, considering the end of the episode. Which I'll get to later.
Next, we have Saki and Anri getting to know each other. Turns out Saki was here to see if Anri had a crush on her boyfriend, but she honestly came at THE worst possible time. I think boyfriend drama is the least of our problems right now. Rest assured Anri is not in love with Masaomi, but the important part of that conversation was Anri's decision to learn about Masaomi's past. She and Mikado knew that he was a gang leader, but they didn't really know the full story. Well, now Anri knows, thus breaking her rule to only reveal her secrets when the three of them were reunited. She chose to find out another way, and this means when the time comes she'll know all there is to know. The best part of this scene was how it starkly contrasted with what Mikado was assuredly saying. Another thing to get to later.
We then have another explanation of The Chronicles of Masaomi's Life and Problems, this time by Masaomi himself to Rocchi. I was right when I said Rocchi was going to help him out, but I'm glad he's at least calling Masaomi out on his BS and basically telling him he's a stupid teenager. He needed to hear that. Also funny how Rocchi accomplished more in thirty seconds than either Mikado or Masaomi have this entire series. "Oh, you want to meet Mikado? Perfect, I'll call him up right now and you two can meet up and talk things out!" Thus demolishing Masaomi's plan to only meet again when the city was back to its normal. Or so we thought. Yet another thing to talk about later. I hope you're noticing the pattern here.
Then there's the bit of chatroom this episode, in which Namie drops all formalities and hints of secrecy to reprimand Mikado. She says, "Come here right now or I'll reveal all your personal information." She's concerned about Seiji, and apparently doxxing Mikado is how she's going to get her answers. He's got better things to do right now than answer her, so I doubt she'll get to talk to him directly. I wonder what kind of dirt she has on him. But regardless, though everyone in the chatroom knows who Mikado is, Izaya is the only one who knows his handle, so if he comes online, he'll be revealing himself anyway.
Most important about this part is the abandonment of pen names and identities. Since the beginning, the chatroom has been a way for the main characters to talk about their lives and such without giving away their real names. Except for Izaya, who knows who everyone is, the list of who knew each others' identities was very short prior to this. The chatroom reflects the story situation at the moment, and like how the plot and city are unraveling at increasingly faster speeds, the chatroom is no longer a place for privacy and secrecy, whether Mikado gets back to Namie or not. She didn't even use a handle of any kind. I was wondering if it's not actually her, but I think it is because the text box was gray, just like Celty's. Namie was at Celty's apartment last we saw, so she probably stole her laptop and entered her real name when logging onto the chatroom. Plus, our previous hacker Kujiragi is otherwise occupied at the moment.
So Namie is very determined to get information out of Mikado, which brings me to what I've been leaving for last until now.
The section on Mikado. I left this till last because the way the episode ended is a good culmination of how the events in this episode all led up to it. Mikado's noticeable unhinging, his dialogue in contrast to Anri's, Rocchi's plan to have Mikado and Masaomi meet again, and Namie's determination to obtain info on Seiji's whereabouts from him are all various events spinning around the thing at the end.
Confusing vagueness aside, the first thing to talk about is Mikado becoming increasingly disheveled. This episode, he was smiling in a very Izaya-like way, as well as being huddled in a corner anxiously biting his nails. Next, right as Saki is spilling Masaomi's secrets to Anri, Mikado is confidently saying that he knows the three of them will confess everything once they're reunited, not knowing that Anri couldn't wait. Then there's Rocchi calling Mikado, which I think was the phone call Mikado received at the end that he ignored. Not part of Rocchi's plan, if that was him. Lastly, Namie wants to know what Seiji's up to and for some reason is confronting Mikado for it. Makes me wonder what he could know, or if she's just desperate.
Speaking of Namie and Mikado, we saw history repeat itself in this episode. Mikado, when talking to Izumii, repeated almost the same words he said to Namie back in the first season, about being weak so relying on numbers instead. This time, it carries an entirely different meaning.
Izumii meets Mikado, and later confesses that he took a liking to the kid because of how he reacted to something. Or in this case, the lack of reaction. Looks like the Aozaki group is trying to get Mikado nailed for a crime, and using Izumii to help them. Doesn't Akabayashi work for them as well? It looked like he was working against them this episode, but it was pretty vague about it.
Lastly there's the elephant in the room to discuss. Izumii gave something to Mikado that he was concealing in his arm, which I'm about 99.9% sure is a gun. Mikado didn't really think anything of it except to thank Izumii for it. Then there was the last part of the episode, where he gets a phone call, but ignores it and puts his phone in his pocket, where I heard it clinking against something. I guess his pocket's big enough for a phone and a gun, but joking aside, I can only wonder what he's going to do with that thing. Ugh.
The preview. So episode 7 is called "No Love's Lost," and the most important part is that it's looking like we get a continuation of the thing with Celty, which didn't get any progress this episode. I was very worried by the lack of Celty this episode, since I really want to know what happens.
We get to see Shizuo meeting Kujiragi, and judging by how a lot of the preview was the two of them talking, it makes me think that will be a big part of the episode. There was also a brief bit of Varona with a gun of her own, so I'm guessing she's leaving the car with Shinra in it and going to meet Kujiragi and Shizuo.
I'm also pretty sure Izaya is doing the narration next episode, which is never a good thing. As I mentioned in the beginning of this week's post, I think he's going to use Kujiragi somehow to get rid of Shizuo. To be honest, she's looking like the most likely candidate to take him out as of right now.
That's all; be back next week to see how this plays out!
Episode Seven
I wanted answers, and instead I only get more questions. Auuuuugh, Narita, why must you make me suffer.
There was some interesting stuff in this episode though. Like the chatroom part with Mikado--as I predicted, as soon as he logged on Namie pounced on him and started revealing tons of personal info anyway to rile him up. Izaya's sisters briefly popped up too, only to say that this chatroom is done for and that Aoba's handle warned them about this. But more importantly, it's doubtful these characters could resume the chatroom same as before, unless they all found another chatroom and used different handles, but even then recognizing typing styles would be pretty easy if it was all the same people. So for now at least, there probably won't be any more chatroom. Unfortunate, I always liked those parts.
As I mentioned above, Namie purposely said all these accusatory things to Mikado to make him angry, and it worked. He kept telling her to stop and she didn't, and now he's fed up with her on top of all this other stuff.
There was also a brief Masaomi moment that made me drop a "Sure Jan" Snapchat on him--when he said he and Mikado would make things up and have a laugh together. If only it were that easy, kiddo.
Also his decision to keep Anri in the dark is frankly idiotic. As if she doesn't already know about you two. Namie isn't helping by telling Mikado that Anri wields a katana and is a monster.
Also, Anri and Saki are now walking to Celty's apartment and all they're gonna find is the ruined remains, some people, and no Celty. I wonder if Saburo, the only normal person there, will talk to Anri, she'll figure out what's going on, and run to help.
Kyohei escaped from the hospital and Erika thinks it's to hunt down the person who ran him over, which is really dumb of him. Can't he wait?
Anyway, I hope she finds him and prevents him from doing anything stupid. He really picked the worst time to come out of his coma.
Now that the other stuff is out of the way, on to what took up most of the time--the continuation of the tale involving Celty, Shizuo, Shinra, Kujiragi, and Varona.
Unfortunately, not a whole lot happened in terms of progress with that. Shizuo showed up to defend Celty which made me go "YEAAAAAAAH GO GET EM" but then left Kujiragi alone to go after Namie's uncle??? Yeah he's the one who wanted Celty's body, but I'm frankly more afraid of Kujiragi and how he just let her walk away after she captured Celty so easily. I also wonder what will become of her, since she said to Shizuo that no one else had ever listened to her properly before.
And if I'm reading my subtitles right, she has the hots for Shinra? What. She called Celty her "rival in love" and if that means what I think it means......yikes.
There was also some conflict between Shizuo and Varona, and a bit of shippiness that made me a bit uncomfortable. I still don't see them as an item, even though I'm fairly sure it's going to happen. Anyway. Then Izaya showed up and started being a dick as usual, and Shizuo said he'd come back for Celty. Um????? Isn't Celty a more pressing issue than defeating the asshole who's causing you trouble???????? He called her a dear friend of his and then goes off to fight Izaya. Okay then.
At least, that's what it's made to look like. Maybe he's going to use the construction equipment to extract Celty somehow. Hell if I know.
Also, it just occurred to me that Celty's head is in close proximity to her body. Kujiragi mentioned she'd probably lose her memories as the Headless Rider (don't you dare Narita), and then she'd sever the connection between head and body once more. However, she didn't count on Izaya being there, and I'm willing to bet he's got something up his sleeve to reunite Celty's head and body and not let them be separated again. Ugh.
Then there's the weird (well, weird-er) part of the episode where Shizuo said "Goodbye" to Izaya and Izaya was like "Yeah, see you." What in the world does that mean. It was a good ending to the episode though, since it's fitting for the last word to be "Sayonara."
I'm guessing Shizuo's saying goodbye because he's about to kick Izaya's ass and Izaya knows he's toast. I don't know why they said that, actually. It's weird.
Lastly, the preview. I saw Erika sneaking around, so I think she's going to find Kyohei? There was some more of Rocchi and Masaomi I think, and more Shizuo and Kujiragi. Most importantly there's a brief flashback of Izaya and Shinra as kids. Thanks, it's not like I needed my heart anyway.
In all honesty, I have no idea what's going to happen. What I WANT to happen is that Shinra breaks free of Saika and rescues Celty, calming her down and restoring her to normal, while her head is whisked away elsewhere. But I know that's not gonna happen. I'm gonna slam my face into a wall now. Be back next week biting my nails for another 24 minutes.
Episode Eight
Only four more episodes left of this show. Oh no. Ohhhh no. Four more weeks of suffering and then that's it for Durarara and I'll be left to suffer over the ending without expecting new content. I'm not ready for it to end.
You know, I said this summer that I was totally down with a Durarara x3 adapting SH, but the more I thought about SH in general the less it seemed like a good idea. I haven't read it so I can't fully judge, but from the vague hints I've learned it sounds to me like a sequel series in which new kids get involved in color gangs and such, with the characters from the original series occasionally making cameos. And it's just like, this is not my beautiful house this is not my beautiful wife. I'm still gonna read it, I'll just be bitter.
Anyway. The episode.
The suspense builds ever higher in this latest chapter of events. Honestly Narita, let's take away some momentum now since we're getting so close to the end. Not much has been happening with plot progression due to so many characters' stories coinciding, but we'll get there.
Before I start talking about events, the animation took a sharp turn downhill this episode. I made a few quality Snapchats about the awkwardly drawn faces and lack of shading, but weirdly enough, the more important scenes were normal and the bad animation stopped midway. I guess the budget isn't suffering enough for the whole episode to be wonky. Not that I'm complaining.
Okay so stuff happened. Izaya set some sort of twisted obstacle course for Shizuo to navigate, so that he can make his way through the temple to the boss fight. I'm honestly not even sure WHY they're fighting right now. Mikage framed it like their ~FINAL FIGHT~ but there isn't really a good motive behind this one. Shizuo is just sick of Izaya getting in his way time after time, I guess. I also think the sole reason this fight IS happening is because Narita figured these two characters should, for the sake of their popularity, duke it out before the series ends because they've been avoiding each other for most of it. So if the characters' popularity is the only thing driving this fight, it's not going to be very exciting for me.
Celty got her head returned this episode. There wasn't even any buildup or anything really. Shingen just popped up out of nowhere and had Egor toss her head right to her, wherein she loses all her memories of Ikebukuro. Wait, what??? You're telling me a major character loses her memories and it's just like, "Okay, that happened"???? They've been talking about it for quite a while and I've been calling this for weeks now, but the actual moment was just whatever. Shingen was basically like "Shinra will build their relationship from square one don't worry about it" and let it fly. While I don't doubt Shinra's persistence, the fact remains that circumstances will NOT be the same. Last time, Celty was driven to Japan in the first place by the need of her head, and made a deal with Shingen out of desperation, and lived as a permanent fixture in their home. So she got to see Shinra grow up and such, whereas now it'll be like, fresh-out-of-the-wild dullahan is annoyed by this human refusing to give up on his affections. She doesn't even have a reason to BE in Japan anymore, so what's to stop her from leaving and going back to Ireland? Although, she still does know Japanese apparently--you can see that from her conversation with Izaya. The only way to fix this mess is if Celty got her memories back. Ugh.
Enough of me ragging on the show.
More of Mikado this episode, in which he reveals the object in his jacket to indeed be a gun (called it) and talks to Rocchi for a bit. The call he received a couple of episodes back was indeed from Rocchi, and now the latter is mad at Mikado for ignoring him so he sent him a few vaguely threatening messages from the chatroom. Now he's claiming Masaomi is his hostage and going to meet with Mikado as an excuse for the two to talk. Only Rocchi clearly said one-on-one and then Mikado is like "How many people can I bring he didn't say" so I'm assuming this meetup is going to go south, like everything else in this show. Mikado and Masaomi are probably going to end up in a fistfight or something.
There was a little bit of worrying internal monologue from Mikado, where he speculates how he doesn't feel excited by the supernatural events occurring around him anymore. Considering he embarked on this weird crusade to feel excited about the city again, things are going from bad to worse. He's becoming like a drug addict whose new high has to keep topping the previous one, although in this case, his best moment where he called on the Dollars for their first meeting, has been so great that nothing else he's tried since can compare. So it follows that he's going to keep putting himself in greater and greater danger until something either gives or he's killed. Ugh Mikado. Why are you like this.
Also in this episode, Nasujima returns with an army of his own Saikas, subdues Haruna, and surrounds Russia Sushi with his gang. His goal? To put Tom under Saika's control and thus use him to control Shizuo. I feel like I'm missing something here, unless his motive is actually Saika's, in which case wanting indirect control over Shizuo makes more sense. I can't really think of a reason why Nasujima wants Shizuo under his thumb.
So they're barricaded in a sushi shop and Simon comes out with flash-bang grenades and a shit ton of guns. I'm not really sure what the point is of shooting people though. They're innocent, and the guns should be used on Nasujima instead of the people he's garnered. In this case, physical strength would be more of an asset because if you pull a gun he's just going to throw people at you. I guess they just don't want to get cut. Anyway.
There was also a little of Anri. She looked rather ill, and I'm sure she can sense all the Saikas under Nasujima's control. I wish they'd show more of Anri's dynamic with Saika since it's one of the more interesting ones of this show, but for now she's taking the sidelines.
Kujiragi and Varona are also fighting Mikage. Though I wonder, why exactly does Kujiragi want to pursue Shizuo? Or maybe it's Izaya she's after. God knows. Aside from that, Kujiragi doesn't have her Saika and Varona is injured so they're at a bit of a disadvantage, but it's still two on one so I don't know.
Erika was hiding from the mobs of Saikas in this episode, and didn't do much else. But finally Kyohei shows up to Shinra and Celty's apartment, looking rather worse for the wear. Since he's after Nasujima, who was in cahoots to hit him, my guess is their hunt is going to take them to where Erika is and then that squad will be reunited.
The flashback of Shinra and Izaya was cute, though it felt a little irrelevant. Just a little though, as it seemed to be foreshadowing the final confrontation between Shizuo and Izaya. I don't think either of them is going to kill the other though. Mostly I was happy to see Shinra, and also sad at the same time.
Speaking of which, the preview. Next episode is called "Walking on Thin Ice" which is a pretty good idiom for how the show is right now. Anyway we see Shinra apparently escaping from the car, and most definitely heading to Celty while still fighting Saika's control. I don't know what's going to happen between them, but yikes. There also looked like continuation between Shizuo and Izaya's fight, which as I mentioned earlier I'm a little indifferent to. I think also some Mikado.
If they're still doing one volume per four episodes, this episode should've been the end of volume 12, though it didn't really seem like an end. Maybe some of the ending was left for next episode. I don't know. I'd have to read the volume or a detailed summary to find out and I'm very carefully avoiding spoilers until the series' end. I haven't even gone on that Reddit thread since Ketsu started because I was sick of being spoiled on minor things. I'll definitely have to kick back and take a day or two to read everything once it does end.
I'm not even going to say I hope for answers anymore this show is taking its sweet time. Be back next week with the inevitable increase in my unanswered questions.
Episode Nine
Three episodes left. Ugh. I'm not ready to die.
Ironically, the one episode I'm expecting not to get any answers is the episode in which my questions are answered. Somewhat. I still have some. I think it's an unavoidable part of watching this show.
Once again, with so many characters' arcs coming together at once, only a couple of plotlines got progression this episode whereas the rest were just shown in brief and didn't do much.
One of those plotlines getting screentime was the fight with Shizuo and Izaya, which as I mentioned I do not understand the motive behind. I just think they picked an extremely odd time and place, as both of them were originally there for different purposes--Izaya to do his usual observing, Shizuo to save Celty. Anyway, the fight itself seemed a bit rushed and Izaya was also a bit out of character in that he blows Shizuo up and thinks what's done is done. Which is why he fell for a girder to the torso. Get rekt Izaya. As a post on Tumblr reminded me, he's been kicked, punched, stabbed, and thrown around a lot in the recent months, so he's not exactly in his top condition right now. But apparently he doesn't care, as long as he can take Shizuo out with him. But wait, hold on. I thought Izaya's whole motive was to start a war, win said war, and then die and be taken to the afterlife by Celty. Now you're telling me he's going to sacrifice himself to kill one person? Okay. Maybe he thinks the war he incited doesn't need any more of his direction. Hell if I know.
There was also the matter of Mikage brawling with Kujiragi and Varona, in which they lampshaded the fact that nobody really knows why they're fighting right now, they just are. Varona wants to kick Izaya's ass instead of Shizuo, but I think Shizuo's got it covered despite having a broken/dislocated arm (When did that happen? I'm going to assume it's when Izaya dropped a crane on him. Savage).
Kujiragi also got a call from Nasujima, which she ignored. I think one way or another, everything's going to come to a head around Russia Sushi, because that's where all the major characters are headed. Except for Celty (who knows what she's up to), Shizuo (who's still in that building), and Izaya (who got tossed to a different building a la TEAM ROCKET'S BLASTING OFF AGAINNNNNN). I feel like Izaya's gotten thrown to a building closer to Russia Sushi though, and since Shizuo will probably be pursuing him, their fight is going to take them there. Anyway, the episode ended with Izaya looking rather worse for the wear, but I'm sure he'll hang in there.
Then there's the matter of Shinra, who decided to pursue Celty while still fighting Saika's control. Why IS he able to resist Saika? I'm going to assume this was explained in the novels and dropped from the anime, and I'm also going to assume it's due to his injury and/or distance. Or maybe his love for Celty overpowers Saika's love for humanity. He seems a bit more lucid than normal, but he's still able to talk in his right mind and stuff. Though I fear if he gets too close to Russia Sushi, he's going to become part of the hivemind of Saika and lose sight of his goal (at least until he sees Celty). I'm also wondering why that girl (damn I can never remember her name) decided to switch goals and help Shinra. I'm guessing she knows Shinra can take her to where Izaya is and she can destroy him.
Also a brief flashback of Shinra, Izaya, and Shizuo in high school. Shinra draws very similar parallels to Elmer from Baccano (who will make the world smile at any cost), in that he'll do absolutely anything for Celty. I think that dialogue was also foreshadowing something in the coming episodes, where maybe we'll see a mark of Shinra's friendship to the two bitterest enemies.
Akabayashi narrated this episode, but didn't contribute to the plot. He hinted he wanted to help Anri out, but made no moves to do so. He also now knows that Anri possesses the sword that cut out his eye, but is trying to tell himself to not worry about it.
Mikado didn't do much this episode, except to hide in the shadows all sinister like. I assume he's going to pop out at the worst moment and then Masaomi will see him and all hell will break loose.
You know, with three episodes left I'd have thought the show would move to some sort of tactical war strategy, but instead there's just an army of Saikas after Tom, Masaomi is overseeing, Mikado's hiding, and Anri's on her way to probably subdue the Saikas. Then there's Celty, doing god knows what; Shizuo and Izaya fighting god knows where; and Kyohei's van gang going after Erika with Namie tagging along for god knows why. I'm giving up on understanding the circumstances at this point. I'll just try to take everything at face value and enjoy things how they are.
I also wonder why everything seems to be converging on Russia Sushi. If I had to guess I'm going to say it's because it's the hub where all the central characters have been at some point during the story. If they haven't been shown eating/working there, then they've mentioned it in passing at least once. That's the only thing I can think of.
Last, the preview. More of Shinra (ow), more of Shizuo looking rather roughed up, Anri struggling to control Saika, and a bit of Kyohei talking. I hope he brings some goddamn sense into this story. There also seemed to be a flashback of Shinra and Celty probably doing something romantic together. Just fuck me up.
Next episode is titled "Telepathy," which is an interesting departure from the idioms that have been all of x2's titles thus far. I'd say maybe it's a reference to some Japanese idiom, except that they've been using English idioms to form the episode titles so far. I'm still waiting for an episode titled "Kill or be Killed."
Oh god after next week there will only be two episodes left. Anri, who's doing the narration next episode, even said that everyone's about to go into battle. Oh nooooo. I'll be back next week, scared and confused as usual.
Episode Ten
GUESS WHO HIT CHARACTER LIMIT AGAIN. So yeah, like last time the last three episodes will be outsourced to Drive.
Here's the link to episode 10: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sK5glRdtQLQBfFBKn9fj9hOeO3yo-NHXYHsB9Ik2SbU/edit?usp=sharing
Episode Eleven
Once again, this rant is on Google Docs. Only one more episode to go!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sD40nIoWptqgokrYsi4KaSjMwrdpsyXFuJIhHyd_Fk8/edit?usp=sharing
Episode Twelve
The finale of this very long saga. Thanks for reading!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_7MSFegypoQuBJv8TKfMDEsycQxei0tt0mz7zOzu7yk/edit?usp=sharing
Opening Notes:
-I haven't read the novels this time around, so I'm in the dark
-Did the same thing for Ten over the summer: http://myanimelist.net/blog.php?eid=772437
-I'll TRY to be more brief this time, so I don't end up hitting character limit, but no guarantees
-Not a review, more of an in-depth discussion of each episode. Also, predictions.
Episode One
What the fuck was that opening. I already hate it. The song was pretty good (I'm not a huge fan of the techno thing; could have been worse), but in terms of sequence. That is what I hate.
There's the thing at the beginning, where everyone is pulling a Mayuri and reaching up the sky. Symbolismmmmm.
So it's raining in the city, and rain symbolism is never a good thing. Last FMAB opening anybody? This one didn't have as much direct symbolism and foreshadowing as that one, but the rain thing alone is enough to make me worried. Particularly considering all the metaphors of burning we got last season. Also, Mikado's name card was particularly the cause of my duress. He's running frantically through the rain, looking like he's going after someone to get them to stop something. The water splashing on his face at that part looks like tears and I hate my life. I'm so scared for Mikado.
Then there was the Shinra and Celty name cards, where he appears in her helmet and sort of looks peacefully up to the sky. To me, that looks like the face of a man about to die. I'm very afraid.
As far as the ending, they did not do an emotional song nor picture characters in their squads, which I'm upset about, but the song was pretty good. But.There was a very brief flash of Celty with her head. I think that's what I saw. Uh-oh. Celty's head was also hanging behind her at the very end of the vertical scroll, and her and Shinra looked like they were about to kiss.
At least the art in the ED wasn't weird this time around. I'm also mad that Mikado and Masaomi seem to be leaning on each other. Symbolism, again.
The actual episode.
Finally, after three months we get some questions answered--what those people were doing in Shinra and Celty's apartment, how Namie escaped, who the woman Shizuo supposedly beat up was, and what happened to Izaya after being captured by Sloan.
I was right when I thought those people in their apartment would form a group dedicated to stop the Dollars and Yellow Scarves from fighting. At least, I'm pretty sure that's what their goal is.
And Namie escaped thanks to Shingen and some others intervening! Kujiragi looked majorly pissed off, but the funniest part of that scene was the three gas masks pulling a Toradora and spinning in a circle. I have to wonder how much Shingen paid them to do that.
The woman "Shizuo" beat up was Mimizu, or "Earthworm-chan" as Izaya called her in the novels. But Izumii was actually the one who did it, so what I got out of that scene is that Kujiragi had them arrest Shizuo to keep him out of Ikebukuro for a bit. I wonder why. I know she has plans for death and destruction as my friend put it, but I bet there's a more specific reason. It's not exactly like he was going to rush to Izaya's aid.
Speaking of rushing to Izaya's aid, we find after three months that he was actually just faking the whole time. Which makes my screaming "GET FUCKIN REKT" every time I watched him being thrown into a building false. Because he didn't get rekt. He was just pretending to be unconscious so he could wait for a chance to be rescued. What an asshole. Also, he's now planning on lying in wait for Kujiragi at the office he was supposed to be brought to. But she's still managed to outmaneuver him twice, so I don't expect it to be neat. Not to mention, if he escapes (I'm sure he will), she'll still be after him. She wants the info on Celty's head. She probably wants Celty's head, and to reunite it with her body. I have my thoughts on what will happen to Celty if she finds her head--lose control and her memories of these last twenty years, most likely. Celty's line that she'd try to retrieve her head without touching it only drove that anxiety home. I'm afraid. I've said that so many times.
That plotline is FINALLY coming back to being relevant. Not that it was ever irrelevant, but it kind of got swallowed up in a bunch of other stuff. And now we're gonna see how it's resolved. Fear.
There were a lot of Shinra and Celty moments (yay!), but a lot of their discussion unnerved me. Not that Shinra's a kinky mofo. We already knew that. It was more about Celty's "I'll defend you till your last breath" line. I mentioned the parallels to Huey and Monica in my Ten discussions, and this only continues down the line. Can we STOP with the "doomed couple" foreshadowing I see. It only makes it hurt more. I don't want them to be doomed. I want them to live happily ever after together and adopt a bunch of kids. Ugh.
All in all, this episode was basically an introduction to answer our questions and begin to set up the conflicts. Also that person who rekt the Yellow Scarves last time is getting introduced soon--Aoba wanted Mikado to meet him. Looks like next episode will feature Rocchi meeting Anri as well. I wonder how that will go down. Next episode is titled "Bell a Cat," presumably from the "Easier said than done" fable we've all heard where the mice propose to put a bell on the cat that terrorizes them. Interesting. Well, until next time!
Episode Two
Well. Interesting. So the first thing I want to discuss is ALL THE ANRI in today's episode. So much Anri. So much good. Also good friendship between her and Erika. We also see how worried she is for Mikado and Masaomi, and how she was ready to jump at Izaya for planning to harm them (meanwhile you have me sitting there like *Shia LeBeouf voice* JUST....DO IT). And then Erika jumped in in her defense and threatened Izaya, and knowing how her squad is, I wouldn't put it past them to go after him. She was totally savage with her line about his head "I bet your brain tissue is shaped like a fox's face!" or something. Good job Erika.
No Mikado or Masaomi this episode, but from the looks of the preview we'll see Mikado at least in the next episode.
Also I was totally right when I said Kujiragi was related to Ruri--the shade of brown hair and the red ribbons were what tipped me off. However, I thought she was Ruri's grandmother (which would make her at LEAST part vampire if not full vampire), but she's actually Ruri's aunt, Ruri's grandmother's child fathered by a different man than Ruri's mom. So she's half vampire, I guess. I wonder how old she REALLY is. But confusing family relations aside, we get to see a peek at her past--sold to Yodogiri at a young age, raised to run his business, and continuing it after he died. Which makes me wonder, when did the real Yodogiri die and what of? I wonder if that's relevant. And the narrator, Shingen this time, said that her real name isn't important. To me it is; I really wanna know. I don't think she's Shinichi anymore, but I do think she has some connection to him.
Speaking of, I still don't think he's been eliminated from the anime altogether, though they certainly have been cutting his roles thus far. I noticed recently he did appear briefly in Ten--Akabayashi purchased information on Mikado from him before going to Izaya. I'm pretty certain that was him anyway. How many information brokers could we have running around this city? Apparently, more than I thought.
Aaaaanyway, if his role in the story isn't much larger than resident narrator, then I wouldn't expect him to be in the anime that much, but something tells me he'll be important later, so I'm betting they want to keep him in the shadows and reveal him last-minute. Honestly though, if they run the whole story without including one of the vital characters I'm gonna be pretty mad. Technically, he should be the one narrating the episodes since he does most of the novels' narration. I like that they have the characters swapping it out since they each add different personality to each episode, but honestly, how cool would it be to have this omniscient narrator and then reveal him to be the overseer of everything in the end? Really cool, right? Sorta like how in FMAB they used the same voice in English and Japanese for Father and the narrator. Father wasn't the narrator, but them having the same voice brings an ominous meaning to it all.
I'm getting off topic here so back to the episode.
Izaya was a mega asshole this episode. Provoking Anri, laughing that he wants to set fire to the hypothetical rope Mikado and Masaomi are walking (that metaphor was really, um, unnerving), and just generally being a dick to people. I really want him to get his comeuppance at the hands of someone he's tormented, but I'm also pretty sure this will happen at some point and I'll be very upset when it does. Why is this trash one of my favorite characters. He has little to no redeeming qualities.
Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure Izaya hasn't interacted directly with Anri since the end of the first season, when she attacked him with Saika. Aside from the chatroom, that is. But yeah, I don't think they've gotten a chance to duke it out before this, which explains why she's still so angry at him.
Also, Izaya didn't get to talk with Kujiragi, which means she either suspected him escaping or got too caught up in something else. I'm thinking the latter, since it showed her enjoying her freedom by....buying cat ears and sitting under a tree. Okay. But anyway, I think she still thinks she has him in her custody, and when she finds out he's not, she's going to be on the hunt for him once more. Unless she gets caught up in the inevitable Saika fight (I'll get to that in a bit) and defeated. I hope so; I don't want her causing any more mischief.
Then there's Niekawa, who bumped into Anri and told her they were going to fight elsewhere. Something tells me they're then going to come across Kujiragi and the three Saika wielders are going to battle each other. I wonder how it will go--the original vs. the copy vs. the copy of a copy. On a side note, Niekawa is so freaky with those dead eyes combined with a pink frilly dress. Still wondering why her neck is bandaged.
Last thing I want to talk about today is Celty, and Celty's head. So there was more cute dialogue with her and Shinra (his flirting made her really flustered, which I thought was ADORABLE), but then, just like last time, it turned to ominous. More doomed-couple foreshadowing, and Shinra being like "I hope you don't turn into a monster ha ha ha!" I'm gonna fight Narita if he does anything to my happy couple I swear. I'm already gonna fight him for this foreshadowing but this is another thing to add to the very long list of reasons I'm gonna fight Narita.
Then there's the really interesting part of this episode, where the girl who attacked Izaya in the beginning of Ten (can't remember her name, sorry. Was it Mamiya or something?) took Celty's head from Niekawa and threw it out into the open. Upon seeing it, Celty collapsed. Um. Yikes.
Whether her collapse was due to shock or some sort of physical reaction upon sighting her head, I'm afraid either way. I wonder if she's going to rush after it now, and run into some sort of bad news. God knows we have an abundance of that in this city.
Bottom line is, I'm very afraid. What else is new.
In the preview, we see Mikado at his computer, which I'm assuming means we're introduced to the guy with a ponytail and sweats (no, not Yato). Also, fun fact, I rewatched the first episode of Shou during the week and that very guy is there. He's in a group of Dollars roughhousing some civilians, and Aoba watches them calmly and then turns away. Curious.
Anyway. I don't remember much else from the preview (I'll probably edit this back when I see some more stuff), but I don't remember seeing any Shizuo or Masaomi. I wonder what those two are up to. Shizuo's being interrogated still I guess? And Masaomi is preparing for war. Oh no.
Episode Three
OKAY SO I'm late this week because I was gone until evening and couldn't watch the episode till then and then I had to Tumblr because I am trash but anyway. On to the episode.
So the first half was just explaining things; fairly straightforward. It flipped between Niekawa and Anri talking over to Mikado and Izaya, which I think is interesting because I'm almost certain those were two entirely separate scenes in the novel. Not that I've read volume 11, but I know how Narita writes and he doesn't mishmash scenes unless the events in each come to a head at the same time, which wasn't the case here. It was just....informational.
You know, come to think of it, I don't believe Mikado has communicated with Izaya aside from the chatroom since that Dollars meetup in season 1. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly sure their communication has all been online and usually discreet since then. So it was interesting to see Mikado call Izaya to ask him about Celty, but then end up getting sidetracked and talking about other things.
Izaya needs to stop riling people up ("You haven't changed at all"; FIGHT ME IZAYA) and telling Mikado he was messed up from the start. Maybe so, but Mikado back then was comparatively MUCH less harmful than Mikado now. There was also symbolism in that setting that I'm too tired to go into--Izaya descending (his sliding down the rail and scaring civilians was hilarious), Mikado ascending. Then at the end Izaya leaves the underground area and Mikado remains where he is. You figure out the significance. This show is pretty good about the subtle placing though; I still haven't forgotten the flickering light behind Mikado in the Ten finale. Fun stuff.
Also did we skip the intro of that guy in the sweats?? He was just hanging behind Mikado while he was on his computer and we don't have so much as a name or personality. Cmonnnn Shuka I need answers. Even if it's not important.
Anyway after Mikado gets seriously sidetracked he tells Izaya to check the news and then hangs up, leaving Izaya to make some rather funny confused faces. He seems a bit surprised that the girl (still can't remember her name sorry) chose that as her play. I wonder what kind of goal she had in mind for that anyway. It doesn't really do much aside from freaking people out?
Also someone (in Aoba's gang or??) noted how the eyes on Celty's head are flickering a bit. I'm definitely right when I said they're more open now, but I don't think this event is enough to cause an "awakening." Maybe that was the girl's goal idk.
I'm rather concerned about the lack of attention paid to Celty this episode. She collapsed on the floor and then???? I know we're going to get closure eventually but I just like.....need to know why everyone isn't extremely worried about her fainting spell or whatever it was because I certainly am.
Anyway, there's also the part of Niekawa talking with Anri. She freaks me out in general, and her leaning on Anri's boobs wasn't helping. She was also touching the bandage on her neck, so I still wonder what that is exactly.
That whole scene was just making me be like "WHEN IS KUJIRAGI GOING TO INTERVENE WHEN WHEN WHEN" and then she did and I was like "YAAAAS FIGHT" and we finally get to see her Saika's power! So the true Saika isn't necessarily a blade; it can be anything. Kujiragi used it as metallic strands and also catlike claws--her cat thing is, I think, her trademark. Anyway, it was certainly enlightening to see this. Now I know what the stuff in the ED is. I thought it was Celty's shadows for some reason, but it's actually Kujiragi's Saika encircling them all. It makes me go "Yikes" even though the meaning is pretty blatantly obvious. On the topic of the ED, I noticed that not only are Mikado and Masaomi leaning on each other, a Saika strand is also very deliberately placed between them. Ugh.
Back on the topic of Saika, it looks like the three are going to fight. Oh boy, it's going to be pretty fun to see. Methinks Kujiragi has an advantage with that ability, and she WAS able to shut down Niekawa pretty quickly with her Saika-taser combo (I FINALLY realized she has one in her glove; I have been stupidly wondering about this since Namie; I thought she just used Namie's against her). And then there was that talk about Anri not unlocking Saika's full potential. Something tells me she WILL unlock it and then her Saika will level up like a video game weapon equip. Exciting content!
Is it just me or was the animation a little off this episode? Not as bad as 7 of Shou and 3 of Ten, but the faces looked a little wonky and I felt the fight scenes weren't as well animated as they could have been (not that there was much, but Niekawa jumping at Anri seemed to just be a couple of barely-moving stills, in comparison to last episode where Anri's hair was jumping all over the place). They also didn't seem to be moving around as much.
I don't know if I mentioned this, but I get the impression the animation in Ketsu has definitely greatly improved compared to Shou and Ten. Probably finally the money from disc sales of those two parts is giving them a much-needed boost. Now if only the art style would stop changing so frequently. I almost feel like I'm the one noticing/being bothered by this, but the changes do feel pretty obvious to me.
Last thing I wanna talk about is, at the end of the episode we see Rocchi showing up with a frightening proposal for Masaomi--Would you rather see your gang destroyed or controlled by another gang? Something tells me he'll answer neither and Rocchi won't like that. He just needs to butt out tbh.
Are we also finally going to find out who ran over Kyohei? The partner of the guy who did it showed up, so I hope so. I need to fight that guy, whoever he is. He just made a huge mess even bigger.
So we have the aphorism "Blood is thicker than water" for the title of next episode, the typical family thing. I'm guessing that's a reference to Saika, since Kujiragi was throwing out the whole "familial bonds" thing to Anri and Haruna. Though, I wonder if the people titling the episode know the full quote is "But blood of the covenant is stronger than either water or womb" or something like that, meaning that friendships/non-familial bonds are stronger than either of those. Curious.
I don't remember much from the preview images because I was concentrating on the subtitles and episode title, but I do remember seeing Masaomi and Rocchi getting in a fistfight. Masaomi, he's out of your league pls don't.
Be back next week with hopefully some more answers! Things are heating up.....
Episode Four
MAL's updated layout made me confused as to where the edit button was at first lol....scared me for a sec
Anyway, the episode. Well I just finished watching it and to sum it up I'm very Afraid. If I'm counting my episodes right and they're being paced the same as Shou, then this was the end of volume 11 and next episode's moving into volume 12. Home stretch now; the end is near.
This episode saw Masaomi and Rocchi fighting, just as the preview last week showed us. If Masaomi wins, Rocchi will be his bodyguard in fighting the Dollars, and if Rocchi wins, Masaomi's gang will be swallowed up into Toramaru vs. the Dollars. But things don't go quite as planned when Rocchi throws himself off of a building and Izumii appears to join the brawl. Very interesting (and convenient) timing; wonder what Izumii was doing looking for Masaomi at this time. We then see Masaomi punch the guy who attacked his girlfriend, only to break his hand. Ouch. That didn't look very pleasant. And now Rocchi's gonna come back and be like "Who the hell is this guy." I hope they team up to take him down.
Then there was a section devoted to the three Saikas talking, and Anri explains she doesn't want to let go of her Saika just yet, and it's the "just yet" part that has me intrigued. Maybe once all this nonsense is over, and if Kujiragi's still around, Anri will actually relinquish Saika once and for all. Or maybe, since this series is all about poor timing and communication, she'll let go of it RIGHT as a situation arises in which she'd need it. Because we all know how that goes.
Also interesting how Kujiragi wasn't interested in Niekawa at all--she simply said there were no deals to be made with her, meaning she places no value in a copy of a copy. Something tells me that rubbed Niekawa the wrong way and she's going to pursue Kujiragi.
The part that made me kind of giggle was when Erika invited Kujiragi to join her cosplay group. I was like "ERIKA NO" because that's exactly the kind of thing we DON'T need. Could you imagine though. If Erika knew how much of an antagonist Kujiragi's been to Anri, she'd definitely rescind that offer.
After Haruna departs from this meeting, she's snatched up by her father working in tandem with the guy who helped hit Kyohei.....Takashi Nasujima. Still following? It's confusing to me too, and I just read volume 2 over this past week.
Anyway, looks to me like Nasujima is now in possession of a Saika of his own, and he's using it to control Haruna's dad and reobtain Haruna. What a creep. I thought he was disinterested in her after even she freaked him out, but apparently getting his hands on Saika's power bolstered his nerves.
Next there was a section with Shizuo, where one of the undercover Saikas in the police station wanted Shizuo to make a racket and allow the Saikas to bust out and grab Celty's head. Though that plan went down the toilet once they released Shizuo all of a sudden, and upon exiting the station, he sees Varona snatch Celty's head and take off. It just occurred to me Shizuo doesn't know that the woman he's hanging with is the same one that kidnapped Akane back in Shou. Or does he? He said "You're Varona, right?" to her right before she sped off. I'm thinking he's gonna chase after her, nab Celty's head, and try to return it to her, only for it to fall in Kujiragi's clutches after all--I'm very certain she's after Celty's head, considering the end of the episode.
So yes, lastly we have a section on Celty. She seems to be fine after she collapsed, which is good. What's not good is she had a rather freaky nightmare involving her head.
Anyway, after that Shinra explains how they had to sedate Seiji to prevent him from running to the police station for Celty's head, and then they had to sedate Namie too for flipping out over it. That part made me laugh a lot, and it was cute to see Shinra and Celty giggling over it too.
But then things all turn sour when a young woman in glasses appears to have a word with the two of them, they assume it's Anri, and then it's Kujiragi. She's probably here to negotiate for Celty's head, just like how she wanted to negotiate for Anri's Saika. Yikes.
Then there's the preview. We see Celty talking with Kujiragi, more of Izumii being a creep, et cetera. What's a bit odd is we didn't see any Mikado or Izaya this episode, nor in the preview. Even though every volume thus far has ended with a dialogue by Izaya. Though, that could just be the studio's decision to not include it this episode, like how with volume 9 they included the ending scenes in the episode starting to adapt volume 10. Anyway, either there wasn't one, or it's showing up next week. Either way, it's curious.
I feel like they're wasting a bit too much time on side plots when the main conflict between the Dollars and the Yellow Scarves should be taking the spotlight, but the only alternative in this case was to adapt even MORE material into Ten which was already rushed enough, so I'll let it slide. Since we appear to be moving into volume 12 though, I assume that the side plots are going to drop off pretty soon and let this war take center stage.
So with that, I'll be back next week to report on episode 5! We're already a third done, wow. And oh no, also.
Episode Five
First impressions: They sure as hell didn't waste any time this episode. Honestly, the first minute has got to be the wildest fucking first minute of any anime episode I've seen. They really should have ended the previous episode with that whole section; it would have been a much bigger cliffhanger. I didn't even have time to dwell on what had just happened or theorize about it before we were off into whatever the hell that was.
Mmkay so today's episode. Mostly it was focused on Celty and Shinra, with a good chunk on Varona too. Now normally I'd be happy that it was my two favorites getting the spotlight, but considering the circumstances, I was very not happy. Like I said in the above paragraph, they really didn't waste any time. I thought Kujiragi would propose a deal of some sort but she immediately grabs Shinra, kisses him, and now he is under Saika's control. I actually giggled a bit when she first did that because I was like "Poor Celty is going to be so confused." But no, they decided to make it far worse than that and um. Yeah. Then we have Kujiragi doing something that's a cross between Attack on Titan and Spiderman to maneuver across the city with Shinra. She's pretty strong to be able to lift him like that, but whatever. It's fiction. We have a man able to pick up a car with the effort it takes us to pick up, like, a notebook. Anyway, tangents aside, yikes. I've been saying for ages that the events of volume 8 are going to come back to haunt us, and they sure did. Mad they left out the fact that Celty was ready to kill Yodogiri (Kujiragi) for hurting Shinra last time, so I'm assuming this is just an escalation of that. I'm also worried anime-only fans are going to be put off by this--I'm sure this was handled better in the novels (it seemed rushed if you didn't know the context), since we already knew Celty had murderous intent. I don't think Celty knows that Kujiragi is technically the one behind Shinra's earlier assault, and it's not like she's up to reasoning now.
So what I think is gonna happen is she's gonna catch up to the car with both Shinra and her head in it, and Kujiragi is going to forcibly reunite her with her head and everything's going to go to hell. Not that everything hasn't already gone to hell, but we're just descending farther into the pit.
Next, the section on Varona. Mostly, her inner monologue being confused. So Shizuo did figure her out at some point--he knows she's the person who kidnapped Akane back in Shou, but he didn't feel inclined to chase after her for some reason. Wish he had because then Celty wouldn't be en route to her head. Anyway, Varona is confused on what to do, and for right now she's just going to follow her orders. She's also wondering about the connection between Saika and the Headless Rider, so I'm hoping against hope that she'll figure things out and save Shinra and keep Celty's head out of her reach. I can dream, all right?
There was a bit on Shizuo too. His conversation with Shooter was hilarious, and also how he was like "Yeah I can ride a bike" and then it fucking shoots him off at a ridiculous speed. The only time of the episode that was actually funny. So what I think is gonna happen there is he's going to arrive at Kujiragi's next rendezvous with Varona, and be part of the conflict. Maybe a choice between Celty and Varona or something?? Either way, Shizuo to the rescue. I hope. I don't think Saika can cut him, but then again Kujiragi's able to do wild things with her Saika so I'm not totally resting easy. I also think Celty's going to end up back with her head one way or another, as much as I don't want it to happen. It's funny too cause back in the beginning I was like "Yeah let's get Celty back with her head it's only right!" and as the series went on I was like "Let's NOT get Celty back with her head keep that thing far away from her." I would have been fine with it if there hadn't been implied negative consequences.
Then a small part focused on Masaomi and Rocchi's shenanigans. Honestly Masaomi's a pretty tough kid to take a hammer to the knee and still be able to stand. Hammers hurt. A lot.
So now Rocchi's chilling at the Yellow Scarves hideout, and Masaomi's going to explain the whole mess to him. I wonder how that will turn out, and if Rocchi is going to take Masaomi's side or instead believe the Dollars have more reason. Either way, I hope those two can put their differences behind them and work together to......I don't know. If Rocchi ends up on Masaomi's side he'll have a valuable fighting asset in the inevitable war. I just hope this conflict can be settled somewhat peacefully. I know in my heart of hearts that it's not likely, but like I said earlier, I can dream.
Finally, Saki's meeting with Anri. Not much happened with that yet. I wonder what Saki wants. I can only hope it's "My boyfriend's being dumb please come talk to him." But I doubt it.
So, the preview. I didn't pick up the episode title again haha. I was still too stressed about the whole Celty incident. Likewise, I didn't get much of the preview images. What I do remember is we're seeing Izaya and the dojo girl (god wHAT IS HER NAME I KNOW THIS ONE......Mikage? I think maybe) probably up to no good as usual, as well as Mikado meeting Izumii. Yikes. I think I also saw Aoba and Izumii arguing. I wonder what Aoba's deranged older brother wants with the Dollars. Probably to join their side in the war, and then the Dollars will have Izumii fighting for them while the Yellow Scarves have Rocchi. Though Rocchi was pretty easily able to wreck Izumii with a flying kick this episode so maybe he'll finally fucking be destroyed. I hate Izumii. If you've been following my blog posts at all you'll be aware of this.
I'm also assuming they're continuing with the tale of Kujiragi, Celty, Shinra, Varona, and Celty's head (soon to be joined by Shizuo). I really want to know what happens ugh.
Be back next week and hopefully I'll feel a bit better about the future!
Episode Six
We're halfway through Ketsu now. Oh no.......
These six weeks have flown by so fast. Six more to go!
A bit of rambling aside, the episode. We basically took some time this week to back up and explain things rather than continuing to leap ahead in the action.
First up, we have a small part of dialogue by Izaya. His dialogue is always so worrisome these days, this episode especially so. He had fun with lighting Tarot cards on fire while laughing about how the "non-humans" (Anri, Kasane, Celty) as well as Shizuo must make their exit. I wonder how exactly he's planning to go about that, but judging by the preview, I think I know. I'll get to that when I talk about the preview.
Mikage also pointed out that Izaya's whole squad has ditched him. He had dozens of people in Ten, and now they've all up and left except for her and that bald guy. They probably couldn't stand Izaya. Not that I blame them.
By far the most worrisome part of this section were Izaya's words on Mikado. He said that incredibly, this kid self-destructed without any intervention on Izaya's part. (Cough cough, yeah right.) The part that concerns me is the "self-destructing" phrase. Mikado is visibly unraveling and I'm really losing hope for him being able to fix himself, considering the end of the episode. Which I'll get to later.
Next, we have Saki and Anri getting to know each other. Turns out Saki was here to see if Anri had a crush on her boyfriend, but she honestly came at THE worst possible time. I think boyfriend drama is the least of our problems right now. Rest assured Anri is not in love with Masaomi, but the important part of that conversation was Anri's decision to learn about Masaomi's past. She and Mikado knew that he was a gang leader, but they didn't really know the full story. Well, now Anri knows, thus breaking her rule to only reveal her secrets when the three of them were reunited. She chose to find out another way, and this means when the time comes she'll know all there is to know. The best part of this scene was how it starkly contrasted with what Mikado was assuredly saying. Another thing to get to later.
We then have another explanation of The Chronicles of Masaomi's Life and Problems, this time by Masaomi himself to Rocchi. I was right when I said Rocchi was going to help him out, but I'm glad he's at least calling Masaomi out on his BS and basically telling him he's a stupid teenager. He needed to hear that. Also funny how Rocchi accomplished more in thirty seconds than either Mikado or Masaomi have this entire series. "Oh, you want to meet Mikado? Perfect, I'll call him up right now and you two can meet up and talk things out!" Thus demolishing Masaomi's plan to only meet again when the city was back to its normal. Or so we thought. Yet another thing to talk about later. I hope you're noticing the pattern here.
Then there's the bit of chatroom this episode, in which Namie drops all formalities and hints of secrecy to reprimand Mikado. She says, "Come here right now or I'll reveal all your personal information." She's concerned about Seiji, and apparently doxxing Mikado is how she's going to get her answers. He's got better things to do right now than answer her, so I doubt she'll get to talk to him directly. I wonder what kind of dirt she has on him. But regardless, though everyone in the chatroom knows who Mikado is, Izaya is the only one who knows his handle, so if he comes online, he'll be revealing himself anyway.
Most important about this part is the abandonment of pen names and identities. Since the beginning, the chatroom has been a way for the main characters to talk about their lives and such without giving away their real names. Except for Izaya, who knows who everyone is, the list of who knew each others' identities was very short prior to this. The chatroom reflects the story situation at the moment, and like how the plot and city are unraveling at increasingly faster speeds, the chatroom is no longer a place for privacy and secrecy, whether Mikado gets back to Namie or not. She didn't even use a handle of any kind. I was wondering if it's not actually her, but I think it is because the text box was gray, just like Celty's. Namie was at Celty's apartment last we saw, so she probably stole her laptop and entered her real name when logging onto the chatroom. Plus, our previous hacker Kujiragi is otherwise occupied at the moment.
So Namie is very determined to get information out of Mikado, which brings me to what I've been leaving for last until now.
The section on Mikado. I left this till last because the way the episode ended is a good culmination of how the events in this episode all led up to it. Mikado's noticeable unhinging, his dialogue in contrast to Anri's, Rocchi's plan to have Mikado and Masaomi meet again, and Namie's determination to obtain info on Seiji's whereabouts from him are all various events spinning around the thing at the end.
Confusing vagueness aside, the first thing to talk about is Mikado becoming increasingly disheveled. This episode, he was smiling in a very Izaya-like way, as well as being huddled in a corner anxiously biting his nails. Next, right as Saki is spilling Masaomi's secrets to Anri, Mikado is confidently saying that he knows the three of them will confess everything once they're reunited, not knowing that Anri couldn't wait. Then there's Rocchi calling Mikado, which I think was the phone call Mikado received at the end that he ignored. Not part of Rocchi's plan, if that was him. Lastly, Namie wants to know what Seiji's up to and for some reason is confronting Mikado for it. Makes me wonder what he could know, or if she's just desperate.
Speaking of Namie and Mikado, we saw history repeat itself in this episode. Mikado, when talking to Izumii, repeated almost the same words he said to Namie back in the first season, about being weak so relying on numbers instead. This time, it carries an entirely different meaning.
Izumii meets Mikado, and later confesses that he took a liking to the kid because of how he reacted to something. Or in this case, the lack of reaction. Looks like the Aozaki group is trying to get Mikado nailed for a crime, and using Izumii to help them. Doesn't Akabayashi work for them as well? It looked like he was working against them this episode, but it was pretty vague about it.
Lastly there's the elephant in the room to discuss. Izumii gave something to Mikado that he was concealing in his arm, which I'm about 99.9% sure is a gun. Mikado didn't really think anything of it except to thank Izumii for it. Then there was the last part of the episode, where he gets a phone call, but ignores it and puts his phone in his pocket, where I heard it clinking against something. I guess his pocket's big enough for a phone and a gun, but joking aside, I can only wonder what he's going to do with that thing. Ugh.
The preview. So episode 7 is called "No Love's Lost," and the most important part is that it's looking like we get a continuation of the thing with Celty, which didn't get any progress this episode. I was very worried by the lack of Celty this episode, since I really want to know what happens.
We get to see Shizuo meeting Kujiragi, and judging by how a lot of the preview was the two of them talking, it makes me think that will be a big part of the episode. There was also a brief bit of Varona with a gun of her own, so I'm guessing she's leaving the car with Shinra in it and going to meet Kujiragi and Shizuo.
I'm also pretty sure Izaya is doing the narration next episode, which is never a good thing. As I mentioned in the beginning of this week's post, I think he's going to use Kujiragi somehow to get rid of Shizuo. To be honest, she's looking like the most likely candidate to take him out as of right now.
That's all; be back next week to see how this plays out!
Episode Seven
I wanted answers, and instead I only get more questions. Auuuuugh, Narita, why must you make me suffer.
There was some interesting stuff in this episode though. Like the chatroom part with Mikado--as I predicted, as soon as he logged on Namie pounced on him and started revealing tons of personal info anyway to rile him up. Izaya's sisters briefly popped up too, only to say that this chatroom is done for and that Aoba's handle warned them about this. But more importantly, it's doubtful these characters could resume the chatroom same as before, unless they all found another chatroom and used different handles, but even then recognizing typing styles would be pretty easy if it was all the same people. So for now at least, there probably won't be any more chatroom. Unfortunate, I always liked those parts.
As I mentioned above, Namie purposely said all these accusatory things to Mikado to make him angry, and it worked. He kept telling her to stop and she didn't, and now he's fed up with her on top of all this other stuff.
There was also a brief Masaomi moment that made me drop a "Sure Jan" Snapchat on him--when he said he and Mikado would make things up and have a laugh together. If only it were that easy, kiddo.
Also his decision to keep Anri in the dark is frankly idiotic. As if she doesn't already know about you two. Namie isn't helping by telling Mikado that Anri wields a katana and is a monster.
Also, Anri and Saki are now walking to Celty's apartment and all they're gonna find is the ruined remains, some people, and no Celty. I wonder if Saburo, the only normal person there, will talk to Anri, she'll figure out what's going on, and run to help.
Kyohei escaped from the hospital and Erika thinks it's to hunt down the person who ran him over, which is really dumb of him. Can't he wait?
Anyway, I hope she finds him and prevents him from doing anything stupid. He really picked the worst time to come out of his coma.
Now that the other stuff is out of the way, on to what took up most of the time--the continuation of the tale involving Celty, Shizuo, Shinra, Kujiragi, and Varona.
Unfortunately, not a whole lot happened in terms of progress with that. Shizuo showed up to defend Celty which made me go "YEAAAAAAAH GO GET EM" but then left Kujiragi alone to go after Namie's uncle??? Yeah he's the one who wanted Celty's body, but I'm frankly more afraid of Kujiragi and how he just let her walk away after she captured Celty so easily. I also wonder what will become of her, since she said to Shizuo that no one else had ever listened to her properly before.
And if I'm reading my subtitles right, she has the hots for Shinra? What. She called Celty her "rival in love" and if that means what I think it means......yikes.
There was also some conflict between Shizuo and Varona, and a bit of shippiness that made me a bit uncomfortable. I still don't see them as an item, even though I'm fairly sure it's going to happen. Anyway. Then Izaya showed up and started being a dick as usual, and Shizuo said he'd come back for Celty. Um????? Isn't Celty a more pressing issue than defeating the asshole who's causing you trouble???????? He called her a dear friend of his and then goes off to fight Izaya. Okay then.
At least, that's what it's made to look like. Maybe he's going to use the construction equipment to extract Celty somehow. Hell if I know.
Also, it just occurred to me that Celty's head is in close proximity to her body. Kujiragi mentioned she'd probably lose her memories as the Headless Rider (don't you dare Narita), and then she'd sever the connection between head and body once more. However, she didn't count on Izaya being there, and I'm willing to bet he's got something up his sleeve to reunite Celty's head and body and not let them be separated again. Ugh.
Then there's the weird (well, weird-er) part of the episode where Shizuo said "Goodbye" to Izaya and Izaya was like "Yeah, see you." What in the world does that mean. It was a good ending to the episode though, since it's fitting for the last word to be "Sayonara."
I'm guessing Shizuo's saying goodbye because he's about to kick Izaya's ass and Izaya knows he's toast. I don't know why they said that, actually. It's weird.
Lastly, the preview. I saw Erika sneaking around, so I think she's going to find Kyohei? There was some more of Rocchi and Masaomi I think, and more Shizuo and Kujiragi. Most importantly there's a brief flashback of Izaya and Shinra as kids. Thanks, it's not like I needed my heart anyway.
In all honesty, I have no idea what's going to happen. What I WANT to happen is that Shinra breaks free of Saika and rescues Celty, calming her down and restoring her to normal, while her head is whisked away elsewhere. But I know that's not gonna happen. I'm gonna slam my face into a wall now. Be back next week biting my nails for another 24 minutes.
Episode Eight
Only four more episodes left of this show. Oh no. Ohhhh no. Four more weeks of suffering and then that's it for Durarara and I'll be left to suffer over the ending without expecting new content. I'm not ready for it to end.
You know, I said this summer that I was totally down with a Durarara x3 adapting SH, but the more I thought about SH in general the less it seemed like a good idea. I haven't read it so I can't fully judge, but from the vague hints I've learned it sounds to me like a sequel series in which new kids get involved in color gangs and such, with the characters from the original series occasionally making cameos. And it's just like, this is not my beautiful house this is not my beautiful wife. I'm still gonna read it, I'll just be bitter.
Anyway. The episode.
The suspense builds ever higher in this latest chapter of events. Honestly Narita, let's take away some momentum now since we're getting so close to the end. Not much has been happening with plot progression due to so many characters' stories coinciding, but we'll get there.
Before I start talking about events, the animation took a sharp turn downhill this episode. I made a few quality Snapchats about the awkwardly drawn faces and lack of shading, but weirdly enough, the more important scenes were normal and the bad animation stopped midway. I guess the budget isn't suffering enough for the whole episode to be wonky. Not that I'm complaining.
Okay so stuff happened. Izaya set some sort of twisted obstacle course for Shizuo to navigate, so that he can make his way through the temple to the boss fight. I'm honestly not even sure WHY they're fighting right now. Mikage framed it like their ~FINAL FIGHT~ but there isn't really a good motive behind this one. Shizuo is just sick of Izaya getting in his way time after time, I guess. I also think the sole reason this fight IS happening is because Narita figured these two characters should, for the sake of their popularity, duke it out before the series ends because they've been avoiding each other for most of it. So if the characters' popularity is the only thing driving this fight, it's not going to be very exciting for me.
Celty got her head returned this episode. There wasn't even any buildup or anything really. Shingen just popped up out of nowhere and had Egor toss her head right to her, wherein she loses all her memories of Ikebukuro. Wait, what??? You're telling me a major character loses her memories and it's just like, "Okay, that happened"???? They've been talking about it for quite a while and I've been calling this for weeks now, but the actual moment was just whatever. Shingen was basically like "Shinra will build their relationship from square one don't worry about it" and let it fly. While I don't doubt Shinra's persistence, the fact remains that circumstances will NOT be the same. Last time, Celty was driven to Japan in the first place by the need of her head, and made a deal with Shingen out of desperation, and lived as a permanent fixture in their home. So she got to see Shinra grow up and such, whereas now it'll be like, fresh-out-of-the-wild dullahan is annoyed by this human refusing to give up on his affections. She doesn't even have a reason to BE in Japan anymore, so what's to stop her from leaving and going back to Ireland? Although, she still does know Japanese apparently--you can see that from her conversation with Izaya. The only way to fix this mess is if Celty got her memories back. Ugh.
Enough of me ragging on the show.
More of Mikado this episode, in which he reveals the object in his jacket to indeed be a gun (called it) and talks to Rocchi for a bit. The call he received a couple of episodes back was indeed from Rocchi, and now the latter is mad at Mikado for ignoring him so he sent him a few vaguely threatening messages from the chatroom. Now he's claiming Masaomi is his hostage and going to meet with Mikado as an excuse for the two to talk. Only Rocchi clearly said one-on-one and then Mikado is like "How many people can I bring he didn't say" so I'm assuming this meetup is going to go south, like everything else in this show. Mikado and Masaomi are probably going to end up in a fistfight or something.
There was a little bit of worrying internal monologue from Mikado, where he speculates how he doesn't feel excited by the supernatural events occurring around him anymore. Considering he embarked on this weird crusade to feel excited about the city again, things are going from bad to worse. He's becoming like a drug addict whose new high has to keep topping the previous one, although in this case, his best moment where he called on the Dollars for their first meeting, has been so great that nothing else he's tried since can compare. So it follows that he's going to keep putting himself in greater and greater danger until something either gives or he's killed. Ugh Mikado. Why are you like this.
Also in this episode, Nasujima returns with an army of his own Saikas, subdues Haruna, and surrounds Russia Sushi with his gang. His goal? To put Tom under Saika's control and thus use him to control Shizuo. I feel like I'm missing something here, unless his motive is actually Saika's, in which case wanting indirect control over Shizuo makes more sense. I can't really think of a reason why Nasujima wants Shizuo under his thumb.
So they're barricaded in a sushi shop and Simon comes out with flash-bang grenades and a shit ton of guns. I'm not really sure what the point is of shooting people though. They're innocent, and the guns should be used on Nasujima instead of the people he's garnered. In this case, physical strength would be more of an asset because if you pull a gun he's just going to throw people at you. I guess they just don't want to get cut. Anyway.
There was also a little of Anri. She looked rather ill, and I'm sure she can sense all the Saikas under Nasujima's control. I wish they'd show more of Anri's dynamic with Saika since it's one of the more interesting ones of this show, but for now she's taking the sidelines.
Kujiragi and Varona are also fighting Mikage. Though I wonder, why exactly does Kujiragi want to pursue Shizuo? Or maybe it's Izaya she's after. God knows. Aside from that, Kujiragi doesn't have her Saika and Varona is injured so they're at a bit of a disadvantage, but it's still two on one so I don't know.
Erika was hiding from the mobs of Saikas in this episode, and didn't do much else. But finally Kyohei shows up to Shinra and Celty's apartment, looking rather worse for the wear. Since he's after Nasujima, who was in cahoots to hit him, my guess is their hunt is going to take them to where Erika is and then that squad will be reunited.
The flashback of Shinra and Izaya was cute, though it felt a little irrelevant. Just a little though, as it seemed to be foreshadowing the final confrontation between Shizuo and Izaya. I don't think either of them is going to kill the other though. Mostly I was happy to see Shinra, and also sad at the same time.
Speaking of which, the preview. Next episode is called "Walking on Thin Ice" which is a pretty good idiom for how the show is right now. Anyway we see Shinra apparently escaping from the car, and most definitely heading to Celty while still fighting Saika's control. I don't know what's going to happen between them, but yikes. There also looked like continuation between Shizuo and Izaya's fight, which as I mentioned earlier I'm a little indifferent to. I think also some Mikado.
If they're still doing one volume per four episodes, this episode should've been the end of volume 12, though it didn't really seem like an end. Maybe some of the ending was left for next episode. I don't know. I'd have to read the volume or a detailed summary to find out and I'm very carefully avoiding spoilers until the series' end. I haven't even gone on that Reddit thread since Ketsu started because I was sick of being spoiled on minor things. I'll definitely have to kick back and take a day or two to read everything once it does end.
I'm not even going to say I hope for answers anymore this show is taking its sweet time. Be back next week with the inevitable increase in my unanswered questions.
Episode Nine
Three episodes left. Ugh. I'm not ready to die.
Ironically, the one episode I'm expecting not to get any answers is the episode in which my questions are answered. Somewhat. I still have some. I think it's an unavoidable part of watching this show.
Once again, with so many characters' arcs coming together at once, only a couple of plotlines got progression this episode whereas the rest were just shown in brief and didn't do much.
One of those plotlines getting screentime was the fight with Shizuo and Izaya, which as I mentioned I do not understand the motive behind. I just think they picked an extremely odd time and place, as both of them were originally there for different purposes--Izaya to do his usual observing, Shizuo to save Celty. Anyway, the fight itself seemed a bit rushed and Izaya was also a bit out of character in that he blows Shizuo up and thinks what's done is done. Which is why he fell for a girder to the torso. Get rekt Izaya. As a post on Tumblr reminded me, he's been kicked, punched, stabbed, and thrown around a lot in the recent months, so he's not exactly in his top condition right now. But apparently he doesn't care, as long as he can take Shizuo out with him. But wait, hold on. I thought Izaya's whole motive was to start a war, win said war, and then die and be taken to the afterlife by Celty. Now you're telling me he's going to sacrifice himself to kill one person? Okay. Maybe he thinks the war he incited doesn't need any more of his direction. Hell if I know.
There was also the matter of Mikage brawling with Kujiragi and Varona, in which they lampshaded the fact that nobody really knows why they're fighting right now, they just are. Varona wants to kick Izaya's ass instead of Shizuo, but I think Shizuo's got it covered despite having a broken/dislocated arm (When did that happen? I'm going to assume it's when Izaya dropped a crane on him. Savage).
Kujiragi also got a call from Nasujima, which she ignored. I think one way or another, everything's going to come to a head around Russia Sushi, because that's where all the major characters are headed. Except for Celty (who knows what she's up to), Shizuo (who's still in that building), and Izaya (who got tossed to a different building a la TEAM ROCKET'S BLASTING OFF AGAINNNNNN). I feel like Izaya's gotten thrown to a building closer to Russia Sushi though, and since Shizuo will probably be pursuing him, their fight is going to take them there. Anyway, the episode ended with Izaya looking rather worse for the wear, but I'm sure he'll hang in there.
Then there's the matter of Shinra, who decided to pursue Celty while still fighting Saika's control. Why IS he able to resist Saika? I'm going to assume this was explained in the novels and dropped from the anime, and I'm also going to assume it's due to his injury and/or distance. Or maybe his love for Celty overpowers Saika's love for humanity. He seems a bit more lucid than normal, but he's still able to talk in his right mind and stuff. Though I fear if he gets too close to Russia Sushi, he's going to become part of the hivemind of Saika and lose sight of his goal (at least until he sees Celty). I'm also wondering why that girl (damn I can never remember her name) decided to switch goals and help Shinra. I'm guessing she knows Shinra can take her to where Izaya is and she can destroy him.
Also a brief flashback of Shinra, Izaya, and Shizuo in high school. Shinra draws very similar parallels to Elmer from Baccano (who will make the world smile at any cost), in that he'll do absolutely anything for Celty. I think that dialogue was also foreshadowing something in the coming episodes, where maybe we'll see a mark of Shinra's friendship to the two bitterest enemies.
Akabayashi narrated this episode, but didn't contribute to the plot. He hinted he wanted to help Anri out, but made no moves to do so. He also now knows that Anri possesses the sword that cut out his eye, but is trying to tell himself to not worry about it.
Mikado didn't do much this episode, except to hide in the shadows all sinister like. I assume he's going to pop out at the worst moment and then Masaomi will see him and all hell will break loose.
You know, with three episodes left I'd have thought the show would move to some sort of tactical war strategy, but instead there's just an army of Saikas after Tom, Masaomi is overseeing, Mikado's hiding, and Anri's on her way to probably subdue the Saikas. Then there's Celty, doing god knows what; Shizuo and Izaya fighting god knows where; and Kyohei's van gang going after Erika with Namie tagging along for god knows why. I'm giving up on understanding the circumstances at this point. I'll just try to take everything at face value and enjoy things how they are.
I also wonder why everything seems to be converging on Russia Sushi. If I had to guess I'm going to say it's because it's the hub where all the central characters have been at some point during the story. If they haven't been shown eating/working there, then they've mentioned it in passing at least once. That's the only thing I can think of.
Last, the preview. More of Shinra (ow), more of Shizuo looking rather roughed up, Anri struggling to control Saika, and a bit of Kyohei talking. I hope he brings some goddamn sense into this story. There also seemed to be a flashback of Shinra and Celty probably doing something romantic together. Just fuck me up.
Next episode is titled "Telepathy," which is an interesting departure from the idioms that have been all of x2's titles thus far. I'd say maybe it's a reference to some Japanese idiom, except that they've been using English idioms to form the episode titles so far. I'm still waiting for an episode titled "Kill or be Killed."
Oh god after next week there will only be two episodes left. Anri, who's doing the narration next episode, even said that everyone's about to go into battle. Oh nooooo. I'll be back next week, scared and confused as usual.
Episode Ten
GUESS WHO HIT CHARACTER LIMIT AGAIN. So yeah, like last time the last three episodes will be outsourced to Drive.
Here's the link to episode 10: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sK5glRdtQLQBfFBKn9fj9hOeO3yo-NHXYHsB9Ik2SbU/edit?usp=sharing
Episode Eleven
Once again, this rant is on Google Docs. Only one more episode to go!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sD40nIoWptqgokrYsi4KaSjMwrdpsyXFuJIhHyd_Fk8/edit?usp=sharing
Episode Twelve
The finale of this very long saga. Thanks for reading!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_7MSFegypoQuBJv8TKfMDEsycQxei0tt0mz7zOzu7yk/edit?usp=sharing
Posted by Leopah | Jan 9, 2016 4:02 PM | 0 comments
January 1st, 2016
Top 10 of 2015
It's that time of year again! Time for me to write "brief" thoughts on what I watched in 2015 and rank them.
This year, 12 shows achieved my criteria for "2015 anime," which include:
-Finished airing in 2015
-Movies, OVA's, etc. count (though not 1-episode specials)
-Split-cour seasons are counted together
-I finished watching it in 2015
Note: Durarara!!x2 Shou and Ten are not included in this list because there's still Ketsu to look forward to! If I were including them, they'd probably top this list, but rest assured I'm almost positive Durarara x2 as a whole will rank first for 2016. Anyway.
So the 12 shows that fit this criteria are:
-Death Parade
-Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works
-Gangsta
-Kekkai Sensen
-Black Butler: Book of Murder
-KNK: Mirai-hen
-Magi: Adventures of Sinbad
-Noragami Aragoto
-One Punch Man
-Psycho-Pass Movie
-Your Lie in April
-Knights of Sidonia: Battle for Planet Nine
Without further ado, here's my top ten.
10. Gangsta
Score: 6
This series built an interesting concept around the conflict between Twilights (superpowered humans) and the drugs that keep them alive but also slowly kill them. I felt like this wasn't explained enough though, in order to keep the story flowing toward action. The "finale" was also really abrupt. It just ended like any other episode, and nothing was resolved. It felt more like the pentultimate episode than the last one, and there needed to be at least one more episode to wrap things up--it'd have a better score from me if it did. The studio unfortunately went bankrupt right after making this, which explains the sudden ending, but I hope some other studio will pick it up and give it the resolution it needs.
I might read the manga. The anime art style was weird (I didn't like how Alex looked), but the story concept was pretty interesting. And from what I can tell, it was accurate up till the end.
9. Kekkai Sensen
Score: 7
I picked up this anime when the broadcast dub started coming out, and watched that. It was a pretty fun show that gave off the same weird vibes as Baccano (even takes place in New York City too), though Kekkai Sensen features otherworldly beings mixed in with the crazy crowd. I'm sure everyone's heard about the ridiculous delay with the finale. This was due to a lot of poor planning on Bones' part. It would be Bones, right?
Anyway, I thought the finale was......pretty underwhelming. I was hoping it'd be awesome considering we waited four months for it (and then like, another week for it to be subbed), but it just felt rather average. I've heard from people who actually have read the manga that the anime is just an interpretation of events in the manga and not a straight adaptation. Black and White are entirely anime-original, which is odd because I felt like they were the best characters of the show.
Maybe someday I'll read the manga! No translation group has picked it up yet that I know of (though it's been a while since I checked), but if anyone does I might check it out! I also heard through the grapevine that Kekkai Sensen was a HUGE unexpected sellout (part of the reason for the delayed finale), and it sold better than Noragami which got a second season, so I wonder if a second season of this is possible. I'd certainly watch one, though it's unclear whether they would continue the original adaptation or go for a more accurate one.
8. Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works
Score: 7.5
Let's just call this Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Budget Works okay. The animation was fucking amazing, and that's really the best way to sum it up. The magic effects were some really neat CGI, the servants fighting skipped no detail, and the backgrounds were gorgeous. Particularly Archer's reality marble, with the landscape of swords.
Aside from the art, which I could rant about for a lot longer, the story was pretty all right. Shirou is a boring protagonist and Rin's a textbook tsundere, and their back and forth could be pretty tiresome--working together, turning against each other, and working together again. There was also a lot of rule-breaking in the war itself, and Gilgamesh joining the fight was just random.
I also had the issue that they kept doing backstories and then killing the character off right after. It happened multiple times and got really frustrating.
Despite all the rules they totally disregarded by the end, the season finales were really cool, and worth all the boringness between fights (this series is a nefarious infodump and it can be very dull). I'm looking forward to Heaven's Feel; wonder if they'll make that into a TV series too.
7. Psycho-Pass Movie
Score: 8
So the movie aired January 2015 but wasn't subbed until late July--DVD waits and all. I felt like it introduced an interesting concept with spreading Sibyl (or Sybil? Funimation's subbing was very inconsistent) to other nations, but in classic Urobuchi fashion it was hard to follow. There was also a ridiculous amount of English being spoken that really didn't do much to enhance the experience, since it was hard to understand through the accent. I was also hoping the original team could reunite at some point, but it didn't happen. At least they chose to totally disregard the second season, since it wasn't all that strong to begin with.
6. Death Parade
Score: 8
An expansion on the premise introduced in Death Billiards, a 2013 short movie, Death Parade is a full 12 episodes with the same concept. I have to say, this show felt like a pretty weak start. I was apathetic to it for the first three episodes--it was rather a snooze. Then it started getting better and better by adding new twists into it. Like, what if both people being judged were good enough to deserve reincarnation? What if both were equally horrible people? Then we start getting into backstories and whether arbiters, who were never human, are fit to judge humans in the first place. Episode 11 was by far the best of the show, and had the one scene that everyone who's seen the show loved. If you haven't seen Death Parade, search on YouTube "Death Parade ice skating scene." The music, animation, and story all came together absolutely beautifully in this big reveal we'd been waiting for the entire show. Moonlit Night still kills me even months after I watched the episode. Obviously this scene makes so much more sense if you've seen the show, so if you're planning on watching it I wouldn't spoil yourself.
Then came the last episode, which frankly was a disappointment by comparison. Shame too, because I had really been looking forward to how they'd resolve the conflict, but instead it just felt rushed and poorly presented. There were still some heartbreaking moments, but the show definitely reached its peak with episode 11, and from there it was rather eh.
In classic Madhouse fashion, the animation is great. No noticeable drops in quality, and Decim's string trick thing looked really cool. Also, the opening is a wonderful song but doesn't fit with the show at ALL. I have to wonder which decision resulted in this.
5. One Punch Man
Score: 8
This was probably one of the most anticipated shows of 2015 as far as I could tell (personally, I was more excited for Durarara x2 and Noragami Aragoto, but those are just my biases).
One Punch Man is really fun! I thought the concept of "man being able to kill all enemies in one punch" would get repetitive and boring in 12 episodes, but it turned out there was a lot more to it! A superhero guild, hero rankings, weekly quotas, and a rival that I could only see as a Yato knockoff. It's great because you'd expect someone like Genos to be the protagonist since he's got all the qualities of one, but instead it's this impassive egg.
Animated by Madhouse again, and the animation is just.....dang. The fighting looks so cool, and they don't even skimp on details like Mumen Rider carefully parking his bike and walking away. Speaking of, Mumen Rider is good and pure and we should protect him.
The OST is also really cool. Tatsumaki wins the award for best character theme.
As far as I could tell they stuck to the manga really well, and I'd love a second season. It certainly seems popular enough for one.
4. Black Butler: Book of Murder
Score: 9
I don't really remember this well to be honest, since it aired so early in 2015. I do remember my overall impressions of the story was that it tied everything together really well, and was a direct stab in the feels. I love the movie-length OVA thing they had going on, and I'm also excited for the actual movie coming next year! I still need to read Black Butler, but I hear speculation about which particular arc the movie will cover--there seems to be two favorites among fans. I'm also glad A-1 is still interested enough in Black Butler to continually reboot it; I know how much of a disaster the original anime was.
3. Kyoukai no Kanata: I'll Be Here (Mirai-hen)
Score: 9
This movie came out in April, and wasn't subbed until October. I thought the wait would kill me, and it very nearly did ever since we found out KNK was getting a sequel. Thankfully, by some stroke of pure luck, the movie was online and subbed only three days after it came out on DVD. This is a record I've never heard of happening before--usually it takes a month or so for anime movies to get subbed after being released on DVD, and those are for popular anime series. KNK seems decently popular to me, but it certainly doesn't have the explosiveness of big hits like Attack on Titan, or One Punch Man as I mentioned previously. So how did this end up being subbed after three days? I have no idea but I'd love to shower praise on the people who made this happen.
Concerning the actual movie, it was everything I dreamed it would be and more. The animation was great, it pretty much made me cry every five minutes, and the ending left me a mess. Judging by the way it ended and the fact that you don't usually see a season 2 after a sequel movie, I don't think we're getting more KNK, but this movie wrapped things up perfectly and I'm still dead inside. I'm sure some people are complaining it was too melodramatic or whatever, but as someone invested in this show to begin with, the drama felt appropriate.
My friends need to watch this movie and join me in dying and being dead.
2. Your Lie in April
Score: 9
This show is pretty highly controversial. It seems to me that people either love it or hate it, and the discourse over it is frankly getting old. The two big issues with it are the pacing and comedy, both of which I agree are issues. However, the pacing didn't really affect me very much since I watched this show in two days flat, so I didn't feel the slowness even though I could tell it was slow. As for the comedy, it really ruined the mood and I never found it funny. It was just so jarring.
But people need to look past those issues and appreciate the show itself because when it hits its highs, it's almost unmatched. The musical moments are gorgeous, and the overarching message is very poweful. Even if you think it's too melodramatic or whatever, I personally took a lot away from this show.
It's really hard to properly articulate my thoughts on this show, especially without saying spoilers, but the bottom line is I hugely enjoyed it despite its flaws, which is why it comes in ranked #2 on this list.
And for the top anime of 2015,
1. Noragami Aragoto
Score: 9
Are we surprised by my choices? If you know me at all, you should not be.
Last year I said I hoped Noragami would get a second season, but I honestly didn't think it would happen because Bones doesn't normally make second seasons. So when it was announced in May, I flipped my shit. I finally got around to reading the manga, and once I read the stuff that would be in Aragoto, I was unbelievably excited for it to air.
And, as you'd probably know from my review, my hype levels were at maximum for the entirety of its airing. Even while I was afraid Bones would pull some anime-original bullshit on us, it was still always "Is it Friday yet?"
The great thing too is, while reading the manga I knew the Bishamon arc would be animated. I never thought the Underworld arc would be too--"it's too long" was my main concern, but they pulled it off decently well, so it was a nice surprise for us manga readers.
Even though I'm salty about the big changes they pulled in the second half of the season, my enjoyment factor for Aragoto was still much too high for it to not be topping my 2015 list.
Though Bones isn't very good about second or third seasons, I'm as sure as I can be without numbers that Aragoto will far outsell season 1. I can only hope it does well enough for a season 3 once the current manga arc is finished, since there's so much good shit in the God's Greatest Secret arc that I NEED to see animated. The good news is, Bones is at least interested in one--that after-credits scene in the finale, anyone? The director also said that the anime is over "for now." So people are speculating they're at least planning a season 3, and I really hope it can happen. If it happens, and airs next year, expect Durarara x2 to have some pretty hearty competition, ahaha.
Either way, there's still the other Aragoto OVA in March! I just reread that chapter last night, and seeing it animated is going to kill me. Can't wait.
So there you have it! My favorite 2015 anime is Noragami Aragoto, while my favorite anime that I watched in 2015 (that didn't air that year) is Code Geass, with Haikyuu and Space Dandy coming in very close behind. Too bad I didn't watch the latter shows in 2014 when they aired, because then I could have booted some worse animes off my list, haha.
My anime goals for 2016 aren't too lofty--the only thing I know for sure I'm watching is Ketsu, and I'll look at shows based on how other people seem to be excited for them. I really, really want to read all the manga on my plan to read this year though. I have no idea how to prioritize said manga, but I'm gonna make it happen somehow.
This year, 12 shows achieved my criteria for "2015 anime," which include:
-Finished airing in 2015
-Movies, OVA's, etc. count (though not 1-episode specials)
-Split-cour seasons are counted together
-I finished watching it in 2015
Note: Durarara!!x2 Shou and Ten are not included in this list because there's still Ketsu to look forward to! If I were including them, they'd probably top this list, but rest assured I'm almost positive Durarara x2 as a whole will rank first for 2016. Anyway.
So the 12 shows that fit this criteria are:
-Death Parade
-Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works
-Gangsta
-Kekkai Sensen
-Black Butler: Book of Murder
-KNK: Mirai-hen
-Magi: Adventures of Sinbad
-Noragami Aragoto
-One Punch Man
-Psycho-Pass Movie
-Your Lie in April
-Knights of Sidonia: Battle for Planet Nine
Without further ado, here's my top ten.
10. Gangsta
Score: 6
This series built an interesting concept around the conflict between Twilights (superpowered humans) and the drugs that keep them alive but also slowly kill them. I felt like this wasn't explained enough though, in order to keep the story flowing toward action. The "finale" was also really abrupt. It just ended like any other episode, and nothing was resolved. It felt more like the pentultimate episode than the last one, and there needed to be at least one more episode to wrap things up--it'd have a better score from me if it did. The studio unfortunately went bankrupt right after making this, which explains the sudden ending, but I hope some other studio will pick it up and give it the resolution it needs.
I might read the manga. The anime art style was weird (I didn't like how Alex looked), but the story concept was pretty interesting. And from what I can tell, it was accurate up till the end.
9. Kekkai Sensen
Score: 7
I picked up this anime when the broadcast dub started coming out, and watched that. It was a pretty fun show that gave off the same weird vibes as Baccano (even takes place in New York City too), though Kekkai Sensen features otherworldly beings mixed in with the crazy crowd. I'm sure everyone's heard about the ridiculous delay with the finale. This was due to a lot of poor planning on Bones' part. It would be Bones, right?
Anyway, I thought the finale was......pretty underwhelming. I was hoping it'd be awesome considering we waited four months for it (and then like, another week for it to be subbed), but it just felt rather average. I've heard from people who actually have read the manga that the anime is just an interpretation of events in the manga and not a straight adaptation. Black and White are entirely anime-original, which is odd because I felt like they were the best characters of the show.
Maybe someday I'll read the manga! No translation group has picked it up yet that I know of (though it's been a while since I checked), but if anyone does I might check it out! I also heard through the grapevine that Kekkai Sensen was a HUGE unexpected sellout (part of the reason for the delayed finale), and it sold better than Noragami which got a second season, so I wonder if a second season of this is possible. I'd certainly watch one, though it's unclear whether they would continue the original adaptation or go for a more accurate one.
8. Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works
Score: 7.5
Let's just call this Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Budget Works okay. The animation was fucking amazing, and that's really the best way to sum it up. The magic effects were some really neat CGI, the servants fighting skipped no detail, and the backgrounds were gorgeous. Particularly Archer's reality marble, with the landscape of swords.
Aside from the art, which I could rant about for a lot longer, the story was pretty all right. Shirou is a boring protagonist and Rin's a textbook tsundere, and their back and forth could be pretty tiresome--working together, turning against each other, and working together again. There was also a lot of rule-breaking in the war itself, and Gilgamesh joining the fight was just random.
I also had the issue that they kept doing backstories and then killing the character off right after. It happened multiple times and got really frustrating.
Despite all the rules they totally disregarded by the end, the season finales were really cool, and worth all the boringness between fights (this series is a nefarious infodump and it can be very dull). I'm looking forward to Heaven's Feel; wonder if they'll make that into a TV series too.
7. Psycho-Pass Movie
Score: 8
So the movie aired January 2015 but wasn't subbed until late July--DVD waits and all. I felt like it introduced an interesting concept with spreading Sibyl (or Sybil? Funimation's subbing was very inconsistent) to other nations, but in classic Urobuchi fashion it was hard to follow. There was also a ridiculous amount of English being spoken that really didn't do much to enhance the experience, since it was hard to understand through the accent. I was also hoping the original team could reunite at some point, but it didn't happen. At least they chose to totally disregard the second season, since it wasn't all that strong to begin with.
6. Death Parade
Score: 8
An expansion on the premise introduced in Death Billiards, a 2013 short movie, Death Parade is a full 12 episodes with the same concept. I have to say, this show felt like a pretty weak start. I was apathetic to it for the first three episodes--it was rather a snooze. Then it started getting better and better by adding new twists into it. Like, what if both people being judged were good enough to deserve reincarnation? What if both were equally horrible people? Then we start getting into backstories and whether arbiters, who were never human, are fit to judge humans in the first place. Episode 11 was by far the best of the show, and had the one scene that everyone who's seen the show loved. If you haven't seen Death Parade, search on YouTube "Death Parade ice skating scene." The music, animation, and story all came together absolutely beautifully in this big reveal we'd been waiting for the entire show. Moonlit Night still kills me even months after I watched the episode. Obviously this scene makes so much more sense if you've seen the show, so if you're planning on watching it I wouldn't spoil yourself.
Then came the last episode, which frankly was a disappointment by comparison. Shame too, because I had really been looking forward to how they'd resolve the conflict, but instead it just felt rushed and poorly presented. There were still some heartbreaking moments, but the show definitely reached its peak with episode 11, and from there it was rather eh.
In classic Madhouse fashion, the animation is great. No noticeable drops in quality, and Decim's string trick thing looked really cool. Also, the opening is a wonderful song but doesn't fit with the show at ALL. I have to wonder which decision resulted in this.
5. One Punch Man
Score: 8
This was probably one of the most anticipated shows of 2015 as far as I could tell (personally, I was more excited for Durarara x2 and Noragami Aragoto, but those are just my biases).
One Punch Man is really fun! I thought the concept of "man being able to kill all enemies in one punch" would get repetitive and boring in 12 episodes, but it turned out there was a lot more to it! A superhero guild, hero rankings, weekly quotas, and a rival that I could only see as a Yato knockoff. It's great because you'd expect someone like Genos to be the protagonist since he's got all the qualities of one, but instead it's this impassive egg.
Animated by Madhouse again, and the animation is just.....dang. The fighting looks so cool, and they don't even skimp on details like Mumen Rider carefully parking his bike and walking away. Speaking of, Mumen Rider is good and pure and we should protect him.
The OST is also really cool. Tatsumaki wins the award for best character theme.
As far as I could tell they stuck to the manga really well, and I'd love a second season. It certainly seems popular enough for one.
4. Black Butler: Book of Murder
Score: 9
I don't really remember this well to be honest, since it aired so early in 2015. I do remember my overall impressions of the story was that it tied everything together really well, and was a direct stab in the feels. I love the movie-length OVA thing they had going on, and I'm also excited for the actual movie coming next year! I still need to read Black Butler, but I hear speculation about which particular arc the movie will cover--there seems to be two favorites among fans. I'm also glad A-1 is still interested enough in Black Butler to continually reboot it; I know how much of a disaster the original anime was.
3. Kyoukai no Kanata: I'll Be Here (Mirai-hen)
Score: 9
This movie came out in April, and wasn't subbed until October. I thought the wait would kill me, and it very nearly did ever since we found out KNK was getting a sequel. Thankfully, by some stroke of pure luck, the movie was online and subbed only three days after it came out on DVD. This is a record I've never heard of happening before--usually it takes a month or so for anime movies to get subbed after being released on DVD, and those are for popular anime series. KNK seems decently popular to me, but it certainly doesn't have the explosiveness of big hits like Attack on Titan, or One Punch Man as I mentioned previously. So how did this end up being subbed after three days? I have no idea but I'd love to shower praise on the people who made this happen.
Concerning the actual movie, it was everything I dreamed it would be and more. The animation was great, it pretty much made me cry every five minutes, and the ending left me a mess. Judging by the way it ended and the fact that you don't usually see a season 2 after a sequel movie, I don't think we're getting more KNK, but this movie wrapped things up perfectly and I'm still dead inside. I'm sure some people are complaining it was too melodramatic or whatever, but as someone invested in this show to begin with, the drama felt appropriate.
My friends need to watch this movie and join me in dying and being dead.
2. Your Lie in April
Score: 9
This show is pretty highly controversial. It seems to me that people either love it or hate it, and the discourse over it is frankly getting old. The two big issues with it are the pacing and comedy, both of which I agree are issues. However, the pacing didn't really affect me very much since I watched this show in two days flat, so I didn't feel the slowness even though I could tell it was slow. As for the comedy, it really ruined the mood and I never found it funny. It was just so jarring.
But people need to look past those issues and appreciate the show itself because when it hits its highs, it's almost unmatched. The musical moments are gorgeous, and the overarching message is very poweful. Even if you think it's too melodramatic or whatever, I personally took a lot away from this show.
It's really hard to properly articulate my thoughts on this show, especially without saying spoilers, but the bottom line is I hugely enjoyed it despite its flaws, which is why it comes in ranked #2 on this list.
And for the top anime of 2015,
1. Noragami Aragoto
Score: 9
Are we surprised by my choices? If you know me at all, you should not be.
Last year I said I hoped Noragami would get a second season, but I honestly didn't think it would happen because Bones doesn't normally make second seasons. So when it was announced in May, I flipped my shit. I finally got around to reading the manga, and once I read the stuff that would be in Aragoto, I was unbelievably excited for it to air.
And, as you'd probably know from my review, my hype levels were at maximum for the entirety of its airing. Even while I was afraid Bones would pull some anime-original bullshit on us, it was still always "Is it Friday yet?"
The great thing too is, while reading the manga I knew the Bishamon arc would be animated. I never thought the Underworld arc would be too--"it's too long" was my main concern, but they pulled it off decently well, so it was a nice surprise for us manga readers.
Even though I'm salty about the big changes they pulled in the second half of the season, my enjoyment factor for Aragoto was still much too high for it to not be topping my 2015 list.
Though Bones isn't very good about second or third seasons, I'm as sure as I can be without numbers that Aragoto will far outsell season 1. I can only hope it does well enough for a season 3 once the current manga arc is finished, since there's so much good shit in the God's Greatest Secret arc that I NEED to see animated. The good news is, Bones is at least interested in one--that after-credits scene in the finale, anyone? The director also said that the anime is over "for now." So people are speculating they're at least planning a season 3, and I really hope it can happen. If it happens, and airs next year, expect Durarara x2 to have some pretty hearty competition, ahaha.
Either way, there's still the other Aragoto OVA in March! I just reread that chapter last night, and seeing it animated is going to kill me. Can't wait.
So there you have it! My favorite 2015 anime is Noragami Aragoto, while my favorite anime that I watched in 2015 (that didn't air that year) is Code Geass, with Haikyuu and Space Dandy coming in very close behind. Too bad I didn't watch the latter shows in 2014 when they aired, because then I could have booted some worse animes off my list, haha.
My anime goals for 2016 aren't too lofty--the only thing I know for sure I'm watching is Ketsu, and I'll look at shows based on how other people seem to be excited for them. I really, really want to read all the manga on my plan to read this year though. I have no idea how to prioritize said manga, but I'm gonna make it happen somehow.
Posted by Leopah | Jan 1, 2016 11:20 PM | 0 comments
December 12th, 2015
On Manga and Manga Artstyles
So now that I've read a few more manga series, I thought I should compile a post on my impressions on the art! Talking about readability, flow, that sort of thing.
Obviously I haven't read MUCH manga so I'll be adding to this post as I read more.
Spoiler-free.
Fullmetal Alchemist
I adore FMA's art style, because it comes across as less stereotypically "anime" and more cartoony. In fact, it's a bit of a shame that both 03 and Brotherhood changed the art style to be more "anime" than the source material, especially since the animes for Silver Spoon and Arslan Senki stuck pretty closely to it.
I love how Arakawa draws the chibi characters, and her facial expressions are fantastic. She's really good at portraying emotion through just a few lines, even if the characters themselves aren't usually fully drawn out. That said, she has a very nice attention to detail by making a character like Ed, who has really complicated automail, or Al, who's a hulking suit of armor with a lot of small details that can be easily overlooked. As well as the military uniforms, which are really adorned with stars, stripes, and logos. She's also good about making the characters change clothes regularly, something that wasn't always portrayed in the anime.
Then there's the crowning jewel of FMA's art, which I've seen praised time and time again. And it deserves to be praised. And that's Arakawa's facial diversity. Each named character looks distinctly different, not just in hair and clothing, but in body type, build, eye shape, and noses. She's really good at coming up with different features for each race in her series, but not enough so that all people of the same race look alike.
Also, fanservice. There really isn't any aside from Winry being shown bathing, like, once. It's a pretty nice thing to not have to rely on cheap fanservice to make a scene comedic, and also something I didn't appreciate until after I watched and read other series.
Her art also improves over the series' run of course, but it seems to become more minimalistic as it goes. In terms of actual style, there's very little change, but one of the things I noticed from the series' beginning to the series' end is that she uses less and less lines to render her characters. It works out quite well for her.
I will say, though, that sometimes the panels can be a little confusing to follow--it's been a while since I read FMA but I remember having to rely on my knowledge of what transpired in the anime during some parts (having watched Brotherhood before reading the manga). That could also be due to this being my first manga, so I don't know for sure. I will reread FMA someday probably, even though the anime is pretty sufficient.
Attack on Titan
SNK was the second manga I read, and I'm still following it over two years later, even though I'm not all about the series anymore.
This series....does not have the greatest art. Granted, Isayama is young and this is his first series, and the art definitely does improve, but there's still a lot of issues I have with it. Namely, that it's really hard to understand what's going on at times. I remember reading it for the first time and being very confused as to the flow of action. There's still some things I'll wait for season 2 to clear up, but I remember having to discuss it with friends to go over what we think happened.
The art style's pretty odd too. I like that Isayama is going for a more realistic feel to it, since I think the mood of this series would look weird with a typically anime style, but sometimes the way he draws eyes is so strange. The 3DMG is really poorly rendered at first too, no more than some sketchy lines to guide the eye. I remember reading that Wit Studio worked closely with Isayama to decide how it would look while animated, and Isayama consequently making it more distinct in the manga thereafter.
Speaking of the anime, the art style of the anime is sort of semi-realistic too, but it's also, like FMA, pretty different from the manga. In this case it's sort of excusable since the art in Attack on Titan is so loosely drawn, but I'm not too big a fan of how they changed some characters' hair (cough cough Armin).
I think Isayama is also pretty good about differentiating facial features, though not to the extent of Arakawa. I'd like to see some more diversity in upcoming chapters, though.
Praise the lack of fanservice in this series. It'd be so out of place here, and completely mood-ruining, so I'm glad Isayama was conservative in his clothing choices and we never have the issue of panties or boobs showing.
Then there's another issue I have with the series, and that's the very odd poses characters are sometimes put in. I know the poor guy is under a lot of stress, but sometimes characters are awkwardly placed in a panel and end up looking very strange. The best example I can think of is Sasha in a chapter a couple of years ago (not a spoiler):
Why is she doing the Shaft head tilt there? We just don't know.
Noragami
Noragami's art starts off pretty frackin good, and only gets better from there. There have been some minor changes in character design since the beginning, but it was to help improve readability. For example, Yato's tracksuit went from being drawn as black on white to black on gray to reduce contrast. I also think it makes it look cleaner and more refined. Yukine's hair has also changed quite a bit in the series' run, going from one solid form to loose and spiky. Bishamon's hair also changed gradually once the anime started airing, and I think she looks older now too.
Art style wise, not much has changed. The gods still have the catlike eyes, and the hair is still drawn very freely and blows back and swipes sideways a lot, much like real hair. Adachitoka is also really good about having their characters change outfits regularly. While the anime doesn't always show this, Hiyori and Yukine change outfits pretty much every chapter (I remember too, rereading one of the early Underworld chapters Yukine's clothing changed three seperate times to show the passage of time). Yato also sometimes puts his hair up in a ponytail, though he likes to stick to his tracksuit for the most part.
Facial diversity is pretty strong here too. Named characters all look distinctly different, except for when the similarities are purposeful. There's also the odd case of a certain resemblance. It's really subtle, not enough to give away the plot point in advance, but once you notice it you have to marvel at how clever it is that these two characters look similar, but not enough to notice it at first.
Adachitoka also put a lot of love and detail into coming up with each character's outfit, and it reflects each person's personality. I also love Bishamon's armored outfit that finally debuted in the anime in yesterday's episode, since it's not skimpy and revealing like most female armor you see.
Speaking of skimpy and revealing, Noragami does have a bit of fanservice (though I think the anime does it more). Panty shots, while not nonexistent, are not uncommon either. At least the panty shots are more in a practical sense as in female characters fighting, not just "Ohh no my panties are showing!" It's more forgivable this way. There's also more of the female characters shown bathing than the male characters. Whaaaatever.
I also love how richly the backgrounds are drawn. Toka's got a very nice eye for detail, and leaves nothing to the imagination as far as where each scene is taking place. This, I think, is part of the reason that led to the anime having such nice backgrounds as well. Sometimes the panels can get kind of cluttered with the backgrounds and speech bubbles competing for space, but I feel like this problem has been reduced since the series began.
It's pretty easy to tell what's happening too. The flow of action is normal and smooth, and though there were a couple of vague spots, I was always able to figure out what I was missing pretty easily.
The facial expressions are well-done (particularly when it comes to pain), and the chibi characters are appropriately timed and funny to boot. I also love how the color pages look--there's a unique watercolor style to them and it's a lot different than the usual bolder cell-shading colors I see.
Adachitoka's pretty good about when to use full-page spreads. They appear at critical moments and always chock full of action and detail, but there's never too many. I also think the use of speech bubbles at some points is pretty clever too, being used to cover up faces or eyes when the character's emotion is ambiguous, and on a more lighthearted side, at one point Yato is being shown stabbed by the bubble when Hiyori and Yukine are talking shit about him. I can't locate the panel in question right now, but I'll be sure to add it in once I do.
Nowadays, the art is clean, full, and detailed. It's overall just a pleasure to look at, and it's worth reading the manga for the art alone, not even taking into account the story and characters that I adore so much.
All in all, pretty much top marks for Noragami's art across the board.
Soul Eater
Soul Eater definitely wins the award for most improved. The art style in the beginning is weird and brings to mind the emo fad of the early 2000's. It's also a bit reminiscient of Clannad in the facial shape and eyes. However, it pretty quickly improves, and by the time where the anime leaves off, the art style is exactly like the anime, and I'm glad the anime chose that style over the earlier one. From there, the art only gets better, and by the time the series wraps up, the style's changed quite dramatically to a more cartoony and bubbly style. While I'm most of a fan of the art style they used in the anime due to my personal biases of having watched that first, the later style is still really good too.
Atsushi Ookubo is a very talented guy. First off, there was never a moment where I questioned what was happening. The panels flow really easily and there are no vague moments. He uses bendy panels for the madness and when Soul is playing the piano, and there's a really cool part where Stein's cigarette smoke forms his speech bubble. It's really subtle though, and I think that's part of the magic. There's also one later chapter in particular that he makes really good use of a creepy parody of a children's book. If you've read the manga you should know exactly what I'm referring to. It makes the scene that much more eerie that he's paralleling something he drew earlier on in that same chapter.
The action scenes are really well drawn too. The poses never look ridiculous or contrived, and once again, it's really easy to follow what's happening.
Full-page spreads are awesome. Unlike Noragami's which are full of detail (which is fine for the series), oftentimes Soul Eater's are really simplistic, which only serves to magnify the importance of the scene. There's another one in one of the later chapters with one of the characters floating in a white void, talking to a dark cloud. Other than that, the page is completely blank and it serves great to enhance the mood. Once again if you've read the manga you should know to which part I am referring.
The facial expressions are great. Appropriately funny, angry, or sad. Particularly with Crona, who makes a lot of creepy faces, even more so in the later chapters. I'm not sure HOW he makes those faces exactly, but they're really good.
The only big issue I have with Soul Eater's art is the fanservice. There's tons of ridiculous nudity in the beginning, taking every possible opportunity to show the female characters naked or with panties showing--there's even a part in the beginning where the kids get Sid to talk by flipping up the skirts of Maka and Tsubaki against their will, and they're of course blushing and going "Oh nooo, my panties!" Luckily, the fanservice drops off pretty fast after that. Maka's skirt quickly becomes magic, and we don't have the issue of panty shots again. The fanservice flares up a bit again at the end with more boob shots, but never as bad as in the beginning.
All in all, Soul Eater not only has great art, it excels in the technical field too. Definitely worth a read once you get past the weird art of the beginning.
Pandora Hearts
Since I've finished Pandora Hearts I can finally give a more comprehensive review.
The art starts off pretty beautiful from the get-go, and it only improves from there. The characters' hair is more defined, the body shapes become less tiny and more full, and the facial expressions are spot-on.
Oz also seems to age up over the series' course, although the series took place over an undefined amount of time (my guess is no more than a year). The art style doesn't change a whole lot, but the art gets cleaner and better. Gilbert also seems to age up just slightly, mostly in that his chin is drawn squarer which makes him look more his age.
The color spreads also remain as beautiful as ever, and every time there was one I'd look at it and admire how Mochijun colors so perfectly.
One complaint I had at the beginning is that it was really hard to understand the flow of action. Thankfully, this improves and in the later chapters I could understand what was happening from panel to panel. In terms of story, I still remained pretty foggy on details even till the end. I think it's a flaw of the story itself that some things aren't explained properly, and there's also a difference between intentionally keeping it vague and just not going into detail. So the vagueness of the story probably contributed to how I was having trouble reading the panels at first.
Another thing I noticed (a bit later on) is that I don't think Mochijun likes drawing legs and/or is not very good at them. Most of the panels are heads or waist-up shots, and a lot of the time the characters' clothing covers their legs anyway--she's fond of long coats. When legs were drawn they seemed a bit awkward, and the result of not drawing them very much is that sometimes the flow can be a bit stagnant with the lack of full-body shots.
I think the panels are really nicely used later on in the manga's course (aside from the issue with the legs), particularly with the character deaths. The action seems to slow down, and the character has time for a brief solliloquy before they pass on. There was also one panel in the end of volume 22 (that I did not see in the online version; possibly it was exclusive to the volume) that was a minimalistic full-page spread used during a character death for maximum emotional impact. I can't talk about what it depicted due to spoilers, but it was very touching and helped to round off the moment.
I've also started reading Mochijun's new series, Vanitas no Carte. I won't be able to give a decent review of the manga's art for a looooong time, since there's only two chapters out right now. So far though, it looks very pretty and there's detailed backgrounds, better so than in Pandora Hearts. Color spreads are as great as ever. I didn't notice the thing with the legs, but I wasn't really paying attention to it either. Although, since it takes place in steampunk AU 1800's France, the long dresses still cover the legs, at least with the female characters.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
So that's it for manga I've read! I plan to review others once I read them, but for now I'll just give impressions on what I've seen around the Internet thus far.
In no particular order.
Magi
Looks pretty clean. The art style is a bit odd, but I think it should be easy to tell what's happening since it's so refined. Also the facial expressions are great.
Blue Exorcist
Actually I haven't seen much of this manga? My friend's been reading it though, and she says the art is very nice and pretty. She showed me a random page that had beautiful clean lines in the foreground and background, and very good perspective. And she said all the panels are like that.
Haikyuu!!
The art style looks really weird tbh. The art style in the anime is odd as well, but less so. In the manga it looks like chibis most of the time, but that could also just be what I'm seeing. It also looks like it might be hard to follow. Facial expressions are great though.
Black Butler
I can tell without having seen much that the art is beautiful. Not really much else to say here.
Ouran
Really weird art style, and Tamaki's hair has a ridiculous amount of detail, but my friends say it's worth it to read just for the story and characters.
Fruits Basket
Another one with a reaaaaaally weird art style. Kyo looks like a character out of a yaoi manga, quite honestly. Though that's probably due to the age of the series.
Silver Spoon
More Arakawa yaaaaay. I'm excited to see the improvements made in FMA continued here.
Princess Jellyfish
Once again, another series I haven't seen much of the art for. It looks cute enough, though.
Koe no Katachi
Well the main guy looks pretty odd, but I was signed up for this series for the story anyway, haha.
Obviously I haven't read MUCH manga so I'll be adding to this post as I read more.
Spoiler-free.
Fullmetal Alchemist
I adore FMA's art style, because it comes across as less stereotypically "anime" and more cartoony. In fact, it's a bit of a shame that both 03 and Brotherhood changed the art style to be more "anime" than the source material, especially since the animes for Silver Spoon and Arslan Senki stuck pretty closely to it.
I love how Arakawa draws the chibi characters, and her facial expressions are fantastic. She's really good at portraying emotion through just a few lines, even if the characters themselves aren't usually fully drawn out. That said, she has a very nice attention to detail by making a character like Ed, who has really complicated automail, or Al, who's a hulking suit of armor with a lot of small details that can be easily overlooked. As well as the military uniforms, which are really adorned with stars, stripes, and logos. She's also good about making the characters change clothes regularly, something that wasn't always portrayed in the anime.
Then there's the crowning jewel of FMA's art, which I've seen praised time and time again. And it deserves to be praised. And that's Arakawa's facial diversity. Each named character looks distinctly different, not just in hair and clothing, but in body type, build, eye shape, and noses. She's really good at coming up with different features for each race in her series, but not enough so that all people of the same race look alike.
Also, fanservice. There really isn't any aside from Winry being shown bathing, like, once. It's a pretty nice thing to not have to rely on cheap fanservice to make a scene comedic, and also something I didn't appreciate until after I watched and read other series.
Her art also improves over the series' run of course, but it seems to become more minimalistic as it goes. In terms of actual style, there's very little change, but one of the things I noticed from the series' beginning to the series' end is that she uses less and less lines to render her characters. It works out quite well for her.
I will say, though, that sometimes the panels can be a little confusing to follow--it's been a while since I read FMA but I remember having to rely on my knowledge of what transpired in the anime during some parts (having watched Brotherhood before reading the manga). That could also be due to this being my first manga, so I don't know for sure. I will reread FMA someday probably, even though the anime is pretty sufficient.
Attack on Titan
SNK was the second manga I read, and I'm still following it over two years later, even though I'm not all about the series anymore.
This series....does not have the greatest art. Granted, Isayama is young and this is his first series, and the art definitely does improve, but there's still a lot of issues I have with it. Namely, that it's really hard to understand what's going on at times. I remember reading it for the first time and being very confused as to the flow of action. There's still some things I'll wait for season 2 to clear up, but I remember having to discuss it with friends to go over what we think happened.
The art style's pretty odd too. I like that Isayama is going for a more realistic feel to it, since I think the mood of this series would look weird with a typically anime style, but sometimes the way he draws eyes is so strange. The 3DMG is really poorly rendered at first too, no more than some sketchy lines to guide the eye. I remember reading that Wit Studio worked closely with Isayama to decide how it would look while animated, and Isayama consequently making it more distinct in the manga thereafter.
Speaking of the anime, the art style of the anime is sort of semi-realistic too, but it's also, like FMA, pretty different from the manga. In this case it's sort of excusable since the art in Attack on Titan is so loosely drawn, but I'm not too big a fan of how they changed some characters' hair (cough cough Armin).
I think Isayama is also pretty good about differentiating facial features, though not to the extent of Arakawa. I'd like to see some more diversity in upcoming chapters, though.
Praise the lack of fanservice in this series. It'd be so out of place here, and completely mood-ruining, so I'm glad Isayama was conservative in his clothing choices and we never have the issue of panties or boobs showing.
Then there's another issue I have with the series, and that's the very odd poses characters are sometimes put in. I know the poor guy is under a lot of stress, but sometimes characters are awkwardly placed in a panel and end up looking very strange. The best example I can think of is Sasha in a chapter a couple of years ago (not a spoiler):
Why is she doing the Shaft head tilt there? We just don't know.
Noragami
Noragami's art starts off pretty frackin good, and only gets better from there. There have been some minor changes in character design since the beginning, but it was to help improve readability. For example, Yato's tracksuit went from being drawn as black on white to black on gray to reduce contrast. I also think it makes it look cleaner and more refined. Yukine's hair has also changed quite a bit in the series' run, going from one solid form to loose and spiky. Bishamon's hair also changed gradually once the anime started airing, and I think she looks older now too.
Art style wise, not much has changed. The gods still have the catlike eyes, and the hair is still drawn very freely and blows back and swipes sideways a lot, much like real hair. Adachitoka is also really good about having their characters change outfits regularly. While the anime doesn't always show this, Hiyori and Yukine change outfits pretty much every chapter (I remember too, rereading one of the early Underworld chapters Yukine's clothing changed three seperate times to show the passage of time). Yato also sometimes puts his hair up in a ponytail, though he likes to stick to his tracksuit for the most part.
Facial diversity is pretty strong here too. Named characters all look distinctly different, except for when the similarities are purposeful. There's also the odd case of a certain resemblance. It's really subtle, not enough to give away the plot point in advance, but once you notice it you have to marvel at how clever it is that these two characters look similar, but not enough to notice it at first.
Adachitoka also put a lot of love and detail into coming up with each character's outfit, and it reflects each person's personality. I also love Bishamon's armored outfit that finally debuted in the anime in yesterday's episode, since it's not skimpy and revealing like most female armor you see.
Speaking of skimpy and revealing, Noragami does have a bit of fanservice (though I think the anime does it more). Panty shots, while not nonexistent, are not uncommon either. At least the panty shots are more in a practical sense as in female characters fighting, not just "Ohh no my panties are showing!" It's more forgivable this way. There's also more of the female characters shown bathing than the male characters. Whaaaatever.
I also love how richly the backgrounds are drawn. Toka's got a very nice eye for detail, and leaves nothing to the imagination as far as where each scene is taking place. This, I think, is part of the reason that led to the anime having such nice backgrounds as well. Sometimes the panels can get kind of cluttered with the backgrounds and speech bubbles competing for space, but I feel like this problem has been reduced since the series began.
It's pretty easy to tell what's happening too. The flow of action is normal and smooth, and though there were a couple of vague spots, I was always able to figure out what I was missing pretty easily.
The facial expressions are well-done (particularly when it comes to pain), and the chibi characters are appropriately timed and funny to boot. I also love how the color pages look--there's a unique watercolor style to them and it's a lot different than the usual bolder cell-shading colors I see.
Adachitoka's pretty good about when to use full-page spreads. They appear at critical moments and always chock full of action and detail, but there's never too many. I also think the use of speech bubbles at some points is pretty clever too, being used to cover up faces or eyes when the character's emotion is ambiguous, and on a more lighthearted side, at one point Yato is being shown stabbed by the bubble when Hiyori and Yukine are talking shit about him. I can't locate the panel in question right now, but I'll be sure to add it in once I do.
Nowadays, the art is clean, full, and detailed. It's overall just a pleasure to look at, and it's worth reading the manga for the art alone, not even taking into account the story and characters that I adore so much.
All in all, pretty much top marks for Noragami's art across the board.
Soul Eater
Soul Eater definitely wins the award for most improved. The art style in the beginning is weird and brings to mind the emo fad of the early 2000's. It's also a bit reminiscient of Clannad in the facial shape and eyes. However, it pretty quickly improves, and by the time where the anime leaves off, the art style is exactly like the anime, and I'm glad the anime chose that style over the earlier one. From there, the art only gets better, and by the time the series wraps up, the style's changed quite dramatically to a more cartoony and bubbly style. While I'm most of a fan of the art style they used in the anime due to my personal biases of having watched that first, the later style is still really good too.
Atsushi Ookubo is a very talented guy. First off, there was never a moment where I questioned what was happening. The panels flow really easily and there are no vague moments. He uses bendy panels for the madness and when Soul is playing the piano, and there's a really cool part where Stein's cigarette smoke forms his speech bubble. It's really subtle though, and I think that's part of the magic. There's also one later chapter in particular that he makes really good use of a creepy parody of a children's book. If you've read the manga you should know exactly what I'm referring to. It makes the scene that much more eerie that he's paralleling something he drew earlier on in that same chapter.
The action scenes are really well drawn too. The poses never look ridiculous or contrived, and once again, it's really easy to follow what's happening.
Full-page spreads are awesome. Unlike Noragami's which are full of detail (which is fine for the series), oftentimes Soul Eater's are really simplistic, which only serves to magnify the importance of the scene. There's another one in one of the later chapters with one of the characters floating in a white void, talking to a dark cloud. Other than that, the page is completely blank and it serves great to enhance the mood. Once again if you've read the manga you should know to which part I am referring.
The facial expressions are great. Appropriately funny, angry, or sad. Particularly with Crona, who makes a lot of creepy faces, even more so in the later chapters. I'm not sure HOW he makes those faces exactly, but they're really good.
The only big issue I have with Soul Eater's art is the fanservice. There's tons of ridiculous nudity in the beginning, taking every possible opportunity to show the female characters naked or with panties showing--there's even a part in the beginning where the kids get Sid to talk by flipping up the skirts of Maka and Tsubaki against their will, and they're of course blushing and going "Oh nooo, my panties!" Luckily, the fanservice drops off pretty fast after that. Maka's skirt quickly becomes magic, and we don't have the issue of panty shots again. The fanservice flares up a bit again at the end with more boob shots, but never as bad as in the beginning.
All in all, Soul Eater not only has great art, it excels in the technical field too. Definitely worth a read once you get past the weird art of the beginning.
Pandora Hearts
Since I've finished Pandora Hearts I can finally give a more comprehensive review.
The art starts off pretty beautiful from the get-go, and it only improves from there. The characters' hair is more defined, the body shapes become less tiny and more full, and the facial expressions are spot-on.
Oz also seems to age up over the series' course, although the series took place over an undefined amount of time (my guess is no more than a year). The art style doesn't change a whole lot, but the art gets cleaner and better. Gilbert also seems to age up just slightly, mostly in that his chin is drawn squarer which makes him look more his age.
The color spreads also remain as beautiful as ever, and every time there was one I'd look at it and admire how Mochijun colors so perfectly.
One complaint I had at the beginning is that it was really hard to understand the flow of action. Thankfully, this improves and in the later chapters I could understand what was happening from panel to panel. In terms of story, I still remained pretty foggy on details even till the end. I think it's a flaw of the story itself that some things aren't explained properly, and there's also a difference between intentionally keeping it vague and just not going into detail. So the vagueness of the story probably contributed to how I was having trouble reading the panels at first.
Another thing I noticed (a bit later on) is that I don't think Mochijun likes drawing legs and/or is not very good at them. Most of the panels are heads or waist-up shots, and a lot of the time the characters' clothing covers their legs anyway--she's fond of long coats. When legs were drawn they seemed a bit awkward, and the result of not drawing them very much is that sometimes the flow can be a bit stagnant with the lack of full-body shots.
I think the panels are really nicely used later on in the manga's course (aside from the issue with the legs), particularly with the character deaths. The action seems to slow down, and the character has time for a brief solliloquy before they pass on. There was also one panel in the end of volume 22 (that I did not see in the online version; possibly it was exclusive to the volume) that was a minimalistic full-page spread used during a character death for maximum emotional impact. I can't talk about what it depicted due to spoilers, but it was very touching and helped to round off the moment.
I've also started reading Mochijun's new series, Vanitas no Carte. I won't be able to give a decent review of the manga's art for a looooong time, since there's only two chapters out right now. So far though, it looks very pretty and there's detailed backgrounds, better so than in Pandora Hearts. Color spreads are as great as ever. I didn't notice the thing with the legs, but I wasn't really paying attention to it either. Although, since it takes place in steampunk AU 1800's France, the long dresses still cover the legs, at least with the female characters.
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So that's it for manga I've read! I plan to review others once I read them, but for now I'll just give impressions on what I've seen around the Internet thus far.
In no particular order.
Magi
Looks pretty clean. The art style is a bit odd, but I think it should be easy to tell what's happening since it's so refined. Also the facial expressions are great.
Blue Exorcist
Actually I haven't seen much of this manga? My friend's been reading it though, and she says the art is very nice and pretty. She showed me a random page that had beautiful clean lines in the foreground and background, and very good perspective. And she said all the panels are like that.
Haikyuu!!
The art style looks really weird tbh. The art style in the anime is odd as well, but less so. In the manga it looks like chibis most of the time, but that could also just be what I'm seeing. It also looks like it might be hard to follow. Facial expressions are great though.
Black Butler
I can tell without having seen much that the art is beautiful. Not really much else to say here.
Ouran
Really weird art style, and Tamaki's hair has a ridiculous amount of detail, but my friends say it's worth it to read just for the story and characters.
Fruits Basket
Another one with a reaaaaaally weird art style. Kyo looks like a character out of a yaoi manga, quite honestly. Though that's probably due to the age of the series.
Silver Spoon
More Arakawa yaaaaay. I'm excited to see the improvements made in FMA continued here.
Princess Jellyfish
Once again, another series I haven't seen much of the art for. It looks cute enough, though.
Koe no Katachi
Well the main guy looks pretty odd, but I was signed up for this series for the story anyway, haha.
Posted by Leopah | Dec 12, 2015 12:49 PM | 0 comments