Quick Final Thoughts – Food Wars: The Third Plate

Food Wars continues to flatten shonen competition under its ridiculous boot.

My issues with its main competitor are on the books, and what Food Wars has over it is pure consistency. After an iffy first episode way back in its first season, this series’ writing has been firing on all cylinders and has kept me totally invested for years. While it has not gotten any less wacky (particularly with reaction shots), the way the show plays so totally earnestly gives it major points. The show can make you totally buy into the fight against food fascism by simply not giving you the option to write it off – I can buy that our characters’ issues are as big as they seem.

And I cannot get over how well Yukihira Soma is written as a main character. Sure, he fits the “cocky underdog” mold to a T, but he doesn’t pull wins out of his ass with the power of friendship, he does so with a lot of know-how, experience, preparation and experimentation, and tends to completely humiliate his opponents for underestimating himself and his family, and he’s not even infallible! We do see him suffer crushing defeats of his own, and it’s never because his rivals were cheating.

Of course, it’s not a 10/10 experience unless it’s got a satisfying conclusion, which is unfortunately not something this series has ever presented, with this particular iteration ending mid-tournament, but it’s just because J.C. Staff ran out of material to adapt. It’ll be a bit before we see The Fourth Plate simply because the author has to keep the manga going.

9/10, though. If you haven’t gotten on this train yet, you’ve got a lot of fun ahead of you whenever you choose to catch up.

Quick Final Thoughts – Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond

Now here’s an amazing show that still knows how to have a rollicking good time.

The first season was largely anime-original, as the source material doesn’t have much of an overarching plot, and it delivered a fantastic story that gets a few nods here, but this second season sticks to the manga’s episodic nature, and proves to be fantastic at telling human stories in its wacky, off-the-wall universe. These are common stories, but ones that haven’t been told this way before, from KK trying to be a good mother, to Zed getting marginalized, or a doctor making ultimate sacrifices to help her patients. It reminds me a lot of the first part of fellow Bones production Fullmetal Alchemist, particularly the more drawn-out 2003 version.

However, this does come at the cost of the building stakes that we got in the first season with its story about the second end of the world, and that’s something to come to terms with in order to get on board here.

Bones delivers more jaw-dropping action production here, but one thing it’s lacking in is the awesome opening and ending department. The first season’s opening, “Hello, World!” and ending “Sugar Song to Bitter Step” are legendary for their amazing production work, and while the new songs, both by Sugar Song’s artist Unison Square Garden, are a great time, they aren’t backed up with quite as ambitious visuals and creative direction, and that’s at least partly due to a change in director.

So, to summarize, while this followup isn’t quite as masterful as its predecessor, the show remains a fantastic time, and it’s still well worth a watch if you liked the first season.

Oh, and the dub remains one of the best I’ve ever heard, and Aaron Dismuke as Leonardo was a stroke of genius, and that’s before getting into the other great performances on display.

9/10!

Quick Final Thoughts – Inuyashiki Last Hero

I took too long to watch this and not finish it, but I’m frankly just not enjoying this.

This show’s MAL score is almost an 8, and based on the overall quality of the first four episodes, I can’t say I get it. For having produced Yuri On Ice! and its remarkable skate sequences, Inuyashiki looks remarkably bad when CG isn’t involved. Tons of in-betweens seem to be just straight-up missing, and the show’s “realistic” art style just does not render well, resulting in something really ugly-looking most of the time.

And the content has gone from an interesting idea to a black-and-white good vs evil story with tons of content which seems to only exist to provoke shock, from graphic, callous murder to several implied rapes (and one actual onscreen one) and none of it connects as well as it should. Frankly, these elements are so distracting that it takes me entirely out of the experience every single time, and I just can’t remain invested in the story, especially not when the most commentary the show can provide is that the villain kills people for no reason, but the HERO is just so amazing and he heals injured cats and cancer patients, and is essentially Jesus.

4/10. What a waste of perfectly salvageable material.

Quick Final Thoughts – Himouto Umaru-chan S2

A definite improvement over the first season.

I’m aware that a lot of people found the first season of this show to be unwatchable and obnoxious, but even as someone who still enjoyed it nevertheless, the reason the show has improved is pretty easy to explain.

While Umaru remains nerdy and lazy, her selfishness and her negative impact on other people have been reduced dramatically, making her much easier to root for in the long run. We do see her growing and changing as a person, and we see a lot less misery on the part of her brother, retooling their relationship into a very friendly, coordinated one. This season demonstrates why he needs her around, and that her behavior has gotten a lot better, leaving us with a solid and funny slice of life comedy, even if the plot doesn’t resolve.

Maybe we’ll see more?

7/10

Quick Final Thoughts – Konohana Kitan

Yeah, I know I’m only getting later and later with these now we’re a month into the new season, but winter is a busy time.

This one turned out a little better than I expected from the first episode, where we got some strong episodic storytelling out of a neat concept. While the stories were a little uneven, it was never anything less than pleasant to watch.

Studio Lerche gives some fair production value to the project and the character designs are all nice to look at, and the traditional Japanese fashion looks awesome in the setting.

I wish I had more specific praise for this one, because I genuinely did enjoy it, but I wish it had been just a bit more challenging, because I can’t see myself remembering this one as much as I’ll remember, say, Flying Witch.

I’d still say it deserves a look if you enjoyed that show, though, or if you want a casual look into Japanese folklore.

7/10

Quick Final Thoughts – Anime-gataris

Well, that came out of nowhere in the best way.

For most of its run, the show I can most easily compare Anime-gataris to is Shirobako. While that was a fairly realistic show about what it’s like to make anime, this one is about what it’s like to be a fan of anime. All kinds of hilarious discussions of concepts like the three-episode rule or kitchen sink plots come up over the course of ten episodes, followed by the most joyous shark jump I’ve ever seen. Basically, with its fourth-wall breaking humor and tongue-in-cheek jabs at itself (poking fun at the plot and artwork, among other things), you could basically consider this a better version of Chronicles of the Going Home Club.

What holds it back from really being great, though, are two problems. First, the animation really isn’t as fluid as it should be, and if a character is more than a few feet from the camera, they tend to go off model in a slightly distracting way. Second, some tonal issues occur in the last arc of the show where it gets more serious and dramatic than it can really pull off, and it would have done better to focus on the sheer comic potential of what’s happening. It intentionally jumps the shark, but there’s a less deliberate dolphin that it accidentally trips on and prevents it from really sticking the landing.

Still, it had me well in stitches throughout, and if you consider yourself an otaku, you owe it to yourself to give this a watch, because you won’t be disappointed.

Oh, and special credit to whichever of the writing staff was in charge of coming up with parody show names. Give him an award.

8/10

Quick Final Thoughts – Love Live! Sunshine!!

I want to emphasize something here, something that I think is important to consider given just how impressed I was by Love Live!’s second outing, and particularly this conclusion to it.

This show did not have to be good.

The studio could so easily have just shoved out something totally lacking in substance or personality, like Touken Ranbu Hanamaru or Kantai Collection the Animation, and called it a day, because despite lackluster tie-in shows, both of those mobile free to play gacha games are still doing just fine.

But Love Live has always lived up to a different standard. The show has always been good, even without the Western audience it really deserves. It’s always been bursting with heart and emotion, always had fantastic performances, and always had characters with an impressive range of emotion and great newbie voice actresses behind many of them.

But the stakes have never been quite this high before. The original conflict of the first series was solved midway through the first season, and it had to rely on the convictions of its cast to keep us interested as they aimed for the top. It wasn’t always butterflies and rainbows, but the series maintained a very idealistic tone nonetheless. Sunshine goes along, especially in its first season, like it’s going to be more of the same, the show more or less repeating its formula…

And then it pulls the rug out from under you with real, heart-wrenching emotion, with actual reality.

All the girls of Aquors want is to save their school just like μ’s did, and the important distinction is that they fail. They try their absolute hardest, do everything in their power, and they fail, and the series takes a turn for the gut punching as we watch our team find their motivation to pick themselves back up, go out, and perform with every ounce of their being, so that they can win the Love Live, be known forever as champions, and leave behind proof that their school existed, and it mattered.

The closing of the school is rather brilliantly framed as these characters having to leave their childhoods behind and choose to strive for something important, not just to themselves, but to all of the other students who won’t let their school be a forgotten footnote.

And all of this is supported by the greatest performances and production work the series has ever had, with much-improved CG on the level of Land of the Lustrous, completely amazing costume design and choreography, and songs that will be in your head for weeks, overflowing with the passion of the characters.

If the newly-announced third iteration of the franchise never comes to be animated, I think I’ll be okay with that.

Oh, and it was all capped off with one of the best final episodes I’ve ever seen, and that is a long list.

10/10. The absolute best the genre has to offer. The recently announced movie has a lot to live up to.

Quick Final Thoughts – THE IDOLM@STER Side M

So happy to have IM@S back, even for a brief time.

This iteration was kind of interesting because I could tell that it was going to have an issue from early on, and the issue in question is fairly obvious – while the show does a great job with the time it has, it is still a thirteen-episode show with more than twenty main characters. Each grouping of guys gets at least one spotlight episode (and one of them got a prequel OVA) that does a pretty fair job of developing them as characters and idols, but it was clear from the beginning that we weren’t going to get enough time with them.

That being said, the lead trio carries a lot by themselves, and nearly all of our cast are just inherently likeable. My personal favorites were hyper-energized fanboy Shiki and our Main Character Tendou (I have a thing for earnestness), but even with such a massive cast, IM@S remains a production tour de force.

For an A-1 show with their usual same-face direction, the character designs on display here (which, to be fair, come from the mobile game) are phenomenal, and the costume design is fantastic on- and offstage. We get our regularly scheduled sakuga with IM@S’ amazing hand-drawn dance sequences (with really minimal CGI, but it’s not so intrusive that I’d consider that a complaint) and they’re just mesmerizing to look at, in a similar way to the first few skate scenes from Yuri On Ice!.

The other thing that holds this show back, however, is that there really isn’t much new here. We get a couple of funny character stories but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before, and while there is something to be said for good execution, I felt like the fact that most of our cast were adults with professional backgrounds wasn’t as relevant as it should have been (Tendou literally goes around with “Lawyer” on his shirt, but not once does he ever have to use his knowledge, for example).

Overall, though, it remained a really enjoyable ride and a strong 7/10. This is a show that I really hope gets a second season so we can get to know these guys more, though since there’s no currently licensed merch in the US I unfortunately don’t have a way of helping that happen. Still, if this is all we get, I’m happy to have gotten what’s here.

Quick Final Thoughts – Just Because!

This was a little disappointing. It wasn’t bad enough for me to drop it, but it didn’t live up to one of the most promising premieres of the season.

Let’s start with the production, the most easily identifiable issue. Based on the design and direction, I think that this show really wanted to be Sound! Euphonium, but didn’t have the KyoAni talent and passion required to really pull it off. The background work is gorgeous throughout, often to the point that if you told me they were pulled from a Shinkai movie, I’d probably believe you, but no other aspect of the artwork or direction comes close to matching it, as the often poorly-drawn characters very rarely look like part of their environment. Frequent animation issues lead to walk cycles not syncing properly to the background so it ends up looking like characters are walking on top of paintings, and attempts at rapid movement fall apart because of a lack of in-between animation. The art design tries for realism but mostly comes across as boring, with the color palette being dull and desaturated, like none of these characters own clothing in primary colors.

The story fares a little better but isn’t quite the dramatic tale I was hoping for. It’s certainly trying for that route but ends up going in too many directions. The main romance isn’t as understandable as it should be and it’s just not satisfying that the two main characters refuse to communicate with each other properly even though they definitely know that their feelings are mutual. The last episode has a few really powerful moments and a great echo of the premiere, but it just doesn’t go anywhere at all.

I will admit that a few sakuga cuts are peppered throughout, but overall the show is just really uneven, and the ending was a total cop out.

5/10, the bad side of average.

Quick Final Thoughts – Girls’ Last Tour

I was impressed from beginning to weird, weird end.

This quiet little show just kept me hooked from episode one, with an incredibly well-executed slow burn and a complete lack of infodumps or inorganic exposition, and the strength of its production courtesy of studio White Fox.

I’m gonna do a full review of this one sooner or later, but for now…

10/10. Instant classic.