SEASONAL PRATTLE

In case you thought Assassins Pride was a slowly sinking ship after last week, its latest episode goes to show that you were being too kind. Our batch of content is once again hilariously deaf to storytelling convention, being equally poor at framing the relevancy of its events as it is properly building its characters. With that, the viewers are essentially ripped through an extremely undercooked training/tournament segment with glaringly predictable results, only relieved from this thoughtless mess to participate in limp flashbacks and character interactions that are purely just going through the motions. 

At the end of the day, Kufa and Melida’s chemistry is still nowhere near earned, Nerva was a weakly constructed antagonist, and EMT Squared’s staff is completely suspect in their ability to deliver this project. Easily an episode worthy for audiences to question their loyalty in continuing to watch, and also one that’s sheer ineptitude has it leading this week’s Fall Check-In for all the wrong reasons.

Ore wo Suki nano wa Omae dake ka yo (3)

As efficient as Oresuki was last week, showcasing its plenty comfortable landing gags on time and working its cast into favorable positions through sheer character acting alone – this third turnout was even better. The level of drama presented in episode three is managed sneakily well, an aspect where a lot of similar, yet lesser cared for works often drop the ball. There’s just so little wasted runtime in this regard as the vast majority of dialogue is thoughtful in its navigation and consistent in its ability to offer hooks while pushing the narrative forward. Sumireko shines on center stage, showing her own capability to deliver when heavily called upon, and Joro continues to shape up as one of the better MC’s this season. Well done.

Ascendance of a Bookworm (3)

Three weeks in and Ascendance of a Bookworm is really warping into a therapeutic, methodical watch that is less concerned with hooks, twists and other attention centric devices in favor of its own lightweight brand of storytelling – one which works fairly well so far. Nothing about this show is even mildly taxing, allowing viewers to free fall through Myne’s discoveries with hardly any friction, and it’s little victories and underlying wholesome bits along the way have their own sense of reward. Unfortunately, patches of Bookworm can be formulaic in direction, a trend that will hopefully break sooner rather than later. But, for now, that’s not too concerning as the show is still very reasonable in the bigger picture. Fine all around.

Hoshiai no Sora (2)

Hoshiai no Sora’s second outing transpires through another twenty-minute cycle of applaudable visual craft, once again comprising most of the episode’s value as it carries a rather familiar chunk of writing for its genre space. From an extremely narrow view, Hoshiai shines. Two has enough tangible weight in its ED alone to the point where it’s become easy to find it overstated as a factor of the actual episode’s value, and it carries a few brief off-hand interactions with a notable level of realistic grace.

Unfortunately though, when you look at the bigger picture of this showing, things aren’t even as close to being that bright. The reality is, episode two is textually linear in design at heart and stunted in the gravity it commands – adhering to ordinary sports cliches and flows that are never too far out of the expected box to give specific praise. From Maki’s impact on the team down to the group run in the waning minutes, it’s hard to deny this script wasn’t just playing it by the thoroughly worn books of many works that have come before it. Curious to see if this show can find some of the wiggle it had in its narrative during episode one, but now fully prepared for future offerings that are fairly typical in nature. Okay performance.

Watashi, Nouryoku wa Heikinchi de tte Itta yo ne! (2)

With a second episode now in the books, it’s becoming sharply apparent, Noukin is as middling as assumed – finding comedic payoffs from a handful of references this week, but quickly drowning everywhere else as the actual story and mechanics of this show still functions like it was pulled out of an Isekai starter pack. On that note, there’s so little gravity behind the narrative that all the pressure to carry episode two squarely falls on the casts’ shoulders – a task they’re not particularly up to as Mile’s concerns about standing out overstays its welcome and provides very mixed results in the process. Perhaps the third time’s the charm?

Boku no Hero Academia 4th Season (2)

Generally, in these early weeks of an airing season, our team here at Seasonal Prattle tends to shy away from any coverage of sequels more often than not. The reason being, not only do we like to give the brand new works more attention. but the build and quality of these sequel titles are well established, and in the vast majority of cases, their opening efforts from a structural sense meet that expectation and really don’t need to be extrapolated upon. So why cover Hero Academia in this week’s Check-In? Well, primarily because we’ve received some inquiries on why it wasn’t being talked about here and are using its space to get this answer why out to readers. So with that said, rest assured this prominent Fall work has been in healthy condition (even with a bit of a flat recap last week) and it will be talked about more once its events really start heating up.

 

 

 

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