“QUOTE OF THE WEEK”

– A very nice writeup on the recent showing of Kono Oto Tomare! after delivering one of Spring’s stronger individual efforts. Give it a look when you can.

 

 

SEASONAL PRATTLE

Fruits Basket (5)

In an episode like this week’s Fruits Basket, empty space is a blessing.  There’s a variety of scenes that are articulated well purely through less busy layouts,  serving double duty to cement the sense of sadness and desperation that runs deeply through many chunks of five’s narrative. This overall less cluttered presentation was also a natural match for the handful of well placed reflective sequences that tended to be wrapped in isolation – namely the Fruits Basket game that bookended our twenty minutes. Being tonally proficient was easily on the short list of aspects that TMS needed to get right this week considering the material that was to be tackled, and they did so with grace. Good showcase all around of Tohru’s insecurities.

Carole & Tuesday (4)

From a bird’s eye view, this outing comes off as a slight step back, but that’s not saying too much coming off the heights of last week. Our twenty minutes spent this time around are a bit soft narratively, burned on a music video angle that ultimately provides little traction through a storytelling lens, but brings a bucket of playful plot beats as a consolation prize. A few of Carole & Tuesday’s base strengths continue to drum on and standout,  primarily in its passive sculpting of characters – with Gus benefitting quite nicely from Marie’s inclusion and corresponding shared bar scenes.  At the end of the day, and as fine as this episode was, it would be great to get more content on the level of episode 2 or 3 as we reach Spring’s halfway point next week.

Hitoribocchi no ○○ Seikatsu (5)

Hitoribocchi had a reasonable showing, offering copious amounts of Aru’s personality and some fitting expressional work to keep things fun. Although episode five rests on two straightforward narrative threads, each set of circumstances ended up being more charming than it appeared on the surface – consistently delivering good jabs at Aru’s misfortune, as well as building to a warm finish that was a satisfying close. This series may not be overtly flashy in its design or execution, but  the grasp of its genre space and the buttons it needs to press is fundamentally taught  enough to remain enjoyable.
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Kimetsu no Yaiba (5)

Despite presenting a nice piece of texture for Tanjirou’s character, doing a fine job of reinforcing his level of compassion and respect with the way he handled the hand demon’s death – Kimetsu no Yaiba still deviates from this momentarily meaningful touch to become a storytelling miscue compilation. Right from its early minutes, the writing we’re granted this week begins to slowly tumble downhill – never laying out the proper foundation to catch the emotional impact that was being aimed for with the hand demon’s backstory, thus falling dramatically short. From there, we would walk through a well-predicted outcome to inevitably find ourselves seeing Nezuko’s awakening, which comes off as all too convenient and manufactured given its timing with Tanjirou’s return. Not to be outdone,  Yaiba’s waning minutes would rekindle its knack for poor tonal composition , delivering a conflicting bout of comedy in an episode that was vocally on the other side of the map from that. Needless to say, optimism for this show’s future scripting is starting to vanish.

Kenja no Mago (4)

Even with the introduction of a fistful of new characters that are already on the path to becoming forgettable in a few weeks, Kenja no Mago doesn’t truly offer anything new in its latest entry – still regurgitating the same limp written effort that does little outside of haphazardly pushing along a bland storyline  and rerunning the same tired dynamics in the process. So we get the usual; Uninteresting demonoid discussions, obvious one-note villain being revealed as an obvious one-note villain only to be defeated rather easily with little creativity behind the pen, A fight that was never honestly competitive, and of course a smorgasbord of beats and interactions that further glorify Shin. Very underwhelming.

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