SEASONAL PRATTLE
Kaguya-sama whips up a beauty, springboarding off its gifted composite and charming cast to deliver a twenty-minute affair that’s exceptionally constructed. Episode nine manages to stay in a great position from start to finish: It essentially works of a spread of pleasing character moments and skits that never truly let up off the gas pedal, but ultimately lends itself as natural fits and progressions to the series’ specific light humor – notably coming up strong with Iino’s wild imagination and not dropping off when turning to the scenarios that would follow. Be that as it may, a large portion of this episode’s relative strength comes in pure craft – stacked with excellent cutting, crisp layouts, and an overall smart directorial effort to elevate a variety of poignant moments to rewarding heights. It’s one thing to be soundly written for the genres you want to reside in and the tonal levers you want to pull, it’s another thing to be that and have sharp, multifaceted portrayals of the material you’re working with. Well done.
Kakushigoto (10)
“Finding its cute moments when it counts and still displaying good dramatic handling”
This may have been a hot springs episode, but Kakushigoto still manages to navigate it to respectable territories without any blatant hiccups. Throughout its run, ten’s material never really lands as an elevated embellishment on the fundamentals we’ve gotten thoroughly acclimated to from this series: Goto’s sickness doesn’t exactly generate the greatest of laughs and the hot springs vacation itself ends up as a mild floor to deliver the levels of wholesomeness viewers expect. However, this was still a decent demonstration of Kakushigoto’s core strengths, finding its cute moments when it counts and still displaying good dramatic handling to cap it all off in typical fashion. Not bad.
Yesterday wo Utatte (10)
“Refreshing to see this series actually put together the puzzle pieces to finally create a concrete sense of progression”
After weeks of shoddy, tedious writing Yesterday wo Utatte launched a more meaningful episode this time around, primarily using Shinako and Rikuo’s particular set of confrontations as the central conveyor belt to push viewers ahead. Given its usual sluggish flow, it’s both weird and refreshing to see this series actually put together the puzzle pieces to finally create a concrete sense of progression – gracefully playing up the tension between Shinako and Rikuo while weaving in more blatantly forward relationship gestures than this work has had arguably all season long. Having Shinkao seemingly make a conclusive step forward with how she’ll be proceeding with her life is a nice secondary bright spot, as can be said for our final minute cliffhanger that cleanly set the stage for what’s to come. Fingers crossed that it’s all uphill from here!
Kami no Tou (10)
“Virtual every crucial beat this week is an awkward stripped-down version of its source counterpart”
Lastly, appearing tremendously unfulfilling in both its pacing and execution, the spiraling descent of Kami no Tou carries on – inevitably slipping up on the same old tricks that undermine it just in a new coat of paint. Virtual every crucial beat this week is an awkward stripped-down version of its source counterpart, missing the necessary details and flesh to make them effective and in the worst cases, functional at all. Thus, viewers are forced through a speedrun version of scripting that has everything from the character interactions concerning Hoh’s funeral to Yuga’s identity reveal being questionable in presentation. Cutting out relevant support for your narrative by condensing key dialogues and dynamics should be an obvious pitfall that creatives strive to avoid, by I guess Telecom Animation Film never got that memo.
