SEASONAL PRATTLE

Yes, Kami no Tou is this week’s lead but not exactly for positive reasons. When you have pacing this brisk, where sequences and fresh concepts hardly have time to breathe, it’s hard to produce anything less than a performance that comes across as an undercooked glob of relevant details. And that’s exactly what this latest Kami no Tou ends up as – delivering an episode that’s the most upfront thus far in paving a heap of crucial relationships and offering hard exposition, but transparently poor when it comes to even remotely fleshing any of that out. Thus, viewers spend the entire time bouncing between a variety of dynamics with little patience – getting doses of everything from Rachel and Bam’s evolving circumstances down to glimpses of Anaak and Endorsi’s relationship in a very mashed together fashion that feels all over the place. “Rushed” efforts are always worrisome for a show’s longevity and quality, so hopefully this won’t be the norm moving forward.

 

Kaguya-sama 2 (5)

“Supple sequencing and pleasing composites”

Staying very efficient in structure, Kaguya-sama offers another turnout that marries aesthetic aptitude with a firm understanding of how their material needs to vent. Supple sequencing and pleasing composites drenched episode five, steadily morphing common interactions and conversations into convincing beats that rarely fail to hit their tonal mark. Supporting that, this showing has no trouble at all in selling viewers on any of its segments through sheer scripting – having limber enough writing to accomplish its particular spread of scenarios without feeling too stuffy or limited. Regardless if it’s discussions of true love or singing training, Kaguya-sama makes it easily investable.

Kakushigoto (6)

“Larger cogs of the show are both in frictionless motion and well established”

Kakushigoto carries on as nothing less than enjoyable, continuing to operate smoothly on its naturally sweet premise yet again. At this point, most of the larger cogs of the show are both in frictionless motion and well established as it relates to the rewards they bring, however, the Kidzania chunks of six’s narrative were especially nice and deserve a nod. Having positive outcomes for Hime through Goto’s relentless efforts is always a treat, but having Hime actively return that energy with her own work, money, and kindness is even more heartwarming. It’s great to have a quality, adorable show like this week in and week out!

Gleipnir (6)

“Wasteful padding”

While Gleipnir manages to build some degree of offhand intrigue in its plotting, episodes like this do little to help it out from a quality standpoint in the bigger picture. We’re essentially dealing with a light narrative backbone of Shuuichi and Clair attempting to gain allies, that’s ultimately executed as one big springboard to loudly launch piles of fanservice rather than concerning itself more with advancing viewers forward through the story in a conventional manner. The outcome of this approach makes the meat of six’s run feel like wasteful padding – a sentiment that surely could have been avoided if Gleipnir weighed its ecchi centric strokes better with the relevant textual details that mattered to its story. Perhaps next week will be structured better, but as it stands this is an easy step back.

Yesterday wo Utatte (6)

“Cheesy misunderstandings and worn cliches”

Finally and resuming its trend downwards, Yesterday wo Utatte coughs up another dramatically stale episode that commences and wanes much like its turnout seven days prior. For that, episode six’s storytelling once again leans on the tropey model of “randomly” having a past romantic acquaintance suddenly appear to stir the pot – nailing cheesy misunderstandings and worn cliches in the process all the way down to Rikuo passing out on top of this latest pop-up, Yuzuhara, from a cold. Of course by arms reach of credit roll, after creating some splashes of jealousy and firing off a few loosely pensive anecdotes, Yuzuhara meets her reason to exit the story reminiscent of Minato – completing this tired batch of writing hopefully once and for all. Fingers crossed the next episode takes a different narrative road.