SEASONAL PRATTLE
In yet another transparently rushed effort, Kami no Tou marches forward, showing its seams and ever decaying decision making along the way. Distinctly on a whole, this latest affair is far too stuffed: There’s a fat spread of plot beats and conversational exchanges littered throughout this one that felt like they could have used much more space to breathe and digest than they received – noticeably coming off as hasty and uncared for when Hoh inevitably makes his move and gets involved. On top of that, our content’s ability to foster and convey drama is mild in the episode’s biggest stages. Kevin Penkin helps out a decent deal, yes, but if we’re supposed to be drawing any meaty emotional cues from Bam’s reaction and handling of the Rachel hostage situation and fallout, he can’t put out linear performances like this.
Kaguya-sama 2 (8)
“Plenty of well-timed comedic snaps and emotional pulls”
With plenty of confidence in its storytelling, Kaguya-sama remains reliable in delivering quality outings that are worth embracing from start to finish. This week had plenty of well-timed comedic snaps and emotional pulls, but the low-key constructive star might be its particular cast utilization. Even in an episode where Kaguya and Miyuki commanded a ton of attention across our set of skits, this series still manages to use its support to great effect in their smaller portions – a real testament to how proficient screentime plays out. There are nicely formulated physical gags, excellent passive background faces, and poppy quips across the whole secondary cast with no one character feeling “left out” during the process. Good stuff!
Yesterday wo Utatte (9)
“Sluggish in structure, full of mildly pensive monologues that hardly transfer into anything kinetic”
Finally reaching its halfway point, Yesterday wo Utatte whips up another clunker – evidently not satisfied with shoving frustrating character dynamics down viewers throats just a week ago. With that said, nine features a lot of the same tenets that made eight displeasing, namely centering around the wishy-washy nature of Shinako and her continuously tiresome internal logic that puts her in poor positions to begin with. However, what’s worse, our content this time around is arguably more sluggish in structure, full of mildly pensive monologues that hardly transfer into anything kinetic or tangible that the show moves forward on, and backboned by patches of scripting that are far too telegraphed and dry to be effective for anyone remotely familiar with this brand of writing and work. Yesterday wo Utatte continues to feel both underwhelming and dragged out as a genre piece.
