SEASONAL PRATTLE

 

It’s another week and yet another dose of Vinland Saga’s careful formula doing what it does best – placing its components in good positions for success. With that said, this series’ strengths march on in usual effective fashion: great use of its genre space, appropriate delivery/timing of imperative scenes, and choice pieces of dialogue that have nicely weaved thematic threads in them. It’s a treat to see this show work its character-heavy beats especially one on one with Askeladd and Thorfinn, and Vinland Saga never wastes those opportunities – pushing Thorfinn forward in poignant ways while still respecting the essence of his struggle. This series’ level of writing may not be outright flashy or clever, but it just refuses to bleed like its Summer peers. Vinland Saga is cognitive about what it wants to do and sneakily triumphant even in small moments.

Given (10)

We may have not matched the highs of last week’s strong, emotionally taut showing, but Given was still pretty capable here all things considered – paying off particularly in its waning, confession laced minutes. Besides its bigger narrative strokes which were pulled off with reasonable touch, I really enjoy how ten spreads its screen time. It’s a sort of quiet quality that Given has been good at all Summer and is sadly taken for granted, but the level of balance is especially welcomed here. There’s a good mix of everything from tailored ensemble sequences with the band to meaty solo beats like when Uenoyama was coming to terms with his thoughts on Mafuyu. It may not seem like much, but these kinds of structural choices keep this series fluent and result in very healthy episodes like this one.

Fire Force (10)

In a series where the only consistent source of value is its production, having an episode this directorially choppy sure does sting – even more so considering the simplicity of the narrative backing it. Fire Force feels like it’s basically shown its entire hand at this point in terms of quality, and no amount of alluding to Shinra’s brother’s circumstances or digging into the Evangelist will make up for this series’ baseline lack of execution and voicing of those very same concepts. At the end of the day, Fire Force still remains a loosely told and built story at its heart, blessed with talented hands behind its visuals that can temporarily deflect from its issues – but nothing more. It’s serviceable, and episodes like this one just echo that sentiment.

Maou-sama, Retry! (11)

Managing to avoid achieving anything, Maou-sama, Retry! is still apparently smearing leftover McDonald’s on a piece of paper and turning it in as the latest episode script – an approach this series has evidently become very comfortable with. It doesn’t take long to realize episode eleven has all the hallmarks of last week’s starved of any real narrative performance, maintaining the trend of irrelevant discussions and meaningless romantic feelings that will go completely nowhere just with Yukikaze in the spotlight this time around. And while Yukikaze may be able to draw a laugh or two at times, the borderline mediocrity of everything else Maou-sama spits out is still very much intact – dragging whatever low expectations this show had deeper into the dirt.

Araburu Kisetsu no Otome-domo yo (11)

Lastly, I didn’t think Mari Okada could crash this plane any harder, but here we are, not even pretending like we have an idea of what we’re doing. Araburu’s latest performance functions with the dexterity suited for a very rough draft: There are abrupt tonal shifts that feel out of place with its corresponding events, bizarre swings in character logic, and a tacked on line of drama that appears extremely desperate to provide a last-minute shakeup. It’s both careless and clumsy with its text till its final act, in which it switches to being an absolute joke – not because it’s funny – but rather, because Okada actually thought “high school girls take a hostage and make demands to solve their problems” works here and is totally not random and dumb.

Remember when this show was supposed to be a more carefully observed and realistic attempt at girls growing to understand their sexuality? Yeah, good times.