SEASONAL PRATTLE

It’s good to see Fire Force back demonstrating its grasp of attractive setpieces, layered compositions, and vision for propulsive action beats. However, those assets would sadly fail to outweigh what is quickly shaping up to be more and more a very real anchor for the show – its writing. Episode three is a circus of poor textual choices that come in all shapes and forms, notably starting from the stunted cliche that practically makes up the entirety of newly introduced Tamaki and working its way down to some seriously generic villain portrayals. Fire Force’s brand of storytelling further dampens the parade, not only pushing a crude narrative backbone of “join the bad guys and I’ll tell you about your brother” with little craft to its delivery, but also being chock-full of some of the cheesiest dialogue all season. Quips like “Are you ready to stop playing hero and seek out the truth?” and “Only beautiful princesses may give orders to a knight” are just a couple of lines out of many that put the spoiled cherry on top of this overall poor performance.

Given (3)

Good execution will get you to higher grounds in general in this medium, and while this latest showing from Given rolled out a dramatic climax that wasn’t exactly the most graceful in that regard, the bulk of its surrounding components were still pulled off rather soundly – primarily showing care with Mafuyu’s personal threads. The texture that he receives is certainly welcomed, and the functional mix of emotionally laced vignettes and oncoming tension with Hiiragi was a nice launching pad to present that. Choice interactions from the rest of the band and an overall fine push into the main tonal space Given wants to reside in round out the list of pros, reinforcing three as a net positive showing. Nicely done.

Machikado Mazoku (3)

Endearing, tonally consistent, and just bubbly enough where its content is light, but not a boring chore to sit through. Machikado Mazoku has been quietly delivering as a genre piece, getting a healthy return off of Shamiko and Momo’s day by day interactions and the comedy generated from that. Three weeks in and it’s clear that this series is quite comfortable on falling back on either lead, ambidextrous and effective regardless of who controls a given scene – which is a very nice positive to have especially in this niche. Slice of life comedies are more sensitive than the average genre when it comes to the core cast’s flexibility, so thankfully that’s not an issue here.

Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru (4)

Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru stays the course, offering its blend of honest fitness advice and clear fanservice in usual proportions for its fourth installment – raising the question if this series has essentially hit its ceiling already. There are specific well-timed jokes and clumps of higher craft effort that suggests otherwise, Ozu Toshio’s bit checks both of those boxes this week, but the consistency of those aspects simply isn’t there for the bulk of twenty minutes – thus leaving the show riding heavily on its linear script with little spark to keep it engaging. Would love to see Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru get more creative when tackling its premise or regularly string together some of its more polished beats.

Arifureta Shokugyou de Sekai Saikyou (3)

In a rare occurrence, Arifureta manages to sober up enough to actually tell a story this week, giving its narrative a more concrete spine and finally painting with some semblance of complexion for at least one of its leads. Even more to its credit, Yue and Hajime legitimately have a moderate level of chemistry here, being able to fill in the downtime while traveling the labyrinth with more personality to their interactions than one may expect. That said, Arifureta still hasn’t found anything even close to an antidote for its slew of other issues – namely its crippled visual craft – so the cons still very much outweigh the pros as this work makes baby steps of improvement.

Cop Craft (3)

Lastly for this entry, we have an unfortunate step back for Cop Craft which swiftly reminded viewers that it is indeed apart of Millepensee’s catalog – turning in a rocky performance that has shades of Berserk 2016 and Teekyu’s competency. Almost all structural aspects under Itagaki’s control show regression, illuminating the brightest when it comes to how he envisions the momentum, composite and volume of Tirana’s fight. For a show that was still trying to find consistent positive footing, a third episode like this definitely hurts, but it’s not the end of the world. There’s still plenty of time for a bounce-back that hopefully starts as soon next week.