“QUOTE OF THE WEEK”
– An explanation to why Chika puts band-aids on her ribbon. The more you imagine and think about it the spookier it gets.
SEASONAL PRATTLE
Mob Psycho 100 s2 (5)
Gorgeous showing from Mob Psycho, drawing clear lines of emotional discovery while still boiling over with a ton of craft talent and care around every corner. Right from the start, the show’s strong production lends a great deal of personality to Asagiri’s portrayal and does a wonderful job of texturing a world filled with turmoil to contrast with Mob’s traditionally optimistic perspective. That would only be built upon with a second-half fallout that is deceptively rich in design and toting arguably the best directorial effort all year so far. It’s rare to see episodes this elastic – bouncing virtually every beat to greater heights from start to finish, but here we are.
The Promised Neverland (5)
Last week’s episode demonstrated that this series is more than capable of making full use of its intimate conversations to drive it home. The way The Promised Neverland tethered informative dialogue with a polished level of shot framing kept even lengthier exchanges appealing. This time around? We’re easily getting more of that and then some. Despite consuming much of our latest episode’s run length, Ray and Norman’s betrayal discussion and fallout never felt like it overstayed its welcome – a testament to just how magnetic bits like this can be in practice. Lots of gracefully deployed visual ticks upfront and strong distribution of vital information ultimately get the credit for that. It’s lovely to see this sort of approach and success now strike twice in a row.
Dororo (5)
Really appreciated this episode’s grab bag of tones and the way it accentuates the hard flaws and fundamental humanity of its residents. Dororo has always been a firm work when it comes to these more intangible aspects; It gets by on well greased narrative mechanics that makes its linear storytelling easily digestible and mixes that with decisive visual construction. It’s a beautiful one-two punch to have especially for episodes like this that inherently carry weighty material. So even though major beats like Mio’s circumstances were fairly predictable from a mile away, they’re emotionally effective and understandable nonetheless. This series doesn’t have to dress it up or take written risks – it can land it flush just off its telling and that’s a great place to be.
Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai (5)
Kaguya-sama dove into a showing that may not have matched last week’s consistency, but still offered a good spread of enjoyable beats, from energetic volleyball antics to more contemplative umbrella shenanigans. The use of Chika was also good this week: Her presences never flat out dominated skits, but she’s also not sprinkled in either. We have a healthy Chika balance where there’s enough of her to effectively contribute to a joke or the overall momentum of the show without overshadowing Miyuki or Kaguya. That level of harmony is an underrated aspect in a series like this, where all leads are enjoyable but space to feature them can be limited depending on the scenario.
Kakegurui xx (5)
Kakegurui xx offered a mixed bag of an episode but still managed to come out swinging in the end. On one hand, Sumika’s reveal is just laughably inorganic – a cluster of writing that’s hard to stomach without at least a heavy sigh or an eye roll. On the other, Natari’s singing in the late stages of this showing was fantastic and easily worth the price of admission of trudging through our earlier shoddy writing. While I won’t say it’s the best vocal performance of the Winter season outright given that there’s still plenty of time left – it’s hard to say that it isn’t the best at the moment. It’s extremely uncommon that anime has vocal talent like this on display, especially when the part in question is attempted in English. I highly suggest you check out her scene if you haven’t yet.
The Rising of the Shield Hero (5)
Finally, we make our way to Shield Hero and its latest outing that was thoroughly mediocre at best. It’s simply hard to find the village race that this episode centers around compelling when all the wrinkles to it are essentially unimaginative, cheesy cheating from the usual suspects. Thus, the race never really held notable weight and Naofumi navigating the hurdles laid out for him with little struggle only reinforced this perspective. Shield Hero could have sold this whole bit more efficiently if it just stopped pumping in so much bland, tension deaf writing into a segment that wasn’t conceptually strong to begin with.
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