SEASONAL PRATTLE
Presented with the opportunity of success or failure, Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? enthusiastically chooses the latter – offering a third episode that’s visually embarrassing and narratively unimpressive from start to finish. Both perspectives that this series likes to operate from are distinctly poor this time around: Kumoko’s share of the plot is still riddled with awful CG monster models and drenched in granular, over narrated events of her spider life that never truly amount to a healthy payoff – only going up a few levels and gaining skills that lack hard impact on her predicaments. And when the series isn’t choking viewers with that, its human-oriented plotting serves as a fast reminder that this is still very much a shallow and highly conventional Isekai, parched of imagination down to the magic it implements. Episodes like this make me question how the source material was popular to begin with.
Wonder Egg Priority (2)
“Once again this is matched by a high level of visual intelligence and further complimented by a great soundtrack”
Wonder Egg Priority’s second episode was effective mostly in the same way the first was – its methodical narrative structure and execution lead to an exquisite articulation of its trauma and suicide based themes. Once again this is matched by a high level of visual intelligence and further complimented by a great soundtrack – consistently elevating the exchanges between Ai and Neiru, the lingering spaces in-between, and Koito centric vignettes. Wonder Egg Priority is clearly a densely tone-driven show, and though it’s frequently preoccupied with conveying the lived experience of its victims’ worlds, the scattered glimpses into Ai’s life continue to do an excellent job of piecing the broader story together.
Horimiya (3)
“Coming off as valuable and fully lived in”
Horimiya spent most of this episode humanizing its relationships, which was a very welcome choice even though it did display some stress structurally in the process. Episode three is certainly less focused than really any given episode so far, and its broader narrative feels congested as a result – wandering across a range of emotional conflicts that aren’t always the most naturalistic, finely paced, or firmest bound like with Remi’s declaration of love. Be that as it may, Three has sequences that still manage to salvage the episode, coming off as valuable and fully lived in noticeably when rolling out snippets of Miyamura’s background early on and operating the hand holding bit in the episode’s second half. Surely not a great offering from Horimiya all in all, but I’m still interested to see what it does next.
SK8 the Infinity (3)
“Staying pleasing visually but often falling prey to predictable patches of writing”
SK8 the Infinity experienced a modest showing, staying pleasing visually but often falling prey to predictable patches of writing. For that, there’s really not much to unpack in episode three as Miya’s characterization and race outcome all play out exactly as one should expect after five or so minutes of watching. Thus, the only real narrative value essentially rests on what’s going to be – with a waning sequence that gets Adam involved suggesting we can actually start digging into the pulpier parts of the script next time around. Decent stuff, but hopefully next week will be stronger.
Jaku-Chara Tomozaki-kun (3)
“The give and take of Aoi and Tomozaki shows some signs of stiffness”
Jaku-Chara Tomozaki-kun returns, not as consistently playful as its second showing, but more valuable as it had a lot more foundational work to do given Tomozaki had his first full day of dating. Like last week, the main levers of satisfaction come in the form of passive interplay between characters, however, that is more stunted this time around. The give and take of Aoi and Tomozaki shows some signs of stiffness, being notably rigid at times as Tomozaki isn’t really challenged in a difficult or entertaining way and Aoi hardly adds any substance beyond dictating goals and light advice. Building on that, Three on a whole lacks genre power – it’s not particularly dramatic or romantic, light on both tags, and essentially just going through unremarkable motions to get Izumi and Kikuchi involved in the story. A necessary episode yes, but a reasonably enticing one not so much.
Urasekai Picnic (3)
“In a show like this, exploration that’s profitable is not only critical but inherently its own reward”
Urasekai Picnic returns with arguably its weakest offering to date, adding next to nothing as far as insights into the otherside are concerned and whipping up a second half creature encounter that’s hamstrung by generous amounts of poor CG. In a show like this, exploration that’s profitable is not only critical but inherently its own reward, and anything short of Sorao and Toriko accomplishing that make for a letdown – sadly wasting time on hollow events that don’t contribute to the narrative in a meaningful way.
