Sakamichi no Apollon – 04

Episode 04 –

Sakamichi no Apollon has yet to fail to meet my expectations, with each episode doing a superb job with reflecting upon it’s ever-changing character dynamics, all while maintaining an elegant simplicity that feels very nostalgic and down-to-earth. This show does well in highlighting the complexities of human emotion and interaction, whether it be through love, friendship, and jealousy. It’s shown through Sentarou having some goofy moments with Kaoru, Kaoru’s wavering resolve in romance with Ritsuko, and Yurika’s smitten reaction to Jun’s great performance at the American bar.

What I personally really appreciate about this episode is how it touches upon Kaoru’s isolation vis-a-vis his family members, as well as Sentarou’s discussion of his backstory. Their histories and family relations leave a powerful impression because the show is exploring how these two guys, even with some of their own insecurities and faults, struggle to move ahead and seek their own happiness. This show is inherently chronicling the struggle these two guys undergo as they grow older and are met with waves of emotional turmoil.

It’s not just limited to Sentarou and Kaoru though. This series also does a fine job with exploring the emotional development for Ritsuko, and now, Yurika as well. There’s love, jealousy, shock, sadness; all the human emotions that we experience as we grow older. Sakamichi no Apollon, without a doubt, is telling coming-of-age stories for the entire cast, and it’s astounding how the series can do it so well across the entire cast.

Amidst the emotional growth of all these characters, Sakamichi no Apollon is taking place during a rather tumultuous era; the 1960’s. Japan had lost the World War against the allied forces, US occupation forces had left their footprint in Japan, and Japan itself was in a period of economic growth and social change. The one thing that is extremely noticeable about this series, the jazz, was actually completely forbidden in prewar Japan (it was considered a crime to listen to it). The inclusion of Jazz shows the magnitude of change that is happening in Japan during this series. The setting in this show is a superb way of reflecting upon the characters; like the cast, the setting is changing in ways Japan had never quite seen before WWII, evoking parallels to the ever-changing complexities that come with striving for adulthood that the cast faces in Japan’s different post-war world.

Overall Enjoyment: 3.9/5

Screenshots are later in the post.

Tsuritama – 04

Episode 04 –

Tsuritama seems to have slowed down in comparison to the opening episodes. The first few episodes were loaded with silly moments and gags, and was all thrown together with a fast pacing that was at times riveting, other times emotional, and sometimes oddly intriguing. While there are still gags around, the series has now started to emphasize the character relationships. The overall atmosphere is infectiously happy at times, especially with the over-hyper Haru in tow. His hyperactive attitude is borderline annoying though, with his obvious ignorance of human society’s norms becoming painfully obvious in this episode.

While Haru is a character I personally don’t really like, he does bring together the main cast with a bond of camaraderie and companionship that feels rather genuine. His sheer innocence makes him a guy that is mischievously annoying, but difficult to hate due to his good intentions. This episode was a way to showcase Haru’s unfamiliarity with human society, improve the relationship between the main trio, as well as add more details to Natsuki’s past. The progress they’ve made as friends is explicitly noticeable, the first improvement being Yuki finally being able talk openly without going all demon-face. Natsuki is also much more open with the other two, though he still hasn’t opened up to the point where he’ll share his family problems.  Haru acts as the catalyst, as well as the glue, that holds all the character relationships together; his role, as annoying as it can be, is a central tenet to this series as of now.

While this episode was all very much about Haru the growing relationship between the main trio, the episode also covered Natsuki’s family problems in far more depth. It’s rather obvious at this point that Natsuki dislikes how his father for seeming to quickly get over the death of his mother (as to how recently she passed away, that’s something I’m not quite sure of). The resulting tensions in the family relationships seem to be getting worse and worse with each passing episode, and it seems the entire cast will get entangled in this messy affair.

Amidst all of this, there does seem to be some tensions developing in the shadows; the Indian guy is getting more and more aggressive with trying to figure out the intentions of our “alien”, and we still don’t really know what Haru and his alien sister want Yuki to fish out of the sea. It’s still completely unknown as to how fishing can “save the world”, but there does seem to be a slow buildup around the idea. I still don’t quite see how all the character relations will fit into the larger picture here, but it feels as if the bigger questions will be answered soon. But until then, we’re seeing lots of buildup and exposition to help flesh out the larger picture.

Overall Enjoyment: 3.2/5

Screenshots are later in the post.

Lupin III – Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna – 05

Episode 05 –

After introducing all the characters to the Lupin franchise, I guess it’s only natural that the show would start to explore how all of them met for the first time. In this case, we have the meeting between Lupin and Jigen (with Fujiko somewhat involved towards the end). It seems that, while this show will indeed cover Fujiko’s past, the creators seem to have decided to make it a long-term investment of sorts. With each passing episode, we only see a brief glimpse into Fujiko’s past, with little hints that would let us fully piece together her seemingly complex history. The ED theme is undoubtedly the most important hint to her past, but the series has been slow with expanding upon the scenes we see in the ending credits.

What’s strikingly noticeable about Fujiko’s personality is that she doesn’t really seem to have any sort of moral or ethical standard, with her only goal being to steal items that are considered priceless or valuable. You could say that her almost extreme desire for these rare treasures is her way of trying to justify her own existence, where only those who feel insecure would think about becoming a famous thief for to feel valuable. Of course, this is just speculation on my part, but it would fit in with the notion that Fujiko suffered through a terrible (perhaps twisted) childhood. She really is a woman filled with contradictions and oddities, where her desire for the “Smiling Red Peacock” exposes some of her inner thoughts and motivations.

With that being said, while Fujiko is still the focus of this series, strangely enough she doesn’t really get much screentime. Most of this episode was dedicated to following the edgy but fun misadventures of Lupin and Jigen in the Pyramids. The treasure hunt, and the inherently goofy/tense character dynamic between the two was fun to watch, albeit very different from what I had originally expected of their first meeting. Lupin and his comrades are known to be quite the goofy bunch, so seeing them meet for the first time in such a wild and dangerous manner certainly wasn’t expected.

In the end, it does seem that this series is trying to showcase Mine Fujiko and her rather multifaceted personality, but it certainly is going at a rather slow pace. I personally don’t mind due to the action-heavy noir atmosphere to the show, which keeps the show entertaining, but it might not be everybody’s cup of tea. Lupin’s presence is nonetheless noticeably compelling at times, and his presence this week made the episode quite a bit more engrossing and fun.

Overall Enjoyment: 3.1/5

Screenshots are later in the post. Warning, some screenshots are NSFW.

Sankarea – 05

Episode 05 –

It seems that the pacing to this series has slowed down quite a bit, where for a vast majority of the episode we simply saw Furuya ruminating over what his next course of action should be. Considering how an undead Rea was beginning to decay and rot away in his own room, Furuya sure was laid back and slow to take action. Then again, as I mentioned last week, Furuya has no precedents to work off of with regards to stopping Rea’s rigor mortis. Since we don’t know any zombies prior to Babu and Rea, there aren’t any previous solutions to the problem that Furuya would be aware of (and thus, I can’t really blame him for not knowing where to start). In the meanwhile, the actual answer is blatantly showed off in front of the audience’s face, where the still flexible Babu continues to laze and jut around like nobody’s business. The obvious solution is eating those Hydrancea leaves that Babu nibbled away at yesterday, though unfortunately this obvious observation never manifests itself in front of Furuya’s own eyes.

The show certainly wasn’t trying to be subtle with it’s hints about the solution to Furuya’s problem, but the frustrating part here is that the plot just conveniently makes it so Furuya doesn’t come across his little cat (which would have been the big hint he needed). While the solution does seem to reveal itself next week, this week’s avoidance of the solution was a bit too convenient and dragged the story on a bit more than I would’ve liked. There also seems to be a growing de-emphasis on Rea’s parents for now. They’ve yet to appear in this most recent showing, which is a sigh of relief considering all that Rea has gone through so far. This doesn’t bode well for the future though, where the absence of the parents makes it feel almost as if they are plotting to get revenge in a nasty manner. Sankarea is one of those rare shows that actually built up a believable, and emotional, main conflict around it’s central heroine and villains, one that feels legitimately terrifying and creepy.

On the plus side, this episode did further cement the suspicions I had of Rea’s zombie status; that is, how she is practically a different type of animal/creature now. Aside from the need to stay in the cold to avoid decay, Rea also has an abnormal appetite that seems to drive her into a crazed trance-like state. I guess this would be the part where she plays the role of a zombie, and seems to induce cravings for some human flesh. There’s no rational reasoning behind why it has to be human flesh in particular, but with Rea’s rather suffocating kiss this week, it sure seems that the situation could get messy rather fast. I do wonder how the creators plan on handling her “zombie instincts” in the long term though, especially once the Hydrancea leaves begin to play a role in the story.

In the meantime, while Furuya furiously wasted away his time brainstorming for solutions, there was plenty of unneeded fanservice all around. There were plenty of close-ups on Wanko’s breasts, plenty of cleavage shots of Rea and Wanko, and the surreal moment where berserk Rea rips off Wanko’s shirt. The fanservice certainly wasn’t necessary considering the non-eventful nature to this episode, and it seems to be continuously getting more screentime with each passing episode. I think I’m starting to get a good idea of what this show will be like once the Rea-vs-parents debacle is over with, where it seems that romance, some fanservice, and zombie-health problems will become the central to the story.

Overall Enjoyment: 3.0/5

Screenshots are later in the post.

Hyouka – 02

Episode 02 –

Hyouka seems to be a rather unambitious series as of now, something that I guess isn’t exactly a surprise considering Kyoto Animation’s hand in this show. However, there does seem to be something brooding underneath all the silliness and trivial mysteries that we’ve seen so far, as seen in Eru’s muttering to herself as well as the librarian’s denial of the presence of previous club anthologies. You could almost say that this was a buildup episode, where Hyouka seems to be slowly unveiling a much more grand overarching mystery that will come to define this show.

That being said, evidence of a future plot doesn’t mean that this episode was by itself particularly outstanding. Hyouka continues the trend it established last week, and covers the misadventures of Eru as she explores trite, trivial little mysteries around the school. There has yet to be any sort of captivating mystery out of this show so far, but these first two introductory episodes do get us familiar with the methodologies used by the characters to resolve these mysteries. The trains of thought used by the characters are rational, straightforward, and systematically interpret details until a valid conclusion is met. I find the main character’s methodology particularly interesting because he isn’t solving these mysteries to find the truth; he doesn’t care for the truth as long as he finds a solution that seems reasonable (and thus, could satisfy the ever-curious Eru). The bantering between characters also get surprisingly entertaining, albeit at times a bit repetitive.

If there’s one thing you have to be keenly aware of with this show, it’s the dialogue. The dialogue is at times sharp, and has subtle implications due to certain key words, intonations, and visual cues. The most obvious bits of dialogue with foreshadowing would be Eru’s muttering about the main protagonist. The less obvious bit of foreshadowing would be the brief encounter between the Classics club and the school librarian. When Satoshi (the self-proclaimed database) introduced himself as a member from the Classics club, the librarian responded in a rather surprised (and slightly hesitant) tone. On top of that, her actual response to the request for to check the archives was too fast, and completely denied the possibility of having old copies of the anthology in the archives. Perhaps I am overthinking things here, but I’m starting to get suspicious about the content of these past anthologies, and they could potentially play a larger role in the overall series. The interaction with the librarian just felt “off”, though perhaps I’m just imagining things.

The main issue with Hyouka as of now is that the story is moving at a snail-pacing, with any signs of a main plot being introduced gradually over a long period of time. Character animation and backgrounds are still superb, which does make this show aesthetically pleasing, but it has yet to really captivate my attention with any sort of compelling story. That being said, there does appear to be much more to this series than meets the eye. I have a strong suspicion that the librarian definitely knows something, especially after her slightly stunted reaction to the prompt from the Classics club. I also wonder if the Classics club has some connection to the request Eru is about to make to Oreki, and if they are indeed connected somehow, it would further reinforce my suspicions of the librarian (as well as justify the “reason” for Eru joining the Classics club).

Overall Enjoyment: 2.9/5

P.S. FYI, I say the “Classics club”, but the club itself is actually a classical literature club. The detail is a small, but rather crucial, part to this series.

Screenshots are later in the post.

Quick Impressions – Aquarion Evol – 18

Episode 18 –

Aquarion has really been a rather strange series to follow. It’s a series that loves to get absurdly silly and goofy, yet transitions to serious bits of plot that are overstuffed with heavy amounts of drama. It’s a combination that has worked well earlier, but now I can’t say I’m as thrilled with the combination. Perhaps it’s due to the sudden heavy emphasis on Zessica and her mixed feelings over Amata, which is a bit disconcerting considering how the main focus is supposed to be on Amata, Kagura, and Mikono.

To be fair, getting in some screentime for Zessica is nice in the sense that it allows us to get a better understanding of her character. What makes the focus on her a bit strange is how she is still undoubtedly a side character, and holds very little importance in the grand scheme of things as of now. While screentime is used up focusing in on her, the tensions in the Mikono x Amata x Kagura relationship continue to be sidelined. This could be disastrous in the future, where the show might have to rush character development towards the end of the series.

And personally speaking, I wasn’t really thrilled with the way in which Zessica was portrayed this week. Her actions made her seem extremely rash, ignorant, and borderline childish. Her knee-jerk reactions to her confused feelings led up to her foolishly deciding to ask for to be kidnapped, only for to get angry and feel responsible after Mix got taken away instead. Her characterization this week was terrible.

While I personally wasn’t a fan of this week’s showing, there is one interesting observation to make here; that is, we actually know very little about Zessica as a character. We don’t know anything about her past, only that she’s a girl with a lot of spunk and self-confidence. And yet, it seems that her self-confidence is slowly eroding away, and it’s scaring her. Perhaps there’s a reason rooted in her past for her fear of “losing confidence”, though this is all just pure speculation on my part.

Screenshots are later in the post.

Fate/Zero – 17

Episode 17 –

Well, this episode certainly didn’t come as a surprise considering all of the blatant foreshadowing between Kirei and Gilgamesh. They’ve both heavily hinted at disliking Tokiomi on numerous occasions, so it was only natural that he would eventually be backstabbed by his supposed allies. What made this twist rather interesting is how, before Tokiomi’s death, the series does try to show him being more of a parent (as seen in the scene with his daughter, Rin). In the end though, he was all about business and magic through and through, especially if you consider how he ended up talking purely about magic with his little girl. I guess if Tokiomi realized that was the last time he would meet her, he would have said some more personal words, but it seems that opportunity has come and gone.

The inherent appeal to this episode is definitely not the fact that Tokiomi himself was killed, but rather, that he was killed by his own apprentice. Kotomine Kirei has been a rather puzzling character in this series, mainly because it’s not exactly clear what his motivations and goals are. However, his motivations obviously seem strong enough to warrant betraying and murdering his master, something that the normally subservient Kirei would have never agreed to. Internally, I’m actually not exactly sure as to what is going on in Kirei’s mind, but it certainly seems to be frightening enough to get Kiritsugu and Irisviel on guard.

I think the main reasons behind not fully understanding the enigmatic Kirei may be due to the original light novel source material to this show. Knowing that Kirei rarely has any emotional facial expressions, we can only figure out his personality based on his speech and occasional bits of internal dialogue. I suspect that the light novel was far more thorough in fleshing out this question-mark-of-a-man, something that couldn’t be done in animated form without a lot of exposition. If this is really the case, it would explain why it’s difficult to comprehend Kirei’s fascination with Emiya Kiritsugu, as well as his fascination with the allure of rebellion (something that Gilgamesh certainly made worse). Kotomine Kirei, as a character, is a fascinating but puzzling man because we really don’t have a solid idea as to what he intends to do. And this uncertainty is what makes him a highly dangerous, lethal foe.

I did mention last week how all the events in this show are interconnected somehow, and how a single event can act as a catalyst to a much larger chain reaction. At this point, it’s quite obvious that Caster’s death was that catalyst that started this domino-effect of master-servant killings. Caster’s death resulted in the death of Kirei’s father, Kirei’s subsequent retrieval of new command seals, Maiya and Kiritsugu obtaining a hostage and blackmailing Kayneth, Lancer’s death, and everything else since Saber’s usage of Excalibur. There’s a clear chain of events happening as a consequence of Caster’s demise, and if you logically follow through, the next master-servant subject to scrutiny will without a doubt be Matou Kariya.  Kariya’s goal was to kill off Tokiomi in revenge for Sakura, as well as win the grail war. Tokiomi’s sudden death this week brings up the question as to what Kariya will do now? Considering he was driven borderline insane from the bugs, right now he is an extremely unstable character; taking away his sole goal (and target of his hatred) will make him an unstable man who will probably meet an untimely demise. Berserker is also equally unstable, which points to a confrontation between Saber and Berserker.

In the end, while you could say that this episode was eventful, you can also say that it was a mere buildup episode. While the episode did a good job with portraying Tokiomi’s demise, the episode also set the foundation for future conflicts with the likes of Kariya and Berserker, as well as the increasingly uneasy feelings between Kirei and Kiritsugu. In the meantime, we’re also seeing the slow deterioration of Irisviel, Kiritsugu’s ideological differences with Saber, and Gilgamesh’s fascination with the other two kings of this grail war. There seems to be much brooding on the horizon to this series, and the show promises to get even more frantic and intense than these recent episodes.

Overall Enjoyment: 3.6/5

Screenshots are later in the post.