Tag: Winter 2021

Categories
Anime Reviews Reviews

Playing in Another’s Sandbox – “Wonder Egg Priority” and Finding Personal Meaning in Messy Storytelling

As I sit here once again looking forward toward a new anime season (October is coming up faster than you think, friends), I find that more than anything about to show up on my streaming services in the coming weeks, I’d rather look backwards. Several weeks ago the long-awaited (and troubled) finale to the Winter 2021 season anime Wonder Egg Priority was released, and while I was looking forward to finally being able to watch the remainder of that story, my weak, indulgent nature exposed me to some of the internet blowback it was getting. On the whole it hasn’t been particularly complimentary to the work. I gave myself the luxury of a few days away to allow the furor to calm before I watched the episode myself.

I should really say “episodes,” because I’m perpetually behind and I heard about the delay of the finale before I’d gotten around to watching the 12th episode. I figured that it would be helpful to have a bit of a lead-in rather than attempting to go in cold after months of waiting. Whether that was a better choice or not I can’t say; at the very least it kept me from having to wait and hope for weeks on end without knowing the outcome. Needless to say, after watching the episode(s) I ended up on an emotional journey that I didn’t entirely expect.

Continue reading “Playing in Another’s Sandbox – “Wonder Egg Priority” and Finding Personal Meaning in Messy Storytelling”
Categories
Anime Reviews Reviews

Horimiya – Snapshots of a Relationship

What’s important in a relationship? I think most people would answer something like “communication” or “shared interests,” and I think we can all agree that those are at least some of the basic things that make for a successful partnership. I might be tempted to ask a different question, however – what moments are important to a relationship? That’s a much more difficult question to answer, because as a rule our brains don’t always keep track of memories that, at the time, might seem insignificant.

Continue reading “Horimiya – Snapshots of a Relationship”
Categories
Anime Reviews Reviews

Winter 2021 Check-In, Week of 3/7/2021

Whew, it’s been a while since I’ve felt like writing something about what I’m watching and not about something more abstract (though I enjoy, in my own way, putting my emotions to the page in a way that intersects with anime – I hope readers will continue to indulge me). We’re at that point in the anime season where I’ve settled into a decent-ish routine and I’m starting to look ahead to the future (the new season starts in just a few weeks, folks). I’m also prepping for an online convention, and while I’m only really responsible for about 1.5 panels the one I’m mainly involved in is focused directly on great new anime from the past year, so I’ve got to squeeze in some of the shows I’ve missed somewhere. So obviously I’ve dropped a few things I stopped vibing with, and have put a few other series on hold since I’m fairly certain they won’t make the cut-off for my recommendation panel and so I can finish them later. You know, this almost feels like my typical Spring time cram session. Almost.

I’ll try to stay away from revealing major spoilers for any of these, but in all cases I’m at least a few episodes in, so keep that in mind.

Continue reading “Winter 2021 Check-In, Week of 3/7/2021”
Categories
Personal

Maybe It’s Unreachable for Me: Inadequacy in “SK8 The Infinity”

Note: This post contains spoilers for recent episodes of SK8 The Infinity (episodes 7 and 8 specifically).

It will come as a surprise to no one that much of my sense of self is tied up in my life as a hobbyist. I entered my mid-20s as a mediocre college graduate, employed but not in a field I was passionate about, and began to develop my passions elsewhere by watching a lot of anime and writing about it. I also did fan-art (sometimes) and played some video games here and there. At least as far as those activities were concerned, I felt pretty good about myself. I’d always been praised for my artistic ability as a kid and for a long time I had deluded myself into thinking that I was better than most people, at least when it came to drawing anime-inspired cartoon characters (and any art teachers who may have critiqued my chosen subject matter were just art snobs with nothing to tell me). And as far as video games were concerned, I always managed to play through the most popular ones and when I was younger I’d even give tips and walkthroughs to my friends who were stumped. I spent a long time on the phone walking people through the dungeons in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, that’s for sure.

Setting foot into the broader world disavowed me of a lot of those assumptions about my own skills. I was never too broken up about realizing that I was “just okay” at video games, because it became clear as I got older that I had less and less time to devote to the sort of sprawling, epic RPG’s I’d loved as a teenager. This felt to me more like an artifact of getting older, and while that’s disappointing to have to confront it’s also predictable. I still play and enjoy games when I get around to them, but I never had dreams of being some big-name gaming journalist or live streamer, so I’ve just never been left with a major sense of loss.

Continue reading “Maybe It’s Unreachable for Me: Inadequacy in “SK8 The Infinity””
Categories
Reviews

My Favorite Moments – Week of 1/31/2021

So, friends, we’ve gotten to that point in the anime season where real life starts to get in the way, and it becomes a bit easier to see where one’s priorities are. I’m someone who thrives on regularity, so when I was suddenly asked to fill in for another position at my job due to pandemic-related absences, it threw things into pandemonium. Doing two jobs at once isn’t really my preference, though the second job is the one I used to perform so at least it didn’t require any training. But it did affect my work hours and the overall ability to schedule out my days, and while you wouldn’t think starting and ending the workday an hour later would be a big deal, apparently it was for my brain.

I’m not a great writer to begin with, but making it so that my evenings were shorter and with less time to edit meant that I wouldn’t have much time to turn my words into something passable, so I decided to just let things go for the week and deal with it later (avoidant personality for-the-win). While this job shift is likely to last at least a few days into this next week, I did want to try to at least come up with something to post, so here’s another selection of moments I enjoyed in the anime I’ve been watching lately. Perhaps at some point these posts will get caught-up with the present… but it’s me so I wouldn’t count on it!

Continue reading “My Favorite Moments – Week of 1/31/2021”
Categories
Reviews Short Takes

My Favorite Moments – Week of 1/24/2021

I thought I’d try something new this season since I’m attempting to keep on top of so many series. While I don’t have the time nor the energy to do a weekly recap for all of the anime I’m watching, I thought it might be fun to post periodically about all the specific scenes, story beats, or moments that bring me joy while I’m going through my watch list. In the future, I might not limit it to currently-airing anime, either; lately I’ve even managed to watch a few things lately from previous seasons, or re-watched anime just for fun (I know, right?).

This post will obviously contain spoilers: this time we’ve got spoilers for episode 4 of Laid-Back Camp Season 2, Heaven’s Design Team, Horimiya, SK8 The Infinity, and Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki. It’s my aim to avoid some of the longer-running, plot-heavy series like The Promised Neverland and Attack on Titan in these posts, mainly because spoilers are more touchy and it gets more difficult to talk about any current revelations without going back and discussing earlier points at length. This could definitely change in the future depending on what happens, though.

Continue reading “My Favorite Moments – Week of 1/24/2021”
Categories
Reviews Short Takes

Winter 2021 – Anime Watch-List

I don’t talk about this in detail very often, but in the grand scheme of things I do watch quite a bit of anime as compared to at least some of my peers. Much of it lately has been in “catching-up” mode, marathoning a lot of single cour series in one go over a couple of evenings to fill in the gaps from this past year. This is the first season in a while where I’ve had the presence of mind and the time to stay on top of broadcast anime, the consequence of which is that I’m following a lot of anime this Winter. But that doesn’t mean that I’m giving everything equal weight – there are some anime that I’ve started to look forward to and for which I carve out some time, while there are others that I’m having fun watching but might delay or even drop if my circumstances change. I thought it would be an entertaining (perhaps mildly horrifying) exercise to outline what’s-what, in case anyone else is following along.

Disclaimer: these are just my own opinions, and based on only a few episodes in some cases. This list is subject to change in light of potential future story developments in any of these series.

Continue reading “Winter 2021 – Anime Watch-List”
Categories
Reviews Short Takes Simulcast Reviews

Winter Simulcast Check-In, Week of 1/17/2021

Hi, all. This post should be significantly shorter than the previous check-in, mostly because I’m just cleaning up a few episodes of shows that hadn’t had second episodes at the time I wrote the first post (or which I cut for time and my own sanity). If you’re a new reader, it might surprise you to know that I do actually like to write things other than episode reviews! Yet, I find it helpful to go through the process even if writing about it isn’t as interesting as it could be (though maybe some folks out there find it interesting to read).

I’ll mention this again – these recaps won’t be a weekly feature of the blog, but if there’s an interesting episode of anything in particular in the coming weeks I might take time to write in more detail about that episode specifically.

Continue reading “Winter Simulcast Check-In, Week of 1/17/2021”
Categories
Reviews Short Takes Simulcast Reviews

Winter Simulcast Check-in, Week of 1/10/2021

I thought I’d try something new this season, since I’m watching a lot of anime (by design; I’m seeing how much anime I can watch concurrently and whether my ability to keep track of a lot of series was a fluke of my youth, or whether I’ve still “got it”). I’m going to attempt a periodic recap of the simulcast/simuldub series I’ve been watching in order to keep my thoughts organized. I don’t know that I’m in a place where I feel like digging deeper into 1 or more series by giving them their own weekly posts like many other bloggers I follow, but I thought this might be a good way to ease into the routine of posting more on a regular basis.

Some series have not aired their second episodes as of the date I’m using as a cutoff for this post, which is why they aren’t listed this time around. I am almost certain I’ll be dropping a couple anime off the list as I go; this might look like a lot, but this is pretty typical for me during a season where I feel active and I’m not shy about cutting a series off if it’s not providing me with any enjoyment.

…Yeesh, this post got long. I hope you’ll forgive me, haha 🙂

Continue reading “Winter Simulcast Check-in, Week of 1/10/2021”
Categories
First Impressions Reviews

Winter 2021 Premiere List

Hi everyone! Here I’ve collected a list of all the premieres I wrote “first impression” reviews for. Just click on the link to read the review you’re interested in. I’ll leave this pinned to the top of the blog for the next few weeks or so.

2.43 Seiin High School Boys VolleyballBack ArrowBottom-Tier Character Tomozaki
Cells at Work! Code BlackCute Executive OfficerDr. Ramune: Mysterious Disease Specialist
EX-ARMGekidolHeaven’s Design Team
HorimiyaHortensia SagaI*Chu
Idoly PrideKemono JihenLBX Girls
Mushoku Tensei: Jobless ReincarnationOtherside PicnicRedo of Healer
Scar on the PraeterSK8 The InfinitySkate-Leading Stars
So I’m a Spider, So What?Suppose a Kid from the Last Dungeon Boonies…The Hidden Dungeon Only I Can Enter
VladLoveWave!!! – Let’s Go Surfing!!Wonder Egg Priority