Reaching The Target With The Help From Friends

Posted on by Karandi
Tsurune Episode Reviews

Tsurune Episode 8 Review

I don’t think I’m ever going to get tired of the animation they use in this for when Minato fires a beautiful shot. Admittedly, we haven’t seen much of it due to his target panic, but this episode really did convey perfectly just how beautiful his shots can be. I was right with the spectators sitting in awe after watching that arrow fly through the air, the feathers spinning, before it struck in the centre of the target. 

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To say that Tsurune maintains its status as an incredibly beautiful anime is an understatement even if most of the time it isn’t rubbing your face in it. It’s the small details that keep this one pretty even as we see some fairly mundane sequences of characters sitting and talking.

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Though, it would be a mistake to believe that prettiness is all this anime has going for it. In eight episodes Tsurune has managed to really make me care about these characters, and this week even Nanao, who has been by far the one I’ve known least about or cared least for, managed to make me pay attention to him as he played his role within the team. The fact that Nanao is aware he’s playing a role makes him an even more interesting character and I have to wonder why he is so fixated on Onogi and what happens when Onogi doesn’t need him anymore to help balance himself. Of course, the same questions can be, and should be, aimed at Seiya in regards to Minato.

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Despite this episode focusing largely on the team shoot at the tournament, which the boys first did fairly poorly in and then, through some team bonding and self-reflection improved for the second half, really the story here is about the characters.  We get excellent moments for Ryouhei, between Onogi and Nanao, Nanao and Minato, Minato and Onogi, and finally Seiya and Shu. Each one slightly revealing and each on interesting on their own.

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The boys did qualify for the next round but it was nearly beside the point by the time that was revealed. The progress they individually made and made as a team made everything worth it and honestly I don’t think I’d have minded if they just had to start again next time. Still, looking forward to what they do next because I’m really enjoying getting swept away by these characters.

March Comes in Like a Lion Episode 31: Lessons Learned

Posted on by Karandi
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Review:

I really loved this episode for so many reasons but I’m going to try to see if I can keep this post from getting out of control. However, other than being a fantastic continuation on Hina’s story and closing the newcomers tournament story, what episode 31 of March Comes in Like a Lion does beautifully is have Rei draw on all the things he’s learned since the start of season 1 and actually take on some of the advice. This whole season we have seen a more proactive Rei who wants to connect with others, but actually seeing him acknowledge a fault within himself and stopping himself from repeating a mistake was truly wonderful.

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Nikaido, for all that he only appears briefly in the episode outside of Rei’s memory, is definitely the most valuable player here for even though Rei has been given advice from others, it is Nikaido’s words that hold the most sway and forcibly bring Rei up short right before repeating the same mistake he made in a tournament back in season 1.

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Despite the success Rei has in the tournament, this episode doesn’t celebrate this moment. For Rei, winning the tournament was really important for his journey but his focus right now is definitely on Hina and having won, Rei immediately shifts his focus back to the girl who has saved him so many times from himself.

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Another seriously good episode from this show. As a side note, I recently started a rewatch of this series starting back at season 1 with a friend and while I knew Rei had grown and changed over the course of the 2 seasons, going back to season 1 it is astounding just how profound that change has been. It really kind of blew me away because it has always felt like such a slow development and yet the Rei we are watching now has come so far since those early episodes.

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Fastest Finger First Series Review: Do You Like Watching Characters Answer Questions?

Posted on by Karandi
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Overview:

Koshiyama is about as typical an anime dweeb as they come. A book nerd starting high school with few friends or social skills. Then he get dragged into a practice quiz and discovers Quiz Bowl.

Review:

There’s really not a lot of story here. Geeky and shy kid joins new quiz circle at his high school and as a result gains some confidence, kind of makes some friends, and kind of finds a rival. I say kind of, because in these 12 episodes the skeleton for future developments is set up but very little time is devoted to anything outside of quizzing and learning about question formats and practicing to answer.

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Enjoyment of this show relies very heavily on the audience enjoying game shows or playing along with quizzes. If you like hearing characters discuss strategies for when you can quiz in or narrow down answers, then you will have fun. If you like seeing if you can beat characters to the right answer, you’ll probably have fun. If you actually want the back story on the characters or to see any of the potential character developments realized you’ll probably end up disappointed.

For me, I loved being inside Koshiyama’s head as he tried to find the answer to questions. Sometimes he was successful and sometimes not (so at least no plot armour for the rookie quizzer) but his thinking and how he drew on his knowledge from the vast array of books he had read was kind of fun to follow.

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The other members of the team and most the rival players are also fun enough, but they just don’t spend enough time with any of them. They all remain more types than characters and, particularly with the leader of Koshiyama’s team, it felt like there was a lot missing that would just make all these characters feel a bit more real and fleshed out.

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Mikuriya gets a lot more time as the set up rival from another school, but even he doesn’t get much beyond his attitude and aptitude. We literally know nothing about him beyond the fact that he likes quizzes and he doesn’t like to lose.

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Of course, the show isn’t all smooth sailing. The introduction of Akira in the latter half hurt my enjoyment of some of the final episodes. He was a really annoying character and while the show needed something to shake up all the composed quizzers and Akira served that role well, he didn’t make it more fun to watch.

The opening song is enjoyable enough and the dings and beeps of the buzzers are certainly nostalgic sounding. Otherwise the music and sound is pretty unremarkable as are most of the visuals.

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There’s no greater narrative going on here. No fighting for a greater good. This is just about the characters and quizzing with Quiz Bowl getting the lion’s share of development even at the expense of the characters. Still, if that works for you then you should have some fun with this show. I certainly did and while it is hardly going to be my favourite anime ever and rewatch value is pretty low (sorry, once I know what the answer is going to be a lot of the fun goes out the window) I’d actually happy watch a second season of this, though that seems unlikely that we’ll get one.

Probably the best thing I can say about this show is that it is consistent in what it delivers.

If you watched Fastest Finger First I’d love to know your thoughts on it.

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Fastest Finger First Episode 12: Define Fun

Posted on by Karandi
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Review:

As expected, this anime has ended by wrapping up the meet though really the tension in the episode ended with the end of the match up between Koshiyama and Mikuriya (no spoiler on how that goes). Basically, there’s a lot more story implied with where the two go from here after this meet but as this is the final episode there’s a real question of whether we’ll ever get a second season or if this is really it for the anime.

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I had a lot of fun with this final episode though will admit that other than watching characters over think questions, and seeing people try to deal with Akira, nothing really happened. Of course, it is a show about quizzing so I’d probably have been a bit put out if they’d tried anything else for a final.

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I’ll get to a full review of this show later but I think the biggest disappointment is that the characters still haven’t been developed much at all. Because we spend so much time with the quizzes, any characterization is definitely taking a back seat.

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Fastest Finger First Episode 11: Low Level Thrills Ahead

Posted on by Karandi
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Review:

There’s not a lot to this episode beyond the obvious and yet when it ended I felt my body relax because I’d clearly been tensing up during most of the second half. It’s kind of fun to be that caught up in a single character’s emotions even if the end result is quite a sore neck.

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The third round of the quiz meet continues with the second group and Akira is back in his sister’s school uniform and determined to generally annoy people. I still really hate Akira’s character but I give credit to the creators because clearly that is what his character is intended for.

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The real thrill here though is Koshiyama as well see him employing everything he has learned about quizzes and questions as well as a fair desire to win even when he doubts he can. I particularly loved the final question mostly because he did exactly what I would do when I know I’ve come across a piece of information but can’t remember it. Of course they end on a cliff-hanger but from what I’ve been able to find out next week will be the final episode of the season so I guess things will come to an end one way or another then.

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Tuesday’s Top 5: My Hero Academia Tournament Matches

Posted on by Karandi
Tuesday's Top 5

So as I said last week, this post topic was suggested to me by Kendra Ressler as one of my patrons and I’m going to thank her for the very awesome topic to write about. If you’ve been following season 2 of My Hero Academia, you already know it has been running a tournament between its year 1 students as part of their sports festival and this has led to some incredible character match ups and intense fights. I’m going to say this is my absolute favourite tournament arc ever given I usually find them pretty dull. There is no possible way to describe the events in this tournament as dull.

Anyway, I’d love to know which were your favourite matches on the tournament so please leave your comments below.

Please Note – There will be My Hero Academia season 2 spoilers below so if you haven’t started watching it you may want to pass.

Honourable mentions this week:

  • Shiozaki vs Kaminari
  • Mina vs Aoyama
  • Yaoyorozu vs Tokoyami
  • Tetsutetsu vs Kirishima
  • Iida vs Shiozaki
  • Ashido vs Tokoyami
  • Kirishima vs Bakugo
  • Iida vs Todoroki
  • Bakugo vs Tokoyami
  • Any of the fights I may have forgotten.

Number 5: Mei vs Iida

 

If you read my episode review featuring this match, you will know I found this whole sequence pretty hysterical. Essentially Mei tricks Iida into helping her sell her support devices. Runs him around in circles while pointing out the various features and once she’s finished her sales pitch she calmly steps out of bounds. While I’m not a major fan of comedy, this was really well handled and is one of the more unique fights in this tournament.

Number 4: Midoriya vs Shino

 

This first fight of the tournament between Midoriya and the seemingly weaker general course student was intense, or at least as in tense as a fight can be where one character simply asks the other to step out of bounds and then waits for it to happen. Shino probably should have specified speed on that one. Despite that, this fight was excellent at making the point clear that just because you aren’t in the hero course does not mean that your quirk is useless or that you can’t be a hero. If Midoriya’s quirk had been anything else and he hadn’t been the protagonist, Shino would have won this particular fight.

Number 3: Izuku vs Todoroki

 

For a fight as amazing as this one to be number 3 just kind of goes to show what it was up against. Seriously, my post of this episode was incredibly hard to write because I was just kind of blown away by how intense things got. Keep in mind though, we’ve got broken bones a plenty in this episode, not to mention a near double wipe out explosion. Todoroki seriously let loose at the end there. Absolutely amazing to watch.

Number 2: Uraraka vs Bakugo

 

When Kendra first suggested this list I thought for sure this fight would be number 1. However, like my top females in shonen list, it appears that Uraraka is always destined to be number 2. That shouldn’t deceive you though. This is a fight you need to watch and rewatch and then watch it again. Going in to this match up I felt for sure Uraraka would make a brave showing and then be swept under the rug but instead she really brought the fight to Bakugo. What was even better is that by the end of the fight he respected her for her strength. Also, this episode brings up a lot of the issues with the world and format of the school so you can deconstruct that as well, or you can just enjoy a seriously amazing fight.

Number 1: Bakugo vs Todoroki

 

It might be a bit obvious to pick the final as my number 1 choice, but really, this was an absolutely amazing match up and one that deserves respect. Without stretching out the time, inserting random flashbacks to rapidly build a reason for the audience to care about the characters, unnecessary lengthy dialogue about motive or tactics, Bones delivered one fantastic fight sequence and they did it in less than ten minutes of screen time. This was a truly awesome clash between two characters that in season one were well and truly overshadowed by Midoriya but have now been given a bit of free reign to shine.

Alright, over to you. Which was your favourite match and why? Once again, thanks to Kendra for suggesting the list.

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My Hero Academia Season 2 Episode 25

Posted on by Karandi
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Review:

What was that? Oh, that was my heart skipping a beat and me forgetting that I can actually breathe. We’re all good. Given this episode gave us a recap, reminding us how angry Bakugo is as a character all the time and a prep room confrontation between the two characters before we got to the fight and it was still all over before the 12 minutes mark, it has no business hitting me that hard. By the way, the next part contains major spoilers for the fight so go watch it first.

Are we sure that Bakugo isn’t secretly evil?

This fight was short but really, really intense. I think all the big shonen titles of the last twenty years could take a lesson from this. Stretching a fight over three, four, five episodes (half a season) does not make it more powerful. Getting the audience invested in the participants, having some emotional drive, and hitting hard and fast, that is going to knock the audience back in their chairs and have them wondering how many times they can watch it before the internet crashes.

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Bakugo is angry for most of this fight. Like, furious. Almost manic would probably be the best descriptor. He isn’t angry at Todoroki. I’m somehow doubting Bakugo has actually seen Todoroki as a person yet given I don’t think he’s used his name once. No, Bakugo is angry at himself and the situation. Once again, Midoriya has beaten him at his own self-imposed standard and that is killing him just a little bit inside. And outside. He isn’t given to keeping his feelings to himself.

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Todoroki on the other hand is emotionally torn in two. He wants to win and he knows he needs to use his left side. He is hearing Midoriya’s words from their fight and logically he understands their meaning and knows the truth of it. He actually does start bringing out his flames after Midoriya calls out from the stands, and then… Well then reality kicks in. A lifetime of trauma doesn’t just vanish because of one fight and a pep talk.

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Before Bakugo’s attack even reaches him, Todoroki has conceded defeat and his flames have gone out. It means Bakugo has convincingly won the tournament but it means his actual victory, showing that he is better than Midoriya, has been snatched from his grasp.

I was kind of glad when they knocked him out before declaring him the winner. He actually looks really peaceful when he’s unconscious.

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So, if all that happens in 12 minutes what happens for the rest of the episode?

We have an award ceremony where All Might shows once again he is a giant dork yet everyone loves him. Except maybe Bakugo. That kid does not know when to just let something go and I kind of love him for it. He might be a socially inept, explosively angry, bully at times but his genuine drive to always be the best is kind of admirable. A lot of characters say they want to be the best but they almost always succumb to being ‘nice’ or helping others. Bakugo isn’t hindered by the usual constraints put on protagonists because he isn’t the protagonist. This allows us to see the true personality of someone who strives to be better than other at any cost. Even if he wants to be a better hero which is kind of arguably a good thing.

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We also spend some time with Iida and his family in the hospital before we head back to the classroom and the students are told they have a couple of days off class. It’s the final scenes here where we see the reflection and regrouping process these characters go through that takes this episode from being cool action to actually being another excellent building block in this story.

While we see numerous characters I’m only focussing on these two. Todoroki visits his mother. He realises he has to overcome his block on his own and he’s finally ready to take that first step. Midoriya on the other hand has taken Rescue Girl’s words to heart and has finally realised his reckless actions cause others to worry. He is also finally ready to go to the next level and wants to take that first step.

With that, the whole class is fired up and ready to get stronger and with the villains briefly being shown plus the condition Iida’s brother is in, it is clear it won’t take long before the students are going to be thrown back in the deep end.

Seriously brilliant episode of a show that has really delivered this arc well.

My Hero Academia is available on Crunchyroll.

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The Silver Guardian Episode 11

Posted on by Karandi
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Review:

I love that this show has absolutely zero sense of urgency or desire to actually deal with its main plot. Otherwise, I might actually start to feel concerned for some of the characters. Instead, our kidnap victim is now doing a Princess Leia impersonation and for some reason joining weird cult guys though we have no explanation as to why they want her to join or why she’s going along with it. But that’s such a minor point in this episode why dwell on it at all.

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Instead, let’s meet random new character with a sister complex who doesn’t seem to understand that the game money isn’t money in the real world, and is for some reason willing to sacrifice all his memories to win one fight, and didn’t actually properly research all the rules of the fight before literally dropping into it. Yep, I’m feeling a real desire to get behind this character.

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And that’s the episode. There’s also the confusion of the Crunchyroll episode title saying Final but a bit of searching on Google suggests there are two more episodes and given the title within the episode wasn’t Final and even the side story this episode didn’t end, I’m guessing there are more episodes to go. Either way, this one is more on count down at this point and I’m only watching it through because I made it this far.

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My Hero Academia Episode 24

Posted on by Karandi
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Review:

This episode is a bit blur like given we get 5 separate match ups and we get a lot of time out of the stadium dealing with the fallout of Midoriya and Todoroki’s fight from last week. I’m not upset about this as everything that is covered is kind of needed to get us to the end of the tournament and I’m glad they didn’t overly dwell on anything in this episode in particular, but it means that this episode works as a transition and not a lot else.

That said, there’s still a few major points that come up.

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Firstly, Todoroki is confronted by his father and it seems that My Hero Academia isn’t going for the instant healing of childhood trauma. Certainly Todoroki has a bit of a break-through in his fight with Midoriya but he isn’t about to let go of all of that baggage just because of one fight. My respect for the writers of this show shot up enormously after that revelation.

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Secondly, one of the teachers at the school finally acted like an adult and pretty much told Midoriya to stop breaking himself at the drop of the hat. The permanent disfigurement suffered already should have been incentive enough for him to tone it down but this is Midoriya we’re talking about so hopefully he pays attention.

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Also, we get a new villain in the mix who I’m guessing will become a bit more relevant after the tournament wraps up (unless the villains actually are psycho enough to attack a stadium full of pro-heroes – that could be amusing but deeply stupid). Okay, he does take out Iida’s brother here and that is probably going to lead to some other character trauma but that point, while made, wasn’t exactly prominent.

Lastly, Todoroki and Bakugo both made it through to the final round (like we were expecting anything else after Midoriya was taken out of the running).

As I said, this episode isn’t particularly good as a stand alone episode (unlike the previous two stories that have been phenomenal to watch just because of what they delivered in the episode), but it works well enough at getting us from point A to point B and has more than enough relevant plot points to ensure it isn’t an entirely skippable bit of filler. Looking forward to the next episode.

My Hero Academia is available on Crunchyroll.

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My Hero Academia Episode 23

Posted on by Karandi
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Review (again, spoilers this week if you didn’t watch yet):

I’m not certain which battle was more impressive during this episode. The physical battle between Midoriya and Todoroki was visually amazing and absolutely intense. We had ice being blasted into a million pieces and strong gusts of wind and that was even before Todoroki caved on his not using his left side in combat stance.

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But as impressive as that was, it couldn’t have one-upped Uraraka and Bakuro’s efforts just for lasting longer and taking a more physical toll on both contestants. Certainly the audience was feeling the effect of some of those attacks. And it was the first time the teachers nearly intervened before the fight was over so they clearly felt both students were pushing themselves just a little too far for a tournament fight.

Yet, the fight that was more impressive was the one Midoriya declared when he decided to shatter Todoroki’s view of himself and his power. Having clearly told Endeavor last week that Todoroki wasn’t Endeavor, this week Midoriya makes a very similar declaration to Todoroki pointing out that his power is his own and not using it when everyone else is giving their all is not the kind of action a hero would take.

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With Todoroki declaring clearly he wanted to be a hero and reconnecting with the child who had genuinely wanted to be a hero, he wins the fight (or at least the match) but I can’t help feeling that this is also Midoriya’s victory.

Besides, even if Midoriya had made it to the next round, his body was kind of done after this match. So, no Midoriya/Bakugo fight for a final which leaves me wondering how this whole tournament arc will come to a close and I must admit at this point I’m really kind of excited to see what is next.

Truly amazing episode following on from a very strong episode. I’m going to be honest, the preview tried really hard but I just don’t know how the next episode is going to stand up after these last two.

My Hero Academia is available on Crunchyroll.

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