An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Category: Seasonal Episodes

Seasonal Selection – Azur Lane Episode 12 (Final)

This was the final episode I expected, but not the one I might have hoped for.

All in all, what happens this episode? Exactly what you would you expect would happen. Orochi fires off its doom rocket (I can’t really call it anything else since it’s kind of nuke-like but not exactly and not given any particular name) and the first act of the episode is the struggle to intercept it before the Azur Lane home port is annihilated. We get, admittedly, a decent action sequence for this show between Purifier and Enterprise on the chase. You know Enty is going to intercept, but it at least tries to sow some doubt the way a good action scene should, and the fighters are a little less static than a lot of the fighting in this episode in particular. Purifier still has a fun personality, too. I’d comment that it’s one hell of a slow rocket but frankly if you watched episode 1 you know to not expect anything to be logically consistent with the real world.

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Seasonal Selection – Azur Lane Episode 11

Hm? It’s been a long while, but episode 11 of Azur Lane is finally here. And to start with, its very “by the book”, but right now I’ll take the safe execution.

In specific, this episode is basically dedicated to taking on the escorts for Orochi, at least in terms of what burns time. At the start we’re in battle with Purifier, but in classic Azur Lane Anime fashion she excuses herself very quickly to enable the “First half talk, second half fight” structure for the episode as a whole, and that is by in large what they do.

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Seasonal Selection – In/Spectre Episode 8

I love In/Spectre. I really do. The manga does an excellent job of blending detective-style mystery with urban fantasy and giving it a unique twist with Iwanaga’s ultimate disregard for the truth and disinterest in judgment, how she instead seeks solutions or uses the truth for her own ends. But every week this show just reinforces my thought that it shouldn’t have made the transition from text and still images on a page to a medium that has an unavoidable element of time.

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Seasonal Selection – In/Spectre Episode 4

This week, our episode is dedicated to clues!

Which is to say, we are primarily concerned with the facts of Karin Nanase’s life and death, facts that will be very important to be aware of as we attempt to unravel (or something like that) the case of Steel Lady Nanase. We know her impressive bust saw her scouted, but the little fame she had came from a good break and quick wit. We also know that she had some trouble in life, with a rumor circulating that she had been responsible for the otherwise ruled accidental death of her father who resented her. This caused her to go on a temporary hiatus that lasted for the rest of her life, for reasons of being crushed by a steel beam in an empty lot near the hotel she was staying at.

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