An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Category: Seasonal Episodes

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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Seasonal Selection – In/Spectre Episode 2 (Late Update)

Apologies for the tardiness of this entry; real life ensued. All is well and future In/Spectre episodes should run closer to their air time.

Here we get the first real “Investigation” of the series, as it’s being presented here – What the Guardian Serpent Heard. By the end of this episode, I feel like you should know if you’re going to like In/Spectre, because while perhaps not as impressive or dramatic as the main plot, the time this episode is spent doing what In/Spectre mostly does for its Manga run: attempt to explain a mystery to the satisfaction of the characters in the scene through a mixture of deduction and hypothesis.

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Seasonal Selection – In/Spectre Episode 1

It’s a new season of anime, so it’s time to go through a new set of seasonal episodes! This time, I’m going to be watching along with In/Spectre (aka Kyokou Suiri). Now, this one… I’m not exactly going in sight unseen. I’m caught up with the manga (through volume 10, which is past anything we can expect to see out of this season), and I know the anime is going to be following that fairly closely since I got to see Episode 1 at last year’s Anime Expo rather than for the first time today.

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