An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

An Epic About Robots, Love, and Surfing – Eureka Seven Spoiler Review

Eureka Seven is, in my opinion, a rarity in that it’s a show that gets the long, escalating epic journey just about right. Because this show is no doubt a marathon. At 50 episodes it’s not the longest anime I’ve watched start to finish, but it is in a high tier that most shows don’t go for, and you do feel the weight that time investment can bring to bear. So I suppose the question is if Eureka Seven uses its time well, and if it’s worthwhile.

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Seasonal Selection – In/Spectre Episode 11

Here we get it, Iwanaga’s fourth solution and the big climax of In/Spectre. In episode eleven. It’s well-done and at least takes advantage of some of the benefits of being an anime rather than a manga. In Episode eleven. This is the big one – the final push against Steel Lady Nanase and the last shot to foil Rikka’s scheme. This is episode eleven.

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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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Ia Fhtagn – Demonbane Spoiler Review

In the spirit of Mecha March, this week we’re going to take a look at another deep, symbolic, long, twisted, psychological… ha! Just kidding, it’s time for Demonbane.

Demonbane (or, if you prefer, Kishin Houkou Demonbane or Roar of the Machine God Demonbane) is a property that I can only assume is the result of a series of drunken dares culminating in “I bet you can’t write and market something with panty shots of the Necronomicon as a selling point”. Needless to say, they did it, and the anime form of the slice of insanity that resulted is what we’re looking at today.

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Seasonal Selection – In/Spectre Episode 10

Unexpectedly, we get not one but two of Iwanaga’s solutions this episode, leaving me with… a few questions, honestly. Chief among them being “If we’re going to shortcut things in this show, why didn’t we do it for some of the setup episodes?”

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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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Imitation, um, Sure is Something – RahXephon Spoiler Review

Welcome back to Mecha March! Today I’m reviewing RahXephon, aka Xerox of Evangelion. Yeah, I’m just going to come out and mention the biggest issue with this show right at the start, because it is in everything and better to just get it out of the way: RahXephon is a show that lives almost entirely in the shadow of Neon Genesis Evangelion and really, really wants to simply be its famous predecessor. Characters, themes, images… a lot of them are lifted straight from Evangelion, serial numbers filed off and remixed just enough to claim to not be just Evangelion all over again.

But does it work? Drawing influence, even strong influence, from a predecessor can be alright. Being a mimeographed copy of your predecessor, slowly degrading from replication, however, is not. There isn’t an exceptionally sharp line dividing one for the other, the “too similar” failure state from the “more of the same, but ultimately OK” pass. Even though RahXephon strives to become Evangelion, if it puts in enough of its own work, it could be fine. Evangelion had a lot of good material, after all, and didn’t always implement it perfectly, so there might be room in the shell for something else.

The task set, let’s start digging in to RahXephon.

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Seasonal Selection – In/Spectre Episode 9

I’ve been speculating for a while whether or not the show would pick up when we got into Iwanaga’s solutions, and believe it or not it actually does. I’m not sure, though, whether this section being better is going to be enough.

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Tackling a Classic – Neon Genesis Evangelion Spoiler Review.

Welcome, one and all, to Mecha March! Every week this month I’ll be looking at a different Mecha show, and what better way to start things off than with the one I’m going to have to spend a ton of time referencing, Evangelion?

That is, I admit, mostly why I’m doing this. I feel like most people who read this blog already know what NGE is and have their own opinions about it, but if I’m going to talk about some of its successors, I need to put down my own thoughts. I also think it’s quite valid to look at old shows with new eyes now and again, which is part of why I spend more time outside the most recent seasons. In either case, Neon Genesis Evangelion

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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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