An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

What if God Were a Bratty Teenage Girl? – The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (Seasons 1 & 2) Spoiler Review

(In the voice of Rod Serling) “Picture of a boy, Kyon by name, starting his first day of High School and looking forward to an uneventful and unremarkable academic career. But this young man is about to make a very particular acquaintance: Haruhi Suzumiya isn’t interested in the mundane goings-on of an average high school but rather in the strange and fantastical. Aliens, Espers, and Future Men are her bread and butter. Impossible things? Perhaps. But as Kyon is about to find out, what Haruhi wants, Haruhi gets. Kyon’s school life is going to become very eventful and remarkable indeed, as he’s all set to join a new club with its meeting room… in the Twilight Zone.”

Ah, yes, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya – a colorful comedy with a premise that is, in fact, like something right out of a classic Twilight Zone episode. Somehow, it’s simultaneously one of the most unique shows I’ve seen and also one of the most cliched. That alone is an accomplishment, but accomplishments don’t always mean something good. Let’s take a look.

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Seasonal Selection – Azur Lane Episode 6

After last time, we get a breather episode! As predicted, the last events on mist-shrouded island are resolved before the opening, and after that we’re all back at port with nothing more needed to execute the escape. The rest of the episode… remains at port, eschewing the fighting for a double (or more) helping of Azur Lane’s fanservice.

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Guilty Crown Audio Commentary

Welcome to our second Harper Anime Reviews Audio Commentary — that thing where we watch a show and talk over it but you can only hear the talky bits hand have to supply the show yourself (Or don’t, if the talking is fun on its own). This time we’re diving into Guilty Crown.

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Jerk Comedy and Isekai Redeem Each Other – KonoSuba (Seasons 1 & 2) Spoiler Review

I’ve got trouble with “Jerk” Comedy. That is, comedy predicated on all the main characters being not just crazy or foolish but outright terrible people. A jerk can be funny used in the right way at the right time, but they often don’t hold up as main characters or whole casts.

I’ve also got trouble with Isekai. I used to think that, as a genre, it was perhaps overly maligned; the basic conceit of travel from the mundane world to one of fantastical remoteness is the backbone of countless works of literature, many of which (like “Alice in Wonderland” or “The Chronicles of Narnia”) are considered classics. That was before I realized just how prolific the genre really is in anime, just how reprocessed and regurgitated its tropes are, and just how frustrating it is when you find yourself trapped between the failure state in which the world revolves utterly around the main character’s quest and the one in which you would much rather have a native character who was germane to the setting instead. There is such a thing as good Isekai, but Sturgeon’s Law really does apply.

So why do I enjoy KonoSuba so darn much?

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Seasonal Selection – Azur Lane Episode 5

We start with Sheffield making her way through a fairly eerie ruined city, still pursued by the Sakura forces from last time. I’ll be honest, It’s not totally easy to say a lot about the episode because the show is, by in large, staying the course. We get some decent humanity talk, met a double hand full of new characters (This Episode: Fusou, Yamashiro, Atago, Suffolk, Repulse…) that fans of the game will love to see but the uninitiated might have some difficulty following, and then a decent action sequence. But talking about this stuff is just what I’m here for, so that’s what I’ll do.

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Ghost Stories Are What You Make Of Them – Dusk Maiden of Amnesia Spoiler Review

Dusk Maiden of Amnesia is a sweet, funny romance between Niiya Teiichi and Yuuko Kanoe, complicated by the fact that the latter just happens to be a ghost. Wait, that’s not it…

What I meant to say is that Dusk Maiden of Amnesia is a character-driven mystery, following the ghost girl Yuuko-san as she and the members of the Paranormal Investigation Club attempt to discover the truth behind her death. Hm, that’s not quite right either…

The truth is that Dusk Maiden of Amnesia is a dark and twisted, heavily psychological ghost story, exploring both the past and present of the haunting of a certain school, delving into sordid tales and dangerous manifestations of supernatural vengeance. Er, you know the drill by now…

Dusk Maiden of Amnesia is all those things, held together by some brilliant avant-garde cinematography, a beautiful palette of fall colors and deep shadows, and a wealth of engaging characters in what would normally be considered a very small cast.

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Seasonal Selection – Azur Lane Episode 4

Just as I was talking about the need for a more Sakura Empire/Red Axis episode, we get an episode heavily focused on the Sakura Empire. True, we still got a couple scenes with Enterprise and Belfast as well as the other Azur Lane characters, but the meat or the episode is spent in Sakura territory, dealing with their intrigues.

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Mafia is Not a Good Game to LARP – “Another” Spoiler Review

Another is a slow-burn Mystery/Horror type of show. It’s somewhat similar to the Final Destination series (at least as far as I know the series, which is getting the premise and having seen one film out of it) in that the horror comes not from any sort of monster or serial killer, but rather from fate conspiring to cause deaths. Where it meets success or failure is the fact that once the horror really turns on, it goes all the way with the gore. On one hand, Another does have its fundamentals down better than some other shows I could name. On the other hand, the over-the-top Rube Goldberg demises could easily come across as unintentional comedy. Where on the spectrum does Another fall?

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Seasonal Selection – Azur Lane Episode 3

So, even in Azur Lane, an anime set entirely in ocean and oceanside environments and about the humanoid incarnations of warships, there must be a beach episode. I guess that checks out: the game gives you the option of a lot of swimsuit costumes for the girls, and the previous shipgirl show I watched, Arpeggio of Blue Steel, managed to work in a ‘beach episode’ as well. The question is not whether or not it’s here, but how it was used.

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