Nothing telegraphs a good episode quite like opening with an aerial cross counter.
First Reactions: Dangan Ronpa Episode 8
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Tag Archives: First Reactions
First Reactions: Free! Episode 7
In general, this was a pretty solid buildup episode, highlighting Haru and Rin’s quietly intensifying rivalry, the comradeship of the four main characters, and a bit of Rin’s external motivation. Oh yeah, and it wasn’t actually a buildup episode. They literally powered through the race, something I was sure would take at least another episode getting to, with ruthless efficiency and great effect.
First Reactions: WataMote Episode 7
The montage segment at the beginning was a great way of demonstrating just how hard Tomoko was wasting her summer vacation. Each individual action she took was a different kind of low-brainpower activity, and her internal feelings about the day afterwards provided rock solid confirmation that that moment six minutes in where she looked like a Cleveland fan circa January 17, 1988 was coming. My favorite part of that segment was her commenting on the video, a little piece of satire directed at people no doubt commenting on the episode the same way. Mashing w is definitely a thing that happens, and he facial expression was a great example of someone showing exaggerating their sarcastic response to ridiculous internet crap.
It’s debatable whether or not its subjects got the joke
First Reactions: Space Brothers Episode 70
I had really hoped this show would discontinue the overtly racist Mr. Hibbit segments. But no, that’s still there.
At least there were some promising developments in the show proper.
First Reactions: Dangan Ronpa Episode 7
Without a doubt, the most impressive thing about this show is the sheer number of ways they’ve managed to work in a Monokuma enjoying himself in the background. This time might have been my favorite, because you can just barely tell he’s now using the Oowada butter on his pancakes.
Hot-blooded, so it melts in your mouth
First Reactions: Free! Episode 6
Showing is superior to telling, but not all showings are created equal. One of the ways to tell a high-class pro director from a replacement-tier one is the way they make a situation clear with the first snap of the camera. Case in point: those first 3 seconds of that shot after Haru saved Makoto. The way one set of feet was dragging and the other was limp immediately spelled out what was going down. Mix in effective not-use of music (just rain and heavy breathing), and you get an immediate impression of the state Makoto was in. It was a bit of imagery that felt like something adapted from an award-winning manga, except Free is a novel adaption that had to make its own storyboards.
One look and it’s pretty obvious someone’s not alright
First Reactions: WataMote Episode 6
This week’s episode didn’t start out up to the show’s usual standards of quality. The sex jokes at the beginning felt like they were there more for the sake of bringing the topic up than in the effort poured into making scenes independently funny. It was still fun, but it was succeeding less on creativity and more on audacity. That problem could really have just been a one-skit thing. With the way the punchlines started rolling in, though, the whole operation seemed to get back on the rails; the second half of that skit was full of decidedly basic slapstick material that worked really well. Odds are it succeeded because of its simplicity in contrast with the earlier grand delusions and cheap usage of the word “sex”. Maybe the writers knew from the start what they were doing.
First Reactions: Space Brothers Episode 69
This was probably Space Brothers’ best episode in a while. I could have said a lot of good things about it; it plowed through a lot of time awful quickly, it made a pretty fun Terminator reference, Deniel’s retirement was cool, Murakoshi made it to space, Mutta’s getting a spot on a backup crew, and a bunch of other stuff. But, unfortunately, I’ll only remember it for one feature, and not a positive one. In previous episodes, there were instances of light xenophobic attitudes, but it wasn’t a consistent enough thing to be a concrete problem. Too, some non-Japanese were shown in a positive light at various points. But there’s really no justifying this:
There are two reasons this could have happened. Either the anime staff were totally clueless about what depicting a black person as a gorilla meant (unlikely given the amount of research that’s gone into other parts of the show), or they knew and did it anyway. Either way, it’s stupid and extremely disappointing. I just hope to hell this doesn’t become a regular feature of the show.
First Reactions: Dangan Ronpa Episode 6
Chihiro coming back as an AI was certainly unexpected. Said AI seemed nice enough, though you can never tell with this show. More interesting than either the revelation of the AI’s existence or the fact that it was doing research to find the party responsible for the events of the show was the way characters ended up fighting over him. It makes a certain degree of sense, given Ishimaru’s pretty unstable right now and Yamada’s just like that, but it still feels like a rather silly thing for a major plot point. I guess I would have rather seen the characters just hanging out a bit more ala episode 4 over whatever this was:
First Reactions: WataMote Episode 5
This week’s installment of WataMote was probably the most painful watch yet, but offered proof-positive that Oonuma Shin is enjoying the hell out of himself. From the start, where he scattered the character design roughs over Tomoko talking about creating a character, to the ED, where he just straight-up made a viral video for the fun of it, this episode consistently spoke to how much fun the people at Silver Link making this are having.* It’s more fun than Tomoko, that’s for sure.
Animetics 