Summer ’24 Mid-Season Report, part 1

The week of 8/11 marked the official halfway point of the Summer 2024 season, so it’s time to take a look at how various series have been faring.

Though I watched at least the second episode of most series this season, I persisted past episode 3 with “only” 23 of them. Somewhat to my surprise, My Deer Friend Nokotan is not one of them. I normally go for these kind of absurdist comedies (I was a huge fan of Excel Saga back in the day, for instance), but I found this one too insufferably stupid to tolerate after just two episodes. I also lost interest in Suicide Squad Isekai after the initial three episodes, found TASUKETSU too shaky on writing merits to tolerate past two, and couldn’t jump on the bandwagon of The Elusive Samurai because the tonal dissonance between its cheery and incredibly dark parts bothered me too much. Of the ones that I did follow further, Spice & Wolf and Oshi no Ko will not be covered here or in part 2 because they’re getting episode reviews.

That still leaves 21 titles, so I am once again breaking this exercise into two parts. This part covers series which have aired at least their seventh regular episode of this season by 8/17/24, as well as special case Our Last Crusade.

2.5 Dimensional Seduction

Rating So Far: B-

I generally enjoy series about characters who are living out the joy of their fandom, and this series is most certainly that. Sure, it leans a bit heavy into the fan service angle at times, but that doesn’t bother me. All the little tidbits about the nature of cosplaying and cosroms are also interesting, even if this series isn’t as thorough about the former as, say, My Dress-Up Darling (the title it’s clearly emulating) was. The weakest part of the series so far is the childhood friend character who’s the wannabe-romantic rival (although she’s the only one at this point acknowledging that romance is involved), but the teacher who’s a former elite cosplayer who becomes the club sponsor is more promising. Not a great series, and it has had its occasional artistic failings (the screen shot comes from one of its weakest points), but it is involving and entertaining enough that I’ll certainly continue with it. It also has one of the season’s better EDs.

Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian

Rating So Far: B

The flak this series has taken for how its titular character isn’t the series’ most interesting or engaging female character is warranted. Alya’s quirky take on the standard tsundere archetype, where she only shows her affection for Masachika by speaking in a language she doesn’t realize he understands, is rather cute, but his sister Yuki is far more vibrant and entertaining with her snarky, playful attitude and indication of a more complicated family situation, and in recent episodes Alya’s sister Masha is starting to outshine Alya, too. Honestly, I’m not sure if it’s even possible for the series to course-correct on this at this point, but it’s not a crippling problem, either. The series still works pretty well as a light dramedy, as long as the incest-leaning elements don’t bother you much. (Yuki clearly has some not-entirely-sisterly feelings for Masachika, but he doesn’t see her that way and it is mostly played off as provocative teasing.)

Dahlia in Bloom: Crafting a Fresh Start with Magical Tools

Rating: B-

This one has suffered from enough quality control issues that it not taking a week off yet, when several others have, is somewhat surprising. I disagree with those who label it the worst-looking series of the season, but it definitely has its visual flaws, and even my favorite character design of the season (Dahlia, in the get-up she’s wearing in the screenshot above) cannot offset that. This is a series which operates at a very relaxed pace as isekai titles go, with the emphasis entirely on Dahlia overcoming her father’s death, failed marriage plans, and budding relationship with Wolf as she develops new artifices, but I don’t mind that, and a good chemistry is starting to develop between the two leads. If the artist merits would at least stabilize at a medium level then this could be a favorite low-key title.

Days With My Stepsister

Rating So Far: B-, I guess?

Of the series in this group, this one is easily the hardest for me to rate. That’s because I respect what it is doing even while not being convinced that its approach is working. This is definitely a very slow-burn series, one that almost takes too gradual and delicate a pace to showing how Yuta and Saki are trying to establish a proper step-sibling relationship while avoiding (partly in vain) being attracted to one another. It generally looks pretty good, and I especially appreciate how stylish its female characters look when not in school or work uniforms and how the series shows both Yuta and Saki’s viewpoints almost equally. However, while there is a mild sense of tension throughout, it lacks the strong spark and energy necessary to be fully compelling. I can still mildly recommend it, though you should not expect to be blown away by it.

I Parry Everything

Rating: C+

I started out liking this series a lot, and will definitely finish it out, but it has its own share of technical problem (though more erratically so). And man, protagonist Noor is just too unbelievably dense. Him not having a proper sense of scale on how strong he is worked well at first, and I still like how he can take such enormous advantage of skills that would, in an RPG setting, be equivalent to cantrips. Increasingly, though, he is feeling deliberately rather than accidentally obtuse, and that’s not a good look for this concept. Still, of the two series this season about a 30ish guy who doesn’t appreciate his own overwhelming strength, this is the better one.

Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World

Rating So Far: C-

Whether because of the Olympics or production issues, there have been a lot of weeks off for anime series this season, but this is the only series (so far) to have completely collapsed. It got four episodes out before its production issues became too much, and that it was struggling was pretty obvious on the visual front. The plot focused almost entirely on intrigue within the Nebulus Sovereignty and Iska’s team’s efforts to get Sisbell back home in the wake of an assassination attempts on the Queen, and it wasn’t doing badly, but it wasn’t anything special, either. The series is on indefinite hiatus, so there’s no telling when the rest of this will air at this point, and its return is not something I will be highly anticipating.

Quality Assurance in Another World

Rating So Far: B

This was one of the biggest surprises of the Preview Guide for me, and it has proven to be a solid (if unspectacular) performer since. The creativity with which it implement various video game flaws into its storytelling is impressive and it raises numerous interesting questions, such as what happens to a bug tester when they’re stuck out of bounds or in a loop and still can’t log out? (Or does that actually kick them out?) And why does Nikola seem to be different among NPCs? Surely it’s just more than one of the game’s major guiding AIs occasionally possessing her, right? It’s far from the greatest at action scenes, but it makes up for that with an engaging core cast. The rabbit character shown in the OP and ED has now joined, so only the elf warrior now awaits.

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime s3

Rating: C+

Can I just get away with saying “it is what it is”? This half still has the spate of meetings which dominated the first half, but this times many of the meetings are more audiences and the people of Tempest are in the thick of putting together the city’s grand “coming out” festival. There are still some minor plots buzzing in the background, but honestly, this series is almost more fantasy slice-of-life than fantasy adventure at this point. It still has just enough going for it in the characters, setting-building details, and large-scale structuring to be mildly interesting, but it has fallen far from being a priority view at this point.

The Strongest Magician in the Demon Lord’s Army was a Human

Rating So Far: C

The strongest aspect of this one is its absolutely bangin’ OP (far more on the strength of its song than its visuals), which is easily one of the highlights of the season, if not the year, in that category. The actual episode content impresses far less. The Demon Lord’s character design is a plus (those eyes!), but the CG monster designs and animation aren’t, and action scenes which lean more on massed battles tend to be rather drab by fantasy anime standards. Nothing much interesting is going on in the plot here, either, although the writing does specifically emphasize that problematic types exist in both among the demons and among the humans. I still find this one watchable, but only as a low-priority time-filler.

Come back on 8/24/24 for part 2!

Oshi no Ko episode 18

Rating: A

Last episode delivered a remarkably effective exploration of one of the series’ more minor regular characters, so it’s only fitting that the focus should now shift to the major ones – in particular, Kana and Akane and the rivalry between them. And forget that both of them are romantically interested in the same guy, and thus rivals in that realm, too; that doesn’t play into this at all. No, this is about where both stand, and how both relate to the other, as actresses. And like with last episode, that conflict alone proves fully compelling.

We knew from previous episodes that Akane got into acting because of idolizing Kana, and that their acting styles sharply contrast, but as this episode shows (against the backdrop of their characters meeting for the first time in the stage play), there’s way more to it than that. Akane recognizes that Kana is more than just gifted; she has the ability to dazzle with her acting, to steal the show, to be the sun. We saw flashes of that when she first went head-to-head against major talent Taiki in episode 12, and also when she fully let loose during the B Komachi performance back in episode 11. When she allows it to show, she’s incredible. But that’s not always what people want, or what’s best for the project, so she has learned to be the consummate professional, playing to the level of those around her and what’s best for the overall show. In this case, she’s on the precipice of letting loose before her self-training kicks in, forcing her to be the sun that shines upon Akane’s showmanship rather than the one which blinds with its own brilliance.

And that’s what Akane can’t stand, for a number of reasons. She initially became enamored with that brilliance, got into acting to be like that, but the Kana she finally encountered in her youth was one driven cynical at way too young an age. This isn’t the glorious Kana she initially idolized, and how can she have an all-out acting match with someone who’s decided that making Akane’s character stand out, rather than herself, is what’s best for the play? In some senses it’s the classic shonen action case of a fighter being frustrated that a foe isn’t giving her best in a fight because of some perceived propriety or self-imposed limitation, but adapted into acting form, and kudos to the production teams for so beautifully demonstrating that through the clash between their characters and the way that Akane’s reaction to Kana syncs with the way her character responds to the growing conflict. The other interesting detail here is that wanting to understand Kana – why she changed, how she could have been pressed down by the pressure from the adults around her – is what drove Akane to study psychology and become a fledgling profiler.

How compelling the Kana/Akane part is almost overshadows the progression of the play that is a backdrop to it. Once again, the production shows how dynamic the play format can be; these episodes would be readily watchable just on that content alone.

This series has now delivered three stellar episodes in a row, making it the clear front-runner for the season’s best at this point. If it can continue to perform at this high a caliber then it will be competitive for yearly honors, too.

Spice & Wolf (2024) episode 19

Rating: B+

Original novelist Isuna Hasekura is most commonly lauded for the way he uses medieval (and sometimes modern) economics as foundational plot elements in his story arcs, but another area he excels at is driving tension. Even if you know what’s coming – whether because of reading the novels or seeing the first adaptation – his content always does an impressive job of generating tension when warranted and regardless of what the stakes are. This adaptation succeeds quite well at that, too, as it brings the Amati arc to a climax.

In actuality, not much is going on here plot-wise. The market has opened, prices go back and forth as new sellers and buyers come into the picture – and Lawrence is getting nervous about Diana’s representative not showing up. Curiously, Amati seems to be getting a little concerned, too, when Holo seems to do a disappearing trick after conspicuously showing her hood’s feathers to Lawrence. What’s most interesting about this is where the true dramatic climax actually lies. The break point in the tension is when Holo plunks a bag of pyrite down for sale at the same time Lawrence does, thus triggering the selling frenzy which dooms Amati, but I’d argue that the true climax comes when Lawrence calms down a bit and decides to trust Holo, as for him, everything is downhill from there.

The main takeaway from this is that one should never, ever cross Holo, as she doesn’t need to turn into giant wolf form to savage a person. Amati is barely shown at all after the climax (and never again in the series), so gauging how he responds to all of this is difficult, but he clearly got totally blindsided by Holo, at least partly because of some unspecified offense he made (the source novel is no clearer on this) but also probably partly because Holo was pissed at both him and Lawrence for putting her in the middle of their silly merchant’s duel. Their conversation afterwards also clarifies that she never seriously intended to go with Amati. She was manipulating both of them most of the time to drive home points about trust, commitment, and not treating her as a commodity, and nearly everything she did – from the marriage contract to conspicuously flashing Diana’s feathers – was meant to guide things a certain way.

The aspect of this that I’ve never liked – and this version does no better on – is that Lawrence comes away seeming totally at fault here. While he definitely shares some of the blame, the outcome too easily lets Holo off the hook for what she did to push the mess forward. She may have been caught off guard by Lawrence initially misunderstanding her apology back in episode 16, but she’s also wise enough that she should have understood how easily her actions could be misconstrued under the circumstances and she certainly took no initiative to explain things better – and no, the helpful details about Amati’s finances don’t count here. Lawrence has been shown stumbling over his own arrogance more than once, but here Holo gets tripped up by her own cleverness and tendency to be obtuse.

To a degree, though, Holo’s comeuppance does come, in the way that Diana messed with her over her relationship with Lawrence. Having talked to both of them, Diana was clearly deliberately vague and misleading about Holo being the one she was negotiating with, and she was manipulating the situation a bit for her own amusement; her “good luck” to Lawrence in parting in episode 18 now could be interpreted as having sarcastic intent. The post-climax revelations also clarify something heavily implied by previous visits to Diana: she is an avatar much like Holo, only of a giant bird and apparently capable of hiding her bird characteristics fully in human form. This does also explain the impression given in some previous shots of her being perched in the chair, and Holo being present for Lawrence’s last visit explains the meaningful look towards the staircase cast in episode 18’s visit. In other words, this time around the truths were hinted about in ways that the audience could reasonably figure out.

Once again, this adaptation covers the exact same ground, and makes the exact same points of emphasis, as episode 6 of season 2 of the first adaptation. Even more so than in previous episodes, the differences are almost entirely in trivial visual details. This is the last episode where I’ll be able to say that, though, as with the next one the series moves into new animated territory. That’s definitely something to look forward to!

Oshi no Ko episode 17

Rating: A-

Episode 16 cast its net wide, addressing all the subplots feeding into the debut of Tokyo Blade and even a few peripheral points, too. Episode 17, which actually begins the play, is almost the polar opposite: its second act narrows the focus almost exclusively to one character, for better or worse.

And on paper, I certainly expected the “for worse” option. This season has made some effort to flesh Melt out, but he still remained one of the series’ least compelling recurring characters coming into this episode. However, that starts to change as his backstory fills in more during his featured scene in act 2 of the play. Women, popularity, and attention came effortlessly to Melt, so it never occurred to him that acting might actually require serious effort. Watching Aqua and Kana’s performances in Sweet Today forced him to realize, for the first time, that he was in an arena where he couldn’t just skate by on looks and charisma. Whether in sports or performing arts, you can’t succeed at a pro level if you’re not giving it your all, if you’re not finding a way to bring out your best, and the particular play he’s in now demands that more than most. The acting disparity between him and the others isn’t something that can be bridged with just a few months of lessons, either.

But like any good performer, Melt finds something about his role that he can connect to – the sense of being beaten because of overconfidence, the frustration of just not being good enough – and is able to channel that beautifully for his feature scene. Despite what Aqua claims, some of it is, indeed, Aqua’s tactics (i.e., focus on one mind-blowing scene rather than trying to improve everything), but Melt is the one who makes it happen, and the production team members are the ones who turn it into a glorious phantasmagoria of abstracted imagery and animation. Intense emotions go hand-in-hand with anime, but instances where you can feel it as much as what’s seen here are rare indeed.

We can’t overlook the episode’s first act, either, which provides a condensed version of the play’s first act. Its staging skillfully shows off the wire works which go into such dynamic fight sequences and all of the theatrical effects in a series of remarkably robustly-animated scenes. It left me really, really wanting to see a play like this in reality and eager to see what the rest of the play will look like.

Special: August Debuts

Date: August 7, 2024

Two late-starting anime series are debuting today, so let’s take a Preview Guide-style look at both of them.

Delico’s Nursery

Streams: Crunchyroll on Wednesdays at 1 p.m.

Rating: 3 (of 5)

This one has the unusual pedigree of being based on a stage play by Kenichi Suemitsu, who also wrote the screenplay for Welcome to the Ballroom and directed one of the Touken Ranbu stage plays. Its origins date back to 2009, so naming a major background character TRUMP (an amalgamation of “True of Vampire”) probably has nothing whatsoever to do with the real-life U.S. presidential candidate. Still, that this is being released in anime form now, just three months before a major election featuring a candidate with that name, is either a truly weird coincidence or else indicates that someone in Japan has a perverse sense of humor.

In any case, this is a Victorian England-styled setting where nearly everyone – including all of the main cast – seems to be a vampire. Exactly why they all need to be vampires is hard to say; that detail seems largely irrelevant to what plays out in this episode, and all of the characters act within the parameters of completely normal humans; they don’t even show fangs or sunlight vulnerability. Regardless, noble Dali Delico is being tasked with leading an investigation into serial murders which may be connected to TRUMP (a mythical entity that is essentially the vampire progenitor), but he’s refusing to do it because he made a promise to his dying wife to give his young children “all his love” and he takes that promise very seriously. The other dashing bishonen who are supposed to be under his command insist that he should be capable of balancing both tasks, so he eventually agrees, but with one catch: all of them have to find a way to balance their duties and child-rearing (which each of them has always been hands-off about), too. Hence the HQ for investigating the serial murders is now both a figurative and literal “nursery,” with the children of all the top officials present.

Honestly, this is a great story concept, one rife with all sorts of potential complications as young men who know nothing about child-rearing now suddenly have to be “hands-on.” Just, again, I’m not sure why vampires need to be part of it. I’m less completely sold on the very stylized character designs and the Victorian architecture and clothing styles, but that’s more of a personal preference, and the setting does have some somewhat intriguing world-building potential. While I’m grading it neutrally for now, I can see this one catching on, especially in the cosplay arena.

True Beauty

Streams: Crunchyroll on Wednesdays at 1 p.m.

Rating: 2.5 (of 5)

Though this one streams on Crunchyroll and has an anime-like aesthetic, it is actually a Korean production, down to being based on a Korean webtoon, using Korean on-screen text and credits, and being originally dubbed in Korean (I think). Though its visual style falls somewhere in between U.S. animation and anime, its story structure, elements, and approach are similar enough to shoujo anime for there to be a lot of potential carry-over appeal. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good, though.

To be sure, it does look quite pretty in its character designs; in fact, that’s the series’ strong point by far. The story derives somewhat from the classic tale of The Ugly Duckling, where a high school girl derided as being ugly at her former school is able to transform herself into a beauty at her new school by simply learning how to take advantage of make-up. While she appreciates the new friend and vastly improved social standing this earns her, she also feels fake, and isn’t entirely uncomfortable with all this new attention. Things get complicated when she starts having encounters in both normal and made-up forms with a drop-dead-gorgeous boy who’s quite standoffish but also seems to be very much in sync with her true self on reading and musical tastes (she’s into heavy metal).

At just a bit under 20 minutes, this is a little shorter than a typical anime episode, but its problems lie more in execution. The episode pushes the pace too much, parts that are supposed to be funny mostly aren’t, and the male lead has all of the personality of cardboard. The concept is also lacking in originality, and I couldn’t help but feel that this is, to a degree, a poor man’s version of Kare Kano. The messaging seems to be heading towards a “beauty may get you what you want short-term, but not what truly matters” direction, but it’s also still being idealized in its approach. I can maybe see this one flying if it can navigate past this bumpy start, but I’m not holding my breath.

Oshi no Ko episode 16

Rating: A

Oshi no Ko‘s anime adaptation has never found itself shy on content, but this may be the most packed regular-length episode in the series to date. Even though its plotline is relatively simple – we’re watching the final preparations for the debut of the Tokyo Blade play – so many different character points and conflicts are in play that the direction deserves kudos for managing them all with a nearly-flawless flow. That results in some of the season’s funniest moments, but also some of its most disturbing.

One of the latter happens in the scene where Aqua confesses his true motivation to Akane in response to her pestering about what motivates Aqua to be an actor. He doesn’t explain why he has that motivation, but unbeknownst to him, he doesn’t need to; Akane is plenty intuitive enough to figure out that it probably has everything to do with the awful incident in Aqua’s past that was bad enough to give him PTSD. Aqua was clearly trying to push her away by admitting that much, but the dark-pupil stare Akane gives him back is a shocker. That she’s not thrown one bit by this suggests some interesting things about her own personality; perhaps she’s had thought about someone herself. In any case, this is just further evidence that Akane, for all her seeming soft side, isn’t a pushover.

What this and later scenes say about Aqua is also interesting. By the end of the episode the nature of his PTSD attacks have become clear: although Ai’s death is involved, the actual trigger is a need to be intensely emotive. Presumably this is because the one time Ai showed her full, true emotions was as she died, so Aqua has come to associate strong emotions with his worst experiences. That would certainly explain his tendency throughout the series to not get strongly emotional about anything, but it also puts a new stake on the upcoming play debut: can he keep it together enough to deliver a truly emotive performance without having a panic attack?

He’s far from the only one who has something personal at stake, too. Melt isn’t just regretful about his bad acting during Sweet Today; he’s haunted by it. He feels he needs to prove that he can act at least passably well. Unfortunately for him, he got on the bad side of Sakuya by interfering in Sakuya’s efforts to hit on Minami, who didn’t seem interested but was buckling under the pressure tactics. That this a case of a 22-year-old hitting on a minor is a separate issue; what matters most here is that Sakuya has decided to be unrelenting in attacking Melt about his acting in revenge. To a point, Melt knows he deserves it, but Sakuya is making it too personal. This is a new dynamic thrown into the mix, and frankly, it’s the weakest of the lot in terms of impact.

Ruby also gets some scenes for a change, and for perhaps the first time this season, her appearance doesn’t feel like it’s there just for the sake of reminding us that she’s still around. Aqua has had the “star going dark” thing going on at least since episode 2 when he’s having a very negative reaction to something, but Ruby’s reaction to Minami’s insinuations about what Aqua is doing with Akane each night is the first time we’ve seen that Ruby is capable of it herself. (But this is also the first time that anything’s been said to Ruby that hit that close to home.) She can’t seem to turn that darker emotion on and off like Aqua does, so I’d guess that her bathroom visit was actually just an excuse to allow her to calm herself down and get back to her normal cheery self. Kana and MEM-cho looking out for her afterwards as a neat little comedy add-on to lighten the overall mood again.

Speaking of moods, Kana and Akane certainly have a sharp vibe between them, don’t they? We’ve known since the first season that they mutually regard the other as a bitter rival, but Akane should know well enough by now that she isn’t going to win a battle of words with Kana, despite getting in a good jab or two during their dust-up in the dressing room. Kana may be on the mean side, but she’s still a delight in the way she screws with Akane. This leads me to wonder if Kaburagi knew about this and so set up a casting that put two real-life rivals into roles that are rivals. Regardless, they form the other driving tension going into the play and the insight that Kana was the inspiration for Akane getting into acting was an amusing but also loaded revelation, too.

Next episode is the play itself, apparently. How much of it will we get to see play out? It will have to be pretty special to top the quality content we’ve seen these last two episodes.

Spice & Wolf (2024) episode 18

Rating: B

We’re in the fifth episode of the current arc, and as in the last two arcs, Lawrence is stressing out over the current financial crisis. This time the stakes aren’t potentially deadly, but a different kind of death potentially awaits him: the prospect that Holo might leave him. And while Lawrence is the nearest thing to a nervous wreck, he’s not going down without a fight – or letting anything in this episode not be couched in merchant terms.

That last point is both a little cute and a little annoying. As his friend Marc points out, Lawrence is a merchant through to the core, so he apparently can’t even describe relationships without putting it in occupational language. Would Holo be thrilled to learn that she’s being referred to as cargo (even if it’s precious cargo)? I rather doubt it. And while that reference is not objectifying her per se, I certainly couldn’t fault someone who makes that complaint. Still, it does lay bare how he really feels without him having to directly say how much he values Holo, and that is something that Marc, Batos, and Diana all seem to appreciate. Or they could just be entertained by watching this young man (and Lawrence, despite looking older, is only 25) make a fool of himself over a woman.

The bigger question, though, is who the real fool is at this point, and right now, both Lawrence and Amati are strong candidates for that title. Amati clearly thinks he has the upper hand at this point, especially with Lawrence briefly losing his cool when Amati hands him the money for the deal they struck the previous night. (And my, wasn’t converting it to gold coins a pretentious little twist of the dagger!) But how fully is Holo really on his side? That’s still suspect. Equally suspect is how casually dodgy Diana is being in her conversation with Lawrence this episode. Even though she has legitimate reasons for being reticent about the identity of the other person who sought pyrite from her, it feels more like an excuse here than a matter of principle, and Lawrence is making too many assumptions to notice. Her departing “good luck” comment also suggests that something is going on here that Lawrence is missing.

Unlike with some of the twists in previous episodes, though, even anime-only viewers have at least a chance to figure this one out. There are visual clues in this episode that Lawrence isn’t picking up on but sharp-eyed viewers might, and this adaptation is a little more obvious about it than the original was. In case readers want to figure it out on their own, I’ll only give a hint for now: one detail in the market scene is inconsistent with something seen earlier in the arc, and that inconsistency is both intentional and extremely meaningful. Kudos to the production team for being sly about it without making it impossible.

One more episode for this arc and then we can finally get into newly-animated content. For us novel readers, the anticipation is building. . .

Oshi no Ko Episode 15: “Emotional Acting”

Rating: A

In the days leading up to the airing of this episode, I engaged in a discussion on another site about whether or not this story actually needed the reincarnation angle. Could a story which eliminated that and Ai, and was just about ordinarily-gifted twins working their way through various aspects of the entertainment industry beginning when they were very young, still be successful? Honestly, I think so, especially if it still contained all of the insider perspective seen throughout this series. But it wouldn’t be Oshi no Ko. You couldn’t just change the character backgrounds and make a few other small tweaks and still have the same series, and the second part of this episode powerfully shows why.

Ironically, the first part of this episode somewhat deals with making these kinds of changes. A combination of Aqua getting the play ticket for Abiko and pushing Raida to take action, along with an assist from Yoriko in advising Abiko about meeting them halfway, led to the kind of direct communication between creator and script writer which should have happened from the beginning, essentially resolved the writing conflict. In fact, how well Abiko and GAO got in sync once they started hashing out the details, and how much fun they seemed to be having with it, was rather amusing. It certainly makes the script more challenging to perform, but as Kana and others suggest with their reactions to it, what true actor wouldn’t rise to this kind of challenge?

But this also creates an unexpected problem for Aqua. He’s not emotive by nature, so putting on a performance which requires him to project his emotions is going to be difficult for him. One telling scene happens when Aqua, on advice from Kana, tries to recall a time when he was happy. He can easily picture other people around him being happy, but not himself, so when he finally does smile, it still feels like just an imitation. But even that’s enough to set off the PTSD reaction that Kana had unwittingly set in motion moments before.

Kana, of course, had no way of knowing that the advice she relayed to Aqua about how child actors are taught to generate tears on command (i.e., to imagine their mother dying) was the absolute worst thing imaginable that she could have said to Aqua. We knew all along that Aqua had never let himself get over Ai’s death, and that he uses it as a driving force behind his actions even to this day, but the depth to which it still affected him emotionally – and how he unreasonably blames himself for not being able to stop it – was not as clear until now. He didn’t just witness her death and the violence which led to it first-hand; he experienced it in tactile and olfactory senses as well, and the way this episode shows him reliving that is masterfully devastating, both in its visuals and its use of dire, tense music. And maybe the saddest aspect of this is that the one person he could share this with – Ruby – is the person he most adamantly wants to distance from it. He has never felt he had a future in this life, but he still powerfully wants Ruby to have one.

Though Akane is an outsider to this whole scenario, her scenes here are no less important. Back in episodes 7 and 8, she showed an almost scary degree of intuition when it came to puzzling out the true character of a person, and that resurfaces again here. She had already considered the possibility that Ai might have secretly had a child, and now just learning that Aqua was haunted by a terrible childhood experience, combine with Aqua saying Ai’s name in his sleep, was enough for her to connect the dots on the possibility that Aqua (and by extension Ruby) were the secret love children she had once posited. Aqua’s only saving grace here is that Akane finds this scenario too fantastical to be fully credible, but she should know as well as anyone that truth can be stranger than fiction.

Some minor quality control issues in the artistry don’t deter one bit the impact this episode has, or how well the (now-translated) lyrics of the season’s OP fit. The effectiveness with which the series can deliver on its key scenes is one of the main reasons why this series is a top contender for the season’s best.

Spice & Wolf (2024) episode 17

Rating: B

Fundamentally, Spice & Wolf is the rare fantasy series where conversations, much more so than actions, carry the weight of the series. The only other episode in the series to date where that is as evident as it is in this one might be episode 2, but this time around Holo isn’t involved in either of the two major conversations which dominate this episode. In fact, in this version of the “scheming up the economics” phase of the arc, she only appears in one scene outside of a flashback and doesn’t have any lines. No, this episode is 100% about Lawrence trying to scheme his way out of another mess.

That’s not to say that Holo doesn’t factor in here at all. She is still absolutely the motive force behind how and why both Lawrence and Amati act here as the festival goes on around the trio. She is on both men’s minds as Lawrence hunts down Amati and has drinks with him at a bar. (And she would probably delight in that if she knew.) Here Lawrence is essentially upping Amati’s ante by throwing an additional bet onto the challenge Amati proposed last episode, only this time on his terms: a challenge that essentially involves futures trading on pyrite. Though Amati is taking the risk in the arrangement, he also stands to gain more if the market is in his favor – and it only needs to briefly be in his favor for him to guarantee a profit. Lawrence, on the other hand, shoulders little to no apparent risk but won’t gain anything; his only play is to potentially bust Amati’s financial position.

Of course, that’s assuming Lawrence already has the pyrite in question which is part of the arrangement, and the sticking point at the end of the episode is that he doesn’t. A financial loss is very possible for him if he’s stuck trying to buy up the necessary pyrite the next day, and his oversight in this case is that the person he was going to rely on to get it for him can’t do it. The most interesting part is that his friend won’t help because he’s an established town merchant. While being so provides a lot of perks, the trade-off is being less free to speculate (like a traveling merchant can!), since reputation is as important as any other business factor.

Hanging behind all of this is where Holo stands, and that we don’t learn anything from her directly this episode is deliberate; it leaves her more up in the air to the audience as well as the two young men. She seems to help Lawrence by leaving the letter about Amati’s finances, but also leaving the signed marriage contract is almost certainly either a challenge or warning from her to Lawrence. As emotional as Holo can be, she’s still the Wise Wolf and, by nature, takes the long view on things (for better or worse). Once she’s calmed down, she’s unlikely to be swayed to action so easily by statements made in a moment of weakness, so she’s basically telling Lawrence here “these are the consequences if you screw this up.” She probably still has no actual intention of leaving Lawrence but wants him to sweat the relationship side of things this time. How fair this is to Lawrence is debatable, but Holo does seem to place premium value on men who proves themselves. W

With the Lawrence/Amati and Lawrence/Marc conversations taking up most of the episode, there isn’t much noteworthy here about the artwork. The clash of knights and pagan forces in the festival could be looked at as symbolic of the clash between Lawrence and Amati, and the detail work on this sets the mood of the town well, but that’s about it. This episode also corresponds exactly to episode 4 of season 2 of the original adaptation, with the only slight variance being that Lawrence’s mind runs a bit wilder thinking about Amati and Holo getting together.

The solution to Lawrence’s pyrite access problem turns out to be an impressively sensible one. Pyrite would absolutely be a common substance used by medieval alchemists, as it was a prime traditional source for sulfuric acids and can be used to make ferrous sulfate, which had a wide range of medieval applications in inks and dyes (among others), and others not wanting to openly deal with alchemists would, indeed, make them an isolated market. More importantly in a meta sense, it gives Lawrence a convenient excuse to visit Dian again. Last time, this visit led to trouble. What will happen this time?

Oshi no Ko episode 14

Rating: B+

Oshi no Ko has never been a series that pulls its punches when it comes to commentating on the entertainment industry, and boy, this episodes hold nothing back, either, as it delves deeper into matters concerning manga-ka and the process of transferring established work into other media. It’s so pointedly unflattering that much of what we see here has to be personal to the creators of the source manga and at least some of it is probably self-referential, too.

The centerpiece of the episode’s events is the two contrasting manga-ka: Sweet Today‘s Yoriko and Tokyo Blade‘s Abiko. The former is a more laid-back personality by nature, one who has a much-less-demanding monthly schedule and quite a bit more experience behind her. And while she claims she’s an introvert, she doesn’t act like one. The other is an inexperienced, socially awkward, and intensely-focused perfectionist who is on an inhumanly-tight (Yoriko’s words) weekly schedule. She has impressive vision but no ability to work with anyone else on it, hence leaving her to not trust assistants and do a work load herself that would normally require a whole team. And because she’s risen so far so fast, no one but her former boss/mentor Yuriko can get through to her at all when she’s convinced of the righteousness of her cause – no matter that her self-imposed loner work ethic is far from healthy.

Seeing Yoriko have an expanded role here is a pleasant surprise, as I was certain her season 1 appearances were going to be just one-shot deals. And the “two hours of sleep a night” thing when on deadline that Abiko mentions probably isn’t much of an exaggeration; in an essay, Hayao Miyazaki once mentioned an anime editor he knew who would only sleep four hours a night on deadlines, and that was 45 years ago. I also find Abiko’s lament about how all the best assistants get sent to “big shots” to be bitingly ironic; does she not consider herself one, especially since she emphasizes how many copies she has in print? The back-and-forth between the two when Yoriko goes to visit Abiko is easily the highlight of the episode, as both let all their feelings and frustrations hang out there in one impressively snappy exchange. Kudos to voice actresses Shizuka Ito (the voice of Sailor Venus) and Ayane Sakura (MHA’s Ochaco, Attack on Titan‘s Gabi) for how skillfully they escalate that exchange.

The other main point of the episode is something I expected in last episode’s review: that Abiko really has no idea what she has gotten herself into with the script writing. That point is impressed hard on Aqua when Akan taking him to a 2.5D musical (at a theater which actually exists in Tokyo) winds up with him being bowled over by what can be done with the format. How could someone literally raised on film editing not be profoundly impacted by something like that (even if us viewers only get the barest taste of it ourselves)? In his typically-analytical nature, he can instantly see why someone not familiar with the format could never successfully take advantage of the format, and that just further backs up how raw a deal scriptwriter GAO was getting served last episode. Given that, his secret weapon to break the writing impasse being to get Abiko to see the same 2.5D show herself is a completely logical move.

It was also nice to get a reminder that Ruby and MEM-cho still exist in the story, even if their scenes were just to remind us that that part of the story is in a holding pattern until the play part ends. Akane also looks better with her hair longer in these episodes. The little touches of humor there and in Yoriko’s reactions to Melt add in the series’ regular light-hearted touch, too.

Overall, this may not be one of the series’ most impactful episodes, and the rough edges on the artistry show a bit more, but it still does its job well at delivering its core points.