Coverage of the Winter 2024 anime season begins! Check aback regularly for updates through 1/14.
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2023 in Review: The Best and Strangest of the Year
As we say good-bye to 2023, it’s time to take a look at the highlights of the year as a whole, rather than just individual seasons. And my, this was a very full year, with over 190 series either debuting or getting new installments this year! The Fall 2023 season was the biggest and deepestContinue reading “2023 in Review: The Best and Strangest of the Year”
Fall ’23 Wrap-Up
Most of the non-continuing series from the Fall season are now in the books, so let’s look at how they wrapped up. As with this article’s predecessor (the Fall ’23 Mid-Season Round-Up), titles that I covered in episode reviews or full reviews will not be found here, so no Pluto, The Apothecary Diaries, or TheContinue reading “Fall ’23 Wrap-Up”
The Apothecary Diaries episode 12
Rating: B+ The situation at the heart of this episode is one quite familiar to any fan of romances with class-based complications. The higher-ranked man wants to be respectful of the lower-ranked woman’s wishes by not forcing her into a situation she may not want (and which he has reasonable evidence to that end, basedContinue reading “The Apothecary Diaries episode 12”
The Eminence in Shadow episode 32 (season finale)
Rating: B+ Ragnarok is upon us! Well, sort of. Really, it’s just an opportunity for Shadow to fight a boss monster-type foe while his Shadow Garden minions do all of the lesser work. The minor problem for the series is that Ragnarok just isn’t that interesting a foe on its own. Sure, it wrecks partContinue reading “The Eminence in Shadow episode 32 (season finale)”
Review: Pluto
This ONA series, which debuted on Netflix in late October, has a very interesting pedigree. It adapts a lauded manga by Naoki Urasawa (the manga-ka behind titles like Yawara! A Fashionable Judo Girl, Master Keaton, 21st Century Boys, and of course Monster), but that was itself a re-imagining of a singular story arc from OsamuContinue reading “Review: Pluto”
Review: The Boy and the Heron
Despite some flaws, this is still a movie well worth seeing.
The Eminence in Shadow, episode 30
Rating: B+ As I watched this week’s episode, I was struck by the thought that I have been overlooking one big inherent irony: Shadow Garden’s behavior is itself very cult-like, especially in the way it idolizes and even (in some cases) outright worships Shadow. That comes through clearly in the different reactions of 559 andContinue reading “The Eminence in Shadow, episode 30”
The Eminence in Shadow, episode 29
Rating: B The prostitute Marie was shown too prominently back in episode 21 for her to not pop up again later, so it’s little surprise that her reappearance comes as the story shifts to what Cid was doing after he stepped out of the picture for a while at the end of episode 27. Unfortunately,Continue reading “The Eminence in Shadow, episode 29”
Fall ’23 Mid-Season Round-Up
For the last two seasons, I have done a mid-season round of of isekai titles. While there are certainly enough of them this season (eight total, if you include reverse-isekai) to do a piece on just them, We also have a bevy of series about characters displaced within their own timelines (four in all!) andContinue reading “Fall ’23 Mid-Season Round-Up”
USA Anime 