Week in Review, 6/15-6/21

This has nothing to do with anything I watched this past week, but I wanted to spread the word about how Honoka Kousaka is clearly Love Live’s Fox Mulder.

Hm, bit late in the week for this one.

Princess Precure, ep. 20

Wow! What a visually wonderful episode. I don’t tend to bother with caps much for PriPrecure’s episodes, but this time around, I was pausing every other minute to get a screenshot. It wasn’t just a matter of the art being gorgeously done, but also of the fact that the visual direction was much more varied than usual. Several bird’s-eye views were used to great effect, although I think this was the single best shot from the episode:

In addition to being so good visually, though, the content of this episode was pretty solid, even if the specific revelations weren’t of much surprise, nor were they particularly novel. The show has recently felt often as if it was treading water and just trying to kill time, and we’ve finally got to the point they were pointed in since Princess Twilight was first introduced. A killer transformation sequence helps take the edge off the lack of freshness to the development, although I’m sure Heartcatch comparisons are inevitable (as are, for some, to Max Heart)… buuut I haven’t seen all, or even most, of that entry, so you won’t hear it from me.

Anyway, here’s hoping the momentum can thrive. And, here, have the rest of the screenshots I have from this episode:

Blood Blockade Battlefront, ep. 11

Snore.

Well, that was disappointing. It isn’t so much that I don’t care about Mary/White and William/Black, although I care a whole hell of a lot less about them than Leo and the folks at Libra. And it isn’t even that their basic story of warped family dynamics is a story as old as time. The real issue is that it’s being executed in such a dishwater dull fashion. Kyousogiga was also a story about familial dysfunction, but it took a unique approach to it. Evil entities of some sort or another holding a family member hostage, thus forcing another family member to sell out a friend? That shit’s so old, the Bible has stories that do that! For that matter, ditto for tales of siblings where one is special and the other isn’t. And those ones involve mysterious quasi-demonic beings, too!

I have for weeks now tried to force myself to be optimistic about White and Black’s storyline even as it seemed increasingly likely that it was going to go the full-boring route, but this episode drop-kicked my ability to do so off of a cliff. The scenes following Mary as she wandered, ghost-like, through crowds of revelers in Halloween-like attire, and settled down at the outdoor movie theater where Sonic found her, were well-composed, and I really liked them, but the final quarter of the episode was an absolute mess otherwise, and the first three-quarters were boring tales of siblings having Issues.

The final bits of the episode really were utterly baffling. So, the creature possessing William wants to die, and somehow Leo’s eyes will let him do that in some magical ceremony. But! It backfires, which… throws the city into chaos because, um, lightning? Maybe bloody lightning? I’m not entirely sure. And this somehow is grounds then for some sororicide. And people said Kyousogiga made no sense!

Vampire Holmes, ep. 11

And, at just about the last moment possible, Vampire Holmes is trying to inject some drama and seriousness into the proceedings. Despite the crucified woman being burnt to death in the OP, this doesn’t seem to involve such; despite the ‘vampire’ on the tin, it also doesn’t seem to involve vampires, either. Nope! It’s a werewolf. And maybe a werewolf wolfed a lady friend of the titular Holmes once. WHO KNOWS. I may not really care about the details, but I am a bit saddened by the prospect of this show coming to a close. It is one of the worst anime I’ve ever watched, but I’ve developed some affection for it, much like the sort of affection one ends up developing for an ugly puppy that keeps running into doors. Is this what moe really means?

Yumeiro Patissiere, ep. 1-25

For years, I’ve been meaning to re-watch Yumepati, and I’ve finally gotten around to it. Yumepati was a surprise hit for me (as it was, apparently for CR, who famously goes after every new show for streaming rights regardless of how they think it may perform – while it was airing, they admitted that it’d outperformed their expectations), as at the time while I was hankering for more shoujo in my diet, I didn’t have much in the way of expectations for the show. Eleven months later I was starting to get bummed about its pending conclusion, and it easily qualified as one of my favorite anime ever.

There’s always a danger in re-watching something you hold in high regard, but Yumepati hasn’t disappointed. Admittedly, some of its flaws are more apparent when binge-watching (these kids freaking love to run away from school, and they also love making bets with fellow students that have completely ludicrous terms), but on the whole it holds up to my own memories. If you never caught it when it was airing, I strongly recommend it – especially if you find the schoolchildren culinary drama of Shokugeki no Soma tiresome. Everyone glares angrily at the lead there because, UGH, HE IS A POOR, UGH, GLAAARE, GLAARE, but they could probably learn a thing or two from the scheming of the students at St. Marie Academy. By the fifth episode alone, jealous classmates are stealing a cake design meant to cheer up a five year old in a bid to humiliate the lead, a shy and misfit kindergartener’s happiness be damned!