Week in Review, 4/24 – 4/30

Yeah, I’m still watching anime and blogging about it.

After slaving away at this since mid-week, WordPress devoured my post. Welp. So, I can’t promise you anything hard-hitting this week and everything is short. Better luck next time. The length isn’t helped by the fact that I’ve been waiting for a certain someone to catch up on Kado so we can watch it together…

Anonymous Noise, ep. 3

I’m a little annoyed with Anonymous Noise. I had figured episode three was going to be the last one I watched, but then the episode was easily the best the show’s had. What the hell? I was going to drop you! Dammit! You can’t even consistently be crap! And, this connects with the other reason for my irritation, which is that this thing does get being a teenager dead-on about 20% of the time. So, it is capable of doing the whole teen drama thing in a manner that resembles real life, it just doesn’t; the remaining 80% is kids wondering why someone can’t hear them sing without them ever making recourse to social media. Millennials, my ass.

P.S. Just for being the first person to recognize that Nino is deranged, Miou is easily the best character of the bunch.

Bahamut: Virgin Soul, ep. 2-4

I’m a little bit skeptical about Nina’s taste in men, but I do adore this girl. I also worry that she’s going to eventually die from being too horny. Girl, I really hope you get through puberty soon.

I’m supposed to ship Elvis and Byakuya’s lovechild with the Rag Demon, right?

Starmu S2, ep. 4

GOTHIC KABUKIIIIIII I am sad that we didn’t get to witness any of the gothic kabuki in action, especially as it isn’t at all clear to me what the hell about it qualifies as “gothic”.

More generally, Tengenji is maybe the biggest turnaround for me in terms of how I feel about the characters in this show. I’ve gone from whole-heartedly hating every time he said “your boors” to finding it charming when he uses the phrase. Maybe anime has ruined me.

Depeche Mode’s Spirit

Anime ja nai. Yeah, I know. But I finally got my hands on this damn thing. I’ll admit I wasn’t anticipating how political the first half of the album or so is – it isn’t as if they’ve never touched politics, but it has been a pretty long time. I think the closest you can get in anything recent of theirs is perhaps John the Revelator? And, oh crap, that was twelve years ago?!!?! Good lord, that’s disturbing… anyway, ahem, political stuff from Depeche Mode – not unprecedented, but at this point in their career it is a little bit of a curveball.

Nothing’s really grabbing me, and I’ve listened to it three times through now. It’s not bad – although I am a bit disappointed they didn’t splash out more for some blues stuff after they dabbled in it on Delta Machine. Poison Heart is it for anyone hoping for more blues from these guys, but its no Slow (which, to be fair, was a hell of a song). That I loved their previous three albums makes me hesitant to be too crabby about this one missing the mark, buuuut I’d kind of hoped the associated tour would be the time I’d finally manage to go to one of their concerts… here’s hoping they’ve got some juice left in the tank for another go-round.