Review-Roundup: Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works 19/20, Shokugeki no Soma 06-08, Sidonia no Kishi S2 05-07, Hibike! Euphonium 07/08

Yep, two whole episodes of fighting and arguing because two dickheads are just too frigging stubborn to find a compromise.

This time I review:

F/SN: UBW 19/20: Shirou and Archer finally meet in battle which naturally means… A lot of talking! Meanwhile Rin has the most tumultuous damsel-in-distress-arc imaginable.

Shokugeki no Soma 06-08: Soma can do no wrong! And apparently the best kind of school might as well be a tournament in disguise.

Sidonia no Kishi S2 05-07: Tsumugi, Izana and Tanake are having a jolly good time! Meanwhile, evil people do evil stuff with somewhat disastrous results! And those two things barely have anything to do with each other. Talk about plot-synergy!

Hibike! Euphonium 07/08: What do you do as a teenager when you’re not devoting yourself to playing music? Of course, you study! Or you go on a date! As far as teenage-life-tropes go not the most imaginative choices. Maybe the vague romantic tension between two girls will spice things up – is what the script-writers probably thought.

Knights of Sidonia: Battle for Planet Nine – 01-04 Review

Tentacle-Rape: It’s what monsters do to investigate the human body.

After a short hiatus I’m back to reviewing some animes. And I start with the second season of Knights of Sidonia which is certainly one of the more entertaining ones this season. I’ve liked the first season but it had its flaws. So far, though, the second season fares much better. Mostly because its style is much more confident and consistent so far this time around.

Sidonia no Kishi – 05-12 Review

Haha, yeah, that’s the past for ye: Always ready to unveil another embarrassing secret! Mostly because you were too drunk at the time to do anything useful, I assume…

Sidonia no Kishi was actually one of those series, I had high hopes for. The first four chapters of the manga seemed good so I figure, ‘Hey, why not as well watch the manga -adaptation!’. After all, most animes who adapt manga don’t have the balls to change the source-material (unless the original writer is a nobody, then that guy’s fucked)… well, unless the manga isn’t finished and there isn’t enough money for multiple-season-long faithful adaptation of that manga (and if the original writer is a nobody that guy’s doubly fucked at this point). There will be an ending nonetheless. Not a very good one, of course, because nobody gives a shit that late into the game of making ar- *cough* I mean, money, of course.

Review-Roundup: Black Bullet 04, Sidonia no Kishi 04, Hitsugi no Chaika 03-04

Jesus, Rentaro already said that he would kill her before she turned into a monster! No need to be such a dick about it…

There isn’t really always something interesting to say about each episode of each anime I watch but I guess sometimes gathering together various snapshots of animes to talk about some topic or other is a good enough solution, I feel like. This time around I want to talk about how differently these three series deal with the subject of consequences. Well, and I also share some other stuff about them as well… The point is, I didn’t have enough to say about each of those to warrant their own post so they get this one instead.

Sidonia no Kishi – 01-03 Review

The series never shies away from showing off the many ugly ways Nagate hurts himself. It really sets the tone of how far this show is willing to go in showing off the cruelty of the world.

Series like Sidonia no Kishi are hard to review, I feel like. There’s neither a simple arc-structure nor is there an easily summarised goal to the plot. It’s more about immediate events unfolding and how the characters deal with those, it’s about keeping a specific tone in how the characters react to those events and interact with each other and it’s about working towards some sort of revelation that is entirely unclear at the start of the series. In many ways Sidonia no Kishi seems like the series that would be more enjoyable to watch if you could watch the entirety of it within a couple of days. So it’s very likely that at the end of this anime-series I will have an entirely different opinion about it but for now, this is what I think of it…