Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventure 17

Another week is done! It’s been a post where I struggled with my health a bit. Insomnia caused some extreme fatigue issues in the middle of this week and my heart being a bit weak at times caused me some extreme nausea in the earlier parts of yesterday! All good now though! Happy and with colour on my cheeks again! Time to tell you about the anime I watched saturday!

Digimon Adventure Episode 5

Holy Digicow  another week that Digimon is my favourite view of the day?! What’s up with them?! Yet again another very solidly paced  episode with plenty of action to balance the fair amount of exposition! And so much great foreshadowing! Wow!

In this episode Sora and Taichi reach some ruins of what was once a great temple. Using their digivices they can read the mystical text on giant stone slabs and it asks them to feel the words. Once they touch the slab they get a vision of a digital world of the past. A war was fought with the Mega forms of the Digidestined digimon partaking in this war. They also see Omnimon again. They learn that they, along with other chosen ones, have a role to fulfill to help their digimon evolve and face evil. If they can’t stop this evil it will leak out into the network and eventually into their work. From inside the belly of a Whamon Koshiro deduces that this in fact must be happening right now.. but through his digivice he shares this vision. 

Also it turns out the statue is not of Hououmon but the digimon whose feathers Takeru and Kairi have been getting.  Almost as if it is one of the three digimon deities. Yet to my knowledge the holy trinity was always Ophanimon, Seraphimon and Cherubimon.  So who is this?!  Before all exposition is given however both Koshiro inside Whamon as Sora and Taichi are attacked by the forces of evil! The Goggle boy and helmethatted companion are attacked by Dokugomon who trap them inside the pantheon of ruins with their webs and Koshiro is attacked by Tylamon. Through the power of evolution all the forces of evil get dispatched and we learn of a mysterious digimon that controls others with sound.. and it seems to belong to Devimon! Now that Kabuterimon has been introduced.. Koshiro travels on him to meet up with the group and we pan to plant-village. A cute Pelmon runs around..towards a girl with a pink dress and pink hat! Mimi is here! Yay!

This show is SO well paced out in comparison to the original. We get background story, we get world mythos, we see every character so very much established!  Koshiro uses his smarts to analyse attack patterns and uses it to dodge foes. Sora once again is very lovable towards Biyomon (whom I shall keep referring as Biyomon even if in Japanese it’s Piyomon)
We see their mission, get teased  with the return of a classic foe, and now that we know these three digidestined we get introduced to the next one. There were so many great moments and the pacing is so nice. For example at one point Birdramon needs to escape from a web so Biyomon digivolves real time. In the fight that happens next that has much more a montage feeling to the beat of the new intro song we see the “stock footage” digivolution scene of Greymon. Both feel incredibly well paced.  Koshiro is making contact with Tentamon when the evolution occurs so he also gets a real time evolution sequence which again fits the tone needed greatly. The whole backstory about the original war gives this world so many more layers and Kabuterimon’s fight was pretty awesome. My favourite scenes would be the hints of Devimon and Mimi coming, I want more! And I nearly broke my own rule and continued to watch on! I was that excited.

I have little gripes with this episode. If anything, displaying Digimon’s names even if we saw them before looks a bit tacky in red but it is very readable.. I just don’t read Kanji so it feels a bit wasted. The only real gripe I had is that Taichi and Sora seem to have forgotten soundwaves were running through the web earlier, when Koshiro mentions a soundwave using Digmon over communications. That feels a bit cheap. Biyomon tells him  that she saw  Digimon before and in fairness Digimon eyes , especially birds would be much better than that of a human so the problem is subverted a bit but there the exposition given in this episode felt a bit forced. Only standing out because of good the backstory is delivered in the rest of the episode. It is a very lore heavy episode and to me as a fan, that lore came with a lot of interesting visuals. I could recognise Mega’s I could recognise other important elements of the digital world. Perhaps if you are less versed with this world it might be less appealing to you. But I can’t judge that I can just speak for myself! 

This in a way reminds me of my beloved DuckTales reboot..but maybe better. Both tell an old story in a contemporary way but add much more substance to the world. However where Ducktales came from an episodic format to this mory story driven one.. Digimon already had this sort of Origin with a progessive storyline. It really seems to fix everything what did not work about the old digimon and weave a much more interesting tale. Assuming this show will run as long AS other Digimon series I love this pacing! I love how this episode gives us something new.. some fun action to digest it and then sets us up for another episode! As far as my viewing experience goes! I can’t fault it!

Samurai Flamenco Episode 12

Unlike Digimon this is an episode I can fault! I loved a lot.. but there was also a lot of stuff I really hated as well. I am still not sure but the show seems to be making choices I really don’t think fit in with what came before. For the first time since I started watching it Samurai Flamenco was my least favourite watch of the day.

We see Masayoshi be part of the Flamengers and do their thing in this episode. In a style very similar to how Samurai Flamenco.. the character got rushed to his final battle.  We see all three of the other monster generals being dispatched in this episode!  We also get a really weird new opening. Why weird? Because it only shows the fight against Ugly Toxic Poison and no new stuff. It barely even focuses on the flamengers.  Something feels fishy about it.
We see Masayoshi struggle with his new command and with being respected…this leads the Flamengers to be in more danger than they have to be! We see some act to cold others to be hot headed and Masayoshi needs to pull them all together! Even if his heart might point out one way or the other. Because he misses his old life he goes back to Goto.. mostly because the new team doesn’t want to eat Curry with him.  They talk a bit and we find out that Moe has been depressed because Mari went missing.  She is living in Goto’s closet and still trying to seduce him. He seems less averse of her but that might be me! Masayoshi tries to recruit Goto as the Yellow Flamenger but he refuses. The Flamengers fight the final two generals of From Beyond and defeat them ..after they find out one of them is actually 43 monsters. Slowly the team begins to respect Masayoshi and they go eat curry together.

I did not enjoy myself that much with this episode. Something felt off for me. I don’t like how easy controlling that giant Robot feels like and how easy these new abilities are to wield for Masayoshi.  I do not like that Moe suffers without Mari! Yet I also saw a lot of good things. As always it does a great job on setting up stuff. I liked how their robot’s emblem could melt in the heat, I love how Masayoshi’s career is now inverse as how he started. My favourite scene is him encountering a drunk man on the street smoking. Masayoshi tells him it’s a no smoking zone and the guy recognises him and puts out the cigarette without polluting and puts it away. Thanking Masayoshi for all his good work. That is a really great callback to the show before. I also like how his reliance on Sentai Tropes makes him think of a good solution later on in the episode! There are some very solid thoughts going into here. I also really liked how the Giant Robo took realistic damage from the fire! That isn’t a thing in Sentai shows normally.

I really do not like the flamengers though! The way everything is paced, how Masayoshi suddenly doesn’t have to learn things anymore, the way every important element is dispatched without impact. this doesn’t feel like a team. In part that is what this episode meant to convey. I like how everyone tells what they add to the team in a documentary style but suddenly that style is dropped near the last bit of the episode so it doesn’t fully pay off. It also shows you a big problem. I know nothing about these other guys. So I am not invested at all in what they do. I don’t feel invested in these fights. I recognise it’s still solid. I am just not having any fun with these guys, they feel flat and one dimensional.  It feels like I suddenly have really bad seats in a cinema.  I can sorta follow the movie and it’s sorta good still but with all these tiny little annoyances around I just can’t get sucked up into it anymore. I do not like the Flamenger design as it feels as a downgrade of the very personal costume Masayoshi had, I can’t be invested in their weapons because they now have so much less flavor.  Even their posing explosion is dull and grey as if something is off! It lacks the energy it should have..maybe it is intended..but I just felt a whole lot of meh.

I can’t score it to harshly though because there still is so much great writing going on! I just don’t care about it as much! It is an issue that needs to be fixed though, maybe now that Masayoshi is forming bonds so can we.. or maybe we go with something new yet again.. like I said things feel off! The opening was weird and a few things do not align and this show is to clever for it to not mean anything. As a solo episode however this did not do anything for me.

That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime Episode 11

Slime climbed back up a fair bit after last week’s episode. It still did not reach the level of some of the episodes before but this was a very entertaining episode nonetheless. It takes the number three spot for me. 

Gabiru the named Lizardman shows up at the Village of Rimuru and tells him he now can serve Gabiru.. which doesn’t go over well with the Ogre’s , Ranga or Rimuru himself.. but first we see Shion’s cooking actually kill Gobta. …well not actually kill.. but everyone assumed he was dead. He has become a bit of the Meg Griffin of Slime which I had a lot of fun with.  Gabiru challenges Rimuru for ownership of Ranga but there is one problem. If any of these guys fight Gabiru they will almost certainly kill him and they want to find out what he has to say. So a Gobta.. who luckily gained poison resistance because of Shion’s food is there to fight for them. Threatening that Gobta might have to eat more of that food if he loses the little HobGoblin is unleashed and trashes Gabiru who tells the village that an army of 200.000 orcs is coming. Which one of their scouts confirms. Rimuru tells Gabiru he can come back later to talk about an alliance but he will not work under him.. and then a Dryad shows up! Pleading for Rimuru to go out and defeat the mysterious Orc Lord named by Demon Lord Gelmund. Since the group more or less were gonna do that anyway this hardly seems like an offer Rimuru will reject.. but the episode ends before we see an answer.

Comedy-wise this episode had a few great hits for me. The poisoned food scene was very funny and Shion and Shuna’s fight for Rimuru’s affection was done in a way that visually really pleased me.  Even if Shuna is a bit of a throw away character for a princess for now , instead just weaving. The other ogre’s also all add something to the village. It fleshes them out a bit more.  The treat of the Orc Army is now nice and thickly layered on and it will allow the show to go a few directions. Will they go for a direct confrontation or first recruit more allies for Rimuru’s little group? Everything is possible and that is what this show does well. It sets up expectations but also ways to subvert them. The way to write off Gobta so cold and cruelly came out of nowhere yet felt in line with what was shown before. His return however also did! I really expected him to be dead. The way Gobta used his powers as cool and I loved the visuals in this episode! I am happy that not everything is solved through Rimuru’s powers and they do come with a drawback.

Yet this episode felt like it was slacking a bit. It dragged in some parts. The rivalry between Shuna and Shion for example.  It was pretty established yet the seen lingered for a while to make some boob jokes and fangirl jokes. It wasn’t bad but it feels like it just could have been a bit snapier. Gobta’s fight was an example of how it was paced well but for some reason Rimuru kept imagining how the situation would have gone differently.. which all was super obvious! I don’t need to imagine Gabiru annoying people so much they will beat him to death! I know that would happen anyway. It kind of feels like those skits in Scrubbs the tv show where JD imagines a situation going elsewhere, it can be fun..but for some reason those fantasies are kept really toned down.. almost still images as if it’s a virtual novel..with some extra art. Because of this these scenes do not land for me and put a brake on the flow the episode. 

In the end the episode felt like a kid in one of those pedal cars. It’s cute and charming and it does move forward and you can clearly see where he is going..Yet it is also a bit impractical meaning the kid can’t really move as fast as they would like and the spectacle becomes a mix of endearing but also awkward. Still a mighty fine episode!

Flip Flappers Episode 7

This episode made me appericate the episode before a lot more! It contributed to things before I even knew! So with that my gripe against the last episode was gone. This one I really liked..yet because of the theming it ended up  at the fourth space when it came to my favourite views.

The plot of this episode.. how do I talk about that?!  Papika and Cocona discover that they have altered the personality of Iro-Senpai and feel really guilty about it. Suddenly she doesn’t care too much for art anymore and she paints her nails. Did they break her? Did they fix a trauma for her? Nobody exactly can tell them what happend and thusly Cocona doesn’t want to dive into pure Illusion anymore. “The Break-up”  is one of the anime tropes I really like the least so doubts if they should continue what they are doing midway a show.. that is about them doing THAT thing..fllies under that same banner for me.  They force Cocona into Pure Illusion however and she ends in an exact duplicate of her world.. with all sorts of different Papika’s.  Reflecting her doubts about change most likely. Is Papika still Papika if she is a pretty boy, or a scary girl? It seems these all reflect different aspects Cocona’ thinks about when thinking of Papika. The girl she can learn from, the scary girl, the pretty boy which she is attracted to and the little sister she must keep safe and tries to appeal to her. These are all aspects we have seen from Papika towards Cocona before.  In the end Cocona is unable to find the real Papika and she falls into a hole but Papika comes to rescue her with a spaceship made of the sewer pipe where they first met and Papika’s alleged house. or her stay over place at least.  They then fall into a field of flowers and Papika’s shard glows.. as she suddenly has a memory of being Mimi? A man has a shard that resonates with hers.

I really liked this episode from a distant observer kind of way. It was fun to see these different incarnations of Papika and see how they actually tie in  with the actual Papika. It was strong to see a much more realistic but empty world reflecting Cocona’s worries. It also shows to me at least how hard it sometimes is to separate dreams from reality. It can be really hard to tell, and sometimes in the real world even when there are actually people around you can feel as Lonely and lost as Cocona feels.  I do think once more they depicted her struggle very well. I like how we do not get a magical girl transformation in this episode either  as it was much more about Cocona’s issues to deal with what just happened and given what just happened these are very reasonable and logical doubts. So as far as cohesion is concerned this is one of the stronger episodes. The tinier form of storytelling, the much clearer metaphors. It very much works for the episode they made.

But yet again, I did not feel that swept up by it. I know why Cocona is having doubts and it makes so much sense..but with half a series to go I know it won’t last and that is my big issue with this trope. I get that it’s a storyline and in the context of what happened it works yet this trope never carries too much weight with it because there still is half a show to go until characters will get over it. Just like I know that Cocona won’t die at least not before the second to last episode, it feels just a tad pointless to make us the audience think she won’t be.. because.. who are you trying to fool?! While a character is in mortal danger there still is an excitement in showing how they escape. However when a character has to make a decision that struggle is much harder to make exciting. As a result the issue of Cocona’s inner conflict feels a bit like a non issue. We know she will flip the switch and no matter if it is because of Papika rescues here with a spaceship.. or she would have found the real Papika amongst fakes.. it would not have really mattered to us which one it was.. I am glad we got from A to B .. and A and B are legit. The stuff in between just feels just a tad filler.. entertaining filler but filler still.

It really is a great episode, it is just not MY episode. While this show really earned the feelings on display and does it well, I really do not like to see the hero in doubt about their involvement in the show, especially in such a short show. I want to see more content like episode 3 and 5 rather than this, so in a way the show just spoiled me. I still had a fine time watching it..but I want my amazing things from this show not just good things.

Hikaru no Go Episode 17

This episode was really simple yet effective. It is weird how involved I got with this. I might even argue it is a bit of a messy episode, but I had so much fun watching it!  Just because of a weird way to raise the stakes.

We pick up at the same go convention we left last time. People talk to each other about Sai and Waya even hypes him up to be that great historical figure whose name I unfortunately forgot..the legendary Go player that was indeed possessed by Sai. We see everyone going completely mental over Sai once they figure out that half the people of the convention are there.. and Waya’s word of hype triggers a young prodigy to get involved. That is right Akira shows up! A laptop is brought up ..with the internet for some reason even though I am pretty sure there was no  wireless internet yet? Where Dongle’s a thing? There is a thingie sticking out of the computer. Akira faces off online against Sai.. and they replay their second match stone for stone! But then to avoid being recognised Sai plays a different stone and  Akira resigns making an appointment to face him in the middle of his own Insei exams, showing he has not let his obsession go yet. Maybe he recognises Hikaru and wants to face him alone?! Whatever is happening clearly he is willing to risk anything for it, which angers Waya a great deal. The episode ends with Hikaru and Sai going to the café to face off against Akira when at the exams it is revealed Akira has not shown up.

I really liked this episode more than I should, for the most part it’s just a bunch of agitated foreign men shouting at each other if they know who Sai is. An international bunch of confusion. We mostly see side characters do unimportant things as they all speculate, until Waya recognises the playstyle of Sai and tells his master. Also adding in his theory that it might be a school kid. This triggers Akira to become involved as well, stepping a bit on Waya’s turf giving into his obsession. I like how the psychological game between him and Sai starts and how Sai is able to identify Akira because of it. I also really like that Akira recognises the online player as Hikaru. Opposed to Waya who sees Sai, though not knowing it is Sai in name of course. Hikaru got completely unmasked without being unmasked. It also gives Akira a bit of a different rival and maybe a potential friend in Waya. Sure Waya really seems to hate him now..but should they find out they obsess over the same guy. This episode has a way of building tension towards its conclusion..and then by making Akira resign it takes the tension to even bigger stakes. Thingies just got real.

Like I said before though, with all the international players shouting through one another the episode kind of starts out very cluttered. It’s a bit tiring to be tossed around all those international players whom we barely know. I recognise most of them but they haven’t been that established yet so I am not that invested in their perspective. The shouting can be a bit draining to the attention as it is hard to focus your attention on one thing. The show cuts around that fairly smart but it is very VERY clear that the goodness that was this episode came from the second half. I became so invested in this episode and the set up for the next during that half. The first half falls a bit flat in comparison. What it did though was show the emotional involvement of all these people! It shows all these people are really committed and that for me helps with the world building for Hikaru no Go. I complained a bit on how oddly these kids react to things.. almost inhuman but by mirroring them to these guys their reactions feel less over the top.It’s just how this world is. Visuals in this episode are a bit off I feel.The dutch guy seems to suddenly have lost a few pounds of weight and Akira looked a bit differently to me too. Hikaru no Go doesn’t have the best visuals and by setting this episode on a busy convention floor we do see some issues I think. Yet nothing I really worried about.

This wasn’t a flawless episode but it was one I was really engaged in and thus really enjoyed. While if I would measure with more objective standards for all we would get an entirely different list and different grade.. but as for my enjoyment this took second place. I really loved the ending so that’s why it gets my highest grade!

I already updated you on my last week! I have also been catching up with my laundry! I hate doing that as it makes noise that might bother other people! All caught up now again though! Also did a few cleaning things throughout the house where energy allowed at least! This week I have a nice family outing planned! The one that should have happened last week but due to my health.. and my sister making double plans this worked out better! Excited for that. Later today I might get some very important news that could be a big change in my life as well so I am a bit nervous today! So be sweet in the comments!