Fall 2019 – Week 3 in Review

Well shit folks, it’s time for the Week in Review. After one more week of racing to catch up on all the shows I’ve left hanging, I believe I’m at this point current on my actual schedule for the season. I finally caught up on Stars Align, which has continued to offer convincing and unexpectedly sharp-edged adolescent drama, and also powered through the remaining Vinland Saga. I’ve also put Blade of the Immortal on hold, which isn’t really a knock against the show itself – pulpy action dramas just aren’t really my thing, and my schedule this season is pretty darn full. I also won’t be covering Chihayafuru here, for basically the opposite reason – Chihayafuru is so much my thing that I’ve already written two separate articles covering its season premiere. With all that sorted out, let’s dive into the highlights of another week in anime!

This week’s Legend of the Galactic Heroes jumped from Reinhard’s military coup over to Yang’s side, where the Alliance was suffering through Reinhard’s other coup. It was nice to see Yang’s side and personality interrogated with the same thoroughness the show has recently been applying to Reinhard, though this coup arc went too quickly to really build up the perspective of Yang’s opponents. Once again, individual nuggets of sharp dialogue went a long way towards adding convincing texture to an almost summarized narrative – these rebels might not be fully fleshed out people, but the speech announcing their intentions offered a convincing, familiar narrative of nationalist pride and purge-friendly rhetoric. It’s no coincidence that Yang’s enemies here so neatly echoed Reinhard’s philosophy of revolution – a contrast with Yang that was highlighted even more sharply during the wonderful “become a dictator” conversation, which demonstrated the fundamentals of Yang’s ideals, for better or worse.

From the constantly moving, commerce-focused nature of his childhood onward, Yang has learned to make do with existing systems, and embrace the hope of incremental change. In contrast, Reinhard’s childhood was defined by the abduction of his sister, an event which taught him his world is ultimately unfair and antagonistic, and that we must fight the intolerable if we wish to find peace. Both of their philosophies are natural responses to the lives they’ve lived – and yet, in the end, even Yang seems like he might be more of a revolutionary or idealist than he’s willing to admit. Though he refuses to replace the Alliance himself, his hope for a better way is revealed through his choices for Julian – by working to prevent Julian from developing genuine allegiance to the Alliance, he is acknowledging that this empire too shall pass.

My Hero Academia continued to slowly build up towards this season’s true highlights, as it ran through the full introduction of Midoriya’s newest mentor, Sir Nighteye. The My Hero Academia anime is so very loyal to its source material that sequences like this, which were never really a highlight in manga form, rarely feel any more interesting in animation. That said, Sir Nighteye feels like one those roles Shinichiro Miki was born to play, and he’s absolutely killing it so far. The buildup to the Overhaul arc felt pretty unfocused even in the original manga, and having it stretched out into slower twenty minute chunks isn’t doing it any favors, but we’ll be through the preamble and into the action soon enough.

Meanwhile, Stars Align’s second and third episodes felt just as visually impressive and emotionally resonant as the first, solidifying the show’s position as the season’s clear frontrunner. Episode two’s race sequence was a wonderful way to get our leads on a first-name basis, and an emphatic demonstration of the pride and stubbornness they both share. Both Maki and Toma are too stubborn to simply accept the unhappy conditions of their lives, but too limited in their personal lives to really fight back against those circumstances; instead, they express their pride, strength, and fierce anger through the club, often taking out their unhappiness on the classmates closest to them.

But even while the uncommon ugliness of these characters’ lives and personalities gives Stars Align a uniquely sharp, realistic texture, the show is also obscenely good at executing both slice of life and sports drama fundamentals. Every scene of Stars Align is embellished with beautiful shots of the characters simply living their lives, existing in a communal space whose vitality is made clear through its unique breadth of perspective and copious incidental animation. That animation is employed with equal intelligence throughout the show’s tennis sequences, making sports drama fundamentals like “conveying the newbie’s clear talent” seem totally effortless. Being able to maintain the pacing and convincing tonal space of a naturalistic character drama while still hitting those satisfying sports drama feats is a truly impressive balance, and Stars Align just so happens to be best-in-class at both character drama and sports drama.

Finally, Vinland Saga’s most recent two episodes returned to its usual dramatic mode, as we witnessed the further deterioration of Askeladd’s grand gambit. There wasn’t too much to critique in a thematic sense with these episodes; Vinland Saga is more of a hybrid action/character piece than Yukimura’s Planetes, and stretches like this are mostly just plot. That’s not to say these episodes are boring, of course – Askeladd’s position is so tenuous, and requires such nimble negotiation of competing priorities, that it was still a tense watch to see him essentially negotiate out of an outright mutiny. At the same time, the show has maintained its current narrative paradigm for quite a few episodes now, so I’ll be happy to see an end to Askeladd’s death march, and an opportunity for Thorfinn to do more than sulk and sneer.

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