Fall 2019 – Week 4 in Review

Japanese broadcast scheduling issues have left us with an unusually “fun-sized” Week in Review this week, which is a term candy manufacturers use to market their smallest portions of candy, since “this candy has less candy than the other candies” is apparently a bad marketing pitch. All this is to say that only Legend of the Galactic Heroes and Stars Align actually aired this week, so that’s what we’ll be talking about! Fortunately, Legend of the Galactic Heroes and Stars Align are both incredibly good shows – Stars Align has not once let up on either its fluidity of animation or acuity of adolescent perspective, while Legend of the Galactic Heroes only becomes more gripping as it moves into the genuine meat of its drama. Let’s break down these two excellent franchises’ latest attractions in this fun-sized Week in Review!

Legend of the Galactic Heroes’ latest episode was largely dominated by something I was never expecting – an outright physical battle between knights with swords in full plate mail. In spite of falling well outside Galactic Heroes’ general dramatic wheelhouse, this episode’s lengthy fight between High Admiral Ovlesser and Reinhard’s forces was actually quite well-animated and solidly choreographed, while simultaneously demonstrating the limits of Reinhard’s perspective.

Reinhard is ultimately driven not by general concern for his fellow man, but by a very personal passion, as well as an unshakable moral certainty. This makes him a dynamic leader and a terrifying enemy, but it also means he’s far more susceptible than Yang to being ruled by his emotions, and potentially acting impulsively or unjustly. As we saw earlier in this season, Kircheis often acts as the tempering influence Reinhard desperately needs; but for this operation, with Reinhard instead relying on Oberstein, his actions felt both irrational and needlessly cruel. Defeating Ovlesser was necessary, and ruining his name likely did weaken the unity of his enemies, but I can’t imagine that largely emotional victory made up for the loss in trust these acts caused among Reinhard’s own men. Even as he claims more victories in the civil war, Reinhard’s trajectory is neatly demonstrating that while it is one thing to claim power, it is a vastly different thing to hold onto it.

Moving on, while I certainly wouldn’t consider this week’s Stars Align a “weak episode,” it did at least feel a bit more conventional than the show’s usual standard. In its first several episodes, Stars Align most often felt like a naturalistic character drama that was almost accidentally also succeeding as a traditional sports anime. In contrast, both this week’s process of pairing up the team’s various contenders, as well as the fresh dash of personal drama regarding another member of the team, felt a bit more like a conventional sports show, where personal drama is often forced to exist within a fairly rigid progression of familiar narrative beats. It’s often weak criticism to call something “formulaic,” since formulas generally exist because they work, but for a show that’s felt so organically paced and plotted until now, seeing these structural bones felt a little disappointing.

That said, even when it’s trending a bit more towards conventional sports drama, Stars Align is still really goddamn good at basically everything it does. The pairings they arrived on felt very natural, the understated discussions between Maki and Toma are always gripping, and it’s been satisfying to watch Maki quickly ascend to a genuine and well-earned leadership role within the team. Additionally, the animation remains as fluid as ever, with this episode’s procession of practice matches offering an almost unimaginable bounty of convincing character movement. And even this episode’s concessions towards genre convention might ultimately serve a greater purpose – Stars Align has been doing an incredibly thorough job of explicating every strategic element of doubles tennis, meaning when its big matches actually arrive, they’re already poised to be tactical feasts.

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