Fall 2019 – Week 5 in Review

Hey folks, and welcome back to the Week in Review! I’m unfortunately still behind on Vinland Saga, but I think I have a pretty good reason for it this time: I’ve spent the last four days feeling sick as a dog, coughing all through the night, and trying to make up on lost sleep all through the day. I’m feeling somewhat better now, but I’m also behind on basically all of my projects, so Vinland Saga will have to wait until next week.

Fortunately, this week’s other new episodes still gave me plenty to discuss! Legend of the Galactic Heroes is such a rich and politically acute production that each episode prompts a short essay’s worth of reflections, and Stars Align continues to stake a claim as one of the year’s very best dramas. Let’s break down all (er, most) of the latest anime highlights in one more Week in Review!

This week’s Legend of the Galactic Heroes was furious and devastating in the way all of this show’s best episodes tend to be. After spending last week focused on Reinhard angrily bludgeoning his enemies to death, this week returned us to Yang, and emphasized once more the epic senselessness of mankind’s violence towards man. I enjoyed the humorous contrast between the early speeches by each fleet’s generals, which once again emphasized Yang’s far-reaching perspective. In contrast with the entirely nationalism-focused speech of his enemy, Yang emphasized throughout his speech how meaningless this fight was, and that furthermore “the only thing riding on this is the life or death of a nation. Compared to our individual rights and freedoms, a nation isn’t worth that much.”

The fight itself was too muddled in its framing to come across as a tactically satisfying duel, but that itself seemed to be part of the point. As Yang said, this battle was entirely senseless – what he was contending with was not a clever enemy, but an obviously stupid enemy, who nonetheless held the lives of billions of innocents in their hands. This is the true nature of war, and the true nature of Yang’s ultimate “adversary” – governments that waste their people’s lives on greed and pride. Thus the tragedy of this battle was not ultimately “we lost,” but “we won too slowly, causing irreparable harm.” The fight served as a natural demonstration of Yang’s fundamental attitude on war, and his understanding that no fight, even a victory, can be considered “joyous.”

Unfortunately, we’re not ruled by people like Yang – we’re ruled by people like Donald Trump, the cretinous, self-absorbed, amoral leaders Yang finds so exhausting. This episode’s final images of militarized police crushing a peaceful protest fell very close to home for me, and emphasized the limitations of Yang’s comfortable, incremental perspective. While Yang is clearly a fundamentally decent person, his philosophy of “I prefer better to best” is unlikely to feel that comforting to Jessica Edwards, who actually died fighting for a better future. I love Yang, but sometimes Reinhard’s scorched earth methods feel pretty tempting.

My Hero Academia actually improved on the manga material it was covering this week, and surprisingly, that wasn’t just because Shinichiro Miki is such a good Nighteye. While I enjoyed seeing Nighteye reprimand Midoriya in regards to his simplistic perspective on saving people, I was even more impressed by the discussion between Midoriya and All Might.

In the manga, I couldn’t help but feel mostly preoccupied by how arbitrary Nighteye’s prediction felt. “I can see the future” is a power that I feel has a naturally messy relationship with satisfying narrative drama; I can understand the danger of an overt threat to a character I love, but hearing “they’re going to die in the near future, whoa-o-o” doesn’t really give me anything to grab onto. In anime form, the excellent color work and beautiful layouts here helped to center this conflict on something I can care about: the relationship between Midoriya and All Might. Largely through the show’s excellent visual execution, this conflict felt centered more on this character bond than Nighteye’s contrived prediction, making for a surprisingly effective sequence.

Finally, Stars Align maintained its general excellence this week, across an episode that touched in on a significant portion of the main cast’s various familial dramas. At times, like during Rintaro’s speech about his adoption anxieties, it can feel like Stars Align is a show that really needs more episodes. We’re barreling through a substantial number of character stories here, and without time to breath, not all of them can land with much emotional impact. That said, I felt this episode still did a marvelous job accomplishing a great deal of characterization as efficiently as possible, with sequences like the home scene featuring class president Kaori, or even just that brief cut of one teammate demonstrating he learned idol dances by dancing with his little sister, really bringing these characters to life.

Stars Align’s greatest strength, aside from its remarkable visual design, might be how messy all of its characters are. No one here feels like a sanitized or idealized version of a young student; even the most compassionate members of this cast can be petty and thickheaded, making for a uniquely convincing portrait of the adolescent experience. And the human messiness of this cast makes their moments of glory hit that much harder, as Toma tries to wrangle his teammates into fighting shape, or Maki cries with relief at being genuinely, unconditionally supported. The messy, complex texture of all Stars Align’s heroes makes it a consistent joy to watch them slowly come together, and I can’t wait to see these lovable brats get totally destroyed during their first actual match.

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