Anime

Current season notes and impressions:

MF Ghost - the finish order wasn't quite what I expected - I thought Kanata would end in third with Sawatari in second - but it still broadly played out the way I expected. And we're apparently heading into a filler episode, though the idea of a filler episode in a series that takes so excruciatingly long to tell its story in the first place is sort of odd.

You and I Are Polar Opposites - still very good because it's closely following the manga, which was very good. We got to meet Taira and Azuma, who are going to be central to the rest of the series, and briefly got to see Nishi, though didn't actually meet her (she was the other library assistant, with the books on conversation). She's easily my favorite character in the series, and she'll probably be yours too, whoever you are.

Scum of the Brave - this has been a pleasant surprise. I watched the first episode on a whim and liked it, and still like it now that we're up to the third. It's an interesting and sort of goofy setting and looks to be heading into an interesting and sort of goofy story, but mostly it's just that the characters are appealing and have good chemistry.

Trigun Stargaze - the fight scene was spectacular. It did a thing that anime only sometimes does to me - it made me appreciate the cinematography. Anime technically has a "camera" - a viewpoint from which the action is shown. Even the most graphically impressive anime generally tend to not do much with that though - they just stick with a simple, practical viewpoint, only switching as necessary to follow the action. That fight scene though really made use of film-style cinematography - pans and zooms and pivots and so on - and it was very impressive.

Ikoku Nikki - still amazing. I was especially impressed by Makio's ruminations on loneliness. Like her, I'm so introverted that I don't really know what loneliness even feels like, but I only very rarely even mention that to people, because it's too hard to explain. That was the first time that I saw someone else who feels the same way, and who put it into words. And I love that she not only sympathized with Asa in spite of not really understanding, but that Asa recognized that that was what she was doing. Broadly, the two of them have a lot of things to work through - both internally and between them - but they're both fundamentally honest, so if they don't give up, they'll succeed. And it's great watching it happen.

And an especially intriguing detail in this episode - there was one of those flashbacks of Asa's mom looking stern and disappointed and saying demeaning things, but it wasn't Makio who saw it, but Asa. That's probably progress - until now, Asa's only flashbacks to her mom showed her as a cartoonish "mom" caricature - this was the first time that she saw her in the same sort of detail as Makio does, and it was telling that she saw her just about identically, though apparently without the same emotional investment. Yet.