It’s that time of year once again when I somehow remember to make a token post on here (although I am a few hours early – I’d probably have forgot if I left it until tomorrow, but hey, it’s the 25th in Japan already). I guess if you want semi-regular anime opinions out of me, Bluesky is probably the place to check these days.

The Japanese home video release of the movie Trapezium, which I am very enthusiastic about, was originally supposed to be out today, but it looks like the release was recently shunted back until February, disappointingly.

The cute slime show was pretty good this last season. Looking forward to the already announced sequel season.

(Also yes, I’ve been playing ZZZ…)

A rare mid-year update? Wow…

Anyway, it’s Scotland Love Anime season once again, and it’s the last day of the Glasgow weekend. Generally speaking, I’m very enthusiastic about a lot of the movies that have screened this year, though I doubt you particularly need me to wax lyrically about The Colors Within given how many words have been spilt over it by far smarter people than me already.

That being said, I saw Trapezium yesterday. This has already been on a one-day release in the US already, so I’d imagine a lot of folks (or at least a lot of the folks interested in this kind of thing) have probably seen it already, but I did kind of want to spill a few words over it in a fashion that’s a little too spoiler-laden to take to Social Media.

I will say that, going into it, the two impressions I’d heard were (a) someone on Twitter saying that it’s one of the worst things they’ve ever seen, and (b) Gerald saying it was some variety of charming on a recent episode of Anime World Order. For my part – I really enjoyed it, but I can absolutely see where both viewpoints come from.

But just to establish the framework before spoiling most of the movie, I’ll stress that the presentation is absolutely that of an otaku-centric idol show – it lacks the superlative sense of slapstick of a Love Live, but it’s not a thousand miles at least masquerading as that kind of thing. The movies heroine is charming, funny, dangerously charismatic and is frequently a joy to watch.

She’s also kind of a sociopathic monster, which is the real crux of the movie. The movie strikes a really curious tone with this, as whilst it’s always pretty clear that some of the things she is doing are not exactly positive (and some of the later Japanese marketing for the movie really leans into this), it tends to shy away from actively criticising her for these things even as other people point out that she might be being a bit of an ass. Infact, ultimately, everything ends up working out for her.

(more…)

It is, once again, the token Christmas post. Not really much to be saying this year other than affirming I’m still alive, something which will probably not be too much of a shock (I hope) to anyone who follows me on Twitter or Bluesky or whatever.

Been reading a lot of LNs this last year, mostly. I’ve just finished mainlining the current translated run of the Apothecary Diaries, if you also want a recommend for what anime I think is good this season.

Anyway, have yourself a good one!

Another year, another instance of me thinking I should at least update at Christmas. Hope you are all doing well, and I hope none of you have accidentally sank as much time into Genshin as I have this last year, which is an amount of time I am absolutely not going to own up to here.
(more…)

Arguably cheating given that I’ve done Penguindrum TV before, but now having seen the first of the new Penguindrum movies (twice), I can confirm that it is still present, and as such can be lazy and just reuse the same screencap. Hurrah for efficiency in posting!

The first Penguindrum movie is an interesting kettle of fish in that it’s mostly a recap movie, though it has a number of new framing sequences that position it as a sequel to the TV show, as child versions of Shoma and Kanba review a book detailing the events of the TV show whilst attempting to figure out why they seem to have been forgotten by the world. Also, most importantly, there’s a new Penguin. Much of this new content feels pretty Takeuchi Nobuyuki to my admitted untrained eye, though the fact it’s half riffing on visuals from the episode of the TV show he handled in the first place, and half mashing together photorealistic and animated elements is probably what’s leading me to that feeling.

As a recap movie, it’s… fine? Better than most, even? Most of the really interesting stuff is likely to be falling into the second movie that I’ve not seen yet, given how this one ends, though it does basically conclude at exactly the halfway point of the show in terms of it’s recap content. As someone who hasn’t really revisited the show since it broadcast, I at least managed to follow the events well enough – it’s obviously a recap movie, but it takes something of a sensible approach to it by arranging it’s content by character rather than strictly adhering to previously established chronological continuity. That said, given that movie a fair bit over two hours long, you are only really dropping maybe 2/3rd of the content of the show, which whilst sounding like a lot, is positively luxurious by the standards of many of these things. You’re still losing some of the flavour of the show, but it’s a pretty reasonable way to relive the story whilst being hyper-focused on a lot of the elements that are particularly meaningful about it.
(more…)