#only watched s1 and tried to watch s2 but it just lost even more appeal

[solemntitty]

NGL I watched sword art online during the height of my weeb phase and even then I really didn't get the appeal

[deltaengineering]

that was the winter anime 2021 that was

Still not quite ready for a dozen posts about how terrible the likes of Combatants Will Be Dispatched are, sorry. Watch Vivy though, it owns. Here’s some more things that are (mostly) good. As always, worst to best.

Yatogame-chan Kansatsu Nikki S3

Yatogame has long run out of hot Nagoya facts and its ensemble comedy never amounted to much, so now it seems mostly content to just spam more and more wacky character designs. About the only thing that it has left going for it is that 3 minutes a week are more effort to drop than to watch, so I expect them to make a movie next. 4/10

Go-toubun no Hanayome S2

Quints is a weird one. S1 was a barely good enough (i.e., well above average) implementation of the ages old harem chestnut. S2 is actually better at the core of its appeal, since it gives all the characters a sharper profile (things like taking Nino from joke to badass and making Ichika a villain are no mean feat), but it does pay a steep price for it. You see, to deliver a steady drip feed of meaningful character moments it apparently has to rush through the source material at a breakneck pace, which completely wrecks the "story" part of this story and makes every episode seem like a recap. And it still keeps wasting precious time on vestigial nonsense like its framing device and the Kyoto flashback scenario that was already the worst part of S1. But by far the most annoying aspect is its insistence on keeping all the options valid, since it prevents any real progress and makes everything seem arbitrary and pointless. So sure enough, after a season of much ado we still don't end up anywhere — you can't really raise the stakes if all at stake was "who wins" to begin with. It's watchable and even enjoyable scene-for-scene but it's getting harder and harder to call it a solid show overall. 5/10

Skate Leading Stars

I was watching this primarily because I didn't like Yuri on Ice much and wanted to see if something that is a blatant attempt to cash in on it would be better — because while YoI delivers on one aspect (being hella gay), it really is an absolute shambles of a sports show. And sure enough, Skate Leading has none of the auteur appeal of YoI, but it just works much better. In particular I appreciate how it managed to make me care even a little about a cast of assholes, which is a nice contrast to the nauseatingly ingratiating way YoI tries to make you love its characters. Also, Skate Leading is just generally cheap and unambitious, so not susceptible to trying hard and painfully flaming out on the presentation side like YoI is. But at some point you gotta let go of these comparisons and on its own Skate Leading is... just fine, I guess? Competent, mildly engaging, not very memorable. And that's probably where it loses to Yuri on Ice in the end after all, even if I think it's "better". 6/10

Idoly Pride

Idoly Pride sold itself on me with a really good (and hilarious/tragic) first episode that was just too bizarre to ignore — I mean, how can you ignore GHOST IDOL MANAGERS. Well, the majority of the show isn't like that. It's a competent and solid version of the idol franchise show, yes, but it really had more potential than that. Especially midseason, it gets lost in these dozens of characters, and while they're all likeable, it does seem like a waste of a good story just centered on Mana/Kotona/Sakura. By the end it comes back around to the heart of the matter with a Maeda-style sob story, which could be a disaster but seasoned veteran Jukki Hanada makes it work anyway. Overall, there's quite a bit of ridiculous hacky melodrama in this, but quite honestly that's the best part and I wish it would concentrate more on it. The rest is just okay. 6/10

Yuru Camp S2

Yuru Camp is still likely the best pure iyashikei show when it gets down to business. Compared to S1 though, this seems to happen less and less. At its peaks (i.e., basically any quiet moment with Rin) it's at least as good as ever, and there's some good cast additions like Mini-Inuko, but it appears that Yuru Camp simply has run out of things you can do with camping and it fills up the time with other... stuff. This stuff includes the generic school club shenanigans it was never particularly good at, and a gigantic helping of crass consumerism. Yeah, I would say the majority of Yuru Camp is just a straight up infomercial at this point, which itself ranges from the perfectly acceptable (which cute anime isn't about food constantly), to the sketchy (I don't know whether the Izu tourism board cut this production a fat check, but if they didn't, Yuru Camp still gives its best effort to make it seem that way) to the highly irritating – I am aware that camping requires gear and you can't just ignore that, but you most definitely do not require whole arcs dedicated to talking about raising funds for the purposes of acquiring the Lamp of Comfy Happiness at your friendly local Caribou™ either. Not to mention an arc where the aforementioned lame school club does the same, for double irritation. Make no mistake, this show is so riddled with scenes that beg for a solution to embed affiliate links in video files that it makes me wish I was watching something as anticapitalist and underground as Love Live. And irritating really is the last thing a show with this core concept, as stellar as it is at that, can afford to be. Bummer. 6/10

SKOO the Infinity

Skoo has one really huge asset: ADAM, its magnificent villain. It also has one really huge liability: Reki, its not magnificent protagonist. To be more specific, it's very good at anything outrageous, physics-defying and silly, such as most scenes ADAM is in, and quite bad at anything serious, dramatic (in a serious way) and down to earth, such as most scenes Reki is in. So, what's the verdict? Well, the rest of the cast is more ADAM-like, and Reki's co-protagonist Langa is fine as the straight (yeah, right) man. The tedious buddy drama is a comparatively small part of this show, and at least it pays off quite well in the end. Seriously, I was ready to give this a 6, but the final episode is probably the best one of the show, in all of its aspects. That's really not something you see often. Skoo's a great time. Except when it's not. 7/10

Non Non Biyori Nonstop

Speaking of the rare good ending, what about we gave one of those to a slim and inconsequential slice-of-life show? NNB has always been solid, comfy and amusing quality with a couple of standout moments (usually something with Renge), and Nonstop has that plus an ending as conclusive as any show of this type is ever going to have. Besides, it does a lot of things right by focusing on more characters than the central 4 (especially Konomi has great material in S3), it expands the universe just enough to not get stale, and it moves things forward — It's definitely a lot better than the movie, is what I'm saying. Apart from that, well, we're three seasons in, if you have any interest in this you probably don't need me to explain what's good about NNB at this point. Bonus points for being nothing but an ad for the manga. 7/10

Wonder Egg Priority

Oh boy, so here's the big one. Wonder Egg is the rare Meaningful Arthouse Show About Real Issues You Guys, as you might have heard. And well, the long and short of it is that it's a very good show with quite a few glaring problems (besides not actually being finished due to production issues, but what we have is enough of an ending to be able to meaningfully talk about it). In particular, one problem: WEP is, at its core, one of these metaphorical Magical Girl-ish series that are just a thin layer of abstraction over coming-of-age or societal problems. The issue is that "metaphorical" in this case means "literal" and "thin" means "basically nonexistent". This show is not subtle regarding what it's about, at all. This is a double-edged sword — on the positive side, some things really should just be said aloud, and I'm really, really fucking tired of the Ikuhara style of "here's some wacky things, maybe a blog post will eventually tell you how it's actually about the most important thing ever" obfuscation — if it's really so important, just spell it out. On the other hand, there are limits to this and when a second, different Ai appears I don't really need a voiceover line telling me that yep, this show is about parallel universes now. WEP spells out many important things, but it also spells out many things that are implicitly clear or better left vague. Not to mention that with being so obvious up front, the show's tendency to leave figuring out what it's actually saying about it up to the viewer can leave the wrong impression. Again, I settled on the opinion that it's subtle after all where it counts the most, but you might easily get the impression that it pulls its punches (Ikuhara does this the exact other way around — once you figure out what the fuck he's talking about it's abundantly clear what he's saying about it).

In fact, this show is so good at subtle, quiet character moments that it calls into question the need for big huge fighting fantasy layer in the first place, especially since I'm not a fan of the fantasy designs and the fights aren't great. Sure, they look impressive on a technical level (this show is very good looking in general), but the lack of actual impact or rhythm makes me think this is not made by people who are very familiar with action and maybe they should have asked some seasoned shounen veterans for this — or just, you know, not do it. They can (and do) impress with character acting in quiet scenes just the same. And while Ai's character story actually does pay off quite nicely by the end we got, and Momoe and Rika are also handled well, Neiru's backstory is significantly less good, not to mention the whole Frill subplot regarding the show's mythology that they introduced just before (and that's the part to be resolved at a later date), which is a huge can of worms. We'll see how well they handle that, I suppose, but as it is it's a weird and vestigial detour that doesn't add much besides thematic headaches.

But yeah, apart from all that — I like it, a lot. Great character writing in the details, cool looks for the most part, tons of ambition, and a message that I consider to be appropriately handled — for the most part, and for now. Not quite ambitious arthouse anime at its finest, but also not a pretentious disaster like Sarazanmai, Monogatari et al. 8/10

[joey-potters]

sylviaplaths said: i like that trope but they don’t even fit it well. like… dawson only developed feelings for joey midway through s1 and then later acted like he’d been in love with her his whole life. and the possession of each other they show… yikes.

Exactly!! He saw her all dressed up and thought oh she’s actually a girl and I’m attracted to her. And thankfully Joey does call him out for that but I just never got them. They really only dated for about 4 months and it was filled with problems and they couldn’t communicate. Even though they always talk about how much they talk. 

The possession and the co dependency is just so unhealthy. The way they felt like they had to be apart of each other’s lives on such a deep level always rubbed me the wrong way. Also the ultimatum and basically saying if you choose him you won’t have me in your life at all. Of course she doesn’t want to lose him, he’s been there for some of the hardest moments of her life but if he really loved her he would have been a better friend because that’s what they were at the beginning. Tbh the moment Dawson read Joey’s diary and then said “You practically left it out for me to find” I lost all respect for him. Comparing their relationship in S2 to Pacey and Andie, I get whiplash. It was so much more developed and complex instead of a couple that had been in each other’s lives for everything and we saw that in S1 whereas Pacey and Andie has none of that. 

I never rooted for them, I just don’t understand the appeal. Maybe I’m so deep in PJ that I never tried to understand. I don’t know how I’d feel if I watched it when it was airing and I was younger. Some people have said they used to be D/J shippers and then as they got older and re watched they were P/J. 

This is long haha sorry, I just really dislike them as a couple and probably always will. I’m going on my 6th re watch and my feelings haven’t changed. 

[ladystylestores]

Homecoming S2: The most fun you’ll have with an evil company this spring

Enlarge / Name? Date of birth? Home address? “I don’t know.”

YouTube/Amazon Prime

Warning: This story references happenings from Homecoming S1 but tries to avoid any major spoilers for FX’s Devs and the new second season of Homecoming.

Sometimes Hollywood at large seems to embrace the infamous Google strategy: make two of everything and see what sticks. Who recently asked for twin dog-as-best-friend-but-end-of-life tearjerkers? And did audiences need dual “Nikola Tesla races to make electricity” biopics starring beloved heartthrobs? (In a world where The Prestige already exists, probably not.)

This spring, streaming TV got in on this strategy, too. A pair of shows centered on secretive, shady startups—companies doing almost otherworldly things that piqued government interest but really complicated an employee’s life—each arrived with star-boasting casts and filmmaking pedigrees behind the camera. Like a dutiful TV reviewer, I watched the first four episodes of both series. Despite each having oodles of style, one felt opaque and unnecessarily complex, like piecing together a puzzle without knowing what the full picture was at the start.

And the other is Amazon’s Homecoming, which hits Prime with seven new episodes this weekend. (Apologies to FX’s Devs, which I’ll likely never finish.)

Janelle Monáe stars in Homecoming season 2, coming soon to Amazon Prime.

Still stylish

Though Homecoming lost some high profile talent ahead of S2—Julia Roberts’ character doesn’t appear and Sam Esmail did not direct any of these episodes—you wouldn’t call this show depleted after watching this new run of episodes. In her first starring TV role, Janelle Monáe is as captivating as ever. She plays a woman named Jackie who is struggling to remember how precisely she ended up alone and passed out on a boat in the middle of a remote lake. And instead of Bobby Cannavale representing our main corporate cog for the Geist behemoth, Hong Chau (the actor behind Lady Trieu of Watchmen) reprises her role as Audrey. Her corporate exec of few words was last seen as a pseudo-big bad at the very end of S1, but she gets fleshed out quite a bit here.

Jackie’s journey and the dynamic between Jackie and Audrey might be the most thrilling parts of these new episodes, similar to how the conversations between Roberts and Stephan James as Walter ended up as S1’s most riveting part. The only disadvantage for Chau and Monáe comes from circumstance: Roberts and James had the benefit of Geist’s overall product and scheme being a mystery that our two main characters learned and navigated together with the audience. This time around, audiences have a lot more info, taking away a bit of the show’s intrigue and tension. If story felt secondary at times to the performances for you in S1, that dynamic will be amplified here.

The chemistry between its leads, of course, was only half of Homecoming’s initial appeal. Mr. Robot creator Sam Email had generously applied his small screen cinematic lens, using different aspect ratios, lens filters, and a robust palette of ’70s film homages. New director Kyle Patrick Alvarez did previous work on Starz’ visually inventive Counterpart, so he appears to have the chops to carry over some of S1’s same visual language (with the emphasis on “some,” given how inventive Esmail has always been). For Alvarez, S2’s premier in particular feels delightfully Hitchcock-ian, as Jackie at times seems engulfed by large pines or encased in a spooky motel straight out of Twin Peaks.

As for the story unfolding in these episodes, well, that’s where Devs comes in.

Janelle Monáe stars as a mysterious woman who wakes up in a rowboat on a lake with no memory of who she is.

Geist Emergent Group, the company behind the Homecoming Initiative, might be involved.

YouTube/Amazon Prime

Stephan James reprises his S1 role as Walter Cruz.

YouTube/Amazon Prime

Also back: S1’s Audrey (Hong Chau), an assistant at Geist Emergent Group.

YouTube/Amazon Prime

Remember that S1 post-credits scene? It’s relevant to S2.

YouTube/Amazon Prime

The memory-erasing drug is gearing up for mass production, it seems.

YouTube/Amazon Prime

Chris Cooper plays Leonard Geist, who begins to have doubts about his company’s business.

YouTube/Amazon Prime

Prestige isn’t the point

Understanding the plot of Homecoming S2 absolutely requires a “previously on” montage. Rather than Shea Wigham detectiving into a new case (sidebar: nothing ever improves by losing Shea Wigham), these episodes revolve around the same basic happenings—just from new perspectives. We’re again watching the Geist signature product being cultivated and applied, the government still contracts with them to do unsavory things, Walter Cruz still endures some less-than-ideal circumstances.

As such, any mysteries (like, why is Janelle Monáe left out to sea again?) are a bit narrower in comparison to S1. We’re not watching plot gain momentum toward a grand conclusion; we’re largely learning about more of the plot’s mechanics, the stuff previously in the background.

This sounds bland when you spell it out like that, but some of the best television shows in recent memory have deployed this basic concept to an extent. Watchmen gave viewers multiple perspectives of the same events in consecutive episodes; Better Call Saul is entirely about the mechanics of how one bad guy lawyer grew into his sleeze. Homecoming is not of the same caliber, but this show knows the story it’s telling and commits to exploring it from new angles. S2 has a confined plot and commits to revealing it stylishly, succinctly (with this and I Am Not Okay With This, half-hour drama remains my favorite bingeable format), and with new likable characters. (In addition to Jackie and Audrey, Geist himself makes an appearance, played by Chris Cooper of “rage-y neighbor in American Beauty” fame.) This season ain’t cracking TV’s Mount Rushmore or Alan Sepinwall’s Top 20 of 2020, but it’s thoroughly enjoyable (think more Stranger Things S2 than Mr. Robot S2). 

That bit of reflection kept taking my mind back to Devs. TV critics generally seemed smitten by that show’s ambition and perplexed by how small Homecoming has set out to be in S2, but I’ve come away feeling the opposite. Devs’ hourlong episodes could be a slog, as the show didn’t seem to know whether it cared more about the kinetic personal action (our “hero” employee trying to get the upper hand and figure out her sinister employer) or about some possibly magical machine with greater philosophical implications. The former is the stuff that kept you going through early episodes, but the latter had so much time devoted to it that you couldn’t help but feel “this must be the point” even as the series didn’t seem to understand how to translate it for everyone sticking with the show. So after four episodes, I stopped, and no “oh, you have to stick it out ’til the finale!” rationale could suck me back in.

Homecoming, on the other hand, never feels overly weighty or chore-ish. The defined focus and faster run time (you could watch all of Homecoming’s two seasons in roughly the same amount of time as Devs’ one) means no sequences feel obviously aimless or like filler. The show has presented what Geist is doing as fact without some mind-occupying takeaway, so instead the series stays most interested in the action. After four episodes, I wanted to see how everything played out and had to stop myself from just “play next”-ing through the whole thing. (Amazon outlined a number of things reviewers couldn’t reveal, and it seemed a number of those things cluster in the season’s second half—temptation avoided.)

To borrow the Hollywood twins analogy once more, one of these evil corporation shows aimed for prestige glory and ended up as The Equalizer. The other knew it wanted to be a competent b-movie the whole time and delivered John Wick. And if being parked on my couch looking for a new show to watch mid-pandemic has taught me anything, it’s that sometimes it’s OK to put the pressure for ambitious greatness on hold for a minute and just enjoy something. As you’d expect, Janelle Monáe guarantees a certain base level of that.

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[gadgetsrevv]

Spurs are lost without Eriksen’s creativity; will they have to get used to his absence?

Shaka Hislop weighs in on Jamaal Lascelles’ challenge on Harry Kane that wasn’t given as a penalty, in Tottenham’s 1-0 loss to Newcastle.

LONDON — This was supposed to be the match that would kickstart Tottenham Hotspurs’ season.

After needing a Harry Kane rescue act to overcome promoted Aston Villa on the opening weekend and then somehow coming away from Manchester City with a statistically miraculous 2-2 draw, this game, against a Newcastle United team who were without a point and had just lost 3-1 at Premier League new boys Norwich City, would be the one where the shackles came off. Or at least, that was the theory.

Instead it was Newcastle who found themselves celebrating a potential turning point after Joelinton’s coolly taken goal earned the visitors a wholly unexpected but richly merited 1-0 victory on a cloyingly hot and sunny afternoon at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

– Player ratings: Kane, Lucas 5/10 in shock loss to Newcastle – When is the Champions League group-stage draw? – ESPN Premier League fantasy: Sign up now!

Tottenham were left to rue two contentious penalty incidents — one in each half — in which referee Mike Dean ignored their appeals despite evidence that Mauricio Pochettino’s men might have actually had a case. But to reduce the match to another VAR controversy would be to deprive Newcastle of the credit they deserved for a brilliantly dogged backs-to-the-wall display and absolve the home side of responsibility for contriving to convert 80% of possession into just two attempts on target.

Just as against Villa, Pochettino left Christian Eriksen, the team’s chief creator, on the bench and it was not until the Dane made his entrance, in the 62nd minute, that the home side began to knock on the Newcastle door at a level louder than a polite tap. Eriksen, 27, has entered the last year of his contract and indicated earlier this summer that the time had come for him to move on.

Pochettino has conceded that the issue is problematic and said the fact that transfer windows were still open in Europe’s other major leagues meant his squad remained “unsettled,” but he dismissed suggestions that the question mark over Eriksen’s future had had any bearing on his team selection.

“I cannot pick more than 11,” he told reporters. “I understand you are going to ask me. If the result is 3-0 [to Spurs], you’re not going to ask me that question. The players who are out are always good when you don’t win. I don’t want to justify our performance because of that.”

Tottenham were short of ideas without Christian Eriksen’s creativity.

One player who did make the Spurs starting XI was Son Heung-Min, who returned from a three-game suspension. The South Korean forward worked Newcastle goalkeeper Martin Dubravka with a well-struck volley in the first half, but by that point Spurs were already behind.

There again, Pochettino’s picks fell beneath the spotlight. Davinson Sanchez was again preferred to Jan Vertonghen, whose contract will also be up at the end of the season, and the Colombian centre-back was caught underneath the ball when Christian Atsu clipped a pass into the Spurs box from Newcastle’s left in the 27th minute. With Danny Rose failing to sense the danger, Joelinton had time to bring the ball down and place a low shot past Hugo Lloris for his first goal in English football since his club-record £40 million switch from Hoffenheim.

With Eriksen watching on from the dugout, Spurs became sucked into endless sequences of lateral passing in the second half as Newcastle crammed 10 men behind the ball. Steve Bruce had set his team out in a 3-4-2-1 system that morphed into a 5-4-1 in the defensive phase, with attacking midfielders Miguel Almiron and Atsu — an early substitute for the injured Allan Saint-Maximin — dropping deep to provide extra protection in front of wing-backs Emil Krafth and Matt Ritchie.

Sean Longstaff and Isaac Hayden screened the defence; centre-backs Jamaal Lascelles, Fabian Schar and Paul Dummett threw themselves at every loose ball as if their lives depended on it. The one player allowed to stay up the pitch, Joelinton, battled tirelessly to give Newcastle an out ball and take the sting out of the game, right down to the booking he received for taking too long to leave the pitch when he was replaced by Yoshinori Muto in the closing stages.

Schar and Lascelles were protagonists in the two penalty incidents, the former sliding in on Son, the latter appearing to trip over his own feet as Kane shaped to shoot from Giovani Lo Celso’s clever pass. Neither got a clear touch on the ball and both seemed to make contact with their opponent, but in both cases Dean’s decision to wave play on was not deemed a sufficiently clear and obvious error for the men in front of the video screens to intervene.

Eriksen’s entrance, along with home debutant Lo Celso, enabled Spurs to establish a foothold 15 yards closer to Newcastle’s goal and finally, the chances came. Moussa Sissoko, who switched to right-back after Kyle Walker-Peters went off injured, teed up first Lucas Moura and then Kane with cut-backs from the right, but the Brazilian hooked his shot over the bar from 10 yards and the England striker failed to even make telling contact. Eriksen tried his luck, too, but his left-foot curler was tipped wide by Dubravka.

Spurs now have a week to clear their heads before next weekend’s trip to Arsenal in the North London derby. The European transfer windows closes the following day, and when Pochettino was asked if Eriksen might have already played his last game for the club, he could only reply: “I don’t know.”

Being without Eriksen’s creativity might be something that Spurs have to get used to.

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