I love how Arthur's and Agatha's face makeup disappears in between takes at Wally's. Continuity is SO HARD.
Very powerful choice to have Andromeda speak her first and only line right before she dies. That's some savvy writing right there.
Kind of feeling @megaframe on the lens flares. They really have gotten quite heavy toward the end of the season.
Nicely tied up in a loose bow that could be easily untied if the show got renewed (but it didn't).
First scene after the OP is the Lip Sync Desert, in which characters frequently talk without moving their mouths (or while chewing food). Budget animation is budget.
Then they have a composer and arranger make a new song…before writing the lyrics. That's not how songwriting works, because it's much more difficult to fit new lyrics to existing music than it is to write new music to fit existing lyrics.
And yet, there's more. They finish the lyrics just a few days before the concert but act like there's no choreography to create and learn in time to perform—not that it matters, because of the record label change bombshell. If there is still no explanation next week how the other idol group stole B-Pro's new song… The writing in this series is truly, irredeemably, bad.
That damned elevator door disappears between the wide shot of it opening and the tight shot of Maihime and Rindou walking out. Continuity is damned hard when you have no budget for animation.
Despite being the penultimate episode, there is almost no sense of urgency or climax this week. More bad writing, yay!
Aaaaand back to not much happening; just character gags that aren't even funny. This episode spends a considerable amount of time explaining from the humans' perspective what we've just learned about the Unknown over the last 2 episodes, so it's kind of a recap.
Don't even try to convince me that a drone from half a century in the future would do that. They'll have so many sensors and failsafes built in, tricking a drone into slicing a man's face open would be impossible.
It's about damn time the plot made some real progress instead of jumping around with no particular direction.
If you're gonna have someone the audience thinks is trustworthy turn out to be evil, it helps to…establish that they're supposed to be trustworthy. Which means, give them screen time to earn the audience's (and other characters') trust. Bad writing again.
This episode is pretty predictable until it tries to give us another hint at the overarching mystery…and then it just falls apart. Not very well written. The writers overused the "muted dialogue" trope for one episode. And let's not forget that it started out by recapping roughly a full minute of footage from the previous week.
This week on Qualidea Code: "Fuck you and your need for continuity between shots. Screw getting on the train as quickly as possible (at the end of the platform, not in the middle). Physics can kiss my ass…and what do you mean 'stop reusing footage'?!"
Aside from the technical issues (some caused by laziness, some by budgetary constraints), this is a decent character-building episode for Maihime. It's just too bad it has so many issues.
This was a refreshing improvement over the last few episodes, which were based on ridiculous premises right from the start. A grounded plot had me actually enjoying this one…until something absurd happened as a plot contrivance. I'm docking 3 rating points for ruining what would have been a solid—even great—episode with physics fuckery.
I dunno why I found Shizuru's behavior believable and Lucia's so unrealistic, but here we are. Good story, poor characterization, I think.
There's a lot of implied drama, but the screen time is spent mostly on obnoxious guy from other school calling Harada "princess" constantly. Meh. Put us inside Gou's head, ffs!
Silliness? Silliness. But there's plot development happening. What keeps this from being a great episode is the fact that they're trying to squeeze too much in and leaving subplots kind of half-finished to fit it all. But the ending is good!
Completely ridiculous premise that doesn't fit in at all with the rest of the series. What the hell.
I was all set to give this episode an 8 and then…oof, that flat-footed ending. Not even trying. Point off for lazy writing.
This episode in five words: Kanan actually gets screen time?!
This episode in more words: So we resolve Kanan's resistance to being an idol again, and get all the third-years to join at once, with basically no ceremony at all, all in 20 minutes. Good to see my fears about pacing were well founded. Up to now, the show's been kind of slow. Now this episode felt rushed.
Nice Alienware clone, there, Akane-chan.
Isn't this show going a bit heavy on the boob jokes?
There was something missing this week. This episode didn't have the same spark as the first several. Can't put my finger on it…
I hate it so much when a mechanical failure (not resulting from damage dealt by an opponent) decides a fight.
Somehow still compelling even though there was no real suspense this week. It's actually rather neatly tied up in a bow at the end by the three remaining friends showing Naho their letters from the future.
This film is entirely worth watching, and I feel 110% justified in my excitement for watching it—but not for the reasons I thought I'd be. It's a lot more dramatic than I expected, based on the synopsis, to say the least.
I've seen a few Turkish viewers express dismay that this film isn't wholly culturally accurate, so I cannot give it a perfect 10 (and even 9 feels high, assuming the criticisms are accurate). But it is a well constructed movie, slow-paced but thoroughly engrossing. While the characters' dress and behavior may not be true to real life, the broad commentary on Turkey's society as a whole—the state of women's rights in the country, and the society's dominant patriarchy—hold true, even according to the reviews I've read from Turkish viewers.
I got about 25 minutes in and, though I was enjoying myself, had to stop. As yet I have not found any source for this documentary that includes subtitles for the non-English portions of the audio. There are several interviews and archival clips with dialogue in foreign languages, and I feel it would be unfair to myself and to the film to watch it without understanding these parts.
So, for now, I'll keep this on my watchlist knowing that as soon as I find complete subtitles, I will finish it.
Tempted as I am to give this episode a 10, I can't bring myself to. Takako's Engrish torpedoed that whole scene for me. It just didn't seem like something she'd actually do. :-/
But the rest of the episode, those few seconds excepted, was very good, as expected.
Oh look, A-RISE's counterpart has appeared. Yay?
Felt like so much fluff, tbh. I have a hunch this storyline should have been one episode—a hunch that should be much more to come, and they're stretching it out for some production reason. Or maybe they're just going for ドラマ because it's an idol show.
I don't have that much to say this week. Other than a few cute moments that managed to drag my rating up a point, this episode was pretty squarely "Meh".
What I said about Tombstone's matchup in the previous episode (https://trakt.tv/comments/92722) was borne out in this one. At least three of the four summarized matches would have been more interesting to watch than Tombstone's utterly predictable victory against the lowest seeded bot.
Come on, ABC. You shouldn't even need a director to fix something this obvious.
It's also a bit annoying that they started cutting out the teams' entrances into the arena. A huge amount of showmanship goes into those, and I'd much rather they spent time continuing to show those and cut out the overly long "Red Team, ready?", "Blue Team, ready?" sequence. We learn a lot more about each team by seeing how they enter than we do from watching them push a button. (Hell, even Faruq's intros have been kind of lame lately.)
ABC's editorial judgment aside, I was pretty disappointed to see Mega Tento beat Stinger. Even though I think Lisa Winter is great at the craft, the bot's strategy just wasn't interesting in the qualifiers—and is arguably even less so now that the bot's design has been tweaked. Stinger is more interesting to watch, and I think Matt Maxham brought a better approach to robot combat into the Battle Box.
Impressive recovery by Chomp after getting caught in a killsaw. I thought it lost the match right there, but it came back fighting.
Did we really need to waste screen time watching Tombstone take out the bottom seeded robot? We all knew what would happen, right? ABC should've put that time to better use. I know they're fond of cutting out matches that lack excitement to save screen time…and this would have been a perfect place to do so.
Ueda-senpai can gtfo, but we all knew that.
All but the last reveal were already pretty obvious, or heavily hinted. That didn't take away from the intensity of the scene in any case. (If you want spoilers, read @Narendran's shout.) This show is destined for Anohana-level feels, I'm calling it right now.
And the last reveal…UGH, it makes me glad that GJM got so far behind on this show, because it means there's hope I'll get to see the next episode pretty soon. CANNOT WAIT.
No freakily observant little brother this time, but we do get a good bit of character study on MC-kun and team-captain-senpai.
brb dying of feels (and I just know this is only the beginning)
Typical [Villain intensifies.] episode, not much here. Feels like there are a lot of overly long pauses during dialogue, like they had to fill air time.
