Fate/Zero – Episode 19

Last episode on Fate/Zero, we flashed back to the story of Kiritsugu as a young boy.  There’s still plenty of Kiritsugu backstory to tell, we could see the story of him as an older boy, or a young man, or as a man older than a young man but younger that he is now.  Probably the story of how he met Irisviel is going to get told, if not in this episode then at some point in the future.  I really just hope that episode 19 of Fate/Zero gets back to the fun Holy Grail War stuff, I like it better than watching Kiritsugu’s wasted youth.

…thirty minutes pass…

Fate/Zero – Episode 18

Last episode on Fate/Zero, Tohsaka tried to enlist Irisviel’s help against Rider, but was betrayed by Kotomine.  Now it remains to be seen if the plan is going to go ahead anyway, or if Saber and Archer are going to be at one another’s throats.  You’d think that since Irisviel’s whole complaint was that she didn’t like Kotomine, they wouldn’t be able to get along now, but I don’t think Archer is going to be happy going after his beautiful doomed queen any earlier than he has to.  And Berserker’s still lurking somewhere, too.  Kotomine may yet come to regret saving Kariya’s life.  Honestly, there are lots of possibilities for what could happen in episode 18 of Fate/Zero – we might even get another Adventure of Rin, The Littlest Magus.

…thirty minutes pass…

Fate/Zero – Episode 17

Last episode on Fate/Zero, Lancer had been eliminated.  That means there are four Servants left: Saber, Archer, Rider, and Berserker.  We don’t know much of anything about Berserker yet, but this would be a good time to lead into his storyline, since we’re doing nothing else and he recently flipped out in battle at Saber for what probably were reasons.  It’s true that the purpose of the Berserker class is to flip out and kill people, but he switched targets from Archer to Saber the moment she revealed her Noble Phantasm, so I’m thinking there’s something going on there.  There are other open plot threads, too, I suppose.  There’s Kotomine’s nascent betrayal of Tohsaka to deal with.  That was set up six or seven episodes ago, so by this show’s pacing it’s about time to resolve it.  Or we could get some more Rider scenes.  He was the coolest character from the first season, and it’s made me sad that he hasn’t shown up much in the second.  Let’s see where they take us in episode 17 of Fate/Zero.

…thirty minutes pass…

Fate/Zero – Episode 16

Last episode on Fate/Zero, Casterthulhu had just been destroyed.  Good work, everybody!  I guess probably it’s going to be Kiritsugu who gets the free Command Spell as the reward, since he’s the one who killed Caster’s master and his servant was the one who struck the final blow against Caster.  Anyway, that probably exhausts this show’s fight scene quota for the next couple months, so let’s settle in for a nice long boring conversation in episode 16 of Fate/Zero.

…thirty minutes pass…

Fate/Zero – Episode 15

We ended the last episode of Fate/Zero partway through the battle against Caster.  Or, it had started out as a battle against Caster, but by the end of the last episode it had turned into more of a sort of a general mixer for Holy Grail War participants.  Saber, Lancer, and Rider were still trying to fight Caster and having trouble coming up with the necessary OHKO to deal with his monster’s regeneration, but away from the main stage, Archer and Berserker had paired up for a beautiful aerial waltz, and Tohsaka and Kariya were on the ground reminiscing about old times.  And then the two socially awkward Holy Grail Warriors, Kotomine and Kiritsugu, were standing alone in their respect dark corners with throwing knives and sniper rifles, nursing their drinks and trying to find an opportune moment to break into one of the conversations.  Let’s enjoy the rest of the party in episode 15 of Fate/Zero.

…thirty minutes pass…

Fate/Zero – Episode 14

The previous season of Fate/Zero ended on not exactly a cliffhanger, because a cliffhanger occurs in the middle of action when some crisis arises and needs to be resolved.  The previous season of Fate/Zero ended right before the action started.  They spent six of the thirteen episodes of the first season building up to the showdown against caster, and then just as Saber was leaping into the air to start the fight, they rolled credits and said “see you in spring”.  Well, it’s spring, now.  Let’s see if episode 14 of Fate/Zero was worth the wait.

…thirty minutes pass…

Sun Tzu’s Picks: Top 10 Anime of 2011

2011 has ended, as years often do.  Soon the new year’s anime will be starting; I haven’t taken a close look at them, but I’ve heard there isn’t much to be excited about.  So rather than worry about the upcoming year right now, let’s take a moment to stop and reflect on the year that has passed, and rank the ten best anime of the year.

Some rules regarding what I consider eligible to receive a ranking: I’m counting anime (so no J-Dramas or My Little Pony) that aired on TV (so no movies or OVA) starting in 2011 (so no Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu for #1 anime five years running).  I’m also excluding any anime that were just continuations of a series that began prior to 2011.  There were a few good second seasons that aired this year, like Ika Musume 2 and TWGOK 2, but those shows have already received consideration during their original airing years, and it’s time for them to step aside and make room for new blood.  Shows that aren’t done airing or shows that I haven’t finished watching are fine, though, so long as I’ve seen enough of them to have an opinion.  All the descriptions below are going to contain spoilers, so maybe you should just read the titles and then go off and watch all of them?

The Top 10 Anime of 2011, in Ascending Order (the last shall be first and the first shall be last)

Anime, Digested – Fate/Zero 13, Mirai Nikki 11-12, Haganai 12, Ika Musume 10-12

I watched some anime!  Here’s my thoughts:

Fate/Zero 13: It was a cool episode, but come on.  There’s no excuse for hyping the audience up for an epic confrontation against a Horror from the Deep and then saying, “oh, by the way, the show’s on hiatus now, look forward to spring”.  This is the battle we’ve been building towards for the past six or seven episodes, and they’re dangling it out of our reach.  This is going to be the worst case of anime blueballs since Haruhi Season 2.  They set the confrontation up six episodes ago and they’ve been stalling ever since!  I figured they were stalling because wanted a climactic battle to end the season on, I didn’t realize they wanted a climactic battle to end the season right before.

Mirai Nikki 11-12: That’s the end of Kurusu, I guess.  I had higher hopes for him than that.  He seemed like the sort of responsible adult supervision that Yuno and Yukiteru could profit from.  I wonder if Akise Aru will step into that role now?  I’m sure he’d like to think he fits that role, but he’s asking unpleasant questions about Yuno, which is unlikely to endear him to the pair.  Yuno, of course, is liable to take the first opportunity she gets to shut him up permanently and add him to her bag of corpses, but I feel like even Yukiteru wouldn’t be too interested in hearing what he has to say.  He defeated Kurusu with the ~★♥power of love♥ ★~, that’s a sign that he’s made his choice.  He’s going to go see the stars with his pink-haired future wife, and he’s just not going to think about how she’s a crazy stalker who murders people.

Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai 12: Your standard harem anime non-ending.  They want to end their season with some sort of climactic plot event, but they can’t actually change anything for fear that the harem setting will fall apart and they won’t get to make a second season, so you end up with these big events that just sort of sputter and fall flat because they have to maintain the status quo. So Kodaka realized that Yozora was his childhood friend, but they agree to keep it secret from everyone and it’s not like they are going to treat each other differently or call each other by old nicknames.  The only real effect is that Yozora’s hair got shorter.  I guess in this show they have an excuse for the non-ending: Yozora’s pride won’t let her accept anything good that happens to her if it’s not completely on her own terms.  Kodaka didn’t immediately recognize her, so to hell with him.

Ika Musume 2 10-12: Ika Musume’s still cute.  Over the course of these three episodes we got to see her in her winter outfit, her with short hair (tentacles), and her with braided hair (tentacles) in a yukata.  The bits were funny enough, nothing really outstanding.  The final storyline with Ika Musume at the festival sad because nobody would ever love her was sort of overshadowed by Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai’s storyline with Yozora at the festival sad because nobody would ever love her.  Yozora does a much better job with it, it just seems out of character for Ika.

Fate/Zero – Episode 12

Last episode on Fate/Zero, the three kings (or two kings and one scared little girl depending who you ask) met for a drink and a parley.  It’s a classy thing to do right before a great battle.  It shows that there are no hard feelings; no matter who kills you, you won’t hold a grudge afterwards.  So then the Assassins showing up to try to kill the parleyers was an extremely classless move.  Archer Gold blamed Tohsaka, but Tohsaka is the epitome of class.  It was probably Kotomine acting on his own initiative, possibly specifically trying to cause trouble between Tohsaka and Archer Gold.  Let’s see if Kotomine finally makes his move in episode 12 of Fate/Zero.

…thirty minutes pass…

Fate/Zero – Episode 11

The last episode of Fate/Zero didn’t see much get accomplished in terms of plot, but now the Rintermission is over, and we should be getting back to the hunt for Caster.  Caster’s done a better job of surviving being hunted by all six other Servants at once than I expected, but his safehouse was raided by Rider and his supply of child sacrifices was set loose by Rin, and things are looking pretty grim for him.  At this point his only hope is that the fragile truce breaks down – almost everyone has someone they’d rather kill than him.  Kiritsugu is targeting Lancer, Kotomine is targeting Kiritsugu, Archer Gold is targeting Tohsaka, Assassin is targeting anybody who shows an opening and Berserker is targeting Tohsaka.  I imagine that if they all track down Caster at the same time, episode 11 of Fate/Zero will look more like a battle royale than anything.

…thirty minutes pass…