Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks? 1 - DROPPED
Well, that certainly managed to take the award for the worse looking show I've checked out this season! It's not even like Okaa-san Online simply has bad animation quality (it does), but it's the incompetence involving the shot composition and sometimes laughable perspective shots makes both the environments look overly flat and the characters feel inserted into the frame in a way that doesn't quite look right. But I think the most striking thing wasn't an animation issue as much as it was the constant attempts to convey humor that feel completely flat in adaptation.
Okaa-san Online is clearly meant to be one of the more humorous Isekai adaptations I've seen in a while, what with a government program sending MMORPG players into the game with their mums for... IDK "reasons," and then said protagonist's mum becoming the most OP player imaginable because she doesn't know the limitations of the framework in which she should be playing. This is an idea that should be ripe for playing off MMORPG cliches the same way Konosuba! did, but the execution of Okaa-san Online feels like it doesn't realize it's supposed to be a comedy. Bizarre edits and stiff animation constantly hamper what life the voice actors are trying to impart into the script, and what you get is a clumsy show that feels more awkward than anything, like it doesn't have any confidence in its material to inspire any genuine laughs despite being so clearly set up to create those kinds of moments.
Combine that with the ugly presentation thanks to the shoddy art and story boarding, and this is an easy skip for me. In the right hands, there was maybe something worth exploring here, but there are far more ambitious creative teams making far more transcendent takes on their material this season to let me give Okaa-san Online a pass.
Is It Wrong to Try and Pick Up Girls In a Dungeon? II 1
Man, it's been longer than I thought since I'd last watched Danmachi. As someone who skipped out on Sword Oratoria due to finding that side-series's protagonist particularly grating, I had to fill in my vague memory of how Danmachi's world worked as the episode played out. Something I always really liked about the series' initial season was the work it went to creating a dynamic and multi-layered surface world where Mafia-esque familias via for influence, creating an equally thorny network of social pleasantries heroes had to navigate that presented a very different but equally challenging experience to crawling through the series' dungeon.
The second season wastes no time in exploiting this by putting Bell and Hestia square in the sights of what looks like one of Danmachi's more powerful familias after the stunt Bell pulled at the end of season one that seems to have made him a household name of sorts. While I do appreciate that Danmachi doesn't waste it's time re-establishing things the audience should already be familiar with if they watched season one, the extended cast at large that made their appearance in the periphery of this episode certainly strained my memory as someone who hadn't seen Danmachi since 2015. That's fine, though, I'll manage just fine by the looks of it as the immediate villain of this second season is someone who hasn't previously been introduced as far as I recall.
It's been a while so I could definitely be wrong, but while Danmachi's second season certainly looks like it landed on the positive end of the spectrum that is JC Staff's current output quality, I'm not sure if it looks quite as sharp as I remember from season one. There were definite moments of classic JC Staff flourishes, like the bar fight with some damn good looking animation cuts, and the overall look of the world remains recognizable all these years later. But it certainly looks better than I expected it to look considering how much of a joke JC Staff has become in the years since Danmachi's first season, so here's hoping they can continue to chase that specter of themselves here (though JC Staff producing both Danmachi and A Certain Scientific Accelerator this season does have me concerned for their quality going forward).
Wait, what do you mean JC Staff are also doing Okaa-san Online and The Demon Girl Next Door this season as well?!
Fire Force 2
This was a decent follow up to the stellar premier, and perhaps a better indication of the quality we can expect for the remainder of the series outside of some truly spectacular moments. If that's the case then Fire Force already has me more excited to see more of it in a way My Hero Academia can hardly muster anymore thanks to its attention to the smaller moments.
Even within simple conversations and moments of exposition, a lot of thought is often put into even simple exchanges with better framing than I would expect from your average shounen. I've become used to My Hero Academia's typical panning shots of people listening to someone off-screen while they talk then cutting back to a close up of a face with some focal point in the shot, like a clenched fist. It's something that comes across as efficient more than anything else, and while My Hero Academia isn't guilty of exclusively using that kind of framing all the time, it's notable enough that I've come to be able to predict its appearance fairly regularly now.
Fire Force's framing often reminds me much more of Shaft darling Monogatari. While not embracing all the typical New Wave film techniques that have bled through most Shaft productions and giving them such a distinctive appearance, the pace of cuts and the fact that when Fire Force cuts back to most shots it repeats it's gone to the length of adding something to that frame (usually for a comedic effect) that feels like care was given to creating a composition to the scene that feels like it conveys something happening beyond two people standing and having a conversation as is common in most anime, where characters talking and doing something else feels like a particularly rare sight (because it's more difficult to animate full-body motion than just some lip flaps).
The fight with Maki was this episode's particular highlight. I didn't really get the chance to see much of what she was capable of in the pilot since it had so much to establish, but along with Arthur's introduction, I appreciate Atsushi Ookubo's effort to find creative fighting styles for all the various members that feel totally alien from one another. Despite all having talents that spawn from fire, the way they use those styles makes them unique and I look forward to getting a chance to see them work together more in the future.
But after a handful of big fights to establish everyone's powers, Ookubo pulls us back and reminds us of the tone he's trying to set with the Infernal conflict in this episode. This is the kind of moment I can't really recall seeing in a shounen in recent years, and made me think back to some of the early episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist where Hiromu Arakawa wanted to remind readers that alchemy isn't all magical battles and otherworldly powers. Sometimes it's obsession taking to an immoral extreme, something that can only impart both sympathy and disgust. The job of the Fire Force is not a glamorous one; they are exorcists and sometimes that means putting to rest people who even in death resist the urge to let their rage consume them. And the best way they can make peace with that truth is to remember those who bear the burden of carrying on once their work is done.
With a tournament arc incoming and the villain's vague power to... inspire combustion(?) having been showcased ever so briefly, I imagine moments like this might become rare from here on out, but it was an important moment to have, just as Ed and Al's stay with Major Tucker and Nina was for them in Fullmetal Alchemist. Fire Force may not continue to inspire this much interest from me in the future, but it's on the right track so far.
O Maidens In Your Savage Season 2
There's so much to unpack here I'm not really sure where to start! Mari Okada's clearly going for the jugular much earlier than I'd expected regarding some of O Maidens In Your Savage Season's themes, but that makes me more curious as to the direction she intends to take some of this material since certain things are moving much faster than I'd previously expected.
There's been some effort at this point to crystallize the intent of where some of the various girls' sub-plots are going. As much as the Kazusa/Izumi story is playing out more or less as anticipated, albeit at a faster than expected clip, I had wondered more about where Hongou and Sonozaki's plots were going after the first episode's reveals about their character and ensuing battles they were facing alone in comparison to Kazusa's story encompassing Sugawara and Sudou, delaying their stories from playing out for now.
Sonozaki's inner conflict stemming from her pretty abhorrent bullying causing her to refuse any advances from anyone because of both her inflated self-image and her intense sense of shame look like they'll be the core source of Okada's trademark emotional abuse until she finds something that allows her to come to terms with damage done to her image of herself. Hongou's story of being subject to the whims of her editor who's trying to hook up with high-schoolers desperate to break into the business is a sad but probably disgustingly realistic portrayal of her situation, and it causing her to lash out at anyone who attempts to get even potentially close to her makes a lot of sense, especially since we've seen the lengths she's already gone to in order to make up for her lack of experience.
The one thing I find remarkable is Izumi's portrayal in O Maidens In Your Savage Season. It's quite refreshing to see Okada not really beat around the bush by presenting him as an asshole, but it's not as one-sided a portrayal as you sometimes find. In a lot of romance stories you find in anime, romantic pursuits of either gender are either perfect vessels of attraction with no real defined faults (aside from a quirk that is designed to be attractive to a particular group) and those who aren't meant to be seen as romantic objects are objectionable beyond what you'd reasonably be expected to see from a normal person. Izumi is someone who isn't honest with himself about what he's feeling, and like most guys who are like that, they pass blame and act emotionally, showing their immaturity by being unwilling to accept responsibility or understand how their actions affect those close to them. And so for the entirety of the episode on the outside looking in, Izumi is nothing but a colossal dick to Kazusa, and I have to wonder if he'll come to terms with it or resolutely stick to his ways, forcing her to move on from her feelings for him.
If there's one thing I found disappointing coming off of the last episode, it's that the direction and animation quality of the show feels like it's fallen a bit. There were some very creative moments last episode, moments that really worked regarding O Maidens In Your Savage Season's carefully timed expansion of themes across its multiple narratives. But much of that creative spark seemed to be missing from this episode. I wouldn't call it bad, per say, but the direction certainly came across more workman-like here than before, functional to a fault and forcing both the script and the voice acting to carry the bulk of the weight. It'll be a shame if that holds true for the majority of the series from here on out, but it's too early to say just yet. But I have no intention of letting the show's technical shortcomings deter me from material this interesting and well-executed.