JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind Vento Aureo 22
Boy, that week off sure didn't seem to help this episode out at all! It's hard to see the production struggling this much this early (we've still got half the series to go), but if they're going to cut corners somewhere, this fight feels like a decent place to do so. The Crush and Talking Heads battle feels like it's evoking similar feelings to the ones I had about Aerosmith vs. Little Feet (what is it with Narancia-focused fights having the most ardent pacing issues?) in that there's too little material being stretched out to meet a two-episode requirement. As for the new OP and ED... I'm of mixed minds about them. I need to watch both more to get a better sense, but I couldn't help but feel the OP reminded me of the kind of thing you see in more typical shounen shows (highlighting story beats with swift animation flourishes to a pop-style track). It's the kind of thing that JoJo has definitely done in the past, but previous OPs it's always maintained their own variations dependent on song choice, animation style, and/or direction. All of those seemed diminished here, which is why it reminded me more of other works than feeling like its own thing. At least the ED isn't another disco ball, so there's that. I look forward to moving on from this particular fight, as I've heard some rumblings about things to come.
Kaguya-sama: Love is War 10
Considering this episode dealt in large part with wrapping up things left hanging from the last episode (and my noted issues with how that episode manipulated characters to fit a situation that didn't feel organic given what we know about them), I found much of this to be... passable, at best. There's nothing inherently bad about this episode from a story perspective, but giving this particular narrative a full two episodes seemed like a waste, especially when the most interesting parts of it have already happened. It didn't help that the direction on this episode felt particularly lacking. A couple neat moments of animation here and there didn't help make up from a lot of the shot composition and framing feeling like it had been borrowed from the first couple of episodes, which is something Kaguya-sama had gotten away from in recent weeks. If anything, the voice acting is what really carried this episode, with particularly good performances from the main cast and especially the narrator. But as I've said before, even Kaguya-sama at its most basic is still generally entertaining. I just hope there's some really great material saved for the last two episodes, as I haven't been much of a fan of where it's been lately.
