alright everyone i know that the month hasn't ended but you need to understand that there is absolutely nothing else new i'm watching or reading this month at this point. i'm currently bored and feel like writing a little bit, so i'm gonna do my month in review a bit early. february is a bit shorter than the rest of the months of the year, and i wasn't very adventurous this month, so there's not nearly as much for me to highlight this time around as i did in january.
also, i'd like to preface by saying that i basically did nothing other than watch anime. i didn't read any new manga (because i'm still reading tower of god, which remains really fucking good), and i didn't watch any movies, tv shows, etc. so this time, i'm gonna give my top three anime i watched this month in order from lowest to highest good (not based on my ratings).
anime of the month
number three
the honor of the third most good anime i watched in february is gonna have to go to Le Portrait de Petit Cossette. this is a short, extremely experimental project by one of the future main directors of anime directed by shaft. i mean, this dude directed fucking madoka magica.
though cossette is certainly unpolished and fairly difficult to follow, when looking beyond the surface there is a fairly interesting depiction of horror here. cossette is largely a commentary about how artists interact with historical works and the value of rejecting tradition in order to embrace one's own style. this is not a conclusion that i think the average viewer of this anime will reach, but i do think when breaking down a lot of the symbolism, this interpretation becomes quite clear. i won't go deeper into it in an effort to not spoil what is legitimately a very enjoyable watch.
interestingly, i do actually think one of cossette's strongest points outside of its subtext is its visuals. there is liberal use of new (at the time) animation techniques, but at times, traditional ones as well. the striking visual depictions actually contribute to one of the main ways it develops its conflict between traditional and new/avant-garde art, since these varying visuals are used to craft two main styles of horror: more traditional horror using gore, creepy objects, etc., and more "denpa"-style horror at other times that focuses much more on the psychology of the main character, eiri, through depictions of traditionally associated imagery (which i won't get into here).
to wrap up this brief discussion of cossette, i do think that this is a real diamond in the rough. it's pretty short and not everything it does lands effectively, but man, it tries really fucking hard to make a truly unique horror experience. i went into watching this three-episode ova with the expectation that i wouldn't like it very much, especially after i was a little bit disappointed with the first episode before i knew what was going on. i was, needless to say, pleasantly surprised by the depth i found when i looked a little further. this anime got a 7.5/10, unfortunately falling just short of being truly great in my mind due to some of its more glaring problems.
number two
for my second best anime, i'll be talking about the first season of Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu. i'll admit it, i absolutely underestimated it because it's really popular. at this point, i understand quite well why most people really like it, and i think that's because it does a phenomenal job of conveying its core internal conflicts and themes of hopelessness and perserverance to a general audience. i think you'd have to be exceptionally fucking stupid to not understand Re:Zero, and that does work to its benefit. i have rarely seen an anime that is so eloquent with its dialogue when it wants to be, and it is not afraid to spend time doing little other than dialogue. in fact, there's basically an entire episode that is just four-ish exchanges between two characters, and that's not a problem because those monologues are incredibly well-written and strike directly at the heart of the viewer.
Re:Zero deftly discusses concepts like self-loathing, cowardice, and learned helplessness without giving into that negativity. this is in stark contrast to a show like Shin Seiki Evangelion (and the movie), where it stews in these themes and ultimately loses to them (not that there is no value in the way eva does that, it's just hard to do right).
basically, i was thoroughly impressed with Re:Zero and i'm really excited to watch the next season since i watched the first one at the very beginning of the month and the ovas weren't enough to hold me over. there is clearly a lot more that it wants to explore, and a whole world of new characters and locations it hasn't even hinted at yet. i gave Re:Zero an 8.5/10, which is still short of some true legendary anime i've watched, but that's a pretty damn great score.
number one
alright, here is where i'm gonna lose people. i'd like to once again clarify that this order is not the order i rate things, but rather how much i liked the things i watched this month. with that in mind, i will be giving my number one spot of the month to Ginban Kaleidoscope. i watched this on a whim because i needed to watch a sports anime that had a vehicle tag (this one has aviation). i normally do not like sports anime very much, with the exception of sports anime that are able to do something outside of the standard formula of practice, tournament, practice, tournament, etc. ginban kaleidoscope does a great job of balancing the sports aspect of itself with less focused segments and a focus on a conspiracy against the main character, tazusa, by some figures in the news media.
this show revolves around figure skating and a kind of strange premise of tazusa being possessed by the ghost of a canadian air stunt artist, a boy named fucking PETE PUMPS. i don't know if that's their idea of what western names sound like but god is it fucking funny. pete is actually a very good character and you grow to care for him and his relationship with tazusa throughout their hijinks.
the figure skating itself is one of the main selling points of this show, and despite it being a 2005 show with pure digipaint, it does a great job of animating these sequences. i was genuinely shocked by this show's attention to detail and interest in making it look as good as it could (while dealing with the technology of the time). i generally think the 2000s are visually not very good with a few great exceptions, but this does a great job.
i had a great time watching this. i did give it a 7.5/10, which is obviously much lower than Re:Zero's rating, but i really enjoyed every second of this in a way i rarely do. this is another true hidden gem and is painfully underrated. i'll remember this for a long time and i'll probably come back and rewatch it in the future. it's just a good time. it feels hard to find things like this that are twelve episodes and a complete experience and just good these days.
at the end of this anime of the month section, i would also like to mention that i began watching Yuu☆Yuu☆Hakusho this month. i'm a little over halfway done with it at the time of writing this blog post (i have 46 episodes left), and i have grown to really enjoy it. the dark tournament arc was really fucking long, but i started to enjoy it around halfway through. i'm excited to see where the rest of this show goes because i feel it definitely has potential to make next month's blog post.
video game of the month
to wrap up this post, let's talk about the single new game i played this month, which was Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. this is my first gta game i've ever played, and i'm playing it on the ps2. it's really fun and i've sunk quite a few hours into it already. i'm appalled at how good this game looks and how well it runs on the ps2; it's seriously ahead of its time. it looks like they did all they could to cram everything on a single disc, too. it's really impressive.
aside from the open world element that is done really well, the campaign is also really fun. some of the missions are pretty hard, especially with the controls which are questionable at times, but it is definitely worth it. this game is really fucking funny and all the characters are enjoyable. i'm also beginning to realize how massive of an impact this game has had on internet culture over the past few years.
i still clearly have a ways to go with completing this game and i'm stuck on a few really annoying missions, but i'm excited to keep playing. maybe some day i'll play other gta games, but i've really been on an older game kick lately so i kinda doubt that'll happen anytime soon.
final thoughts
february was, at least compared to january, a pretty good month of watching stuff. i finished 1981 urusei yatsura, i watched some great shows, and i continued to read tower of god which is still great. i also started rewatching Ergo Proxy with a friend, and i'm excited to keep doing that because that show is fucking awesome.
hopefuly i'll post a few more times in march than i did this month. i'm not currently sure what i really want to talk about, but i'm sure i'll figure something out. that's all for this one folks. -lego jujutsu kaisen