Summer 2022 Episode Reviews Week Five

6 min readAug 7, 2022

Welcome, weebs, to Animated Observations

If it was not clear from last week, Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer is now officially out of my rotation. It is just too consistently mediocre for me to continue caring, so I decided to drop it. Everything else I plan on finishing save for some insane dip in quality. With that being said, here are my thoughts.

Made in Abyss S2 Ep. 5

I have said before that this is not the direction I was expecting the series to go in, but I am glad it did. Something about this show’s current arc and exploring themes of humanity even in places that seem the most inhuman is genuinely very interesting. This week mostly focuses on the secrets of the hollow village.

Reg attempts to find it again after escaping from Faputa, only to be helped back by her Robot servant, where he alludes to the fact that there are more robots like himself and Reg. Meanwhile, Riko goes looking for both Reg and Nanachi, only to end up in a giant pit, eventually finding Vuelo trapped in a cave. As far as what is going to happen with Veulo’s character, I honestly have no idea, but that cliffhanger was certainly something. Made in Abyss just continues to be impressive.

Call of the Night Ep. 5

The vibes are good, man. While I certainly appreciate the idea of a lonely middle schooler and a vampire doing whatever, much like with Made in Abyss, I do appreciate the show’s effort to explore its themes a bit more in-depth. That is exactly what happens in this episode, as the two seemingly get more intimate after Nazuna takes a bath and has her hair down. This more conventionally attractive look causes Kou to re-evaluate his feelings.

Differentiating feelings of friendship and romance can be difficult, especially for someone who has not had to do so before. Yet, Kou also understands that he wants to be romantically involved with Nazuna in order to become a vampire. At least, he thinks he does. As Super Eyepatch Wolf commented in his last video, the series is a lot more about exploring those feelings, and I think that is where it is at its strongest, alongside those crazy nighttime vibes.

The Devil is a Part-Timer S2 Ep. 4

I know I said animation for a show like The Devil is a Part-Timer does not matter as much, but, idk. Something about this week felt a little off.

(I know taking frames out of context isn’t great for judging animation, but they linger on this for like 2–3 seconds and she just looks off).

On top of that, the first major fight scene happens in this episode, and…it kinda sucked. There was very little sense of impact or real danger when it came to the fighting. I guess I could chalk it up to not remembering the original all that well or the fact that Maou isn’t as involved in this fight, but it still bothers me.

Normally I would not harp as much on it, but it is kind of the only thing that happens in this episode. Maou tells a story of a traveler turned greedy king who is given his power by an angel which feels like a fairly obvious allegory for himself considering he is supposed to be the biblical Satan. Emi deals with the continued turmoil over whether she should kill Mao or not, even more after talking to Gabriel, who ultimately fails his mission to take back Alas Ramus. It is a fine episode, not amazing, but not awful.

RWBY: Ice Queendom Ep. 5

Ice Queendom definitely has some pacing issues, especially compared to the original. That much is certainly true. Still, I would be lying if I said some great animation and music did not at least make up for it a little. This episode has that in spades, with the rest of Team RWBY joining Ruby as they re-group in order to rescue Weiss from her nightmare.

This episode also had some surprisingly sophisticated character writing. Inside Weiss’s dream, we see Pyrrha performing a song while locked in a cage. The song focuses on looking in a mirror and regretting what she sees. This seems to parallel the story of Snow White, where the queen asks the mirror who the fairest of them all is, only to be shown Snow White instead of herself. However, this also works intertextually as well, because Weiss made it clear in the beginning just how much she admires Pyrrha. In that way, this part of her dream could be seen as desiring the reverse, where Pyrrha is instead the one pining to be more like Weiss.

Idk if this is ground that was covered in the original, but if it is, then studio Shaft did a damn good job remaking it. Overall, this was a fantastic episode.

Lycoris Recoil Ep. 6

It seems we have reached the mid-point of the season. Except, it does not feel like it at all, at least not for this show. The more and more I watch Lycoris Recoil, the more I feel affirmed in my assessment that a lot of it is just wasted potential. This episode has Chisato and Makima meet after Makima teamed up with Kurumi’s hacker rival. Chisato gets targeted, much like the other Lyrcoris we saw. However, the others come to her rescue just in time.

There are a lot of good ideas in this series, and as much as I want to like it, it kind of just keeps piling stuff on. For example, we get an off-handed mention of a brother organization called the bell, which literally has not been mentioned up until this point, and was forgotten about immediately after. Unless they actually become relevant later on, this just feels like really lazy worldbuilding. The action was pretty solid, as the show has a good eye for martial arts and gunplay, but otherwise, it was just ok.

How did you feel about this week’s episodes? let me know in the comments below.

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