Summer 2018 Week 13 Ranking

That’s definitely not how a bomb fuse would light when it’s literally inside a fire.

 

1. Sirius the Jaeger (11)

Yevgraf gets tired of Mikhail doing silly things like “constantly trying to thwart his plans”, so he turns the Vampire Mind Control dial up to level 5 and sends him out to fight Yuliy. I thought this would end up forcing Yuliy to kill him so he could get all sad and then his brother would say it’s okay he didn’t want to keep living as a vampire and this is how he wanted it to end and all that. But that doesn’t happen, because Mikhail just sort of snaps out of it when Yuliy’s about to fall to his death. Convenient.

Mikhail gets upset with Yuliy, because the only thing his little brother had to do was not come to this place at all. No one else could’ve broken the seal on the ark, so it would’ve been safe if he had just stayed home. I guess at the time Yuliy couldn’t have known that, and neither did he know that the vampires were all going to die in the near future, but still, Mikhail’s not wrong. Could’ve saved everyone a lot of trouble. Take your time and figure out what to do with it later.

It was blatantly obvious that Bishop was actually a vampire, so I was happy there was a little twist where he was planning on double-crossing the vampires all along. Sure they turned him into a vampire, but that doesn’t mean he had to like it. When Yuliy accepted his terrible excuse a few weeks ago, he wasn’t actually fooled by his terrible excuse, but rather sensed that Bishop’s words were sincere. But once he’s revealed his true motives he’s not long for this world. At least he got to shoot one of the vampire twin girls through the head.

In the meantime, Ryoko and the major have also arrived. For now they get to just sorta stand there and watch.

In any case, the big bad guy now has the Ark, which is not good. It supposedly contained all sorts of knowledge, but there’s no signs of that yet. Maybe it happened to also contain the knowledge on how to make your veins pop out and your eyes turn yellow.

Episode Score: 7.0
Season Average: 7.05

 

2. Angolmois (12)

When a story has a straightforward happy ending, you can just take it and move on. You don’t have to think deeply about it. Something that leaves you satisfied is meaningful in itself, even if it has nothing else going on.

But Angolmois certainly didn’t have a happy ending. I’m not even sure if I could call it bittersweet either. So it’s left me wondering what it meant to me. Did I like the ending, and the message of the show in general? I’m not sure. Part of it is definitely the quality of the adaptation. Hell, in the final episode there was a walking scene that didn’t get animated. If the presentation is lacking, the story suffers. And if the story suffers, you don’t get as deeply invested.

In the end, there was no victory, no epic comeback. They were never going to defeat the Mongol army, and all they could do was try to survive. They literally said as much in the show: “To survive is to win”. And even that was a lot to ask for. In total, two main characters and two minor characters survived. But was it worth anything? Sure it’s nice that those characters get to live on, but in the end they accomplished nothing, and lost everything. It’s not exactly uplifting. In the end, I don’t think I can get a lot more out of it. It was all right, but not especially good.

Episode Score: 7.0
Season Average: 6.83

 

3. Hanebad! (12)

Weird how a show about playing badminton is best when they’re actually playing badminton. The match between Ayano and Nagisa has been fine so far. Admittedly I know nothing about badminton, so when they’re talking about how you can do a special curve smash when you’re left-handed I’ll just have to take their word for it.

When Ayano’s at her lowest point, her teammates are kind enough to encourage her. Good for them, but I think deep inside they all know Ayano deserves to lose. Then the whole crowd gets up and starts cheering for her. It’s so weird it’s almost funny.

Meanwhile Elena asks Uchika why she abandoned her daughter, but instead of finally getting a clear answer she starts rambling about things that don’t make much sense to me, except that her ultimate point seems to be that it’s all good because Ayano is about to ascend to the next level of badminton. The ends justify the means I guess. Except that Uchika leaving caused Ayano to stop playing badminton in the first place and she only happened to get back into it by chance, so I don’t think she can take credit for that. Overall, nothing has changed and Uchika still comes across as the world’s worst mom, but I don’t get the feeling the show is acknowledging this fact. Instead it seems to be trying to convince me that this is some kind of tough decision she had to make.

Episode Score: 7.0
Season Average: 6.63

 

4. Planet With (12)

Well, it ended. Dunno, there’s not much to say at this point. The final episode was exactly what you’d expect it to be, with no surprises. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. It just did its thing and finished. A fitting ending for a show that left me cold from start to finish.

Soya had to go meet the dragon and forgive him for genociding his race, because it was mandated by the story. He was originally saved and raised by Sensei in order to prove that Siriusans were not born evil, and that there were solutions that didn’t involve planetary mass murder. So this was the natural conclusion. But was it satisfying? I mean, I certainly didn’t care about saving the dragon, or going through all this effort to prove that maybe killing billions is not a good thing.

Also, you can’t convince me that a flower could bloom on a barren planet without a single drop of water.

Episode Score: 6.5
Season Average: 6.33

 

5. ISLAND

Already ended