Hi everyone, I’ve decided to try out a new column on my blog where I go back and recap what I watched during a week. I think its about time I become a bit more active in my blog and this might be a good opportunity to keep writing on things that aren’t a “feature” in a sense. As the title suggests I would like to recap what I watched over a certain week, giving a few more thoughts on things and reflecting on my watching. I’m not sure if I’ll update this every week or every two weeks as sometimes I get busy and cant watch much over a week, but we’ll see how it goes. For now, I’d like to start in this random week in February since there is no better time to talk about media consumption. Let’s begin.
I started the week with a rewatch of James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad with a couple of friends. Lately there have been many criticisms of Marvel and DC films and so I was excited to revisit James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad to see how he has avoided many of the criticisms that other films of the franchises have faced. After watching it this second time, its pretty obvious that this film is a heist film, stylized with comic book characters. It doesn’t try to be anything other than a heist film, and Gunn’s light sarcastic tone and quirky script matches the comic book style very well. I think those two are what made this film such a success in a very saturated and shallow field. The Suicide Squad is a strict genre film with real oddball scripting choices that makes it stand out, and while it was a marketing gamble to borrow the same name a disastrous DC film, I think it worked out for the better as it only boosts up this film as “the better one”. I highly recommend this as the one comic book movie you watch.
I just really wanted to get some thoughts out on The Suicide Squad. I watched two other films this week: Kabei – Our Mother (2008) and Fallen Leaves (2023). Kabei is a film by one of my favorite Japanese filmmakers Yoji Yamada, a master of family drama, and is once again a great feature. The film is set during WW2 and begins with the father, a professor of philosophy, getting arrested for so-called “thought crimes” and follows the ideological torment of the Japanese empire as the mother, played by Sayuri Yoshinaga, and her two kids struggle to survive on their own, helped by one of the father’s former student played by Asano Tadanobu. It’s a really great drama, and a refreshing take on daily life in mid-century Japan after the films of Takashi Yamazaki. In addition, Sayuri Yoshinaga performance is just outstanding, more people should know her name because she’s so consistently amazing. Fallen Leaves is an interesting new film that I decided to watch when browsing the Mubi streaming service. It had received a lot of critical praise in the film festival circuit last year and I had written it off as not the type of film to get an NA release, but to my surprise its right at my fingertips. Fallen Leavesis a neat little art film about seeking emotional attachment, but the main characters are stunted by the issues of life and modern society. Its really well directed, with a great cinephilic gaze, but difficult to be really invested into it with more a more somber tone and inexpressive characters due to their emotional stuntedness.
In the world of anime, I continued my watch of Metallic Rouge. My interest in the show keeps growing with every episode, with more about the world and racial conflict expanded as Rouge and Naomi encounter new friends and foes. Episode 4 was a particularly strong one, that did a great job of the cliché “answers questions by asking new ones”. Izubuchi is cooking.
Freiren and Kusuriya were both great as usual, both offering very different mid-points of their respective arcs. You always want to see the characters in a shonen arc outside of the battles, to just see them as characters rather than pins for the heroes to topple and this episode of Freiren gave a bunch of interconnected instances between the varied cast of this arc in between the first and second round of the magic exam. In contrast to this warm and low-key midpoint, Kusuriya’s episode this week has an intense turning point to this arc of discovering Maomao’s origins. Cleverly split in two, the first half about her mother and the second about her father, this ep featured some very visually striking steps forward in this mystery, transforming the intrigue felt earlier into suspense as the heat is turned on. While the exchange between Maomao and Jinshi at the end of the episode was the most striking moment, I found the entire episode quite visually engaging, and especially that first half offers some interesting insight into how Maomao is handling the current events. Definitely one of my favs for the entire series. Finally, I continued my watch of Ei Aoki’s original anime Overtake after finishing Given last week. It’s coming into its own as the down-to-earth tone is starting to allow for more characters to be involved in the individual dramas of Madoka and Kouya. I’m now halfway through this series and can’t wait to watch the second half.
That’s been some highlights of my week. It’s a little stiff because I’m new to this format, but I think it might be a consistent way to release content while I work on more detailed reviews and other works. Let me know what you think, I’m very open to feedback. I hope you have a wonderful day.
Tiger and Hibiscus 
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