Straight Up Saturdays (Yasuhiro Imagawa Is The Director To Beat/A Further Look At Shin Mazinger)

Yep, I definitely think so.  I’m hard pressed to think of another director still in the TV anime business that is so capable of marrying style and substance for the purposes of creating a gripping opera full of both drama and comedy.  Consider this latest episode of Shin Mazinger:

Right from the start Imagawa is giving us a taste of what is yet to come by showing us the end of this latest arc.  Tragedy is in the air, but we know naught how we get there.  Such is the purpose of that which is yet to come

My little angel from the very first episode.  Here she actually has lines and we learn that her name is Lorelai and that she is at the Kurogane House doing an errand for her “papa”?  You don’t have to squint to notice something about the picture above and the adorable little girl shrouded in what may very well be Imagawa’s vision of heaven’s light.  The idea of Lorelai as a symbol of purity has been planted and yet it constrasts with what we see above…..or does it?

Shiro is immediately smitten and it’s love at first sight, hence the title of the episode “First Love? The Beautiful Lorelai”