No big news here besides the fact that I am dropping Stars Aligned. More on that later on in the post. Other then that, it’s been another good week for anime even if Psycho Pass 3 is pulling back it’s story telling a little bit.
Chihayafuru Season 3 Episode 7
Ahiru no Sora Episode 8
Well, that was another solid episode here with a better introduction to Tobi then we’ve gotten before hand. Especially with the basket ball team at stake and everything. Tobi was as violent as he could be here with little regard toward anyone else. He got a girl injured with his craziness because he just doesn’t care and had a fight in the gym which leads to Tobi’s charges of being expelled when the new club’s advisor made an appearance here. I’m glad that Madoka slapped him and told him to stop lashing out because of his own problems. The most notable thing that happened was that phone call Tobi got in the middle of this happening and them just admitting he’s not apart of the basket ball club so it doesn’t get banned. Key moment for Momoharu, including not wanting to say that Tobi isn’t apart of the club, was him apologizing. He’s grown so much.
All of which leads to Tobi’s backstory and such making in towards the second half. He got that phone call again when Sora was near him so he could listen into the conversation. It was Tobi’s sister who deeply misses him despite the fact that their step dad doesn’t consider Tobi apart of the family anymore. Tobi still promises to go to nationals so he can see her, but it’s clear that it’s not a problem he can keep. You know, until Sora comes in and tries to blindly get him to join the basket ball club so he can get their which results in a game of keep away and the club itself wandering in and saying “maybe you should check out why the fight happened in the first place.” I honestly don’t think that would work in real life, but this is anime. Who knows?
Blade of the Immortals (2019) Episode 8
This episode features Rin, Mr. Manji, and the Mugai-Ryu (yes, I remembered their name now), planning to attack the villain of the series, Anotsu, and understanding other parts of the Mugai-Ryu a little bit. Rin and our blonde assassin friend have some supposed girl talk about the Assassin’s pass before she completely doesn’t mention her family. Instead, the assassin gives Rin advice about men and how she should strengthen herself instead of relying Manji to always save her. A little annoying considering that is exactly what Rin is trying, but she doesn’t have enough time to improve enough to fight on an equal level as everything. Still, Rin did take the world of advice and will probably continue to train harder.
The second half is where all the craziness happened again. The person in question escaping was crossdressing as a woman. At least that’s what the information that came from the Mugai-Ryo’s informant. That result in our group spreading out and attacking each of the people involved here. Rin with Shinriji. He attacked the woman in question to find that it was women with two assassins behind Rin and Shinriji while insanely starting to kill the mostly innocent woman in front of him. Shinriji just wins and then violently assaults the women which Rin tries to stop and Mr. Manji jumps in to save Rin by cutting off one of Shinriji’s arms while he deciding to chase more villains cursing Mr. Manji. He’s not going to die is he? Characters like that never do so easily.
But anyway, this was a pretty great episode. A lot of thoughtful character work came to this which is fun. All of these episodes feel compressed and don’t have a lot of massive visual things going on like the first, but the direction of this show really does continue to make it work somehow. No, more then work. It’s better then functional. It feels like there is a world being built.
Gundam Build Divers Re:RISE Episode 8
With Parvis and Kazami sort of had their arcs while continuing the forged together Build Divers Missions with the resistance members continue, it’s now time to focus more on May and Hiroto again. It’s a very simplistic formula in itself, but the action and the story line with the villagers keep it going with some sort of momentum that makes it all worth it. So yes, this time it’s May’s turn and her personality is very close to Hiroto’s. That’s something that took Parvis and Kazami 8 episodes to figure out. Remember that no matter how dumb you think you are, you aren’t as dumb as these two.
But anyway, back to the episode. May doesn’t believe in team work, but there is something she is searching for by playing this game. She sees the same in Hiroto which is true. Hiroto saw an image of a girl who he fill in love with. He just doesn’t want to share it with anyone else, because this search must be the thing to bring his smile back. Maybe. He lost it some day in the past and nobody knows why because he won’t tell anyone. May won’t share her secret either so are knowledge of her is very withheld in this episode too.
All of this is sort of tied to the rest of the episode, which had some interesting world building for our villagers and resistance members because we see a cool city that is protected by a shield, because the next battle is an under water battle. They ran a team mission based in an underwater scenario against another team and Hiroto was able to win because he betrayed the rest of the team. May got close because her Wadam had underwater gear, but she didn’t have the skill to go under water. That lead to Hiroto saying he would do this underwater mission by himself which May asks “is that what you relaly want?” The episode ends wonderfully with that question in the air. As systematic as this show is, it’s strangely powerful. I can’t help but love it.
No Guns Life Episode 7
Hmmmm, truly an interesting episode this week. A very simple one on the surface, but one with a lot of moving parts. The episode itself focused on the whole situation with Armed and Gondry with Kronen and Juzo’s interference. We quickly see how Kronen and Juzo can work together with Juzo allowing Gondry’s sub brain to be found while Kronen can disable it. So that happens and we find out that Berunhren operatives were controlling him for their own purposes. Of course, nothing ever stays the same right? Armed, whether controlled or not, decides to take down Kronen and then fight Juzo to preserve the honor of extended. This is the focus of the episode and I liked it quite a bit.
At the same time, the other things provided some interesting things too. Olivier is in trouble from EMS and is dismissed from her job as the EMS director due to her failure of keeping her plan silent. Something that effects the plot as a whole because the nature of Gondry’s take down is necessary here now. There is also Tetsuro’s use of harmony, just like people did on Gondry from Beruhren, took over an EMS guard and broke out Olivier from her house arrest to bring Juzo his cigarettes. For an episode that was put in two places, it was pretty cool and good.
Stars Align Episode 7
I’m just going to drop this show. This episode compared to the others just didn’t have much character depth to like most of them do. Maki still feels like a gary stue sort of character where everyone just likes him because he exists and no amount of trauma will allow you to relate to despite how strong they are. This episode was Maki and Shinjo playing a soft tennis game and almost matching up to the other team’s ace team. Almost.
It just doesn’t work here because that ace player shows up to the tennis club’s Sunday beach barbecue. That last ending scene where the adult counsel commenting on how one of their adults noticed the soft tennis team forcefully practicing tennis on a Sunday? Yeah? That doesn’t make any sense here because would someone like Maki’s father actually know to do this? It’s kind of unrealistic and stupid.
LOGH Reboot S2 Episode 9
Wow, I wasn’t expecting Yang to take down the Free Planet Alliance’s capital planet Heinessin defense Artemis’ Necklace which means ending the rebellion that is attempting to destroy the bad Free Planet’s Alliance broken government with the Imperial government instead. There is a lot of character build up to it too with an awesome visual scene where these ice blocks with engines destroy all 12 of the necklace points at the same time.
The rebellion learn that they are Reinhard’s puppets too which causes mass chaos for them too. Frederica’s father was the head of this rebellion and his death affected her a lot the same way it affected Yang when Jessica Edwards die. The Alliance put down of the rebellion has a lot of emotional impact because people have changed. Then the episode ends with the finding of Trunicht, that annoying coachraoch who didn’t die and was with people from the Terra religion. Such powerful things here.
Psycho Pass Season 3 Episode 5
Karina is governor now and she is enacting a special zone where people from all sorts of religions and immigrants can live in a protected area. It’s pretty much an advanced sort of slum in the form of acceptance from the Japanese government. Is this show going to continually walk the line of the insanity of real world politics in the US and other places? I’m kind of scared. But anyway, the Karina isn’t actually their, but the bomber from a religious sect goes on stage and decides to destroy himself anyway. That leads to some fun exploration of the religious secs with one of them obviously harboring four more people implanted with bombs ready to kill each other. There is a lot more in the episode then that with it’s exploration and character interactions, but so what? I’m a sucker for that stuff.
I really love how these episodes can be this long to make the world feel real and have some actual investigation in them like a western tv show. That’s so unique and not at the same time because Darker then Black did it too, but this show is handling that better I think. Even having Kei’s wife in place here and having her eye surgery is a fun method of adding some world exploration plus seeing how the sybil system thinks of religion are such interesting aspects.
Also, seeing that the last episode felt rushed because it felt like it had to conclude an arc to get this episode, but the investigation of the bombers didn’t end here though the investigation did feel more natural. Now Mao and Kei are hiding themselves as a couple to find the priestess and her problems she provided. I’m kind of excited for that just as excited I am to continue to see Yayoi on the scene here. Next episode is going to be fun and I was worried about this show going crazy. It’s still doing some interesting things in a restrained way which is what I like.
My Hero Academia S4 Episode 6
For an episode centered around characters sitting around a table, talking about the league of evil and over haul’s group, their plots, the illegal drugs they are using, and such. Yeah, that was the episode. It started with some of our 1-A (Deku, Kirishima, Tsuyu, and Uraraka) kids walking to this meeting, then Aizawa meeting with these afterward specifically to talk to Deku about not trusting him yet.
What is the major thing that made it interesting to me? It’s very character focused. This is a meeting of characters not just people throwing out lines of exposition and such. My favorite moment was seeing Morio and Deku thinking the same way towards saving Eri. They really are almost the same person with different circumstances and age group bringing them together. Not my favorite episode, but it does make me feel better about this season so far.
Fate/Grand Order: Babylonia Episode 7
Well, that was a fun episode. One with a lot of character and very cheap fight animation. Like seriously, no impacts were put on screen. But that’s fine considering that a lot of important character moments happened. The plot of this episode was simple. Uruk’s nothern wall was broken and Ritsuka and crew helped to kill the demon beasts that broke through the wall. With that comes an all out attack lead from Ritsuka to attach the demons on their domain and the broken fortress city called Niddur.
A city that Uruk slowly emptied over night. So Rituka and others, with Leionada’s and others help, attack the city to bring it back. Of course, the city is empty, Enkidu is there to talk about how they are using humans to create larger and upgraded demon beasts, with the appearance of Limati, Enkidu’s mother, at the end. She’s huge, holy crap. Many of Leondias’ spartan soldiers died during their run and Ushiwakamura is on the way to save the day. Ok, maybe that wasn’t simple but this is the general stuff
In between all of that are some fantastic character moments. Ritsuka is discovering his sense of leadership after being questioned by Soloman. The true stars however were Merlin and Anna. Merlin displays his sense of in humanism because he absorbs dreams in order to feel like some sort of human because he doesn’t actually care. On the other side of the equation and that talk was Anna who is existence is important to the resistance. Something we won’t find out until now, so an interesting character set up maybe? So many questions here which is interesting. So yeah, good set up episode. I hope next week pays off all this setting up.
Vinland Saga Episode 19
Oh wow, a lot of intresting parts in this episode that work insanely well. Holy crap. Thorfinn and Thorkell continue their duel after Thorfinn passed out despite his new found broken arm. Of couse, there was a little bit of backstory when Thorkell idolized Thors as a JomsViking before Thors’ first death then meeting him again when Thors took Helga from her home to run away. It’s interesting to see how complicated of a character Thorkell can actually be. He was presented as a muscle head when he first appeared, but we are getting more snippets out of him to see how he envied Thors and wanted to walk the path of the true warrior too. Also, Thorkell is fifty? The hell? By all rights, he should long die during that time period.
Also, it’s interesting to see Askeladd and Thorfinn working together to win against Thorkell in a sneaky way. Askeladd was able to blind Thorkell for a little it leading to Thorfinn getting the jump on him. Of course, Thorkell’s men became betrayers and broke the honor of the duel. Plus, Canute showed up with his new ambition to destroy his father Sweyn and somehow recruited Thorkell’s group while Akseladd and Thorfinn are being taken for a ride too. Holy crap, I didn’t expect any of this to happen. I love it. Go! Fight! Win!
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