Wooper: I’m all on my lonesome, it seems. We’ve got just two blurbs for this week’s post, both written by yours truly. The holidays are a busy time, after all, and – wait, does this mean my life is the emptiest of all the Star Crossed writers? On that uplifting note, here are a few thoughts on some anime I watched over the past week.
Mugen no Juunin: Immortal 12
This episode felt like a greatest hits compilation to me. How much time was supposed to have passed between the beginning, when Rin encountered Kagehisa, and the end, when they parted ways? It’s very difficult to tell, because each phase of the story was represented by a single scene. Their conversation in the cave near the beginning passed too quickly to quell her vengeful intentions, so the mere fact that they traveled together afterwards felt wrong. If the show had given their partnership another two or three scenes to establish itself, I’d have been okay with it.
Midway through the episode, Rin helped him fend off a band of assassins, and later pleaded with Manji to kill another group of Kagehisa’s pursuers. The overall direction that this takes her character is consistent with what we’ve seen in the past; despite Rin’s anger at the death of her family and her hatred of the man who orchestrated it, the vein of compassion running through her is similarly deep. The issue isn’t the road taken by this episode, then, but the speed at which it traveled. Kagehisa’s illness came on far too quickly, and the appearance of Manji, Magatsu and Makie during the lakeside battle was so sudden that it felt nearly surreal. Of all Immortal’s jam-packed installments thus far, this was the hardest for me to swallow.
Mairimashita! Iruma-kun 12
Looks like we’re on to the next phase of the story: choosing an after-school club. They’re called “Battlers” in the netherworld, and many of them have their eyes on Iruma after his recent dodgeball exploits. Since he’s courted by a handful of club presidents, and countless others are handing out flyers and doing recruitment drives, we get a good look at what sort of extracurricular activities there are to choose from in this version of hell. That’s a fine way to elaborate on your setting, but I feel as though the series missed an opportunity here. At this point, we know that choosing your club has a big impact on your ability to rank up, but we don’t get a sense of what Battler life looks like on a day-to-day basis. The latter is probably more important to Iruma than the former, given the value he places on friendship (as well as his cautious nature). I wish the episode had spent half of its time popping its head into various clubs, then settled on one to really explore during the second portion. It’s a minor quibble, but it did gnaw at me during and after the show this week.
