The Reflection – 5&6 [Vy and Michael]/[San Antonio]

by Lenlo, posted in Finished Series: Action, The Reflection

Hello everyone, apologies for the joint Reflection review, but driving 1400 miles from Texas to DC made for a busy weekend. I ended up late on episode 5 and just decided to bunch it an 6 together. Shouldn’t happen again and with that said, let’s jump into it.

Alot happened during these 2 episodes, of varying levels of quality. First, lets talk about episode 5. We start with an introduction to some of those staying with Merchant and Trader. As suspected, they aren’t selling Reflected, but rather protecting them. Some of the scenes here are odd, with the lack of eyes and the silence, but I get its purpose. After this we jump to Lisa, searching New Orleans for Elen and real Jazz. Sadly, she doesn’t find much good Jazz. Eventually she finds a bar, where the child Elen saved is playing however! A bar fight ensues and the child manages to get Lisa out of there.

Little did either of them know however, Steel Ruler and the Racist Cop from earlier episodes are meeting on a balcony. Looks like the Cop does have much love for Merchant and Trader. As we see later on, this is all building to a final confrontation. We cut back to Merchant and Trader, who we now learn are named Vy and Michael. We are gifted with some nice backstory for the two, revealing their abilities and how Michael is blind. Loving the handicapped cast so far. We get some exposition with Elen about the types of Reflected, and some warm words towards Vy. Sadly not everyone is having a good time right now, as we jump back to Lisa.

Turns out, people are still after her and the child. A truck comes by and swipes them up, taking them who knows where. Taken to a construction site, it looks like they are being interrogated about Michael and Vys location. The child, of course, spills the beans and reveals their location in the swamp. With this info, the Cops gather a group and head out. They get on their boats and head towards the swamp, where they are intercepted by Vy, Michael and Elen. What follows is one of the more disappointing fights i’ve seen. Vy has her armor destroyed quickly, Michael is useless and Elen is the actually the most useful for once. As well, in the middle of the fight Vy is miraculously cured and able to control her powers!

All in all a disappointing episode, and Reflection doesn’t do much better in episode 6. We continue investigating the Allen family, finding more and more are kidnapped. Along with that, everyone in the mansion got taken behind their backs. How? No idea, but it happened. We do get to see more of the Japanese Idol group though, as we transition from one burger scene to another. Looks like they have been fighting their own battles and will soon be having a trip to America. Suppose they had to get involved in the plot somehow.

For the rest of the squad however, they next stop is San Antonio Texas! Nice place, but expensive to live in. Just as they arrive and track down some Allen’s, Steel Ruler and her group of evil Reflected arrive as well. Battles over the Allen family members occur, with our group losing each one and public perception going down. One amusing scene in all this is Lisa’s inexperience though. She pops her robot in the middle of a crowded shop, unable to move without destroying it. Love it when characters aren’t immediately competent.

With all these losses, X-On decides to call in a favor to try and even the odds. He calls in Jim, a private investigator and a friend of his. In just a few seconds on his computer, he tracks down one last Allen. An old lady in a barber shop named Nina. Some old texan lady banter occurs, Nina refusing to budge, before eventually being taken anyways. Our heroes give Steel Ruler the slip and head off to California to find Nina’s daughter. Once they do however, they realize their mistake. Steel Ruler was using them to find this missing Allen and now wants her for herself. But whats that? Whats that song playing?! Its I-Guy, the best character in the show!

He smashes through the roof, challenges Steel Ruler, and we end on a cut of grimacing metal headpiece. Am I excited? Alittle. For the plot? Hardly. But I-Guy is back and we get some more great music and a better character.

All in all, some packed but ultimately empty episodes. There were many minor things I could have pointed out, but with 2 episodes in a single week and my tendency to write more than I should, I wanted to keep it short-ish.

Expect a single episode cover next week! Talk to ya later!

Kakegurui – 08[Love-Dancing Woman]

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Kakegurui

I only just noticed it now but I see the opening of this series actually spoils the order which Yumeko takes on the student council. Likely because I skip the opening after seeing it once.(Unless it’s really good.) So this time we have an idol girl and if there are those who read my posts then you might know that I don’t have a particularly high opinion of idol culture. I have see many an anime which attempted to glamorise the nature of it as giving hopes and dreams or promoting advertisement for a good cause. Though that’s fiction and no matter how I try to think of the positives of idols, I really cannot see it other than the exploitation of young girls in order to strip lonely individuals of their money. For the music is frankly terrible and the underlying implications are rather sinister. Of course I am no idol expert so my opinion isn’t worth much as I have only experienced it through the lens of anime. Still I do wonder just what those girls think as they shake their fans hands and jump on stage to sing songs. For I wouldn’t be surprised if it was close to what Yumemi thinks here.

I don’t blame Yumemi for hating her fans, if anything she has good reason to. The level of obsession they have is quite creepy and much like she said, they aren’t even listening to her music. These are the kind of fans that would burn her albums at her mentioning a boyfriend. (That even happened with an anime when one of the characters revealed that she had a previous relationship. The demand for idolised girls to remain “Pure” sounds much like a contradiction to me. For the only reason they want her “pure” is so they can imagine dirtying her themselves) Still I find her plan to reach stardom through the idol industry to be rather fascinating yet highly unlikely. From the 5 minutes I spent searching google I can’t find any Japanese idol that broke into Hollywood Cinema. Nor would I think one would be looked upon favorably as that would be more the Justin beiber or Miley Cyrus path to fame. I mean sure you would be well known but not very respected. Looking at her goals, her idol career would be more a blight than a blessing and she would fare far better if she just learned English and started Acting.

Anyway Yumeko does her usual thing of removing any safety nets from the bet which appears to been helped along by another member of the student council whose attempting to shake things up now that the student council president…has taken a helicopter…to engage in important business…(Alright Aidan, you know it’s dumb but let’s just roll with it.) Though honest question, what does student council work actually entail? I have seen plenty of series where they apparently do paperwork and it’s supposed to be a rather busy job but I am having a hard time thinking of what they actually do besides allocating club budgets and organising school Festivals. I fear I may have gotten rather sidetracked in this episode post but well it could be summarized as just introducing the new Council member and her challenging Yumeko to a bet. We don’t know what the bet entails but we do know that if Yumeko loses then she will be forced to become an Idol duo with Yumemi under the name of “Dreaming Creaming Girls”. As a side note, while I didn’t find evidence of Japanese idols becoming Hollywood stars I did find a few articles detailing Japanese idols who became Adult Video stars. That name might be rather prophetic of your future profession Yumemi. Of course the big thing here is that can Yumeko sing and dance, or maybe that doesn’t matter?

Princess Principal – 08 [Case 20 Ripper Dipper]

by SuperMario, posted in Currently Watching:, Princess Principal

We have a much-needed backstory of The Princess and the Pickpocket in the Black Lizard Planet this week. The actual case of week 8 was reduced into some minor scenes, but now I become more certain that the main boss the spy girls have to face in the end will be the Duke of Normandy; as once again his personal agent, Gazelle, was up to no good this time around, trying to trick Lord O’Reilly or whatever his name was, defecting to the Commonwealth to trap him. How the hell the girls figure out the whole evil scheme just by recognizing Gazelle is anyone’s guess (maybe because they’re… spy?), but no problem at all since the real juicy part of this episode lies in the Princess and Ange’s backstory and her interaction with the poor kid that remind Ange a lot of her childhood. Three weeks in a row Princess Principal slows down the pacing for more character developments and while the previous two added little to the main story, this one provides a backbone of Ange and Princess’s tragic “love” (see the heart-shaped door frame when the two girls playing piano together?) and with that story we can identify how the Princess has been struggling to become who she is today.

Alright. The juicy part first. Ange and Charlotte indeed swapped places when they were small – being around the same age with same features and same eye colors and everything (hey, they might as well be a twin). One from the royal and one from the dirt poor. The kinds you always see in fairy tale. But this isn’t your regular fairy tale, as the real Princess received a real hardship when she went out of her kingdom and then they got separated after all the high-spirited talks about becoming a real Queen, healing the world and what not. In a serious side though, the flashback gives us much more context about the relationship between Ange and the Princess now; and it’s rather heartwarming to finally learn that the very reason Princess wanted to become the Queen is because that was exactly what Ange wanted before the separation. All their conversations make sense now in retrospect. I also like the way that Ange not only appreciate the Princess for taking her role flawlessly, she also understands and admires her friend for all the hardship the Princess has gone through in order to survive – in order to act and behave like real Princess.

And for me, this part is where the episode truly shines. A certain conman, in the name of Kaiki Deishu from the Monogatari series, argues in Nisemonogatari – itself meaning Fake Story that (sorry for mild spoiler here: you don’t need to read the next sentence if you don’t want to be spoiled, for others, highlight the sentence) – the fake (like himself) has to spend much more effort to look like real and in a process become more real than the real thing.  It might sound like some twisted argument but it’s a kind of argument that I happen to agree with to a degree and here, it makes a whole lotta sense. The poor Pickpocket who suddenly becomes the Princess, who couldn’t write before or couldn’t read any single musical note, had to try harder and harder in order to match with the Princess’s image; along with a constant pressure that if she slips in any moment, she’d be uncover – and in a process, herself becomes the true Princess. The fact that she never regards herself as the real one, but tries hard to become perfecto make it all the more tragic. Chise realizes immediately (very great little moment there) that the Princess doesn’t enjoy all the hard trainings – those simply have become her duty. But when she said the same lines that Ange proposed long ago, it’s the talk of the real Princess – and to me at least, she becomes the REAL princess now.

It’s also nice to see Ange opens up to another little girl, Julie, who reminds her so much of her past. She goes such length to not only teach the girl how to pickpocket, but tell her the story of her life and comes to her factory to rescue the girl and advises her to stay in the orphanage. I don’t know if people notice but the painting that Ange finished (while spying) has Julie smiling in there. I also love the tiny little moments Princess Principal constantly place on other girls: how Chise wears warm clothes on the second night (wait, is she ninja or is she batgirl?), Ange has to dress up as the Princess and Beatrice gets angry at Dorothy because she brought booze to the mission and how the Princess’s hands were shaking while she was riding the horse. It’s a legit visual storytelling right there and I hope Princess Principal relies more on these little moments and sweet interactions than pulling the rug out under our feet with life-changing twists and turns.

Katsugeki Touken Ranbu – 9 [Former Master]

by Lenlo, posted in Finished Series: Action, Katsugeki Touken Ranbu

This week Ranbu gives us a character-focused episode, in a self contained little story. Good, but with its problems. Lets jump in!

Ranbu starts off with the 2nd Unit teleporting in to Kyoto in style, falling from the sky as swords. The mission this time? To protect Sakamoto Ryoma during the Taradaya Incident, where he was almost caught. No doubt, the Retrograde Army plan for him to be captured, ruining his plan to bring down the Tokugawa Shogunate. As it turns out, Ryoma was Mutsunokami’s former master! Clearly, Mutsunokami is the focus of Ranbu this week.

Because of his association with Ryoma, Mutsunokami knows all about the incident and how to plan around it. This puts our 2nd Unit on even ground with the Retrograde Army, as now they know that path to defend. Strangely however, Mutsunokami wants little to do with Ryoma. He wants to avoid meeting him again, perhaps because he fears how he would act? Or maybe what he would say, affecting the future? Regardless its an interesting character point. Soon after they lay out their plan, night comes and everything starts.

Police surround the inn where Ryoma is staying, setting off the Taraday Incident. Ryoma and his guard flee, with the 2nd Unit taking out the Retrograde Army as they appear. Shockingly competent, the 2nd Unit takes care of everything quickly and quietly. However it wouldn’t be an episode with the 2nd Unit if nothing went wrong. A Retrograde slips past and attacks Ryoma, doing who knows what. We next cut to Mutsunokami fighting some simply Retrograde, before turning a corner and seeing a terrible sight.

In a very nice scene, we see Ryoma fleeing from a horde of police, alone and unable to fight. Lights behind him, as he trips and falls to the dirt, Mutsunokami debating whether or not to jump in. After a short speech from Ryoma, he does just that. Running into the fray, defeating the police and saving Ryoma. They flee together, slowly opening up, Mutsunokami fixing his hands and protecting him. During some of their scenes together you can see how alike they are and how Ryoma influenced Mutsunokami. When Mutsunokami finally talks, Ryoma even remarks on their similar accents. After these bonding scenes, Ryoma is lead back to the Satsuma Clan house, only to run into one final group of Retrograde.

In this final segment, we get some pretty scenes and a quick fight. Little occurs here story wise, but Mutsunokami has quick but well done fight in an alley way. With the fight over, Ryoma is turned over to the Satsuma clan, and the mission is over. All in all, an above average episode, but with the lack of a final arc I am concerned how Ranbu is planning to end the season. I am not sure what sort of final mission would be satisfying to end Ranbu when it had little overarching story.

Still, we have 3 episodes left, so the only thing to do is wait. See you next week for another episode of Ranbu!

 

18if – 08 [Threshold]

by SuperMario, posted in 18if, Currently Watching:

It’s nice to see an anime episode that tackle on the everyday life’s problems of people who experience hearing loss: ya know, having trouble with boss, can’t hear what the waiter says, don’t realize the train’s delay announcement, relying on flashlights for delivery, sleeping through the whole freaking Alien invasion… She said she has been stuck under rubble for a week now, but doesn’t Katsumi the scientist just met her performing back then?? Any attempt to make sense with the plot will prove to be difficult because there’s no such thing as coherent plot or backstory in this tale of the deaf singer. Instead 18if this week uses this story as a foundation to teach us about the importance of hearing, and to its large extend the importance of communication and then sheds some developments to our main Haruto. This episode of 18if was handled by Takaaki Ishiyama, the director of the new religious movement Happy Science-produced The Rebirth of Buddha; Chaos;Head and Tomoe ga Yuku, all of them were… terrible, but he’s on form with 18if this week. Overall, this week is a disjoined episode with dialogues that sometimes too “important” for its own good, but I quite enjoy its messiness and its original visual style.

The director has total control on the visual front of this episode and it fits well with the theme of the story. At first, in one of the Witch’s version Haruto and the Witch are in striking black and white world, but when he switches to another version of the girl the background is soft and naturalistic. The bar where Katsumi heads in remind me a lot of Paprika’s bar so it goes without saying that the interior design of the bar is my favorite part out of this week. As we reach to the end, the color becomes more prominent with strong, but in-control color palette (you can see all of them in the screenshots above). They nail the sound effects right as well. As this week is all about deafness and an ability to communicate with other through sounds, many decisions towards the sound effects are spot on: from the purposeful captions of every lines, the blurred dialogues that Haruto, like us, can’t hear properly to the soundless, only background music of the montage of our deaf girl in real life (significant what she can’t hear). The audiovisual in this episode 8, to sum up, is very effective that further elevate the story.

As the deaf singer points out clearly when she talks to Haruto, it’s a desire to communicate, to able to express and hear what others speak that made her wants do to deaf singing, and only Haruto can hear what she says. Somehow, the conversations progress into the need for communication, as she presses that people only like to hear what they want to hear (a bit stretching here, but… okay) and thus Haruto can’t hear what her other version says is because he doesn’t want to hear praise and good words (what? What?). I get the overall message but somehow those speaking lines just twist around like a twisted knife that I can’t really get into their train of logic. It’s important though that properly converse to each other make the most of communication’s effectiveness (only 7% into the actual meaning behind those words, the remains are facial expressions and the way the words are said – including tones, vocal pitch…) so yep, I kinda understand the underlying message of 18if this week, even if I feel it was heavy-handed at times.

We have a brief flashback of Haruto regarding his past life, or to be more exact, how other people perceive at him; from the kids who deny playing with him, to the parents who flat out tell him that he was a drag to the teachers (I assume) tell him that they were disappointed in him. Truthfully, I think those are just purely his perspective, the way he feels others’ impression towards him due to his lack of communication; but the sequence is so vague in context we hardly know anything concrete. I don’t even think that it’s his “real” life to speak of and I think it’s about time we need to learn who Haruto really is, don’t you think?

Classroom of the Elite – 07 [Nothing is as Dangerous as an Ignorant Friend; A Wise Enemy is to be Preferred]

by SuperMario, posted in Classroom of the Elite, Currently Watching:

This is your usual pool episode, except that it’s not quite your usual pool episode. The pool activities and the peeping Tom operation serve as a surface for some subtler scheming, and set the conflicts from Class D to other classes into motion. I’m glad that Youkoso realizes the stupid nature of the “Operation: Peep on the Girls’ Dressing Room”. They would play up the absurdness of the operation, make it overly-dramatized with several “missions”, codenames, communicating in codes. My favorite moment has to be when Iku cries his manly tears for nearly abandoned his hope of a successful operation. If only they could give their all in academic pursuit as well. Another intentional but quite questionable approach, is the “male’s gaze” perspective that keep scanning on girls’ chests and their bikini for wayyy too long. Normally this is just an excuse for lazy fanservice but in this context, it has its merits because it fits really well to the peeping operation and their hormonal operators. This is one of the rare cases when I can argue that anime uses fan-service elements successfully, the kind of fanservice that fits to its theme and has deeper implications.

This episode also serves as a base to re-establish the tension between different classes, as in somewhat convenient fashion, all of the important figures from each class, and the student council president himself, appear all in one place – in a pool; or to be more exact, in front of the pool’s public bathrooms. The tension between Class-A and Class-C has been well hinted in previous episodes, and this time Class-D member (Sudo, of course) finds himself stuck in the middle of this whole conflict, both literally and figuratively. Horikita’s announcement in the diving board (I thought she would jump for sure) serves as the final declaration of how Class-D is willing to climb up rank, and force the others to take them seriously. At the moment Class-B has a friendly term with Class-D, but really what is Ichinose’s real motive?

But Horikita’s little event in that diving board is only in a service of distracting the other classes to save those stupid boys from getting caught, as Ayanokouji has pulled all the strings on a backstage to let the boys do what they want, but eliminate all the consequences in the process. It’s the only real reason that the anti-social Horikita decided to join them for a day in a pool after all. Amusing that this episode is the first time that we get to hear her voice over – to know her inner voice and the way she sees the world. While this girl Horikita is as dry as the Sahara Desert, it’s good to understand her inside a little bit more because unless we can identify the main cast as real people, we’d have a hard time rooting for them when conflict arises. Ultimately, this episode is exactly how a pool episode function: main characters gather around and have fun times together, splashing waters at each other (ohh, you poor thing, Sakura…) and at the end of the day, having a fond memory together as friends, something that both Horikita and Ayanokouji rarely aware of.

Fate/Apocrypha – 08[The Beginning of the War]

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Fate/Apocrypha

One of the particular things I like about Apocrypha is that out of the Fate franchise, this is the only Holy Grail War that is deserving of the title of War. Other grail wars are certainly flashy but by definition they are more battle royales with every man for himself. This on the other hand has armies with two sides each with their own generals. This is a genuine war and not a war in name only. Though while I say that the real deciding factor in this war is the servants with the Homunculi and Dragon tooth warriors being just pure cannon fodder. Another thing I like is that they have pretty much thrown away the whole “keep the war secret” rule which has always been a rather inconsequential rule. It has only ever been relevant in two places in the entire Fate series. One was with Shirou Emiya being a witness to the battle between Archer and Lancer in Fate/Stay Night. Remarkably the only civilian within the Fate universe to ever do so despite the kind of things that the servants get away with. The second time was when Fate/Zero’s caster summoned a monster in the river and gave the masters a reason to all gang up on him. Other than that despite servants having ridiculously flashy battles in open view, no one ever sees them and the damage is written off as gas explosions and the like. There are those assigned to cover it up but it really is silly that no one in Fuyuki manages to see any of this going on. In Apocrypha this rule is just chucked out the window because why bother with it. We got a giant flying fortress with a small war going on so screw the rules, he who dares, wins.

This was an alright episode of the show as we have an action packed battles between the servants. I really do love the exchanges between Chiron and Achilles, as well as Vlad and Karna but the fights themselves do feel lacking. I attribute this to a general lack of fight choreography as far too little do we see servants exchange blows. To often do we have close ups and explosions obscure the action and very little do we see servants deflect blows or land blows. We either get an exchange of laser beams or see a servant wind up an attack only to cut to after he has unleashed it. This is basically the shaky cam style of fight scenes where in exchange of good fight choreography the director just makes a series of fast paced edits which does give the impression of a intense fight sequence but often is too face paced and frantic for the viewer to follow. For me these scenes are just filler which is why I am not particularly fond of the Bourne series of movies. No matter how flashy and epic these fights appear, they cannot hold a candle to the Saber vs Lancer fight of Fate/Zero. I would even say they are inferior to the Illya Archer fight of the first Prisma Illya season.

We have our matchups, Vlad is facing off against Karna and while he has a home field advantage Karna is someone who could fight on par with GIlgamesh so there bout isn’t favorable to him. We did get a bit of backstory on Vlad but once again I am disappointed that it didn’t go into Vlad’s reason for fighting in this war. Chiron is facing off against Achilles which is a matchup made more interesting by their former relationship as master and student. Astolfo is taking on Semiramis and the hanging Gardens of Babylon in the air. Our last fight appears to be Shirou Kotomine taking on Fran in the woods after having decided to leave the garden as a kind of test of conviction. Shirou seems to be under the impression that if he can come back from the battlefield alive then this would mean that god approves of his mission and he can move forward without doubt. At the moment i can’t really think anything of Shirou as much like Sieg he’s playing a bit of an expected role. I have heard he gets more interesting later but at the moment his chemistry with his servant is dull and his general interactions just seem to speak of him having some genius master plan that no one can guess. He’s better than Sieg who I swear just kills interest just by appearing on screen. Well Mordred has landed on the scene and it looks like we are getting closer to that opening sequence we saw at the beginning of the series.

Made in Abyss – 07[The Unmovable Sovereign]

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Made in Abyss

Well it’s official, Ozen is now my favorite character of this series. Big revelations today and one of the biggest is that Riko by all accounts should not be alive as the relic which protected her as a baby is revealed to have a different function. It can bring dead things back to life for a small period of time. Riko was originally a stillbirth which makes a lot of sense as her mother was diving into the abyss when she was pregnant with her. So of course the baby wouldn’t be able to handle the journey. However when Ozen threw her into the curse repealing relic she miraculously came back to life. Thus Ozen concludes that Riko was only temporarily brought back to life and that her life will end very shortly. I think Ozen is discounting something though as her experiments dealt with things long dead like a piece of meat. Riko has managed to grow up and life for quite a number of years so it’s possible that she will have a normal lifespan. Though Ozen did remark that all things brought back to life with the relic started moving towards the center of the abyss so it could very well be that if Riko reaches the bottom of the abyss that she would die.

Ozen also proves that she isn’t called unmovable as a matter of metaphor but her strength makes her quite immovable. She toed the line of becoming an antagonist but I felt during the episode that this was all some level of tough love. After all if Ozen really wanted to get rid of these kids then she would have done it before introducing them to Marluk. The fight itself did seems to be her testing them on a number of matters even if her methods were well…questionable. She tested out just how much punishment Regu could take but got too into it that she went fairly overboard. However even if his was excessively cruel she did teach them how an enemy would exploit their weaknesses. She turning Regu’s laser and pointing it at Riko definitely showed that Regu’s laser has too long a charge time and can be too easily misdirected. Ozen figured out that after firing it he would be out cold for two hours which certainly gives the laser a high price for it’s use. Ozen also showed that Regu’s arms can’t restrain everything and use them to help disarm him. So in the end this thing was her assessing their combat abilities and then deciding what training would be suitable for them.

Ozen is lot older than she looks as well as she helped mentor Riko’s mother when she was a small child. Looks like their relationship wasn’t as simple as being rivals and Ozen actually has a bit of a soft spot for her. Though she looks to have difficulty expressing it. I mean she dug up her friends grave just to verify whether there was a body inside which is rather excessive and tactless. Though with that Ozen denied her earlier claim and stated that Riko’s mother was indeed waiting for her lower in the abyss. It’s still up in the air as to whether this is a lie to give Riko motivation to continue. Ozen’s the mentor to get these kids in shape and she’s already thrown them into a kind of training I remember seeing in Full Metal Alchemist. Throwing them into the wilds and saying good luck. If I had to guess this would likely be training for for Riko than Regu as Ozen pointed out that the degree that he could protect Riko was limited so it looks like RIko is going to have to be more than the brains of the operation.

Kakegurui- 07[Refusing Woman]

by AidanAK47, posted in Currently Watching:, Kakegurui

Today on Kakegurui, we see the end of the bet and well…that’s it. This post may have the same problem as my Attack on Titan posts in that I just don’t have a lot to say here because not a lot actually happened. Mary refused the student council president’s offer to join the student council and Yumeko got away from Midari’s bet unscathed. So this more or less has gone as usual besides Yumeko ending the bet in a draw instead of a win. All in order to deprive Midari of the satisfaction of losing the bet. yes unlike the other bets Midari rigged the game to lose rather than win. For she is batshit insane and only really gets a thrill out of life when in pain or agony. A masochist if you will and one insane enough to gouge her own eye out for losing a bet with the student council president. I guess we did learn a little about the president in that she doesn’t really see people as people and more as things to entertain or interest her. When inquiring to Midari about what the other side of an eyeball looks like she sort of reminded me of a messed up version Chitanda from Hyouka.

Though I don’t really find this to be fascinating as those that tend to treat themselves as some higher master race are often more ignorant than intelligent. It works as a way to get Yumeko to be the one to bring her down from her pedestal and knock this high handed attitude out of her but sadly I sincerely doubt this series will ever get to that point. As for Midari she has certainly stepped up from repulsive to absolutely vulgar. Looking over her character I can’t say she’s all that great and if she’s going to hang around then she’s going to have to need something more than her desperate masochism. Otherwise she will just be a one trick pony begging Yumeko for bets for the sake of comedy. She did accomplish one thing however and that was proving that Yumeko desires a fair bet. Yumeko doesn’t get off on a one sided bet, instead she always breaks down any cheats in order to turn a bet into an equal match. Both sides must have something to risk and seeing Midari hog all the risk for herself made her disgusted. Midari was the first antagonist to truly get Yumeko to hate her with a passion. Somewhat funny as now Midari is absolutely obsessed with her.

Katsugeki Touken Ranbu – 8 [Protect History]

by Lenlo, posted in Finished Series: Action, Katsugeki Touken Ranbu

This was perhaps the best week yet for Ranbu. There are no flashy fights or new enemies, but there is a lot of characterization and quiet moments. Lets jump in.

Ranbu starts this week right after the 1st Units victory of the unnamed Retrograde soldier. Honebami does some fawning over the units strength, before being told there is one more job left to do. Surprisingly they don’t mean more combat, but rather a humanitarian effort. Having completed their mission, the 1st Unit wants to help those affected by it. So they go around and buy some food, to hold a little soup kitchen sort of event. This was very unexpected, but very welcome. Our first unit, even the large scary one, has a heart. Unhappy with simply protecting the future, they decided to also protect the people. It’s purely character focused and I love it. Continuing this trend, the 2nd Unit has some character scenes as well, but none as good I fear.

We cut back to the Citadel, where Saniwa and our resident fox discuss the previous mission of the 2nd Unit. Apparently, they protected history by the thinnest of margins. Saniwa, being the terrible employer he is however, states they did more than he expected. Truly? Then why give them this job? Though this is all ok, as Kane has some ‘quality’ that makes up for all this. Once again, Saniwa is a terrible employer. During this conversation another emergency occurs, meaning our 2nd Unit is going to get another arc. Kane better get ready, because he has a job to do!

Speaking of Kane, he is having some confidence issues. We transition to him sitting by a river, contemplating their last mission. Apparently he has the same doubts I did, which is good to know. He has his doubts as to how history could possibly be saved with that fire, with all those dead. Its good that this is a reoccurring issue, rather than one off with him. As he considers this, Horikawa approaches, and the two set off. One by one they gather the members of the 2nd Unit, Kane asking them if they will fight once more with him. One by one we see the effects this loss had on the 2nd Unit, eventually reaching Tonbokiri.

There is a small scene with Mutsunokami losing his mind about being asked last, which went on for too long, but that is a minor gripe. It broke up the solemn, quiet moment, with some poor comedy, but it ends on a sweet note. Mutsunokami leaves a gift of Daifuku for Tonbokiri, his favorite food. In a much more subtle scene of sweet comedy, Tonbokiri reveals the mountain of Daifuku everyone else had left for him. It’s a good welcome back to the best character of the squad.

With the sunshine and lollipops of the gang getting back together though, the warning from Saniwa’s scene comes out. The 2nd Unit is summoned, once more into the breach! They are being sent out on another mission, running into the 1st Unit on their way out. By the 1st Units estimation, they are now prepared, but we will have to see.

All in all, a good episode. Quiet, lots of character moments, and the opening of a new arc. Disappointed we still don’t have an antagonist but I doubt we will be getting one at this point. Ranbu appears to like its villain of the week story, so let’s roll with it. So long as these character scenes continue, between the pretty combat scenes, Ranbu can end on a high note. I’m looking forward to see if that is the case.

See you next week!