Aaaand we’ve got ourselves a beach episode here. I guess it was inevitable, with how the OP kept hinting at it, but it’s a good thing that this show is well written, otherwise it would have been a complete disaster, plus gg’s insert jokes are also getting on my nerves now (we know these fanservice moments are bad. You don’t need to make them worse!). This was very much a buildup episode, but at the very least the creators made sure that the random antics and the fanservice didn’t get in the way of the good parts of the episode: Merry and her sense of justice.
Merry and Yumeji… they’re a great lead couple. This episode again showed that even within an episode with such a badly overused premise of going to the beach with half the cast, the chemistry between them remains rock-solid. The past seven episodes have done wonders developing the trust between them, and seeing them play off of it really saved this episode for me. For a beach episode, it could have been much worse, and the creators also took their time to slightly develop the relationship between two of the side characters.
Plus, the characters kept talking about justice, so I was really expecting Merry to gather her composure just in time in order to save that young boy whose dream demon was about to be killed. And yet, Merry didn’t even notice it, and the boy just got his dreams destroyed. It’s definitely an interesting entrance for the new villain, but she really needs to get less stereotypically evil after this point. That will be fine if this episode was indeed hinting at what I think it was hinting.
Rating: (Enjoyable)
While I do think Yumeji and Merry make a decent couple, I felt as if Yumeji was being a bit too forceful/imposing with his talk about being a hero that never gives up, etc.
It felt rather insensitive on his part when at times when he would bring up stuff like finding dream demons and such, especially after it was rather clear that she was very worried about her actions.
That being said, it also does show that Yumeji cares for Merry, which is why I got some mixed feelings with regards to this episode.
I suspect that this episode threw out a huge red herring. No other dream demons have looked like their host before. I’m interested in what that creapy teacher is up to though.
I think it was a rather good episode for it being more of a filler than a plot-progressing episode. One of the most important points of Yumekui Merry is drama and with it characterization and in that regard not one episode of this series had disappointed until now, I think. Even this episode really concentrated on the portrayal of the characters instead of exciting action but I’m not sure whether it was really worth stretching Merrys internal struggle of how she can live on with the revelations of the last few episodes over an entire episode. The outcome was predictable after all.
The story so far really gives off a feeling of “quiet and slow moving”. It just doesn’t feel like anything epic’s going on here but instead this series concentrates on the character and how they try to cope with the abnormal situation instead of letting them be whatever is necessary to be the righteous heroes who save the day.
A lot of the cannon fodder Dream Demons seem to be anime-original. And there doesn’t seem to be any Treesea mentioned in the manga, either, at least what has been translated.
I’m quite worried about this show being only one season long. The Anime followed the manga quite faithfully till now, but the manga’s way ahead and there seem no kind of stopping point yet to let the anime end in 12-13 only episodes at all. Plus there’s this anime original char in the way.
I’m thinking this anime will stop right after the confrontation with this anime original villain and the real villain, named Ph* will be introduced in a later season, if there’ll be one.