High School DxD Hero - Episode 4 [Review]

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High School DxD Hero - Episode 4 [Review]

So episode 4 happened.

While that may not exactly be a fair way to describe the episode, it nonetheless characterizes how little of a lasting impression it made. I first watched it during my lunch break, but I had to go back and watch big chunks of it again at the end of the work day just to recall what happened. That's generally not a good sign.

So what does happen? Well, the Hero faction of the Chaos Brigade strikes on two different fronts. One is in Kyoto, where the spear-wielding young man is revealed to be Cao Cao, a descendant of a like-named warlord who figured prominently in the classic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The other is the home front back at the school, but we see only the aftermath of that battle because the attention remains on what Issei and crew are doing. His battle is mostly typical for the franchise, as all sorts of new foes with special powers but forgettable identities show up to face off against Issei and friends, resulting in a fresh opportunity for Issei to combine his Booblingual and Dress Break powers to take a trio of cannon fodder out of the fight. A new stand-in for Freed shows up to oppose the more knightly characters, with his only distinguishing characteristic being a silver third arm that allows him to wield three swords, while Azazel battles Cao Cao to an uninteresting standoff. To keep the battle from being decisive, a young witch with the amusing name Le Fay Pendragon (combining Morgan Le Fay and Arthur Pendragon) shows up and throws out a giant suit of armor named after a legendary English giant to chastise Cao Cao for going too far. Strangely enough, she's apparently a fan of the Boob Dragon.

So yeah, this fight smacks of a supernatural variation on one of those mixers where you jump through hoops to get introduced to everyone. It offers little excitement or thrill factor beyond one fanservice scene, and it would feel like a complete waste of time if it weren't the first instance this season where Issei's evolution from flunkie to charismatic leader has been emphasized, as someone who can stand in as King when Rias isn't around. Issei has unquestionably drawn in a bevy of compatriots who are extremely loyal to him, and this battle also shows that the team functions well when he takes charge. That's a much more interesting development than anything else in this episode, certainly moreso than Cao Cao's utterly uninspired motivation of wanting to see how far humans can go in an environment populated by angels, devils, and gods. Snore.

It's also handled better than the shoehorned reappearance of the guy from last episode's flashback. This guy with the shadow-related Sacred Gear has been written into this season sloppily, but at least his shadow armor is sorta cool and he has Issei (improbably) on the ropes at the end of the episode. Maybe the fox girl will jump to Issei's rescue? Whatever the case, the sooner that guy gets offed so we can return to not caring about him, the better.

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Real Girl - Episode 6 [Review]

Relationships aren't easy to maintain, even when you've known someone forever. Tsutsui learns that lesson the hard way this week, as his attempts at resolving his argument with Iroha lead to another conflict, this time with Ito. Suddenly cut off from both his best friend and his girlfriend, Tsutsui takes some time to reflect on how he met Ito in the first place. Getting that friendship back on track proves to be relatively easy, and after a couple of false starts, Tsutsui manages to reconcile with Iroha as well. The only problem now is his budding friendship with Ayado, which is poised to cause a whole new round of misunderstandings.

This episode is a tale of three relationships, and the friendship between Tsutsui and Ito is the first into the spotlight. The brief conflict between them isn't all that intense from a dramatic standpoint, but it provides a decent excuse for Real Girl to indulge in a flashback. In some ways, this little origin story is reminiscent of Tsutsui's first encounter with Iroha; as much as the younger Tsutsui tries to push Ito away when they first meet, their shared status as social outcasts pulls them together. We can see the beginnings of their current friendship, with Ito's empathy and desire for connection balancing out Tsutsui's more stoic and self-isolating nature. Tsutsui's lonely late-night cooking session also opens the door for an interesting reflection on how he's beginning to change as a character. His fights with Iroha and Ito make him feel lonelier than he ever felt when he was on his own, which suggests that he's beginning to understand the value of those personal connections. Now that he's experienced these positive interactions, it's much harder to stomach the idea of being alone.

Once Tsutsui and Ito go back to being best buddies, the focus shifts towards his romantic relationship with Iroha. As simple as it is in practice, the way they patch things up with one another is reasonably faithful to their personalities. Tsutsui may not know what he did to upset Iroha during their festival date, but he does at least know that he's hurt her feelings. This leads him to essentially apologize for not knowing what he should be sorry for, which is sort of charming in its own awkward way. That ends up being enough to break the ice with Iroha, who seems just as eager to close the book on this conflict. While Real Girl sticks to its usual pattern of telling the story from Tsutsui's perspective, it does at least give Iroha a chance to vent her frustrations. As we saw last week, this conflict has its origins in the characters' differing perspectives, with Tsutsui's disbelief that a girl might actually like him coming across as a lack of trust to Iroha. Now that the two of them are back on the same page, they can get back to dealing with all of those raging teenage hormones, assuming they can spend more than two minutes alone together without Tsutsui freaking out and running away.

Finally, we have Ayado's friendship with (and crush on) Tsutsui, which plays a supporting role throughout the episode but becomes more important in the last few minutes. It may be all smiles and free potatoes for now, but this relationship looks like it may present Tsutsui and Iroha with their biggest challenge yet. Much like it did last week, Real Girl is dropping some pretty big hints that there's some real chemistry between Ayado and Tsutsui, both through dialogue and the visual presentation of their interactions. One shot in particular, which splits the screen into manga-style panels, really highlights the visual similarities between the two bespectacled characters, suggesting that they've got a kind of “kindred spirit” dynamic going on. It's no wonder this looks bad from Iroha's perspective, even if Tsutsui is far too clueless to realize what's going on. Given a little more time to simmer, this tension could easily boil over into a compelling storyline.

On the whole, this is a solid episode that continues the course correction that Real Girl started making last week. There's a renewed focus on the pitfalls and nuances of relationships, both romantic and platonic. Instead of relying on a snickering villain to stir things up, the show is crafting storylines by letting trouble arise naturally between the main characters. When everyone's intentions are relatively good, the conflicts they encounter have more emotional depth, and the potential for heartbreak feels more credible. It's a shame that the animation remains on the weaker end of the spectrum, but at least the script is carrying an impressive amount of weight.

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Food Wars! The Third Plate - Episode 17 [Review]

Did you need another reason to hate Azami? Probably not, but Food Wars isn't taking any chances of making him seem sympathetic, so this week they throw another crime in our faces: he bullied Akira into joining Central by threatening Jun. (It's even worse if you consider that Jun is practically Akira's mom; threatening someone's family is a new low for Azami.) His methods for doing this were typically underhanded – he forced all of Jun's corporate sponsors to withdraw their offers of financial aid. Not only does this speak to the power Azami wields outside the academy, it also shows how low he's willing to go to force his vision of “gourmet” on the world at large. Technically, he really shouldn't be able to interfere with outside businesses, especially since if his plans go through, some of these companies will go belly-up. It's like he's the Don of the Food Mafia, and a kid like Akira, who isn't comfortable going to others for help, was essentially put in a position where he had no choice but to comply.

All of that explains not only why Akira's now with Central, but also his determination to beat Soma no matter what and the dead-eyed stare he's had all season. He's fighting not so much for Azami's ideals or even to stay at school, but for the only family he has. That's more of a burden than any sixteen-year-old should have to bear, and a loss could have serious emotional repercussions for him. Not that this means he ought to win, but it is something that Soma's going to have to help him deal with on the off chance that Soma carries the day.

We're not going to find out about that until next week, which is actually a good thing in terms of pacing. I was afraid that they were going to try to cram the entire match into this episode, which would have taken a lot of the tension out of it. The decision to do this in full and presumably cut back on other content later (because there's still a lot to cover here) will likely prove to have been the right one. There's a lot more at stake here than just Soma's enrollment; this is the match that has the most fully revealed the depths to which Azami will sink. If his minion wins here, against the rebels' best man, that won't bode well for Totsuki overall.

It's also an important cook-off because Soma's never beaten Akira before. While this would be an awesome time to start, it couldn't happen if he hadn't lost before. All along an important piece of Soma's character has been his ability to learn from his mistakes and defeats. He's okay with admitting that someone is better at something than he is (a rarity at Totsuki), and his main take-away has consistently been the way he examines why he lost. Having done this twice with Akira, he's now ready to really put what he learned into practice, something we see right off the bat when the head judge, Alice's dad, immediately realizes that he used the gamiest parts of the bear meat. Scent has always been Akira's weapon; for Soma to deliberately attempt to use that against him like this, and to thus far succeed in it, speaks volumes about both his confidence and his ability to learn.

Will Soma succeed in beating Akira? And will the same be true of the rest of the rebels? It's not a good sign that Nikumi is up against he Council member who specializes in desserts, which is far from her area of expertise, and how Takumi and Megumi will fare against Rindo also feels fraught with peril. We'll just have to dwell on the glory (?) of either Dojima's abs or Cilla and Berta in little bear bikinis or the humor of Soma pulling a Takumi running around screaming Akira's name until next week.

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One Piece - Episode 835 [Review]

Big Mom's hellish tea party rages on as Luffy makes his second attempt to strike her Achilles Heel: the broken photograph of her childhood caretaker, Mother Carmel. These past few episodes could easily get a little frustrating because we're still trying to get this big scream out of Mom, but they make me extremely curious as to how the anime is going to handle the rest of the Whole Cake Island climax, which in the manga is one big complicated action scene that's divisively low on traditional one-on-one fights. Last week's episode almost felt like we were getting a proper Sanji vs. Daifuku fight, and this week there's a brief conflict between Brook and Charlotte Oven that wasn't in the manga. There's a sincere effort to flesh the story out with more action, as opposed to just taking the manga and stretching it out. Perhaps this could give some characters who fell by the wayside in the manga more chances to stand out.

But sticking closer to what the source material had to offer, the emphasis this week is still mostly on Luffy and company trying to outrun Katakuri and his mochi powers. I find it endlessly amusing that Katakuri is canonically sixteen feet tall, right between his mother's size and a regular human, and you see examples in this episode of that creating some jarring perspective shots. It's that weird One Piece quirk where strong guys (like Doflamingo) are just naturally super-tall, which has mostly been successful at simply creating a contrast between the big dudes and little ole Luffy. However, Katakuri just looks like a giant when I think he's meant to feel a little more Doflamingo-esque in that regard. You've got to be strategic about how often you show the dude standing next to other characters.

There isn't a lot going on in the episode that sets it apart from last week, but we do finally get that Big Mom scream, connecting us to the cliffhanger where we start to fade into her childhood backstory, ready to finally learn who this Mother Carmel actually was. Capone and his crew don't get the chance to pull the trigger on their rocket launchers just yet, but I've been hungrily waiting for this flashback to arrive and for One Piece to aggressively become less child-friendly for a couple weeks. Before her big scream, we see Mom finally confronting that Mother Carmel picture, desperately trying to put its pieces back together as her hands shake in horror. The deep dive we're about to take into Big Mom's psyche is so interesting and exciting to me.

The other change-up is Sanji finally breaking his family free of their candy prison and the Straw Hats providing them with earplugs (to withstand the scream) and the containers that hold their Super Sentai raid suits, since Capone had collected them as a part of his security duty. Now the Vinsmokes are going to join the fight, and we're facing that weird dynamic where the Nazi Power Ranger family get to be allies as the result of circumstance. It doesn't come without a lot of pontificating from Reiju about how Sanji's the only good thing to have come their family and how their mother's good will survives through him, but that continues to be something ripe to be made more interesting with further context. My theory for a while now has been that we'd learn Sanji's mom was also a supervillain type like Judge, and we'd string that reveal into the larger theme of managing our complicated relationships with the rare instances of love we receive in our lives.

There's some really fascinating stuff going on in this arc, as we deal with villains who range from morally compromised to the morally vacant, a topic One Piece has a unique perspective on by virtue of focusing on lawless pirates to begin with. The Vinsmokes get off a little easy in this arc, but because so many blind spots have been teased about their history, I'm not comfortable believing that their role begins and ends at "grudging allies."

This episode continues the colorful action from last week, although it looks a little more shoddy in places. I remain pleasantly surprised by how well the anime is handling the emotional chaos as we inch our way between plot points, but right now I'm just happy that we'll finally get to talk about Mother Carmel for real next week, and with her all the insane darkness lurking in Big Mom's memories. Let's get weird with this.

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Tokyo Ghoul:re - Episode 6 [Review]

As the big battle at the auction house lurches into its third week, Tokyo Ghoul:re finally gives itself some space to stretch out and look inwards. Our protagonists aren't just fighting wave after wave of enemies, they're also fighting their own insecurities and traumas, and this more intimate focus on their psyches makes for a more engrossing episode.

First up we have Urie, who at the end of last episode had landed in Big Madam's gullet. I was waiting for his experimental surgery to finally pay off, and it does, granting him enough strength to break free. I was also waiting for him to be consumed by his heightened ghoul powers and lose all of his composure, which of course also happens. It's pretty entertaining to see the normally stone-faced Urie with his tongue gleefully lolling out, but it's also telling that even his ghoul-addled thoughts are totally self-centered. He's blind to everything but his own greatness, which brings me to the thing I wasn't expecting: he still gets his ass kicked. A common thread when protagonists take a great risk to become more powerful is that they'll win at some great personal cost. I thought that Urie would seriously hurt one of the other Quinxes and be forced to reckon with those consequences, but instead, even sacrificing more of his own humanity doesn't get him any closer to the glory he longs for.

The world of Tokyo Ghoul is fundamentally unfair. Urie didn't deserve to lose his father, but it still happened, and it still haunts him. Even if it is true that Urie worked and sacrificed the most out of the Quinx Squad, that doesn't guarantee him anything. As he lies defeated on the floor, he runs through his list of all of the people he believes failed him, until the last of his selfish bravado fades away and he reveals that his true insecurity is feeling unwanted himself. He believes that Sasaki and everyone else see him as dead weight and that they'd be better off without him, so he simultaneously hates them and desperately tries to prove himself to them. It's a toxic mindset that makes him lash out at the people closest to him, which in this case turns out to be Mutsuki. For his part, Mutsuki is fully aware of his own fears and weaknesses, so he recognizes the same ones in Urie, who finally snaps out of his self-centered ramblings when he realizes that he just hurt his friend. In a beautiful gesture, Mutsuki at last unleashes his kagune, not to fight Urie, but to comfort him. The image of Mutsuki gently embracing Urie with his giant horrific appendages has to be one of the strongest that Tokyo Ghoul:re has given us so far.

Meanwhile, Juzo confronts Big Madam, the last specter of his own traumatic past. Madam turns out to be a surprisingly accurate portrait of an abuser. She first tries to appeal to Juzo's sentimentality as his former “caregiver,” implying that she loved him and just wants to be there for him again. When Juzo doesn't react to this at all, she does an immediate about-face and begins to berate him. She tries to break him down by saying that he wasn't special, that she was the only one who could have put up with him, and so on, but Juzo still doesn't give her the satisfaction of compassion or resentment or anything at all. He's long since been able to move past the awful things she did to him, thanks to good people like Shinohara and the support of his friends at the CCG. This confrontation isn't the big emotional climax of Juzo's story. This is him turning over the final page in this chapter of his life. Now only his scars are left, but his scars will not define him.

Moving on to more uplifting developments, it turns out Shirazu is actually pretty darn smart! He quickly figures out the gimmick behind Nutcracker's kagune traps and uses them against her. He also manages to convince the timid and stubborn Saiko to finally use her ghoul powers. We still don't know what they are exactly, but they pack one heck of a punch and outclass the rest of the Quinxes. Shirazu must then confront some of his own weaknesses in the aftermath of this battle. Nutcracker dies in classic Tokyo Ghoul fashion, with a sudden flashback to her childhood in a ploy to garner sympathy. It's a pretty cheap tactic, and it's not gonna work on me the umpteenth time that this story has done it, but it's consistent with Tokyo Ghoul's dedication to showing the moral grayness of its world and characters. The good in Nutcracker doesn't justify the horrible things she did, but that good is part of her nonetheless. Anyway, the impact all of this has on Shirazu is more important. He's briefly overcome with greed, since the defeat of high-ranking ghouls fetches a high price, so he rushes to finish her off. Her sudden display of vulnerability snaps him out of it and clearly makes him uncomfortable. He still has a good heart, but he's gonna have to grapple with the fact that ghouls are both monstrous and human, just like the CCG and just like him.

This brings us to the most troubled character of them all, Sasaki. He's gone through multiple identities over the course of this show, but the one constant in his life is getting the crap beaten out of him on a regular basis. This time it's Takizawa's turn to dole out the pain, from one half-ghoul experiment to another. His transformation into the Owl has done nothing to assuage his inferiority complex, and he's eager to prove himself the superior hybrid. Sasaki can barely keep up the fight, with most of his strength locked behind Kaneki's personality. We've already seen that handing the reins over to Kaneki could put even more people in danger, but Sasaki has run out of options to deal with the Owl's relentless assault. It's time for another trip into the far recesses of his mind, to that room where Kaneki passed the point of no return.

Sasaki wanted nothing more than to be able to live his life and forget about Kaneki, and maybe there's part of Kaneki that wanted that too. But life isn't that simple, and we can't just discard our pasts. Sasaki has no choice but to acknowledge Kaneki's existence, if for no other reason that Kaneki's legacy defines Sasaki's own. Takizawa singles out Sasaki because he's Kaneki, but Hina also tries to save Sasaki because he's Kaneki. Kaneki did many good things and bad things alike, but just because Sasaki can ignore them doesn't mean that other people have to do the same. Kaneki affected people simply by living. At the same time, Sasaki is not an empty vessel holding him prisoner. He's also has formed important bonds, created precious memories, and pursued his own desires. Both personalities have their weaknesses, fears, insecurities, loneliness, and trauma. Just as ghouls and humans cannot be separated in their messy complexity, Kaneki and Sasaki cannot boil each other down to anything less than two sides of one person with a complicated life.

So rather than succumbing to or shutting away Kaneki again, Sasaki chooses to protect him. The already muddy line between the two of them blurs further as they find the strength to fight back together. You can tell it's an important moment because the original OP “Unravel” begins to play in the background! I could complain about the way it kinda feels like :re is leaning on a crutch established by the stronger direction of the first two seasons, instead of carving out its own identity. But I won't complain, because the song is too good and too fitting for Sasaki/Kaneki's struggles. Even if this particular use of it isn't as impactful as previous examples, it still makes for a powerful scene. The battle ends as the episode does, but the outcome is uncertain. All I know is that the only healthy outcome will be for Sasaki and Kaneki to completely accept themselves as part of each other, if we ever reach such a conclusion.

Tokyo Ghoul is at its best when it's exploring the psychologies of its broken characters and their attempts to survive the cruelties the world forces onto them. Its endings are rarely happy, but its rare moments of kindness stand out against the backdrop of despair. Mutsuki's embrace of Urie struck me harder than any of the head-splitting, kagune-shattering, and ball-busting blows of the auction arc's dizzying myriad of battles. The war between humans and ghouls isn't settled, and perhaps it never will be, but as long as these characters can learn to help each other, there's moments of hope.

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