Tower of God - Episode 12 [Review]

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Kakushigoto - Episode 12 [Review]

After weeks of teasing disaster and despair, Kakushigoto finally pulls back the veil on its frame story and delivers a definitive conclusion for its father-daughter saga about manga artistry and dick jokes. Unlike prior episodes, this one takes place entirely in the somber flash-forward starring 18-year-old Hime, and even though it's a slight departure from the story's expected format and tonal variance, it feels appropriate. Kakushigoto has already spent so much time hyping up the mystery of its titular character's fate that there's no way it would've been able to squeeze something satisfying into just a minutes-long epilogue. That doesn't stop the finale from feeling a little bit strange, but on the other hand, we can all be thankful that Kōji Kumeta resisted the temptation to knock over his meticulously-arranged chessboard of character drama for one last spectacular goof. Instead, Kakushi and Hime find closure and a (mostly) secret-free path forward for their family.

Kumeta actually seems kind of embarrassed about how long he ended up stringing the audience along, based on how quickly he reveals all the narrative cards he was hiding. Hime is indeed Kakushi's real daughter. Kakushi himself was actually the illegitimate child. That only mattered because kabuki actors and traditional artists don't get along, apparently. His half-sister sent Hime the house key. His wife was lost at sea, and he could never fully accept that. He gave up on manga because his fans found out and thought that was weird. He's also not dead right now; he's just in a coma. And that's more or less it. All of this comes to light in the first five or so exposition-saturated minutes—more perfunctory than satisfying. The saving grace is that all these answers are pretty mundane and set the stage for the eventual reunion between Hime and her dad. Last-minute twists for the sake of it are difficult to pull off (and to be fair, Kakushigoto does try to pull a pretty big one that we'll get to shortly), so the way these naturally fizzle into the denouement is probably the best course it could have taken.

One issue I do rankle with is the valuation of blood relations, which is broached briefly when Hime's cousin reassures her that Kakushi is her “real” dad, to her vocalized relief. As a staunch appreciator of found families—especially those in some of my favorite anime series—I can't help but critique this small but nonetheless misguided focus on the “legitimacy” of their bond. Kakushi would have still been Hime's dad even if he had found her in a stalk of bamboo. This whole show was about the two of them taking care of each other, working through their problems, and celebrating the triumphs whenever they could, because they love each other. They're family!

The last-minute amnesia twist is also so shamelessly cloying that Kumeta can't help but lampoon himself yet again through the mouthpiece of Tomaruin. If I'm being charitable, I can accept it as symbolic of Kakushi's deep-seated reluctance to see Hime grow up and consequently learn the truth about his former occupation and passion. In reality as in fiction, there's a temptation for fathers in particular to infantilize their daughters. Thus, the key to Kakushi breaking through his amnesia is his acceptance that raising Hime and seeing her grow up into her own person was well worth working through his own discomfort and insecurity. That's both sweet and perceptive, but it's still tacked onto a cheap and cliché dramatic shortcut appended to the final ten minutes of the show.

Unsurprisingly, the tone of this episode is a lot more serious overall compared to its predecessors. However, buried just underneath the surface of the text is some of Kumeta's most quietly acerbic satire to be found in Kakushigoto, surfacing here as if he finally felt freed of the responsibility of sustaining cute father-daughter shenanigans. Most overt is the manner of Kakushi's accident, in which a man who tried to run away from the manga industry ends up hospitalized due to a pallet of manga falling on him. That's some tasty irony, but to take this one step further, the reason the pallet collapses is attributed to someone stealing a copy of Shonen Jump to leak to the internet. Many people (myself included) have at one point justified manga piracy to themselves, but here Kumeta doesn't mince any words about the harm it causes creators. While they might not be falling into conveniently tragic comas, there are plenty of other ways it hurts the people who, as Kakushigoto has frequently pointed out, don't have easy careers to begin with.

This finale in general doesn't paint a flattering portrait of the internet. A combination of tabloid journalism and vitriolic anonymous commenters dealt the final blow to Kakushi's ambitions of making people laugh. Granted, Kakushigoto doesn't (and couldn't) explore this facet with the intensity of something like Gatchaman Crowds, but it's not accidental that Kakushi's recovery—both from amnesia and from his manga block—stems from time spent together with people who care about him. Hime triggers his memories with a decidedly low-tech cardboard box full of musty manuscripts. It's a callback to the boxes her mother left for her, but it also shows the importance of the in-person interpersonal warmth Kakushi has been able to foster in spite of himself.

Ultimately, what works best in this finale is what has always worked best for Kakushigoto: the small and sincere moments shared between people who care about each other amidst their rampant wackiness. Whether it's Hime's classmates banding together for one last detective job, or Kakushi's former assistants dutifully drawing pages for a series that ended years ago, the bonds they've all forged transcend any attempt at secrecy. It adds up to a safe yet satisfying conclusion. Personally, in my heart of hearts, I'm always going to hold Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei as the paradigm of Kōji Kumeta manga and adaptations, but Kakushigoto was a nice change of pace and a relaxing companion for stressful times. I look forward to whatever Kumeta moves onto next with a mixture of anticipation and fear for the unmined depths of pun-making he can still unearth.

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Listeners - Episode 12 [Review]

Here we have it, the big finale of Listeners, and like any sci-fi action series made after 2000, it's got to go out on a big emotional confrontation where the fate of the world hinges on magical robot powers that let enemies and allies alike understand eachother for the first time. At least this time the robot magic is also tied to music, which is actually a pretty good vehicle for facilitating empathy and one of the few times the show has managed to harmonize its musical aesthetic with its broader themes. Still, at this point it definitely feels like the story going through the motions of what's expected for it. There are still some buried gems in the dialogue – Roz gets probably the best line of the whole show when Denka starts to call Echo the second-coming of Jimi: “It's nothing so grand. All he did was express what was in his heart, and the world chose all by itself to be moved by it.” It's a perfect encapsulation about the act of making music, how it can be at once personal and powerfully external, and I came out of the climax really wishing those feelings had really been at the center of this story and conflict.

As is, Listeners' conclusion mostly serves as an object lesson in spoiled potential. There are multiple monologues and speeches during Mu and Echo's big confrontation that try to tie a bow on the questions of understanding, hope, and love that have been thrown around across the show's runtime, but through most of them I kept asking “wait, is that what you were trying to be about?” as the show seemed to self-assuredly wrap up on the sentiment of not labeling others and reaching out to learn who they really are. It's certainly not a bad moral to build your show around, but through the sprawling, cluttered stories Listeners has told that only ever felt like one of its many philosophical toys it would bring out when it wanted to add weight to its rock'n'roll robot dystopia.

And then there's Track 13, which makes up the back-half of this finale so we can double up on Beatles references, and tries to be a happy epilogue where Humans and Earless now live in harmony and everyone gets a new beginning, but also serves to throw in two very random twists that I cannot wrap my head around. The first is easily the dumbest, with the reveal that Lyde and Richie were alive the whole time and just off camera some where. It's a bizarre joke to end Nir's arc with, and pulls the rug out of what was one of the more emotionally effecting beats in the whole story. I get they didn't want to leave Nir alone and mourning when everyone else gets a happy ending, but there had to be a better way to go about it.

The other twist comes in the form of that elf looking kid in the review image, who looks so much like a fusion of Echo and Mu I initially thought that what they were. But the final post-credits scene assures us that our protagonists are alive and distinct, going on yet another adventure together, and they certainly haven't aged enough to have a kid either. Going by a blink-and-you'll-miss-it bit in the climax I've got to assume that's the new form of Listeners, now that Mu's own personality has split off entirely, and I guess they get to start a new life coexisting with humans just like the other Earless. If that is the case, that's a real baffling way to conclude an already underdeveloped storyline, and making the delivery so vague just leaves me scratching my head rather than soaking in the good vibes of your happy ending. In all, these final scenes are just a strange, discordant note to go out on for the series.

So that's where I stand on the finale, but what about Listeners as a whole? Well...ok. I have made my fair share of musical puns and metaphors throughout Listeners' run, and I'm proud of every last terrible one of them, but there's a particular comparison I've been trying to hold off on until the show could play out its tracklist. It's not a damning comparison, nor a particularly kind one altogether, but having finished the show I think it's entirely fitting. Plus the show starts with an Oasis reference and ends on TWO Beatles name drops, so really it's inviting this:

Listeners is the Be Here Now of anime.

If you've watched this show for this long I assume that comparison makes sense to you, but for those who only know Oasis from the Eden of the East OP, Be Here Now is the band's 3rd full-length album and widely considered the bomb that took them from the biggest name in rock music to a faded memory of the mid-90's. While on the whole it's not a terrible album, it's a work defined by pretentious of grandiosity being undercut by a vapid, vacuous lack of real sentiment; an LP that intends to be profound but in the end feels too soupy and disjointed to achieve it. It's also littered with an embarrassing amount of Beatles references that only serve to remind you of much better songs you could be listening to instead of “Magic Pie.” And I don't even like The Beatles that much.

In much the same way, Listeners feels like a show too smothered by its influences and inspirations to ever say anything of its own. For all that it's slathered in broad and deep cuts of rock history, it ends up feeling like a cover version of its obvious sci-fi anime forebears, and only rarely manages to pull something unique from its mix of mech and music. As much as seeing anime-tastic versions of iconic musicians tickled my brain, it also left me wanting in a big way when it came down to what the show wanted to say. What made so many of the musical acts that Listeners name-drops so memorable was that their art had a sharp, personal, often intentionally counterculture sentiment behind it, and that never really shows up here. In the end it's not a bad show – the stories are mostly entertaining, and if you get a kick out of rock history in-jokes there's plenty to be found to amuse you – but I left wanting something, anything more.

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Wave, Listen to Me! - Episode 12 [Review]

So this is how Wave, Listen to Me! ends: Not with a bang…but a 6.8 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Hokkaido! Yes, dear viewers, the show opted to end the season in a surprisingly grand fashion, showcasing everyone on the MRS team at their best as they work together to use the power of radio to unite the island and bring some peace of mind in times that are both literally and metaphorically darker than anyone expected. This isn't about tragedy, or death, and it doesn't even feel like a cheap grab at the real world earthquake disaster that is still a fresh wound in the minds of the whole Japanese populace. It's just a simple story with stakes that are a little bit bigger than normal, and it's all about how radio is a tool that can be used for truly extraordinary purposes when the time calls for it.

So, with those lofty and emotional ambitions established, how on earth did “I Want to Convey It To You” end up as such a letdown of a finale for an otherwise stellar and refreshing series? I'd seen rumblings that the season was going for something of an anime original conclusion already, mind you, so I was prepared for Wave to maybe pass over a couple of plot threads on its way to putting a bow on what might be its only run of episodes. Don't get me wrong, either, as an individual morsel of calculated pathos, “I Want to Convey It to You” works well enough, and if this was the penultimate chapter of the season or something I'm sure it would go down nicely. As the show's final and theoretically most emphatic statement of purpose, though? This episode is weak sauce, man, there's no way around it, even if this isn't anime original material.

My misgivings are all tied up in the way the episode both seems determined to address all of the plot threads its laid out across the past eleven episodes, while simultaneously failing to do anything remotely interesting with any of them. Take Makie for example: At the beginning of the episode, we see that she has actually been using the alias “Joker Stonsky” to work as a contributor to a radio program at HCB, which I presume is a rival station to MRS, which is significant because…well, I'm not sure, to be honest. There are a lot of things to infer, naturally, mainly to do with the romantic rivalry she shares with Minare, and she outright says that she's doing the work as an act of rebellion via independence, something that is hers and hers alone. That's all well and good, but I'm flummoxed as to why the show would include a plot thread like this in such a half-assed manner, only to completely forget about it once the earthquake hits. After that, Makie and Nakahara's cute bonding gets routed into turning Voyager into a makeshift soup kitchen for locals. Again, it's fine, but it all feels decidedly random.

Then there's Mizuho, whose angst over Kureko's imminent departure has been a stopping point across the last few episodes. Here, we get a bit more texture when we learn that a lecture of Kureko's is what got Mizuho interested in being a station assistant director to begin with, and then there's lots of her fretting over whether to pursue her “dream” of working with Kureko on her own show. After weeks of kind-of building this character arc up, the climax that Wave gives us is…Mizuho working up the nerve to just ask Kureko to work with her, which he says he will in his own curmudgeonly way. So, yeah, an incredibly minor crisis was capped off with an incredibly minor resolution.

”Okay,” I can hear you all saying, “Sure, but Wave was never the best at juggling a bunch of plot threads at once, especially in its back half. Surely, though, Minare and Kanetsugu get a worthy send off?” That, my poor hypothetical reader, is where I will have to disappoint you the most, because they really don't. Now, there is good stuff here, once the cool and collected Kanetsugu has to walk the panicky Minare through the routine emergency broadcast procedures. I liked the way Minare has to balance her anxious word vomit with her responsibilities as someone with broadcasting capability in an earthquake/blackout emergency. I liked how Minare didn't suddenly fall into her destiny as The Ultimate Local Hokkaidan Entertainment Personality when the chips were down; Chishiro had to step in to provide the measure of genuine authority that Minare doesn't quite project yet. I even kind of liked Kanetsugu turning on his Hardass Mode to keep Minare functional when things got crazy, (though someone maybe ought to let him know that it's 2020, man, and Minare doesn't need to have “balls” to be capable).

As a one-and-done after-school special sort of affair, this stuff works. It just makes for a lame finale to a whole season's worth of stories and development. We don't get any of the program's wacky visualization, we don't get to hear Minare interacting with her audience in a more personalized and non-earthquake-focused manner, and hell, the scene doesn't even work terribly well as a signifier that Minare has taken her first big step into a weird new career, even if it just the first of many. The best the show can do is have Mianre reflect on how amazing and powerful radio is at, like, bringing people together, man, and that she's more determined than ever to make her mark. We get not one, but two different treacly pop-song montages over scenes of the Hokkaidans making it through the night, and of Minare committing herself to radio once and for all.

I don't know how else to say this: It's corny as hell. Wave, Listen to Me! has been a lot of things over its twelve-episode run. It's been brash, bizarre, inventive, oddly touching, and frequently hilarious, sure, but more than anything, it's been honest. No matter how wacky or warped Minare's worldview painted things, this show, to me, has been about empathizing with Minare, and enjoying the ups-and-downs that come from starting a new and unpredictable chapter in one's life (oh, and bear fights! Wave has been about bear fights, too). The point is, for all of the things this finale did well, it's the first time I felt I could see all of the turning cogs and dancing strings holding the story together. It felt manipulative, albeit in a somewhat muted sense, and dishonest. Does that negate all of the wonderful things the series did in its best moments? Hardly. It's just a bummer of a note to go out on.

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Ouran High School Host Club - Episodes 7-8 [Review]

I like when shows like Ouran High School Host Club, which revel in playing with their stock genre setups, arrive at the ‘obligatory’ swimsuit episode, since I get to revel right back by calling attention to it. So what better joy can there be here for me than Ouran actually having two swimsuit episodes, in a row, which line up directly with this week's review block? At last, the multi-episode synergy benefits the analysis of the reviewer! What's that, they're actually wildly different from each other in intent and tone? I'm ruined!

Seriously though, that just means there's plenty to ruminate on across both these episodes despite their superficially similar subject matter. Episode 7 sees the Host Club take a day off for themselves to relax at a cutting-edge resort waterpark, owned by Kyoya's family in one of several links these episodes do share. They go for the most obvious gag fuel first: the Hitachiin twins conspiring to try to get Haruhi into a feminine swimsuit, and Tamaki interfering as his own conflicted feelings on the matter manifest. Since their turn a couple episodes ago made clear the bros might have more serious romantic designs on Haruhi apart from their usual playful flirting, it seems Tamaki has adjusted to regarding them as an actual threat to his own intentions. Oddly, this makes him come across as more sincerely protective of Haruhi from their overt lascivious intent, though his newfound couching of such concerns in acting as her ‘Daddy’ is more than a little off-putting in its own way. It's still funny, because Mamoru Miyano doing anything this ridiculous is always funny and Tamaki continues to not be taken seriously at all. But it still does so in that mid-2000's shoujo way that makes me side-eye how far some of these jokes might go.

Tamaki's not the main event though, as this is ostensibly a focal episode for Honey and Mori, the two club members still pending any development at all. And this episode actually delivers on that need in pretty much the best ways I could have asked it to. Honey has been a complete enigma to me, as I question how much of his childlike persona is as much of a projection as the other boys' character types, obfuscated as it is by the vagueness of his actual age. But the same kinds of depths behind his presentation start coming to the surface here, indicating that he's well aware of his own cute kid nature and how to play it up, and showing that he's very capable of taking care of himself. Mori, for his part, gets some decent development vis-à-vis his loyalty to Honey and how the other characters explain it.

I'm honestly not 100% down with the supposed explanation that Mori is obligatorily deferential to Honey due to his family's past of servitude, but at least Haruhi seems to agree with me on that one. That makes it somewhat sweeter when he assists Haruhi out of what seems to be the same kind of generalized loyalty to his friends. So there's a lot of digging still to be done on Mori's character, but Honey's childlike earnestness still seems to come through in a real way. Despite some odder ins and outs detailing his and Mori's relationship, I dug his appreciable demeanor towards his much taller friend. Honey is a good example of why I've been hoping so hard that Ouran would add more nuance and layers to its characters, since that gives me more reasons to enjoy watching them. Plus there's a scene this episode where Honey single-handedly beats up a bunch of cops. So I might have a new favorite.

The implications of Ouran's relationship developments are decidedly messier to parse in the eighth episode, which takes a suggestion by Haruhi from that previous one and runs with it all the way to a real beach (also owned by Kyoya). This one also sees the club actually performing their hostly duties while lounging around in swimwear, and it's always a delight to be reminded of Haruhi's complete inability to turn her natural swag off. That does dovetail into the overarching conflict this episode, beginning with the boys trying to discover if the perpetually-unflappable Haruhi actually has anything that can distress her, and halfway through turns to... them scolding Haruhi for forgetting the inherent weaknesses she has as a female? Oy.

The one pass I can give Ouran on this plotline is I can't be certain the narrative itself is admonishing Haruhi or if it's just a way to put the guys' regressive views on display. We're still in the single-digit episodes after all, and this series has been nothing but clear about how glacially its character development is actually going to occur. Yet there's a thread of understanding their worries, regardless, in how the story is told, as Haruhi's badass moment of rushing in to save some Host Club guest girls from drunken molesters is kneecapped by her struggling against them and comments about her lack of musculature. A gag series like this, especially one that's already played plenty with the ideas of gender presentation, is kind of the last place I was expecting a cheap intonation of the supposed immutable differences between sexes. Half an hour ago I watched a three-foot-tall kid kick the crap out of a SWAT team, and here everyone's admonishing Haruhi because there's no way a girl could win a fight? I don't buy it.

It doesn't help that the storyline causes dudes like Honey or the twins to start guilting Haruhi like callous jerks, or, in the case of Kyoya, swerve straight into Shoujo dangerous-bad-boy mode. His momentary assault of Haruhi is some serious whiplash in a show that previously never approached that level of seriousness. It does get walked back in a way that effectively reminds us of Haruhi's true strength in being able to genuinely read people, making clear to us anyway that her rushing in was not about ignoring the worries of the Host Club but instead a sign of her trust in them. And I can't argue with this series injecting more drama into characters when I've spent so much time asking for it; indeed, I'm more interested in what's actually making Kyoya tick than I ever have been. But it might have been too much too soon in an episode that was already pushing how it treated Haruhi.

What I can praise episode 8 on is its last-minute development of Tamaki, who not only owns up to being wrong about any gender limitations he accused Haruhi of, but acknowledges the singular life she's lived until now as the real explanation for her attitude and interactions with the group. It's an impressive moment of growth because we can see him starting to interface with Haruhi's philosophy of understanding people as individuals apart from any socially-constructed signifiers. If Ouran is going to attempt a serious romantic thread before its end, then Tamaki's always been the obvious choice for the endgame just going off all his promotional positioning. But this moment between him and Haruhi at the end of this episode was the first place I got the feeling such a thing might actually work. Far from hinting at the potential for character development, this gave me hope for how much the show could pull it off. Plus, it still showed off its comic chops at this early stage by undercutting things and making Tamaki look like a doofus. I could watch them dunk on that guy all day.

So we get an episode with Ouran's comedic ability still on fine display, which throws in some solid character work for the last two main boys that needed it. But then it attempts more nuanced analysis that may not be ready for prime-time at this moment. I can't fault the show for being ambitious, but it's frustrating when those ambitions lead it down a path that undercuts the strengths I so enjoyed about it until now. Trying to put its cast through an emotional wringer while still having silly snake jokes and crab puns perhaps shows a skewing of priorities so early in the series as we are.

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Tower of God - Episode 12 [Review]

I didn't think the penultimate episode of Tower of God would have me clamoring for Crunchyroll to redesign their website but here we are. “Underwater Hunt (Part Two)” ought to have concluded on a shocking cliffhanger, but I knew ages in advance that Rachel was up to no good. Even if I hadn't read some of the original webtoon the show is based on, and even if I wasn't on social media, I would still see the comments under each Tower of God video wishing ill on Rachel in increasingly colorful language. Now that it turns out that all Rachel did to deserve this vitriol was one extremely-telegraphed yeet, I'm sitting here wondering, “Why does Crunchyroll even have a comments section?” People call them the “Netflix of Anime” but just imagine what kind of hellhole a Netflix comments section would be. YouTube has comments to be sure, but they're not a place I'd like to spend a lot of time. However, my dashed expectations at the end are only a small part of the experience this week, an action-packed episode that crams in everything and the kitchen sink.

While each episode of Tower of God has been nonstop, this one took it up a notch. Every character we've met so far (and a few that we haven't) played a role this week. This episode never lets up as it switches between multiple high-stakes situations, which themselves are cliffhangers from last week. Rak continues to torment Paracule with his gung-ho personality, making for an entertaining interlude between more serious beats. Khun manages to game the wildly complicated system by pitting the earthpigs against the barnacle goblins and their wetworms—proving that an exam with this many different aggressors has an obvious loophole. But when a family member of Khun's shows up, it's a realization that even our resident strategist can't account for all of the Tower's unexpected twists. In this fast-paced anime we're only getting a taste of this world's internal politics, but there are so many factions with differing motivations that even Hansung Yu and Lero-Ro can't agree on how to administer this exam.

One thing that Hansung Yu is weirdly cool with: Ren (aka the evil riceball) running amok in the testing site and putting out hits on various contestants. By controlling the eldritch abomination known as the Bull, he's decided to take out the “imposters” Anaak and Endorsi, ostensibly on the orders of King Jahad. He offers Endorsi the chance to redeem herself by killing Anaak, but in a surprisingly sweet about-face, Endorsi instead invites Anaak to have lunch with her when this is all over. It was just a few episodes ago that these two were fighting each other pointlessly—neither girl willing to put aside her pride to avoid serious injuries. The power of friendship doesn't magically defeat Ren, but a fellow princess does. Lady Yuri finally returns to the testing area twelve episodes after her first appearance and proceeds to absolutely wreck the dude. We don't know much about Lady Yuri aside from the fact that she seems to be invincible as well as not subject to the rules in the same way as everyone else—the perfect ally for our protagonist Irregular and his team of what are now traitors for assisting him.

Speaking of traitors… Rachel took all of Bam's puppy-dog loyalty and literally pushed it away. It turns out she could walk the whole time; she was just holding onto that ability to increase the element of surprise. I get that this is supposed to really make me hate Rachel, but it's been a long time coming—though I'm not sure if it's the fans' constant disparagement or her multiple-episode coldness toward Bam that has fed that suspicion more. From using a fake name to avoid Bam, to commenting that she found Bam weak and annoying even during the honeymoon phase of their relationship, to quietly acknowledging but not reciprocating Bam's constant words of praise and affection… well, the writing has been on the wall that She's Just Not That Into You, Bam. Compared to the cluster of betrayals that occurred in episode 9, this wasn't such a shock. But even if it wasn't a huge surprise, the show did a great job using its impactful closing music to give additional pathos to the moments following the push. Hopefully this will encourage Bam to finally move on and find his own reason to climb the Tower. But, looking at how much hatred webtoon readers have for Rachel, I'm going to say probably not.

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