One Piece - Episode 847 [Review]

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One Piece - Episode 847 [Review]

┏┓

┃┃╱╲ In this

┃╱╱╲╲ house

╱╱╭╮╲╲ we love

▔▏┗┛▕▔ & appreciate

╱▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔╲

Charlotte Pudding

╱╱┏┳┓╭╮┏┳┓ ╲╲

▔▏┗┻┛┃┃┗┻┛▕▔

Before we get ahead of ourselves, however, the Big Mom chase rages on as usual. Nothing can stop Big Mom from chasing that delicious (nonexistent) wedding cake, not even being blown into the ground by a giant lightning bolt. The Straw Hats stop, thinking they must have slowed her down, only to hear her thumping footsteps as she walks through the crater walls like they're made of cardboard. By this point, most of the audience is probably tired sick of hearing her scream "wedding cake!!!" over and over again in a half-conscious tantrum, but each successive example of how ludicrously unstoppable she is gives me goosebumps.

Some progress is made elsewhere since Brook and Chopper have secured the submarine and arrived at the Thousand Sunny only to discover the enemy on board. Katakuri and Perospero are watching from the side for now, but the action scene with the smaller grunts looks fantastic. There's something really exciting about seeing Brook and Chopper, two of the more scaredy-cat members of the crew, fail to miss a beat in taking the enemy head on. The adrenaline is rushing through their veins and the rest of the crew is counting on them to keep the ship safe, so their decision to go head first into the fight is awesome. This sequence makes for a great companion to the better-looking scene from last week.

From there we reach the next significant development in the story, with Pudding and Chiffon flying into the middle of the chase and begging Sanji to help bake the cake that will calm Big Mom down. We've already learned by now that Pudding is a flustered mess around Sanji, but only now that she's actually confronting him again do we meet hyper-tsundere Pudding, flip-flopping between blushing adoration and throat-slitting villainy.

In a stroke of happenstance, I actually prefer how this reveal got spaced out in the anime. In the manga her feelings for Sanji leading up to this moment were split between two cliffhangers: one showing "good" Pudding and one showing "evil" Pudding. The reveal that she's still juggling her evil side is a lot funnier when it comes all at once like this, because it's so comically futile. Normally tsunderes act mean because they want to hide their true feelings, but Pudding's already vomited hers for the world to see and now it's just damage control. "It's not like I didn't want you to die or anything!" What's the point of saying that?! Everybody just saw you talking about how great he is two seconds ago!

Pudding really strikes a nerve with me. Despite the cartoonishness of her personality, I find her incredibly sympathetic. She's spent her entire life playing a character for everybody else, only truly existing in her own head, and now the facade is broken and she can't go back to the way things were anymore. Anything that isn't the raw id-fueled acceptance of another person (which Sanji can offer in spades) just feels like loneliness to her now. I have a love-hate relationship with tsunderes, but I like how this cuts straight to what I've always believed was the most relatable aspect of the trope—it's reaction-formation, a conditioned hatred of your own feelings. I also like how Chiffon gets to play the straight man act opposite her. They have this entire plan to calm Big Mom, and she'll be damned if she lets Pudding get in her own way!

This tsundere-twist is definitely not for everybody—many will be disappointed that this is the destination of a character who was the secondary antagonist of the arc not too long ago. To me, the tsundere thing feels like a deliberately sensationalist spin with the intention of pushing the trope to its logical extreme and bending it into a new shape as a result. I always got the sense that the author sees a human being underneath her wackiness, and the audience is given every opportunity under the sun to understand her situation and feelings despite appearances, which is frankly a very Eiichiro Oda way of telling a story.

So the Straw Hats may be closing in on their ship, but the battle isn't ending any time soon. The argument that Chiffon and Pudding make is that the crew would have no way out of Big Mom's territory even if they could make it to sea. Big Mom is just that good at finding and killing people. Their only course of survival is to hold the fort and wait for Sanji and the girls to bake the most delicious wedding cake in the world, praying that it gives the crew a chance to skedaddle. This episode is the feeling of taking another deep breath to hold. We were so close to victory and now an entire cake has to be made while we twiddle our thumbs and hope the rest of the cast doesn't die.

And I am here for it.

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One Piece - Episode 843 [Review]

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One Piece - Episode 843 [Review]

At long last, it's time for the Luffy/Capone/Caesar alliance to come to an end. They may have failed to kill Big Mom, but they succeeded in knocking down her castle (an accident) and pissing her off (hey, what can you do?) so Capone's ready to cut his losses and call it a day. The Big Mom pirates are furious and on the hunt, so they only have so much time to escape the territory completely. Sadly, this is also Caesar Clown's final appearance in this arc, concluding his multi-hundred episode long saga as the Straw Hats' resident hostage/bargaining chip. His final gag is to hang out in the background, shouting goodbye and hoping somebody somewhere will care that he's gone.

I care, Caesar. I care.

The Big Mom pirates were able to survive the fall off the chateau thanks to Streusen's food powers that turn the Whole Cake Chateau into an actual cake so that people can land on soft bread and frosting. However, food produced by the Cook-Cook Fruit apparently doesn't taste good enough for Big Mom's liking, and in the rubble of her fallen castle all she can do is lament the loss of that wedding cake she was craving for at the ceremony—the one that Luffy busted with his grand entrance. Mom's "hunger pangs" were established early in the arc, and the combo of those and her seething rage toward the Straw Hats as she hits a furious withdrawal and topples the nearest city screaming "wedding cake!!!" over and over again. Her children have a lot to worry about between killing the Straw Hats and stopping Mom from killing them.

After spending the past few months on top of the bright, confectionary-themed chateau, it's refreshing to see the green grass and trees again now that we're back on the ground floor. This episode's greatest strength is that we're finally entering a new phase of the story, with new settings and goals. That doesn't mean that our heroes are anywhere close to done with Big Mom and her family, but there's still something bittersweet about parting ways with our allies nonetheless. There's a lot of good comedy that comes with the end of the Straw Hat/Firetank partnership too, like Capone putting up a "Straw Hats went that way -->" sign in a last ditch attempt to get the Big Mom family off his heels.

The weakness of this episode is that somewhere along the way we slipped back out of the one-chapter-per-episode pace, so a lot of the runtime gets taken up with Big Mom's kids standing around talking, and the fate of Charlotte Opera, who was sent to try and calm Mom down in the midst of her rampage, is left for next week. If you were an anime-only watcher, then you'd likely be confused as to why the Straw Hats are now free to escape Big Mom's territory without any more fighting. Like, really? That's it? The faster the show can get us to the the Straw Hats' next concrete goal on WCI, the better.

This is a serviceable episode if ever there was one. Entering a new phase of the arc can be a little exciting, but it also comes with new challenges. The gimmick of Whole Cake Island moving forward is a giant chase with Big Mom herself, so we're going to hear her shout "wedding cake!" a deathly number of times. It's about to get very old, very fast. However, the focus on story flow and momentum in this part of the arc is incredible, and I'm looking forward to seeing it be adapted, janky pacing and all.

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One Piece - Episode 842 [Review]

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One Piece - Episode 842 [Review]

It's starting to become tradition that every major One Piece arc will have that one mysterious character detail that remains a painful tease and nothing more. In Dressrosa it was Doflamingo's eyes, and in Whole Cake Island it's Judge's eyebrows. Big Mom dropped the thunderbolt on Judge's face and cracked his helmet wide open, but its contents are still covered in shadows, leaving all my theories up in the air. I'm still pretty sure that his eyebrows are massive and bushy, with six swirls on each side (Get it? Germa "66"?), but it looks increasingly likely that we may never find out. Perhaps it never really mattered to begin with.

Anyway, this episode suffers from a lack of polish. The first half continues to be action-heavy (still adding embellishments on top of the original manga material) but there's a notable lack of detail in most of the drawings. There manage to be some stand-out moments of animation sandwiched between the endless reaction shots of characters hanging out on the sidelines, but it's an awkward mishmash of good and bad, both aesthetically and pacing-wise. Right up until the big scenery change at the end, this episode gets bogged down by a lot of meaningless noise. If you want to see the Vinsmokes and the non-Katakuri members of Big Mom's family get some more time to shine, the anime has you covered, but the content can still get boring.

That said, a major scene I forgot to mention in the last review was the continuing adventures of the Tamate Box, the bomb-rigged chest that Mom was hoping to open during her daughter's wedding. It ended up in the hands of Du Feld, one of Big Mom's guests, but before he could open it and discover its "treasures", he was slain by Stussy, who turned out to be a double agent working for the government's CP-0 group this whole time. And before she could open the box, it began tumbling down the side of the Whole Cake Chateau. I think this episode does a good job getting our protagonists to an emotional low point, with Big Mom crushing the Vinsmokes effortlessly and her kids successfully capturing Luffy and Sanji just as Katakuri's Haki alerts him of the falling box. We've been anticipating this bomb going off for months, and once it hits the ground it creates an explosion much bigger than expected; it takes a big chunk out of the chateau, and Big Mom's entire castle begins to fall.

There's real joy to be had in seeing the tables turn in our heroes' favor so drastically and unexpectedly. The chateau falling will take at least another episode to play out, but the excitement in Capone's demented laughter once he realizes he may have won is infectious, and it's cool to see the camera cut between all the various rooms we've visited throughout the arc being destroyed. You can only imagine how dumbfounded the Big Mom pirates must be as they topple and roll off the side of the building. Luffy's "gift" from all those years ago paid off tremendously, and this final sequence was enough to elevate the whole episode for me.

This set piece flings the entire cast into the air to fall thousands of feet, bringing the adventurous spirit that this arc has desperately needed. We're doing away with Big Mom's tea party and moving to the ground level where the Straw Hats will have a renewed chance to book it towards the sea now that their goals have been re-accomplished. Honestly, the next episode could spend most of its runtime in midair with the heroes and villains still falling, and I'd still probably have a good time. That scope and whimsy are the shot in the arm I needed.

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Food Wars! The Third Plate - Episode 24 [Review]

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Food Wars! The Third Plate - Episode 24 [Review]

What a place to end the season! Yes, we have every reason now to be hopeful that the Rebels will ultimately carry the day, and seeing Isshiki proved right about Nene's defeat at Soma's hands is very satisfying, but when you get right down to it, the season ended at the climax of the storyline we've been following for two cours now. It's not like we can't just pick up the manga and see what happens next, but if you're not a manga reader, it could feel like you've just been screwed out of the conclusion of this story.

I do think that Nene's ultimate defeat is, almost more than Isshiki's victory over Jurio, the biggest indicator of why Azami's theories are flawed. Jurio's overwhelming ego definitely helped him lose, but the real problem for Nene is that she was unable to think outside the box. While that's absolutely become a cliché at this point, it remains true that things that don't move stagnate – look at a still pond and watch its deterioration over time until it can no longer serve as a viable water source. That's what's happening with Nene (and presumably other Central members) – a lack of change is making their water unpalatable. Because no matter how classic a recipe, tastes do fluctuate over time; look up a recipe from fifty years ago and think about whether or not you find the upper-crust cuisine of those days appetizing. I don't know about you, but “jelly salad” sounds pretty grim to me.

Of course, this isn't quite that extreme, and Nene's base recipe would have worked out under normal circumstances. But her inability to think of new ways to do things is still what did her in. She's from a restaurant family just like Soma, but her training didn't teach her about the need to adjust to your environment on the fly, or even to just make changes based on an allergy or something. Soma's diner work did, so he immediately notices that the size and temperature of the competition venue will affect his final product. As Isshiki says, the minute soba was chosen as the topic for the shoukugeki, Nene was sunk, because he knew she'd just do as she'd always done and never make the needed adjustments for a new environment. It's not that her resultant dish wasn't good, but it wasn't up to the standard needed to wow judges from the World Gourmet Organization, a group that's certainly not following Azami's theories about cooking.

Significant plot wrap-up aside, this episode does leave our characters in a decent place. I love seeing how Akira is part of Alice's crew now, and it's nice to see that he's largely pleased with things even if he'll never admit it. Isshiki's finally stopped hiding behind his joviality and emerged as a force to be reckoned with, and Erina's this close to accepting that she actually does like Soma. The Polaris kids have really pulled together and brought new people into their fold, and that unity stands to be another one of their weapons going forward, because I get the feeling that the current Elite Ten isn't particularly close as friends, which robs them of the weapons of solidarity Isshiki whipped out last week. This episode is also good for its tasty-looking dishes and foodgasms; although the latter aren't particularly extreme, Anne's soba mermaid is fun, and we do get another glimpse of the Soma Chicks from the cour's start. I'm not thrilled with Nene's part in the foodgasm, screaming as her clothes are torn off, but at least this sort of thing has become much less prevalent as the series has gone on.

And that's it – season's done! It isn't nearly as satisfying as it could have been given a couple more episodes, but it does feel like an okay place to put the show on hold. As long as we get another season announced at some point, we can wait. In the meantime, the manga's out there in case you can't wait for the next plate to arrive.

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Tokyo Ghoul:re - Episode 10 [Review]

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Tokyo Ghoul:re - Episode 10 [Review]

Each season of Tokyo Ghoul spent its last collection of episodes steadily building dread as each of its characters race toward an inevitable bloody climax. Tokyo Ghoul:re has proven to be no different. The Tsukiyama family's last stand only begins in the final moments of this week's episode, but everything beforehand has lent our characters enough pathos to ensure that the outcome of the battle is going to be tragic.

We begin with the wild card for the upcoming fight, who turns out to be Kanae of all people. Shu's most loyal devotee screwed up when he asked Aogiri Tree for help, and his punishment is delivered by Eto. Despite her big role in the previous season, Eto's stayed in the background for much of :re, so it's nice to see her up front and active in the story again. Her “temptation” of Kanae drips with biblical references, down to her holding an apple the entire time, and while in another story this might stand out as too blunt and shlocky, it fits perfectly into Tokyo Ghoul's overall tone of no half-measures. In what's now an all-too-familiar pattern for this story, Kanae's positive emotions, his love and devotion to Shu, are corrupted and twisted into fuel for hatred, jealousy, and wanton murder. His love is certainly one-sided (Shu doesn't mention Kanae once this episode), but that doesn't mean Shu doesn't care about him, and it doesn't mean that killing Sasaki will help him win Shu over (it would almost certainly do the opposite). However, it does fit Eto's agenda to catch Sasaki. Kanae hasn't been the most sympathetic character this season, but he deserves better than being mutilated at Eto's whims. The final scene of him kneeling wordlessly like a doll in Eto's garishly colored world makes for one of :re's most striking images.

Elsewhere, the Quinx Squad finally don their ghoul disguises to gather intel for the upcoming battle, but the main story is the continuation of Shirazu's arc. The girl in the hospital is indeed his younger sister Haru, who suffers from some kind of kagune-like infection on her face. His entire reason for joining the CCG is to earn enough money to take care of her, and it's probably also the reason why he did something as risky as becoming a Quinx. As selfless as his motivations are, his actions have come with their own high cost. He has a repeat of his short conversation with Sasaki, this time with Fura, but Fura elaborates that agonizing over killing Nutcracker isn't necessarily a bad thing. It just means he's human and still possesses a sound heart and mind. He also acknowledges something that we haven't seen many other investigators talk about—that ghouls are people, which means they're taking a life when they kill ghouls. Otherwise, he doesn't have any better advice than just saying it gets easier with time, which is sobering even if (perhaps especially if) it is true. And if we look at the kind of investigators who make up most of the CCG, most aren't like the empathetic Shirazu. The most successful ones share the bloodstained grimace of Kijima as he tortures and kills for no reason, or the mysterious grin of Ihei as she gets ready to cut down dozens of ghoul grunts. I don't want Shirazu to look like that, but I don't know if there's a different future waiting for him at the CCG. Nevertheless, Shirazu commits to continue helping his sister and even gets an Important Haircut™ to commemorate the occasion.

Meanwhile, Sasaki continues to unravel. Disguising himself as the Eyepatch Ghoul seems to hit him uncomfortably close, and he can't help but dig into any possible leads to figure out who he was before he became Sasaki. Amon's name finally comes up, and we finally see a Kaneki wracked with guilt over killing Amon at the end of last season. Sasaki doesn't want to accept his past, but he's also reached the point where he knows that he'll eventually have to remember and deal with the consequences of his actions. He's stuck in a horrible double-bind, knowing that he's Kaneki but not wanting to give up the life he's made for himself as Sasaki. Ideally, he wants to remember everything on his own terms, but I doubt Tokyo Ghoul will be so kind. As much as he wants the old Kaneki back, Shu painfully realizes that the few pleasurable days they spent together are forever in the past, even if he does return somehow. Sasaki already resembles Kaneki too much for Shu to do anything to hurt him by bringing his memories back.

For Akira's part, she has too much of a vested interest in keeping Kaneki's memories suppressed to help, but she cares too deeply for Sasaki not to hug him as he breaks down in front of her. She's hugging the person who killed her old partner, but the moment is beautiful and genuine in a way that speaks to how effectively Tokyo Ghoul builds to these emotional climaxes, even when the plot surrounding them is labyrinthine. The real MVP of the episode, however, is Natsuki Hanae's heartwrenching voice acting, injecting his scenes with all of the desperation and sadness that's been building in Sasaki since he first woke up to his past identity.

I can't believe how much this show has made me care about Shu and his family. He almost seems like a completely different character than the guy we met in the first two seasons, but this fits :re's larger thematic concern of looking at how the passage of time has affected all of its characters. It makes sense for Shu to have mellowed out, especially after recovering from being bedridden and delusional. His decision to walk away from Sasaki was a painful but mature one, but it's Shu's father who steals the show by the end. We saw him at the auction previously, so it's not like Tokyo Ghoul intends to delude us into thinking that the Tsukiyamas are helpless victims. But they're still people, and his decision to surrender the manor rather than let his servants die is a powerful moment. Of course, this is Tokyo Ghoul, and we need to have a huge brawl to play us out, so this moment is undercut by the revelation that this is a distraction to help Shu escape to another location, where another battle to protect him will probably take up the remainder of the season. But I'll be damned if I didn't get a little choked up as Shu realizes that his father is sacrificing himself to protect him, just as the guardians of Anteiku did for their “children.”

With this episode, Tokyo Ghoul:re has done another commendable job weaving its seemingly endless stream of characters and plot threads into one big confrontation. I just hope the confrontation itself proves to be as engaging. The other big battle at the auction was unfortunately the low point of the season so far, juggling too many action scenes and not enough of the psychological and moral complexity that lends Tokyo Ghoul its strongest material. Some of the story's pet themes, like the bonds of family, the frightening power of love, and the tenuousness of identity, all remain in play. As long as these ideas remain in focus, we should be in for another thrilling and heartbreaking conclusion.

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Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These - Episode 6 [Review]

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Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These - Episode 6 [Review]

Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These has been hewing closely to the original novels more than the old OVA series. However, its cinematic tics and expansive scope also mark it as an attempt to be the "blockbuster" version of those same events. This is especially evident in this episode, which successfully expands a few pages of descriptive lead-up into a fully dramatic story. More impressive than simply making the most of its minimal material is how well this episode works on its own.

The opportunity is still taken to include as many details as possible in the run-up to the titular attack on Iserlohn Fortress. LOGH has a reputation for episodes that are entirely comprised of characters preparing for an operation, and this one falls squarely in that category. It is nice to see Yang bantering with his new officers, giving us snippets of how he knows them. This series' proper introduction of Frederica is also strengthened by the included foreshadowing of her in Yang's flashback a couple of episodes ago. And if her little moe chuckle makes you worry that they may be attempting to make her too conventionally cute, that goes out the window when you see her arm-throw a member of Rosen Ritter a few scenes later.

The Rosen Ritter are an important component to in this storyline, although I'm torn on their portrayal in this adaptation. On the one hand, they're pointedly shown to be more ‘badass’ than the rank-and-file Alliance troops, which makes sense given their role and pedigree. But that pedigree also leads to them acting like jerks, getting snippy with Yang and outright harassing Frederica. The ‘good guys’ in any given portion of LOGH depend on which side of the conflict we're following at the moment, so the Rosen Ritter acting antagonistic to our main Alliance characters belies their Empire-defected nature. It's a storytelling tool that lends contrast to various sub-factions like this and ups the intrigue as Yang pitches an already uncertain plan. However, the way their unpleasantness is portrayed comes off a little too obvious; they feel less nuanced or misunderstood and more like simply unpleasant allies of convenience.

This extends somewhat to their commander, Schönkopf. He's presented as a slightly more polite balance to the Rosen Ritter's immature rabble, but he still carries that unpleasant air of antagonism. He comes across largely like he's supposed to have a snarky personality, and overall he does seem more animated than the novel or OVA's version of the character. But the portrayal does veer into smirky jerkwad territory too much at times. Overall, the dialed-up tension and antagonism between Yang's crew and the Rosen Ritter works for this broader anime version, wringing more drama out of the slow reveal of the plan to capture Iserlohn.

The latter chunk of this episode mostly consists of Yang explaining things. Thanks to the character's delivery and dialogue, this mostly works. Yang's response to Schönkopf raising questions about his own loyalty is still a classic moment of characterization, and their discussion about retiring for ‘a few decades of peace’ is excellent content, which speaks both to Yang's character and the historical realism this series strives to convey. Still, listening solely to Yang does get somewhat monotonous, and given that this episode is largely covering content that was only summarized originally, it might have been beneficial to bring Frederica or even Admiral Sithole in to break up the conversation a bit.

It's still an effective and entertaining expansion of the scene, aided by the episode wisely not ending just as the characters wrap their plans. Instead, we spend the final minutes of the episode with the Imperials at Iserlohn (its liquid-metal composition rendered quite nicely in this shiny new production). It's important to bring us up to speed with them, since the Empire has been out of focus for maybe too long, but it also provides a unique way to watch the Alliance's plan unfold. Admittedly, these interest points seem moot if you've already guessed their strategy or know the story from previous versions of this material, but at least we're reminded that the Alliance is still active in the story.

The competing Admirals at Iserlohn offer a good perspective to visit at this time. Between their squabbling as well as the tempering suspicion of Oberstein, we get to see all the angles they think about approaching the possible trap from and where they plan to go from here. Despite the space-battle strategies being a selling point of LOGH, there is criticism to be had in how much of these military successes might depend on the incompetence of their opponents. This way of presenting the story lays out how victories can also arise when confronting a nominally effective enemy. Seeing Oberstein raise the objection against the Admirals also fits with the story's overall theme of young upstarts challenging the assumed ideas of the old guard, and this scene makes for an effective cliffhanger to the story so far too. This isn't the most action-packed episode of LOGH, but it's still among the stronger entries by virtue of strong adaptation.

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Lupin the Third: Part 5 - Episode 6 [Review]

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Lupin the Third: Part 5 - Episode 6  [Review]

Episode 6 is the much-hyped "throwback" episode of Lupin the Third: Part 5. We knew from last week's preview that this one would be different. Just the appearance of a pink-colored jacket had long-time fans excited, and there was also a significant art shift. All of this suggested a modern homage to Lupin the Third: Part 3, aka the "Pink Jacket" series. Part 3 is known as the weakest of the Lupin III TV series, largely for its animation quality but also for some particularly goofy plots. This episode delivers on that homage, but in a way that works for fans of modern-day Lupin.

This episode revolves around a mysterious safe, designed by the two Hirameki brothers in a contest from the Greater Tokyo Bank. They're looking for a safe that even Lupin can't break into, and the brothers seem to have hit the jackpot by finding one that uses Lupin's intelligence against him. This safe only opens if a person with the bare minimum brainpower—represented on a scale from 0 to 300—has their head scanned by the machine. It just so happens that one of these brothers has that intelligence score (despite being smart enough to build this safe in the first place and land on such an ingenious plan, but maybe that was all his slightly smarter brother's idea?). Lupin has the maximum level intelligence of 300, so he's out of luck. Even if he tries to dumb himself down, he has no hope of opening the safe.

First of all, is Lupin really supposed to be the smartest person in the world? He's pretty crafty for sure, but I don't know if he's even the smartest character in his own TV show or on his own team. He's also shown some incredible levels of stupidity over his 50 years of existence. But aside from having to accept its silly premise, the episode is pretty fun. It's clearly the sort of bizarre nonsense that was a hallmark of much older Lupin series, and it's a good premise for a tribute to Part 3, which was especially known for stories that didn't make much sense. It feels nostalgic in a Saturday morning cartoon kind of way, and it's welcome after the deadly-serious plots of many recent Lupin adventures.

About half of this episode is made up of shenanigans, as Jigen and Fujiko plot to lower Lupin's intelligence to open the safe by bonking him on the head and exhausting him with endless workouts. (Sleep deprivation does indeed lower your brainpower, so that at least is somewhat based in science!) I was a little surprised that we didn't eventually see Fujiko disrobe, which is historically the easiest way to reduce Lupin to his dumbest self, but I guess Fujiko wasn't that interested in the safe's contents.

In the end, Lupin's intelligence is what saves rather than dooms him. Even all of Jigen and Fujiko's efforts, they can only get Lupin as low as 001 level brainpower—still too high to open the safe. However, the elder Hirameki brother is so flattered by his efforts that he thinks they should open the safe for Lupin anyway. This snaps the thief out of his daze to start chowing down on fish for their supposed intelligence-boosting qualities. (This is also somewhat based in science, but no matter how many fish you eat, it wouldn't boost your brainpower that quickly.) Lupin's score zooms off the charts, breaking the system and thus busting open the safe. It's a fitting ending that lets Lupin win without ruining the brothers' brilliant(?) idea. They realize that the intelligence-boosting qualities of the fish offers them a new business opportunity, and all's well that ends well.

In many ways, this is a perfect update of pink-jacket Lupin for a modern audience. The art style fits the older 1980s version of the show, but without the weaker animation and other production issues. The characters are more in line with their sillier versions, particularly Fujiko acting as a clear ally to the gang rather than a mysterious rival. The character models are much rounder, giving them a more "cartoonish" appearance, rather than the sleeker modern designs. The plot is also inexplicably weird in a way that no other recent Lupin series can rival. Both Part 4 and The Woman Called Fujiko Mine have gone some strange places, but they always try to justify them with worldbuilding of some kind. Pink jacket Lupin just lets the weirdness fly, one episode at a time.

It looks like this was just a brief diversion, with the next episode promising a return to form and the blue jacket. Still, this bit of vintage "filler" was so well-executed that I really hope it's not the last one we see for this series. Lupin the Third: Part 5 could make a good formula out of five-episode storylines, followed by one-off tributes to the series' past.

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Magical Girl Ore - Episode 6 [Review]

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Magical Girl Ore - Episode 6 [Review]

Just how long can an episode stretch a single joke? This episode of Magical Girl Ore would like the answer to be twenty minutes, but I can't say it's successful there. In “Hot Springs Business,” the cast goes to a hot springs resort, but between karaoke, demons, and concealing their identities, Saki and Sakuyo don't get a moment to relax. There's a lot of potential to explore by putting two gender-shifters in an environment that centers around sex-separated bathing, but the episode tosses most of that out the window to pit Saki's Ore form against the silent Mohiro in a sauna endurance competition that goes on for way too long.

If Magical Girl Ore were a short, with episodes anywhere from 3 to 12 minutes, I think I'd be enjoying it a lot more than I am now. It has fun art and a lot of cute visual storytelling details, like when Sakuyo and Mohiro wear welding helmets to avoid staring directly into the lightning flash that is Saki and Hyoe's rivalry. The problem is that it drags jokes on for long after they cease to be funny. As Saki continued to keep up her “love power” by staring a hole through Mohiro's dick, it occurred to me that the same result could have been achieved if they'd shown her doing this just once, instead of dozens of times. The most unforgivable part of this episode's plot is that Mohiro is essentially mute, so we watched Saki as Ore mostly wrestle with internal dialogue while Mohiro says nothing at all, which really means watching Saki make the same joke while Mohiro sits there not reacting.

Speaking of tired jokes, I'm getting really sick of Saki seeing Sakuyo, who has been nothing but sweet, as the biggest threat in the show. Saki even imagines herself weeping while Sakuyo, in her Ore form, smokes a post-coital cigarette. However, this episode might be the turning point in that romantic plot—it seems that even the show is tired of Saki's fears. Though we've seen her act more predatory in the past, this time Sakuyo is the model of consent, telling Saki she doesn't want to do anything Saki doesn't want, and it's Sakuyo who bursts into the men's bath in the nick of time to be Saki's knight in shining armor. (She does this after taking out a demon party, and this battle is treated as an afterthought instead of being allowed to add any real interest to the story.) Saki may still be deeply in love with wet blanket Mohiro, but her blushing response to Sakuyo after the rescue gives me hope that she'll see that her real dreamboat isn't Mohiro, but his sister.

This episode also showed us exactly how Saki and Sakuyo's Love Power works. They can jump into a cold bath (perhaps a nod to Ranma ½) to kill their libidos or otherwise dampen their lovey-dovey feelings for the object of their affection. It makes sense that Saki's infatuation with Mohiro fades in the bath since she's busy panicking about being discovered, with Ashita no Joe-esque art coming out to emphasize just how far she is past her limit. But just as the minutes in the sauna dragged on for Saki, they were also dragging on for the audience. There was too little tension in this episode, and even the arbitrary countdown clock couldn't make me excited to see just how long Saki was going to be stuck in the bath.

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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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Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku - Episode 4 [Review]

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Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku - Episode 4 [Review]

(Before I start the review in earnest, I just want to draw attention to how cute and relatable it was when both Narumi and Hirotaka cried at a rerun of Sailor Moon R. I didn't have a good place to put this in the review itself, but I didn't want to leave it unaddressed. Bless these dorks. Thank you.)

Passions flare in this extra spicy episode of Wotakoi. The growing pains of Narumi and Hirotaka's fresh otaku dating experience take a backseat as the spotlight shifts to the seasoned and tempestuous relationship between Hanako and Kabakura. Much of that spiciness comes from the first half of the episode dedicating itself to dressing the boys in cosplay—or more specifically, crossplay. Narumi starts the day all too pleased with herself, showing off her selfie with girl mode Hirotaka to Hanako and Kabakura. Hirotaka is understandably kind of embarrassed, but to his credit, he owns it and later brags about how cute he ended up looking. Kabakura is much more resistant to the idea, despite dating a famous cosplayer (or precisely because of that).

I get the impression that Hanako has been relentless in her drive to get her boyfriend to cosplay since they started going out, and their friends' impromptu photo session finally pushes her over the edge to rather forcefully persuade him into doing it. I do like that Kabakura's apprehension isn't solely based in some hackneyed fear of wearing girly stuff, but rather more general anxiety about his looks. Cosplay is about performance, and he doesn't want people to look at him because he doesn't think he's handsome. But Hanako does think he's handsome (come on, look at him), so she wants him to feel more confident and understand why cosplay is so important to her. Also I think she just really wants to see girl mode Kabakura, and the results are to be expected from somebody of her prestige and talent. Plus, Kabakura got a Kan Colle figure out of it, so it's a win-win for everyone!

The gang goes out for drinks in the second half, and believe it or not this is actually the first time they've all gone out drinking together. They have such a great rapport that it's easy to forget Narumi only started working with them recently, and they've been existing as a pair of otaku couples for even less time. However, Narumi quickly learns that Hanako is one heck of a lightweight, becoming affectionate and talkative the minute the buzz hits. She lets her proverbial guts spill almost immediately, reminiscing about the time she and Kabakura started dating, which quickly leads into an argument about which one of them asked the other out first. Despite Narumi's best efforts, the two of them get into an actual fight over this, but thankfully the evening ends with everything patched up.

Wotakoi was on some of its strongest game with these two storylines. The comedy succeeds because it's not just a parade of otaku in-jokes; the humor mostly comes from the pace of the dialogue. Everything's snappy, but it still manages to flow naturally, and everyone gets equal opportunity to throw out their jabs and japes. It can get a little mean sometimes, but it's playfully mean in the way that friendships and flirtations can be. Hirotaka's bone-dry zinger delivery often steals the show, but it's also wonderful to see Hanako's face light up with a devilish grin as she shows off her lovey-dovey phone background. Wotakoi doesn't have the virtuoso character animation of a Kyoani production, but it still has a good sense for the body language and expressions of its couples. Angry Hanako gets some quick cuts of getting ready to give Kabakura a piece of her mind (and fist), while a crying and vulnerable Hanako gets a series of lingering shots as she hugs Narumi. Both the storyboarding and directing were above average this episode, which went a long way toward making it so memorable.

Beyond the comedy part of its romcom equation, Wotakoi continues to be surprisingly thoughtful in its approach to nerd romance. The big pratfall it tackles this time is the concern over building a relationship purely out of convenience. Nerd communities tend to be insular, which can contribute to a culture of forging both friendships and romances out of a few specific shared interests. There's nothing wrong with this, and most relationships of any kind start out this way, but it's narrow-minded to prioritize these common interests unilaterally, especially when it's something like a shared interest in media. Just because someone likes the same anime you do doesn't mean that they're going to be a good friend or lover. Amusingly, Hirotaka did propose a relationship based on shared otakuness, but their success as a couple is based on a chemistry that goes beyond this. As this episode points out, even as otaku, the two of them have mostly non-overlapping interests, but that's okay! It's healthy to have differences, because you're different people, and learning new things from each other is one of the best parts of being in a relationship.

However, with differences comes friction. Hanako and Kabakura's penchant for silly arguments clearly comes from a degree of comfort they've achieved by going out for almost a decade, but that doesn't mean they can't hit each other's weak spots. She still has insecurities about not being desirable enough, or that the two of them are stuck settling for each other. These worries might be unfounded, but they stem from real raw feelings. That said, I wish we could have seen more of her make-up conversation with Kabakura. He plays it cool, but it's only fair that we should see some of his vulnerable and conciliatory side too. I'll just imagine that he managed to convince Hanako he loves her by saying there's no way he'd miss out on dating the hottest bishounen cosplayer in the country.

Narumi has similar worries, but unlike Hanako she doesn't have years of dating Hirotaka under her belt to assuage her. She does at least possess the gumption to bring it up to him, and he has the courage and clarity to tell her that he genuinely likes her for who she is. Their relationship might be one of compromise, but it's also one of mutual joy and respect. There's no one-size-fits-all equation for any romance, even otaku romance. What Narumi and Hirotaka do have is an indelible spark that's as brilliant as their pair of smiles in the episode's epilogue. And in a show that's full of adorable moments, seeing Hirotaka finally smile was perhaps the most adorable of them all. I'm really glad we have a show as funny, realistic, and tender as Wotakoi this season.

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Today's Menu for the Emiya Family - Episode 5 [Review]

Seasons change, the calendar's pages turn, and as April gives way to May, a new episode of Today's Menu For the Emiya Family drops into my CR queue for me to review. This month's premise is that, as thanks for feeding those folks at the temple last episode, Issei gives Shirou a bucket of freshly harvested bamboo shoots. Later in the day, Sakura is doing some grocery shopping and happens to run into Ayako. This encounter gives her the idea to make gratin for dinner, so she heads over to Shirou's house in order to make it with him. They combine their foodstuffs in order to create a tasty dish that succeeds in satisfying their servants' hunger—for now.

Unfortunately, this episode has something like the opposite problem of last month's in that it features popular characters, but little in the way of a seasonal hook to make their antics interesting. As a result, it comes off like a less focused version of the very first episode, in that it's just some people making ordinary dinner in Shirou's house again. I think this was supposed to be Sakura's spotlight episode, but I found it pretty disappointing on that front, as her interactions with other characters – from Shirou to Rider to Ayako – just weren't that interesting or novel to watch. It feels like we got more of that way back in Ilya's dedicated episode, which showcased stuff like Rider's protectiveness of Sakura or the lingering awkwardness between Sakura and Rin. This is a shame, since Sakura/Rider is the dynamic I'm most eager to see more of in this show. After everything that Sakura has gone through, it's especially nice to see the two of them living a happy, normal life together.

This brings us to the episode's conclusion. I don't even really want to talk about it, but I know I gotta, so here goes. It is an odd choice to say the least for this show to revise Sakura and Shinji's relationship into the form it takes in this episode, where Sakura happily cooks for her brother while hiding from him in fear/anticipation that he won't like it. Remember that in Fate/stay night, Shinji is at best Sakura's abuser and at worst her rapist. Unless he's just a totally different character in this canon, Sakura shouldn't be anywhere near him, much less trying to please him with odd trepidation. I don't appreciate the attempt to recast Shinji as a benign grouch who Sakura will eventually get through to with her earnest kindness. That's not the sort of thing that you can sweep under the rug in your iyashikei cooking show.

For the sake of my own sanity, I'll just pretend that Sakura slipped poison into his dish, and that that's why Sakura and Medusa were watching him eat with such anticipation. Hopefully, he won't appear again, so I can just quietly assume that he died without anybody noticing or caring.

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Tada Never Falls in Love - Episode 5 [Review]

The majority of this week's Tada Never Falls in Love follows the sweet yet bland formula the show has developed so far, focusing on one or two characters to show that they're slightly more than they initially appeared to be. This week, the spotlight fell on Kaoru Ijuin, Tada's annoying friend who likes to hang out at his family's café. Kaoru may have seemed like a self-centered goofus, but it turns out that he has a hidden heart of gold when it comes to his lifelong best friend. Deepening these supporting characters is all well and good since it makes us care about them more, but this pattern can only hold for so long. As charming as Tada's friends can be—and I was plenty charmed by Kaoru in this episode—they aren't interesting enough to carry the entire series on their own. They make for good one-off episodes, but I'm glad that we're moving back to the main couple next episode.

This episode already showed some movement in that direction. While Kaoru is the star of the show, the reasoning for his behavior entails revealing important information about Tada's past. We already knew that he had mysteriously absent parents, but now we know the full details; they both died on the same day, and this is ever-present in Tada and his sister's minds on the anniversary of their parents' death. Kaoru has been Tada's friend since he was young, so he makes sure to liven up that gloomy day by distracting them with fun activities. Awww. This also helps explain why Tada puts up with Kaoru so much. We're generally more tolerant of our friends' foibles the longer they've been our friends, but Tada understood that Kaoru had positive traits that others couldn't readily see.

I'll be honest though, this particular detail about Kaoru wasn't that shocking to me. He'd never seemed like a bad dude, just melodramatic and obnoxious. The worst you could say was that he was self-centered, but a lot of his histrionics seemed centered on impressing other people. So while the episode presents this as "shocking" new information, it doesn't really come as a surprise, any more than the gravure-idol-obsessed geek being secretly shy when he actually meets his celebrity crush. (I mean, who wouldn't be?) Perhaps the revelation about shy Hasegawa being HINA is more surprising, but it's hardly incongruous with her character. Heck, blending into the background at school is the ideal way to hide a Hannah-Montana-style secret.

You know what did surprise me? That Teresa is a princess.

For all that happened this week, none of it really stands up to this episode's last-second twist. I'd seen some comparisons elsewhere to Roman Holiday, but I hadn't quite picked up on that myself, given that foreigners falling in love while on vacation is basically a romance sub-genre on its own. As of this twist, the direct homage is unmistakable. Not only is Tada a reporter photographer (to be fair, photography plays a role in Roman Holiday too), but Teresa is really a princess. Some viewers may find this direct riff worrisome, but I think there are enough differences in Tada Never Falls in Love to avoid retreading the plot of a classic film. Tada is a citizen of Japan rather than another traveler, Teresa already seems far more integrated into his life and not like she's deliberately hiding her identity, and so on. If anything, I think this opens up more potential to explore their relationship.

We already got more exploration into Tada himself this week, so I wonder what we'll learn about Teresa next time. She seems just kind of happy-go-lucky and perfect, but certainly there's more to a princess who just decides to spend a year in another country for some reason. This also complicates her relationship with Alec. At first it just seemed like she was another student in her exchange program, but now it's clear she's probably some type of handler or bodyguard. And what does this mean for the fact that Alec might have romantic feelings for her princess? I'm not so convinced anymore that Teresa is only here for a "Rainbow Shogun" pilgrimage. This reveal raises so many intriguing questions.

The presence of Charles is another big question mark. As Teresa's suitor, what will he make of her life in Japan? Was she hiding this trip from him? Will he get in between her and Tada? Maybe he could force an epiphany for one or both of them instead? Next episode's preview suggests that Tada and Teresa will be on some romantic date, which is sure to complicate matters.

Tada Never Falls in Love has been cute and fun so far, but it was starting to seem like "nothing special" despite its initial promise. It was a fun weekly diversion, but it ultimately developed just like any other cute school comedy we've seen already. With this latest nugget of info, Tada Never Falls in Love could turn out to be something entirely different. It still probably won't set the world on fire, but I appreciate a good fish-out-of-water travel romance, and I'm glad that the show seems to be returning to that strength.

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Record of Grancrest War - Episode 17 [Review]

I assure you it was merely coincidence that we got to see Theo and Milza duel to the death with glowing red and blue sabers on May the 4th. (For one thing, by the time it aired it was already May 5th in Japan.) Of course, that didn't make it any less cool. We finally got to see the showdown that's been telegraphed for what seems like half the series. I've always thought that Record of Grancrest War was at its strongest during bouts of action, but I suspect this episode will be divisive with fans due to its use of multiple animation and art styles. At least two different artists lent their own perspectives to the making of this episode.

Who are the “Two Heroes” of this episode's title? Certainly one is Theo, who gets more dashing and self-confident every week. Now called the Earl of Sistina, this decorated lord is growing into the hopes that people have for him. He's a textbook hero who's clearly grown a lot over the course of the show—just look at the size of his crest at the end! And though we love to hate him, I'd say the second hero is Milza. He's sort of an idiot this week, opting for a suicide mission in lieu of waiting for Marrine's troops, but the show plays it off like a chivalrous act. (Not that Marrine herself is impressed; it's clear that she would have much rather had him come back alive.) When Milza meets his extremely telegraphed end, he does not lose his dignity with it. As Theo points out, it's Milza's inexperience with leadership that leads to his demise. He's a great fighter one-on-one, but he uncharacteristically shared his crest with his soldiers, leaving less strength over for himself. This feels like such a rookie error! RIP Milza, you were a fearsome swordsman and an extremely bad tactician.

I thought the duel looked fantastic, and that's partly because it was animated in a different style than usual. There were a lot of high-contrast shots, filling out Theo's murderous expression in broad black strokes and at one point depicting Milza as a black silhouette with one gleaming eye. It gave the battle a grittier look than usual. Sections of the skirmish also had a much looser and more fluid look. Remember that duel between Jana and Siluca in episode 14? We can once again credit up-and-coming web animator Nakaya Onsen for these scenes, characterized by fine-line drawing, flat colors, and character shapes that twist and morph onscreen. (Onsen has also been tweeting about his animation whenever it appears in Record of Grancrest War.) This style, along with the standard Record of Grancrest War look, made for an episode that was inconsistent but stunning in moments.

Watching this story shift between visual styles will be seen as experimental by some, but inconsistent by others. It reminds me of Samurai 7, a 2004 Gonzo show that suddenly altered its art style specifically for episode seven—fans debated whether it was intentional or a last resort. I liked seeing these disparate styles united by a stronger-than-usual episode plot, but it's hard to tell if this was the original vision or not.

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Megalobox - Episode 5 [Review]

After this episode opens on soldiers working their way through the dusty roads and ruined buildings of a war-torn country, you could be forgiven for thinking they were watching the wrong show at first. The faux-low-res haze and grimy aesthetic of MEGALOBOX are all there onscreen, but there's still something to be said for the way “The Man from Death” so capably upends expectations, and this cold open is just a taste of things to come. Once again, MEGALOBOX goes out of its way to take a familiar sports drama plot, where our protagonist goes up against his mentor's old protégé, and infuses it with enough style and drama to make the whole story feel visceral and compelling.

A big part of what makes “The Man from Death” such a fascinating episode is just how much it commits to selling the pain, both physical and emotional, that broke the foundation of Nanbu and Aragaki's relationship. Last week, I assumed that the scary-looking bruiser was someone who had been burned by Nanbu's penchant for chicanery and back-room dealing, but the truth turns out to be much more harrowing. Aragaki is a veteran who lost both of his legs and suffered terrible burns in a bombing incident that took out the rest of his crew, and for a long time he was thought to be dead. Before this awful incident, he worked with a very different Nanbu from the one we know today, a legitimate trainer who offered Aragaki the only home he could depend on. When Aragaki returns to Nanbu to challenge Joe to a fight, he isn't doing his old mentor a favor. Aragaki hates Nanbu for shutting down the gym and fleeing when he needed him most. Aragaki doesn't simply want to fight Nanbu's new protégé; he wants to destroy him.

Indeed, destroying his opponents is what Aragaki has become famous for, as Sachio ominously discovers after some internet sleuthing. The fighters who face off against him aren't just beaten, they're left broken, bruised, bleeding, and unconscious after just one round. This plot works on a number of levels. First, and most predictably, this conflict elevates the stakes for Joe, who has quickly risen up the ranks after his brief stumble in the ring last week. Beyond that, Aragaki's ruthlessness gives MEGALOBOX the unexpected opportunity to explore the depths of suffering that come from his physical trauma and PTSD. “The Man from Death” makes liberal use of both mabanua's electric score and MEGALOBOX's flair for surreal visuals to dive deep into Aragaki's headspace, including a particularly fraught scene where Aragaki has his finger on the trigger of a gun he's lodged in his mouth.

It's really dark and heavy material for a show about boxers with pistons attached to their arms, but MEGALOBOX pulls off this feat by drawing direct parallels between Joe and Aragaki's lives, with Nanbu caught right in the middle to reckon with his past. Like Joe, Aragaki was cast off by society, though his pain is amplified by both his physical scars and the psychological damage that comes from being tossed into a warzone, chewed up, and spit back out, only to be forgotten by the world you were maimed trying to protect. Nanbu may have thought that Aragaki was dead when he cut and run from his old life, but that offers little comfort to either of them, and Aragaki cannot help but bristle with rage and hurt when he sees that he's been replaced by a haughty young upstart. Aragaki needs prosthetics just to be able to walk, let alone fight, and here comes a kid who thinks he can become the next Megaloboxing champion without using any gear at all.

This is complex material for MEGALOBOX to throw at us out of the blue, and I can't help but be impressed with how well it turned out. The general outline of this story may be familiar, but the show goes to surprising lengths to examine the many ways its heroes have been tossed aside by the world and how they rely on acts of violence to fight their way back to claiming even a modicum of human dignity. Even though some of the imagery and direction is heavy-handed, “The Man from Death” succeeds in making Aragaki, Nanbu, and Joe's stories all gripping in their own ways, making even a routine matchup between the young blood and the ghost from the past heavy with real tension and emotional stakes. When Joe gets knocked down in the first round at the episode's end, we feel the hit land, and it ensures that the cliffhanger works despite MEGALOBOX's reliance on relatively predictable narrative checkpoints. If you were worried that the show might begin to lag as it neared the halfway point, “The Man from Death” is here to reassure you that MEGALOBOX isn't letting up any time soon.

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Full Metal Panic! Invisible Victory - Episode 4 [Review]

Episode 4 brings to fruition the moment that you had to figure was coming ever since this season started: Kaname winds up in the hands of Amalgam, probably as part of some effort on her part to protect Sousuke. It's a classic scenario that we've seen from innumerable series over the years, but it works because it's so efficient. It shows the strength of the bond between the central couple, as they each try to protect the other before the eventual catharsis of a rescue mission. Frankly, I'm a little surprised that it took Full Metal Panic! this long to bust out this plot.

The triteness of Kaname's move to protect Sousuke when he's clearly being overwhelmed by Leonard's mecha is one of only a couple minor negatives in an otherwise a stellar episode. After so much focus on one side of the Amalgam attack or another, this one fully covers both angles. As Sousuke and Kaname execute a plan to rescue Kyouko, Tessa and her people have to escape Merida Island base. Of the two, the latter plot is more successful, with Melissa arriving back at base in the nick of time to save Tessa's butt. Tessa again acquits herself well with her aggressive push against an underwater Behemoth, although the scene where the Tuatha de Danaan launches out of the water with the rammed mech on its nose was my other minor nitpick, as the moment where I felt the CG animation of these massive war machines was truly inadequate. I also thought it was odd that Tessa wasn't showing more concern for leaving Kalinin behind as well, even though she knows from experience that he can handle himself. Unless the two of them had some scheme cooked up that wasn't apparent to the audience?

The sequence involving Sousuke and Kaname was ultimately far more harrowing. The close-range action scenes between mecha were excellent, and the rooftop scene where Wraith gets involved was engrossing as well. The new villain guy being thrown off his game was quite satisfying, as was seeing Kaname apply her burgeoning Whispered power to the cause, and it was somehow fitting that Kyouko would winding up badly injured out of the deal. Prior to this, FMP! has skirted around the potentially serious consequences of Sousuke's actions on his fellow students, so that scene made a strong impression, as does the follow-up where Sousuke reveals at least some of the truth to his classmates and deals with their reactions. The retiring Student Council President getting in one more good appearance was also welcome.

So that leaves us with the next big plot going forward, where a battered MITHRIL attempts to rescue Kaname. I'm definitely curious to see how they pull this off, and I'm eager to see if Kaname being taken into Amalgam's clutches will reveal more about them and their goals, since they've remained rather obtuse so far, unless I'm forgetting any major details from The Second Raid. Whatever ends up happening, it should be fun to watch things unfold.

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Hinamatsuri - Episode 5 [Review]

This episode focuses on the younger half of Hinamatsuri's cast, and the results are remarkably funny. Anzu gets the ball rolling by enlisting Hina to help her find discarded electronics, which she's discovered are worth much more than cans and bottles. Even when Hitomi joins the search, the “help” that Anzu receives is of dubious value. Later in the episode, we spend some time with Hina and Hitomi's middle school classmates, who suspect that something is awry when they see both Hitomi and their teacher walk into the same bar. The ensuing investigation might not be well-organized, but it's effective enough to cause Hitomi plenty of stress.

The search for old televisions is the less impressive of these two storylines, but to be fair it's facing some tough competition (more on that later). Taken on its own merits, this is a solid little sequence that makes good use of the characters' personalities. Hinamatsuri's sharp comedic timing comes into play yet again as Anzu boasts about having made a friend, only for Hitomi to show up in response to Hina's summons. Both Hina and Hitomi create some fun moments as they gather TVs for Anzu to “find,” and these scenes are well-matched to each character's comedic strengths. Hitomi's terrible luck sets up a delightfully awkward encounter with a police officer, and Hina's deadpan dialogue allows her to get her way while confusing the living daylights out of every adult she encounters. All that humor is capped off with a nice little moment of friendship between the three girls, which leaves the door open for more tales of Hina, Anzu, and Hitomi getting in and out of trouble in future episodes.

As neatly-told as that story may be, it's the investigation plot that makes the most of Hinamatsuri's inspired lunacy. The basic premise of other characters trying to make sense of Hitomi's bartending gig is funny enough on its own, and the show builds on that foundation by portraying her classmates as a bumbling group of wannabe detectives. Considering we haven't seen much of these characters before, there's some impressive comedic chemistry on display from them. Kengo and Takashi lean hard into their ill-informed enthusiasm, and Aizawa balances them out as the voice of pseudo-reason. The fact that all three of them are doing this as much for their own reasons as they are to help Hitomi adds yet another layer of humor to the story. Of course, Hitomi ultimately steals the show as the target of the investigation, and her utter inability to maintain a poker face proves to be one of her greatest comedic strengths. The show's great eye for exaggerated facial expressions certainly helps in this regard, and a mix of strong writing and direction help to sell her desperate attempts at misleading her pursuers. Who would've thought that one of Hinamatsuri's saner characters would be such a good match for its crazy sense of humor?

What I find both interesting and encouraging about this episode is that it relies so little on the core duo of Hina and Nitta. Sure, they both have their parts to play in this episode, and the two of them do have a couple of brief interactions when Hina hits Nitta up for money to buy a TV, but the basic dynamic of Nitta trying to deal with Hina's super-powered whims is hardly employed at all. Instead, the two of them take on more of a supporting role, especially in the second half. Hina's main job is to repeat her initial question about what's going on whenever the opportunity arises, and Nitta joins Utako as a horrified bystander when the middle school crew confronts Hitomi at the bar. They're certainly effective in these roles, but the jokes they provide are essentially just icing on the cake. Hinamatsuri's ability to deliver strong comedic material while keeping its lead characters on the sidelines says a lot about the strength of its ensemble cast and its ability to draw humor out of any situation.

Altogether, there are many positive signs for this show's long-term potential. Instead of waiting for its initial premise to wear thin, Hinamatsuri is actively seeking out new ways to make the audience laugh, and that search has already yielded some hilarious results. Anzu and Hitomi are developing into leading characters in their own right, and minor players like the middle school crew have proven capable of pulling more than their own weight. I'm excited to see what will happen as the series continues to refine its comedic voice, and I hope it'll continue to push its creative limits as far as they'll go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADnruW2t1OI

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Comic Girls - Episode 5 [Review]

In a similar vein to last week's Ruki-centric outing, this week's Comic Girls shines a character spotlight on Koyume. As the most boisterous and outgoing member of the group, Koyume often acts as a foil for the eccentricities of her housemates, but as episode 5 illustrates, she can also be a compelling character in her own right. This week's first segment finds the girls going to the beach at the behest of Koyume, who's instantly able to make new friends and enjoy herself while her fellow mangaka go out of their way to avoid social interaction. In the end, Koyume's enthusiasm proves infectious and draws each of the girls out of their respective shells, although Tsubasa and Kaos are too tired for any more summertime outings. In the episode's second half, Kaos, Ruki, and Ririka engineer an amusement park date for Koyume and Tsubasa. Not only will this enable Koyume to collect some research for her romance manga, it will provide her with a prime opportunity to get closer to her crush. Although Koyume is ultimately unable to confess her feelings, she winds up receiving invaluable words of encouragement from her regularly published peer.

Koyume's turn in the spotlight is decidedly less focused on her manga-making experience than Ruki's. True, she's essentially trying to get life experience to make herself a better shojo mangaka, but actual manga creation takes a backseat this week. Unfortunately, in the absence of its usual focus on the creative process, Comic Girls becomes a run-of-the-mill CGDGT show in many regards. The girls go to the beach, show off their swimwear to the viewers, and as far as Ruki is concerned, spend unrealistically long amounts of time comparing boob sizes. Two of them go shopping while the other two stay at home and game. Then Koyume sort of gets Tsubasa to go on a date with her, though she never makes it clear that's what she has in mind. At least her crush on Tsubasa is endearing—albeit vexing due to the whole "we can't date! we're both girls!" cliché.

Perhaps if we saw Koyume work on her manga more often, this kind of respite would make more sense. Instead, Koyume is known primarily for her shapely body and bubbly personality, with her interest in manga coming off as secondary. The second segment makes a good effort at tying manga creation into the main story, but at this point, not enough is known about Koyume's creative process for the emotional beats to have their intended impact. While episode 5 certainly helps add depth to her character, Koyume still comes across as a vehicle for fanservice.

Koyume's episode may not be as compelling as Ruki's, but getting a glimpse of the girls in different settings makes for an interesting change of pace. Still, taking an episode-long break from manga creation this early on may not be the wisest course of action. Unlike Tsubasa and Ruki, Koyume doesn't have a serialization, but seeing more of her actual manga may have made certain parts of episode 5 more meaningful on a number of fronts.

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DARLING in the FRANXX - Episode 16 [Review]

“Days of Our Lives” picks DARLING IN THE FRANXX up after a two-week break with a new OP and the Parasites living in an unfamiliar status quo. Not only has Zero Two's attitude toward the other pilots completely turned around, but all the kids have essentially been abandoned by their adult guardians. With only a small ration of food and a quickly dwindling fresh water supply, The Parasites must deal with running Mistilteinn themselves as they wait to be called back into battle. When even the food begins to run out, the kids have to figure out how to hunt and cook for themselves too, which turns out to be quite the bonding experience for the group. This is all perfectly fine to see unfold, and after the supercharged climax of episode 15, it makes sense that DARLING in the FRANXX would want to afford its cast a break, but at this point I have to wonder if this series can really afford to spend more time exploring the Parasites' interpersonal dynamics when its plot and world-building remain frustratingly hazy.

I will admit, it's nice to see all the kids finally getting along like friends; even in their struggle to fend for themselves while they wait around for orders, they seem happier than they've been in a long while, and that's an admittedly infectious feeling. Nobody is enjoying this newfound freedom more than Zero Two, who works tirelessly to befriend the others and uphold their rules, and even Ichigo can't help but be pleased to call Zero Two her friend. While it's nice to see these once-contentious pilots enjoying time together, the sudden shifts they've undergone over the past couple episodes feel pretty toothless, dramatically speaking. I can see how the show is getting them from Point A to Point B, but the actual development of Ichigo and Zero Two's arcs has felt too driven by narrative convenience, and I feel like some of this episode's pathos is hampered because of that.

The biggest issue that “Day of Our Lives” struggles with is that its script is just too focused on performatively indulging surface details; it's so devoted to foreshadowing all the Serious Business that each character is (not yet) facing that it becomes distracting. Miku is sprouting some conspicuous grey hairs, Futoshi has developed an eating disorder, and Ikuno seems to have fallen ill out of the blue. Mitsuru has Kokoro cut his hair before sharing an unexpected kiss with her, which is like a double-whammy of death flags. “Days of our Lives” even brings back Zero Two and Hiro's picture book at both the beginning and the end of the episode, making sure to bookend the story with reminders that our central couple is almost certainly doomed. A few minutes per episode spent on all of this portentous imagery and storytelling is usually tolerable, but devoting an entire half hour to this teasing feels gratuitous.

We've been reminded time and time again that the Parasites are designed to die young, so the audience can only watch the kids develop signs of their inevitable destruction for so long. Dr. Franxx insists that the Parasites' isolation is a part of his larger experimental goals, but we still have no clue as to what any of those goals are, and the series is well past its halfway point. DARLING's usual penchant for teasing out plot developments as slowly as possible feels frustrating rather than intriguing at present; this might not much bother the binge viewers who come into DARLING in the FRANXX late, but it certainly affects the experience of watching the show on a weekly basis.

When I'm just absorbing “Days of Our Lives” in the moment, there's a lot of fun to be had in seeing the Parasites bond and become more independent. For being such stock archetypes, the DARLING in the FRANXX cast ekes out just enough charm and chemistry to stay engaging week after week. Plus, the visuals and direction are strong as always, which means the episode is never painful to look at. But as a piece of the show's larger puzzle, “Days of Our Lives” is disappointing, an aimless and interstitial chapter in a story that cannot afford to kill any more time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O90sRP1A73U

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My Hero Academia - Episode 43 [Review]

We've gotten a big fight out of our systems with Midoriya trying to protect Kota from the villain Muscular, but the Vanguard Action Squad's attack is far from over. Last week was about as much as I could ask for from Midoriya, so the fact that he's still running around and trying to help his friends given his injuries really adds a sense of urgency to the remaining fights. Aizawa mentions that Midoriya's now fueled entirely on adrenaline, and the second he stops moving he'll be a sitting duck. His job now is mostly to convey information from group to group, but even then that feeling of his exhaustion competing with the barreling momentum of the story is exactly my jam.

This is as traditional Shonen Jump as My Hero Academia gets, where you've got the big cast sprawled throughout the scene and organically crossing paths with villains while each group strategizes on how best to deal with their circumstances, using their powers as practically as possible. Midoriya's gunning for Mandalay, who can send messages telepathically to the whole class, and the hot shots Bakugo and Todoroki are teaming up, but they have to be careful about their Quirks setting fire to the wooded area surrounding them. Muscular mentioned last week that he was looking for Bakugo, and he seems to be the League of Villains' primary target, so everybody has to be super careful about that (not to mention the implications of the League thinking they might have something in common with our ratty little anti-hero).

This is yet another case of MHA doing some pretty basic stuff for its genre, but doing it shockingly well. My attitude when it comes to the lesser-known side characters is that I'm not actively looking for them to impress me—I'd much rather just let the surprises happen over demanding that every character be fully fleshed-out—but the efficiency and confidence with which this show manages to do exactly that astounds me. Between the Class 1-B students who get a moment to shine, the swarm of memorable villains, and ending on a cliffhanger involving kids like Shoji and Tokoyami, this episode continues to make balancing this large cast look so damn easy.

At this point I'm just waiting for the day that season three delivers an episode that's simply decent, but so far it's still going as strong as the best-executed swath of long-running shonen series I think I've ever seen. We've got world-building, intrigue, small character moments, big action scenes, an ebb and flow that coherently links all the thematic elements together, and so on. I'm impressed at how much I'm enjoying a show that I already loved. If I had just read a plot synopsis of this Forest Training arc, it would probably have seemed pretty rote, but I'm head over heels for every second of the ride.

For a sprawling battle episode, you don't really get better than this. The variety in characters and fighting styles is pitch perfect, and while it isn't going for the emotional highs or bombastic animation of last week's episode, you feel the consequences of the Muscular fight all the same. Everything feels like a reaction to everything else, and Bones is doing such a fantastic job capturing the flow of the story that it doesn't leave me with much to say beyond "it's really frickin' good."

So it's really frickin' good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KhMD7h2Tns

Source

Boruto: Naruto Next Generations - Episode 56 [Review]

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Boruto: Naruto Next Generations - Episode 56 [Review]

The Chunin exams are officially underway as Boruto: Naruto Next Generations heads into the second act of the film's storyline. Now that each hidden village's examinees and proctors have arrived in the Leaf, the first-ever joint-village exams are finally off the ground. After making enemies of the trio of examinees from the Cloud and becoming acquainted with Shinki's group, Team 7 takes part in the first phase of the exam: an intricate yet simplistic quiz game proctored by Sai. In the end, all the main characters are able to see through Sai's ruse and move on to the next round, which is set to take place in three days. Shortly after arriving home, Boruto is pleasantly surprised to receive an email from his father congratulating him on his recent victory and wishing him luck in the next round.

Since the exams themselves didn't receive much focus in the preceding feature film, it makes sense for a longer form version of the story to flesh them out a bit. For example, the members of Team 7 finding themselves at odds with the trio of Cloud Genin is something entirely new, as is the expanded role of Shinki and his fellow Sand Ninja. That being said, the impromptu rivalry with the Cloud kids is a fairly tried trope, albeit one that's perfectly at home in a shonen anime. The expanded journey to the exam grounds also doesn't add much to the story, though it does serve a purpose—namely, to get rid of assorted small fry before the main event. Based on what's been shown, Shinki seems like a reasonably interesting character, but given his relative lack of screen time, it's hard to pin him down at this point. The hitherto unrevealed special skill he alludes to in the woods certainly sounds like something to look forward to, however.

The twist to Sai's exam is clever, although even if you haven't seen the film version, it's pretty easy to figure out the gist of it before the big reveal—especially since Boruto's team and Shinki's team each choose different answers. After all the work the show has done to build Shinki up as a skilled shinobi, there's no way his team would be taken out of the game this early on. Sai's closing message that only those who give up in the face of failure can truly be called failures nicely resonates with one of the franchise's central themes: hard work and perseverance will always be rewarded. Sai's trick with the stopwatch—starting the countdown before he's finished explaining, without so much as a twitch in his expression—is another clever trick that perfectly encapsulates Sai's unique manner of thinking.

The first round of the Chunin exams is over almost as quickly as it begins, but that helps add to the brisk pace of the challenge, emphasizing the limited amount of time the characters have to complete their task. While the Cloud kids are paint-by-numbers antagonists, they'll at least provide Team 7 with enemies to fight until the Otsutsukis arrive on the scene.

Source

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjp2C8u-qSw

Steins;Gate 0 - Episode 4 [Review]

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Steins;Gate 0 - Episode 4 [Review]

Now that it's set up its new cast members and reestablished the repartee of our more familiar faces, it's time for Steins;Gate 0 to get down to brass tacks and dive into its plot. Okabe's slowly evolving relationship with Amadeus is definitely a good place to start, but it wouldn't be Steins;Gate if Okabe was the only one with something to do. The whole Future Gadget Lab needs to be involved too, and episode 4's primary job is giving us an idea of just what their mission will be.

As a result, this week's story feels somewhat interstitial, dropping many tantalizing breadcrumbs without moving the plot too far in any one direction. We open on a view that may well be a flash-forward to the dire, war-torn future that Okabe has been warned about – bodies litter the streets as our tattered scientist is dragged around by a cadre of soldiers, though before long he finds himself in front of a faceless general, who bids him to pick up his ringing phone. Okabe wakes afterward, unsure if this is merely a dream or a sign that he is travelling to new world lines yet again. The latter possibility suggests something quite disturbing: someone else has developed a time machine capable of changing the course of reality.

However, the main development this week is Suzuha revealing a side operation she's been working on ever since she landed in the past. It turns out she wasn't alone when she made the trip; for years, Suzuha has been searching for Mayuri's adopted daughter, a war orphan named Kagari Shiina who went missing ten years in the past. This is understandably a lot for Okabe to take in, and he hasn't even seen that Kagari looks eerily similar to Makise Kurisu. It's way too early to unpack the implications of this resemblance, though I do have some theories. Heck, Okabe is already being treated to an unwelcome surprise, as Daru's contact turns out to be Moeka, who viewers will remember as the woman responsible for murdering Mayuri hundreds of times back in the original series. Combine that with the brief glimpse we get of Rukako's mysterious visitor, who I would bet is a grown-up Kagari, and it seems like S;G 0's story is gearing up for a ton of twists in the coming weeks.

For now though, the Kagari stuff is still in setup mode; it's gotten Suzuha, Daru, Okabe, and even Rukako and Faris working together again, though how all this relates to the Amadeus plot (if at all) remains a mystery. Alexis has revealed that his ultimate goal is to prove that Amadeus can fall in love with Okabe, though Maho is quick to point out that Amadeus' love could never replace a relationship with a real human being. Her prickliness regarding Amadeus/Kurisu's relationship with Okabe seems to imply that she's going to be fighting with her own AI for Okabe's affections, though it's also possible that Maho's feelings are more focused on Kurisu herself. I'm personally not interested in seeing Maho set up as yet another love interest for Okabe, especially since S;G 0 is so rooted in Okabe and Kurisu's relationship, but we'll just have to see where things go from here.

All in all, this was a solid episode of S;G 0. The direction and animation continue to be somewhat underwhelming, but the characters and their dynamic remain as compelling as ever, and though we may still be in the phase of the story where we're getting more questions than answers, Steins;Gate has proven that it's more than capable of playing the long game. Even with unnecessary love triangles looming on the horizon, I'm excited to see where the story will go from here.

Source

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWodpqSAC7E

Black Clover - Episode 30 [Review]

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Black Clover - Episode 30 [Review]

The day has finally arrived to discuss Gauche Adlai, the little sister enthusiast of the Black Bulls. Even as a one-note joke, I find his presence unpleasant. It feels weird to embrace his particular archetype as just another arrow in the quiver of your shonen anime cast. A wannabe ladies' man with boundary issues is about where my line for tolerance lies, but so far Gauche's entire character has been constant nosebleeds at the mere thought of his (very young) sister Marie.

I'm not aware of what's to come for the guy moving forward, though this episode does give me reason to suspect that maybe I'm supposed to be creeped out by him and that I'm not expected to just laugh it off. It's Marie's birthday, so Gauche is taking advantage of the Black Bulls' recent payday to purchase as many gifts for his sister as he can carry. The cold open before the theme song gives us a hint of how powerful and sadistic he actually is, and the episode follows that up by framing Gauche as unkempt, unwanted, and—wait a second, that's what "gauche" already means. Dammit! The show's way ahead of me! The tough old nun who looks after Marie during the day also doesn't seem to like him, so I'm going to defer to her judgement.

The conflict this week starts with the fact that Marie, like every girl in this series, has developed a crush on Asta while Gauche wasn't looking. It's a simple innocent little kid thing where she claims she's going to marry him and Asta's just playing around with her like a big brother, but Gauche takes it personally and vows revenge on Asta, going so far as to sneak into his room at night and try to kill him with his mirror magic. Gauche definitely feels like the villain of this episode at times, but I can't tell if this is meant to be a dark subversion of a joke character, or if this is a temporary turn before everything settles back into the status quo. This mini-fight between Asta and Gauche leads us into a larger conflict where an outside force is hypnotizing and luring the kids in town while the adults sleep, so it looks like the two of them will have a common enemy to team up against soon enough.

Rebecca from the mixer episode is sticking around, as she and Asta have been really hitting it off. She's got her own younger siblings that Asta gets along with equally well, and they're starting to egg her on to make a move on our hero. Oddly, the will-they-won't-they stuff manages to be a breath of fresh air in this episode, which is otherwise pretty bland when it isn't giving me Gauche-related whiplash. We're beginning a new storyline, but the cliffhanger about the missing kids screams two-parter rather than a new major arc. I'm not very invested yet.

The idea to spin Gauche as an evil villain who's been waiting in the wings this whole time gave me a twinge of excitement, but I can't imagine that's where this is actually going. Siscons are a thing now, and the way they've snuggled themselves into media so easily does manage to be kind of fascinating. I'm not nearly as judgmental of run-of-the-mill pervert characters, even though there are plenty of gripes to be had about the message we send when we treat their antics like inconsequential jokes just because we're used to it. I don't think characters like this inspire copycats or anything, but I do expect the traditional pervert to be the kind of archetype that will gradually fade away or mutate into something else. This siscon archetype may just be a new mutation of deviancy we've added to popular culture.

Source

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjw_yZ--NI8

Magical Girl Ore - Episode 5 [Review]

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Magical Girl Ore - Episode 5 [Review]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkcBASkgmck

There's definitely some context I'm missing from this latest episode of Magical Girl Ore. The entire episode interrupts the story thus far to violently skewer every aspect of anime production at Studio Pierrot. (Magical Girl Ore comes from Pierrot Plus, but as the episode handily points out, most animation is heavily outsourced between studios these days.) The jokes are all pretty inside baseball, but even if I did understand them, I don't think I'd like this episode any better. While it's a lot easier to parody somebody else's work than to create something new, this episode proves that the result isn't guaranteed to be entertaining.

“Magical Girl - On Vacation” is a more literal title than I'd expected—Saki and Sakuyo effectively take a week off from being on the show. Instead we focus on Cyborg Fujimoto and his five brothers, who turn out to be professionals in the anime industry. They're on schedule to submit their latest episode when an executive rejects it outright—apparently the designs for Cyborg Fujimoto and his brothers are too similar to the sextuplets from Mr. Osomatsu. That doesn't prevent the episode from showing Fujimoto and his brothers mimicking the Osomatsu brothers' colors and age order, as well as their mannerisms and vocal tics. After this odd start, the episode devolves into a criticism of working conditions in the anime industry on the whole. From unreasonable producers to difficult animators to impossible deadlines and excessive reliance on outsourcing, it's an anime episode about how difficult and thankless it is to create anime. It's an understandable critique of an industry that absolutely has its problems, but I wouldn't say it's funny to watch. It's important to be aware of problems in the industry in order to fix them, but this didn't feel like the place for it.

The Fujimotos' hastily concocted storyline suffers from lack of logic, and having characters angrily shout, “Who came up with that premise!?” to prove that they're in on the joke doesn't make it any more forgivable. Pointing out the problems with a story for laughs can be a calculated risk, but this week it just reads like everyone saw the issues with this episode's parody take before it even aired. In the end, Saki and Sakuyo arrive to save the day in their magical girl forms, dispelling any need for the convoluted scheming of the previous 20 minutes. “What the hell kind of ending is this?” Fujimoto asks, taking the words right out of my mouth.

I'm all for parodying the anime industry, but I prefer the show commit to it the way Anime-Gataris did. This reads like an abrupt tantrum in the middle of a formerly cohesive story. I felt like Magical Girl Ore could frequently deliver pitch-perfect parody of the magical girl genre without losing itself in snide sideroads, so I'm not sure what happened this week. It definitely feels like I'm missing some context here, like perhaps the situation that happened with the Fujimoto siblings actually happened to the Magical Girl Ore animators, so maybe they had to scramble to create a filler episode like this? (It seems pretty unlikely, but you never know.) Even when I did have the cultural context to understand this episode's jokes (like when Chiba fell to his doom while playing Pokémon Go), none of them were funny enough to justify a complete departure from the magical girl story that was being told until this point. Just because characters kept proclaiming that this episode was a disaster didn't make it any less of one.

Source

PERSONA 5 the Animation - Episode 4 [Review]

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PERSONA 5 the Animation - Episode 4 [Review]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6RLvRFteRA

Disappointingly, after covering most of the story build-up for the opening hours of P5 well, this episode handles the climax of Kamoshida's story arc by sticking to the game-constrained rails as tightly as possible. Adapting cutscenes and their dramatic escalation worked previously thanks to the skillful direction of content that was already interesting. But when the time comes to take on virtually any other element of the game, the anime comes off way too rigid in its interpretations. For starters, there's an over-long explanation by Morgana about how the calling card makes the treasure appear, with a resulting time limit for the thieves. However, all this talk of obvious game mechanics is substantially less interesting when you're not engaging with them as a player. This easily could have been skimmed over, but P5A seems insistent on being too faithful to its source material at times.

This is also present in all the other prep before the party takes on the dungeon. We see Ren and Ryuji shop for new weapons in an airsoft shop, and Ren gets some healing items dumped in his lap by a passing doctor. For what it's worth, Takemi's appearance is actually a highlight of this section, since her immediately intriguing personality comes through without this being a straight adaptation of the game. But it still feels like a deus ex machina for a problem that doesn't ultimately matter, since Ren and the thieves don't use any healing items once the adventure is underway. Similarly, the anime works in a moment with Ren constructing tools at his desk that don't get used either, seemingly just there to acknowledge that this is something you do in the game.

You might think that this issue would be alleviated after the prep work is done and the actual heist gets underway, but you'd be underestimating P5A's commitment to detail. We then get a montage of the characters sneaking around busting enemies while they chat about their code-names. This portion really contributes to the whole Let's Play feel of the episode, in that we're seeing people just push through the game as they talk. It gets the story across functionally, but an adaptation should strive to leverage the strengths of its medium, rather than adhering so closely to the beats of a different format. Persona 5's animation still looks generally good, so it's frustrating to think of how the pedestrian direction is holding back its dramatic impact.

And even the visuals come up short for this episode's big showpiece: the fight with Shadow Kamoshida. I understand the constraints that most anime productions are under right now, but limitations aside, going with CGI for his monstrous form was an ill-advised decision. This design was done in stylized CGI to begin with, being from a PS4 game and all, but taking that route with the anime only highlights how its visuals come up short against the source material. The fight itself proceeds along the same rote path as the rest of the episode, complete with turn-based attacks and breaks for healing spells. The climax of the battle does try to build some drama out of game over/restarting mechanics, but even that just leads to introducing the Persona fusion gimmick in an unsatisfying way.

After all this, the story still has the solid payoff of its source material. The focus on Ann versus Kamoshida and the resolution of her feelings are handled extremely well, and seeing the terrible teacher get dragged on multiple planes of existence for his crimes is as satisfying as ever. This stuff is PERSONA 5 the Animation at its best; if only it could figure out how to make the journey there more interesting.

After this first case is wrapped up, we get a flash-forward to later in the story, showing teenage detective Akechi talking to the assembled team of thieves in the future and hinting at their next case. (Because this show needed more shifting timelines; Sae and her interrogation didn't even appear in this episode!) As convoluted as it makes the storytelling, this is still an engaging flourish that embraces the way an anime adaptation can play with the narrative's presentation. Moving forward, the show should deploy more unique touches like this, instead of feeling so much like a Let's Play of the original game.

Source

Cutie Honey Universe - Episode 4 [Review]

https://cdn.animenewsnetwork.com/thumbnails/max300x600/cms/episode-review/131008/chu042.jpg

Cutie Honey Universe - Episode 4 [Review]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF5p6eJxNBw

Cutie Honey Universe is quickly becoming a series at odds with itself. There's a sense of wanting to adhere to its classic cartoonish roots, but it's also been trying to tell an arc-based story within a modern one-cour framework. This week's episode does take a step forward, but then falls not just one step back into its persistent status quo, but another step thanks to some misplaced bad habits.

At least the positive can be highlighted first since it kicks off the episode. The most welcome development is that Honey has already tired of just reacting to the monster-of-the-week formula instigated by Panther Claw and wants to take more direct action. It's a good idea for a series in this position, and given CHU's propensity for lighter elements, it makes me wish Cutie Honey Universe would go even further with the meta-jokes. A classic romp like this one could absolutely support bits with the characters commenting on their archetypal situation. Instead, this just provides an opportunity for Genet to ‘assist’ Honey in an infiltration plan to further her nebulous agenda.

As a result, we get a new Honey transformation in the idol-based Misty Honey, along with a dance number that would have been a great place to insert the classic Cutie Honey theme song, but sadly no dice on that one. At least there are other crowd-pleasing elements to this episode. The idea of Honey infiltrating the enemy's turf, complete with a disguise, is right out of the classic anime's playbook. She even does a variation of her iconic appearance speech, which ups the hype for the big fight scene of this episode. Even as the fights keep making use of the anime's speed-line dimension, they've found ways to continually spice things up, like bringing in masses of land and rocks to affect the fight. In general, this episode just has more to do action-wise, so it looks better than last week's. If nothing else, it seems like Cutie Honey Universe can be counted on to deliver entertaining super-heroine action.

Beyond Honey's initiative, the story development for the villains is another plus. It's a comparatively short scene, but seeing some internal conflict in Panther Claw as Jill's subordinates question the same motives we still don't understand is refreshing. It helps that we seem to finally have a recurring villain character besides Jill in the form of Tarantula (sporting a terrific update of her classic design). It's already established that this show has too many elements to really keep track of (Natsuko isn't even in this episode after her epiphany in the last one), but Tarantula's dynamic with Jill is one the show would do well to keep leaning on. In fact, all the most interesting stuff in the show so far has focused on Jill/Genet's motives. It's no wonder that Honey wanted to take the focus back in her own show.

Unfortunately, that focus comes at the cost of her own dignity this week. Fanservice is of course going to be an integral part of any Go Nagai production, and things seem par for the course in this episode's first couple acts. The unconscious captured ‘Honey’ actually incurs the first use of the ol' ‘Buy The Blu-Rays’ lights, and demonstrating that Honey's transformation dissolves as she runs out of energy is a perfectly fine use of fanservice as well. This also leads to an appreciably clever moment where Honey uses her transformation device not to access a new form, but to disguise herself as a statue.

But that statue bit leads into the most divisive part of the episode, an agonizingly long segment where Danbee and Junpei unintentionally assault the statue-fied Honey. It's not that there's no place for sex comedy in a show like this, and it's even thrived in some of the earlier episodes, but this scene is simply unfunny, disconnected from the rest of the episode's plot, and goes on far too long. Maybe you'll find more humor in an old man and a little boy dry-humping a statue that's actually a disguised android woman, but personally I was with Honey in just begging them to leave. The fanservice in Cutie Honey works better when it's incidental to the action, like making those cool fights the show excels at and making them sexy in the process. The show doesn't need to bother with these annoying attempts at skeevy sketch comedy.

So that last scene not only derails all the fun and goodwill the episode delivered, it also abruptly stops Honey's whole proactive infiltration scheme to reestablish the status quo. That's a shame, since the first half of the episode, along with parts of earlier ones, showed that this series might work better if it shifted into a proper serial format. As it stands, we've got about two-thirds of a great episode with a not-so-great chunk that really drags it down.

Source

Caligula - Episode 4 [Review]

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Caligula - Episode 4 [Review]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5J2N4cPWaY

While last week saw Caligula ditch its plot momentum to shine the spotlight on Mifue's character, episode 4 manages to find a much more even balance of character development and exposition, dividing the story roughly in half between the two efforts. Things move quickly on the exposition side, as Ritsu, Mifue, Shogo, and Kotaro get the lowdown from Aria about the history of Mobius and the need to gather heroes together to fight against μ's well-intentioned but dangerous hold on the virtual city. As far as character development goes, the other half of this episode belongs to Suzuna, who begins to form an emotional bond with an equally isolated library patron before discovering his darker nature hiding just beneath the surface.

Both halves of the plot do good work in stabilizing Caligula's shaky storytelling, though they aren't without their faults. The exposition scenes help to establish a clear conflict and finally unite our cast together under a common goal. Most of what Aria explains about her and μ's goals in creating Mobius rely on fairly standard sci fi tropes, most of which were already apparent after the first couple episodes, but the clarity of focus Aria provides in summing it all up is still welcome. It's unfortunate that the cast's group dynamic hasn't gelled together yet, nor have their individual personalities managed to rise above the generic JRPG clichés we met at the start of the show. Ritsu is essentially a cipher protagonist, Shogo is stoic, Naruko is quirky, and Kotaro is headstrong. Mifue fares a bit better in theory, since last week spent so much time with her, but we see none of those personality flaws or idiosyncrasies factor into her chemistry with the others this week, which makes episode 3 feel like even more of an outlier in retrospect. While Caligula definitely needed to take some time to get its team of heroes on the same page, it's worrisome that they still feel so half-baked as characters.

Suzuna follows Mifue in being slightly more interesting than her companions, but even that stems from grading on a heavy curve. I dug the slightly surreal and eerie atmosphere of the library she shared with Komori, but the actual dialogue they exchanged was underwhelming. I'll give Caligula points for using The Lord of the Rings as the episode's main reference point, but watching two moody teenagers spend half an episode psychoanalyzing Sméagol is not my definition of entertainment. The characterization of both parties felt far too self-serious for such an incredibly basic breakdown of the effects of isolation on the psyche; I'm happy that the show can focus on character interactions over empty spectacle when given the chance, but in order for that strategy to pay off, the dialogue has to actually be good. I was also not a fan of Suzuna using “the power of song” to defeat Komori in the end, which came across far too corny to be taken seriously.

Overall, Caligula seems to slowly be taking shape, though the show's pacing is still too erratic for my tastes. There are some strong aesthetic compositions on display in this episode as usual, but the mediocre animation negates Caligula's potential to get by purely on the graces of its good looks. Now that the exposition has been mostly taken care of, I'd like to see Caligula give its heroes some of those Catharsis Effect weapons so they can begin doing battle with the Digiheads and the Musicians. At this point, more dumb and empty spectacle might actually do the show a favor.

Source

Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card - Episode 16 [Review]

https://cdn.animenewsnetwork.com/thumbnails/max300x600/cms/episode-review/130988/ccs-ep-16.jpg

Cardcaptor Sakura: Clear Card - Episode 16 [Review]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqJlSZ--oBw

This week makes up for the last in terms of action and plot, although the trade-off is that it feels kind of rushed. We pick right back up with the card wreaking havoc on Tomoyo's family estate, and it's really too bad that Sakura doesn't have a “Repair” card, because this sucker tunnels all over the place like a giant version of Bugs Bunny, leaving huge hummocks of land in its wake. That makes it somewhat surprising that the card isn't something like “Dig” or “Tunnel,” and I admit to being sad that it didn't look more mole-like, but the real takeaway is how much power Sakura has over her cards. To stop this new one, she encloses the entirety of the estate in Siege, something Kero isn't even sure is possible because of the space involved. That it works says a lot about both Sakura's own magical strength and how much the cards themselves respect her, something we see again in Flight's jubilant behavior.

This fight is over before the commercial break, which does make it feel a little too fast, especially since the length makes it apparent that if a little more flashback were eliminated last week, this could easily have fit there. Was it drawn out to try and entice viewers to stick around? Maybe, because the slow plot progression is definitely beginning to wear on me at least. Finally getting some confirmation of the true villain is very welcome, but it also feels like something we should have had sooner.

On that note, the baddie now seems to be exclusively Kaito. This week he reveals that he's much more involved in Akiho's life and friendships than she's aware, in part because of his handy little power to turn back time – when he reveals that he knows too much about Sakura's family, he rewinds the clock, leaving Akiho confused and off-balance. This all makes Akiho feel much more like a pawn than a willing participant in whatever's going on. She seems to know that something is wrong, because her fixation on falling asleep at friends' houses feels like much more than mere embarrassment, and when Kaito invokes his spell, she's both scared and seems like she's definitely seen it before. Why Kaito needs to work through Akiho may be as (relatively) innocuous as her being the right age, but it's becoming increasingly evident that if she knew what was really going on, she wouldn't like it.

Kaito's increased sinister vibe isn't helping her peace of mind either. This week he compliments her on her singing before making a comment about Tomoyo being a good singer too – and there's something kind of worrisome about that. For as much as he's using her, Kaito does appear to care about Akiho, so this begs the question of whether or not he'd do something to Tomoyo in order to help his favorite pawn. Right now I wouldn't put it past him, and I'm sure he'll be listening in through Momo (which is all but confirmed when he meets Akiho on her way home) to see what he can do.

All of this may be why the second card capture this week has to be carried out by Sakura and Meiling together. As Kaito grows more possessive of Akiho and antagonistic toward her friends, Sakura and Meiling are strengthening their friendship. Even though Meiling goes back to Hong Kong at the end of the episode, she's now on first name terms with Sakura, which she feels gives her the right to tell Syaoran in no uncertain terms to knock it off with the stupid stuff. The actual fight against what turns out to be a humanoid card is choreographically interesting, the most exciting card capture we've had in a while. It's almost enough to make you forget that faces are simplified to the point of being mouthless for much of the episode.

The preview for next week doesn't look like anything different from what we've been getting so far – no markers of major plot developments or anything. But evil roll cakes is a promising visual premise at least, and given Kaito's skill in the kitchen, maybe it will be more than it appears.

Source

Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online - Episode 4 [Review]

https://cdn.animenewsnetwork.com/thumbnails/max300x600/cms/episode-review/130977/sao-alternative-ep4.jpg

Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online - Episode 4 [Review]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QAnZIMAuB0

With the flashback now over, episode 4 brings the story right back to where we left off at the end of episode 1, with team LM scoring a victory over the team of professionals. But as M is quick to remind LLENN, they're not done yet. Two other teams remain, and they only barely manage to fend off one of them when the opponents charge in on hovercraft. (M later speculates that vehicles are made more readily available as the number of players dwindle, which seems sensible.) That results in a fairly tense standoff as LLENN rolls around to avoid shots while M sets up his shots.

This is when we finally find out what's in that huge pack he's been carrying around: it's not extras guns or ammo, as I had assumed, but a portable parapet made of spaceship armor that's impenetrable to small arms fire. As cool as that is, M then outdoes himself by taking out the hovercraft crew without using the game's auto-targeting system. A later flashback to Pito and LLENN training explains that the advantage to firing without assistance is no sighting lines to give away your shots, but the big disadvantage is that shooting this way depends heavily on real-life skill, so most players won't be good enough marksmen to reliably hit targets at range.

In other words, the episode devotes a couple minutes to explaining the game mechanics necessary to understand why something a character did was cool. There really isn't a great way to do this, so I suppose the story handles it about as well as it could, but if your interests don't include explanations of ways to exploit game mechanics, then I could see this scene being a little tiresome. We should probably should get used to it though, because beyond even SAO's penchant for this sort of exposition, SAO-A: GGO's writer Keiichi Sigsawa has proven in past works to be enamored with such technical details.

That aside, this episode has more going on than just that action scene, the exposition surrounding it, and the flight from the last team to follow. It also spends much more time on character development for M, who freely admits that he's a sniper because he's a coward. He also apparently has an uncanny talent for remembering map details. Karen also demonstrates how pumped she is about the game by not hesitating to gun down an incapacitated avatar, which interestingly was the one scene where we didn't actually see the characters getting shot. Even without any blood or gore present, the camera still pulled back from the carnage. We also get to see that the last remaining opponent is an all-female team, and I do believe several of those characters appear in the opener, so this tournament may not be the last time we see of them.

Of course, the big twist comes when M pulls a gun on LLENN at the end. The way LLENN handled this – flipping the safety on his gun when she grabbed him – made for a slick reversal, but the lingering question is why he betrayed her at all. Was that note from Pito? And why did it have to be read exactly at 15:00 hours? This intriguing mystery partly makes up for the episode not switching back to the real world at all. As much as I'm enjoying the game scenario so far, I do hope the series gets back to splitting its focus between the real and virtual worlds, since this approach always broadens a good SAO story.

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Food Wars! The Third Plate - Episode 16 [Review]

https://cdn.animenewsnetwork.com/thumbnails/max300x600/cms/episode-review/130993/food-wars-s3-ep-16.jpg

Food Wars! The Third Plate - Episode 16 [Review]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w7xdMzspCI

Oh, Evil Akira. Not only did you get a CLAMP-style makeover, but your eyes are now perpetually narrow and droopy, and you've gotten much more handsy to boot. Okay, that last bit was just the one scene toward the end of the episode, but I seriously thought that Evil Akira was going to kiss Soma's hand for a second there. Also, smelling the ingredients someone is using by sniffing their hands is very creepy unless you're a dog.

Once again, we have an episode that's intent on cramming in a few chapters from the source material, but it works decently well this time. The return of Dojima as the impartial judge for this particular exam does give the whole thing more of an air of legitimacy than previous stages, because we know that he's much more likely to actually be impartial than many of his brethren. He wouldn't stoop to Azami's level any more than he'd insult Soma by favoring him, so that's a definite good start. While there are still places where Azami's tentacles can reach – the supposedly random selection of bear meat for the topic could favor Akira – we're starting this challenge on much more even ground, especially since Akira's still got a shred of decency left in him.

We see that when he refuses the fancy appliances and assistants that Central has arranged for him to use, which would have been yet another blatant misuse of their power. It's not clear whether it's Akira's former self speaking up when he says no thanks or if it's simply his pride, but I'm inclined to think he wants a more level playing field for his fight against Soma. He keeps repeating how much better he is than the last time they fought, and while that's doubtlessly true (it would be odd if he hadn't kept growing as a chef), he also really cares about this rematch. It's a test of his own worth, since Soma's come close to beating him in spice-based dishes before and if he can win this one, not only will it finally determine that Soma's not worth his apron, it will also confirm that Akira made the right decision in becoming Azami's minion. While we don't know much about why he did this yet, we can infer that it was not an easy choice, given how devoted he was to Jun and her kitchen. Azami hasn't played fair yet, so whatever's behind Akira's choice, there's doubtless some emotional conflict for him.

That's not really an excuse for deliberately pissing Soma off like this, though. (I mean, has that ever worked out for anyone?) If nothing else, it's likely to make Soma suspicious of Akira's motivations and fire him up to make the best damn bear meat he possibly can. That could be what Akira is hoping for, but frankly I feel like this is going to bite him in the rear. Everyone who goes up against Soma makes the critical mistake of underestimating him, and in this case, Azami doesn't fully understand Soma's determination and the full brunt of the support standing behind him. Sure Yuga has his own ulterior motives for helping out, but at the end of the day he's lending his stooges to Soma and helping out personally because he likes the guy. Potentially bringing down Central in the process is just icing on the cake.

Soma's not the only one who might be in trouble, of course. Megumi and Takumi have been taken away by Rindo for their test, and their fate is still unknown at the end of the episode. Rindo herself is the biggest wildcard here, because I feel like she may be playing Clue while everyone else is playing Monopoly. Her motives seem to just be stirring the pot, and I suspect that her only real allegiance is to herself. How that will pan out for Megumi and Takumi is uncertain; it probably depends on how useful she thinks they'll be in the future. We'll hopefully find out next week, as the bear meat cook-off comes to a head. In the meantime, we'll just have to ask ourselves one important question: who would win if this was a bear meat cooking contest between Soma, Akira, and Golden Kamuy's Asirpa?

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Tokyo Ghoul:re - Episode 5 [Review]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiyDkD02F1Q

The battle at the auction house rages on, with the blood of ghouls and humans alike getting spilled by the gallon. And who's that entering the fray? Why it's out good pal Takizawa! Only now he's a big scary ghoul named Owl, of course. (Not to be confused with the One-Eyed Owl, Eto.)

Who is Takizawa? You'll be forgiven for not remembering, since he was a pretty minor member of the CCG. He stuck to the background working under Amon, but the anime did highlight him more in the second season by focusing on his struggle to write a last will and testament before the big final battle against Anteiku. It was classic Tokyo Ghoul character work, revealing the hidden depths of a person, their dreams and fears, just before their brutal and untimely death. But death is a nebulous concept in the Tokyo Ghoul universe, and Takizawa is actually alive and well (by ghoul standards anyway). He's a one-eyed ghoul himself now, just working under Aogiri instead of with Sasaki and the Quinxes, but the details behind his resurrection remain anybody's guess for now. The boy really seems to love jam though.

Takizawa's sudden appearance and radically altered behavior set the tone for this entire episode, which leans hard into Tokyo Ghoul's propensity for gory camp. There's no room for subtlety when Takizawa, reunited with one of his former students, punches straight through her torso as punishment for not paying attention during his lectures. These aren't delicate moments, but they can be fun. I got a kick out of Kanae stopping Mutsuki in his tracks by throwing a projectile rose into the ground, Tuxedo Mask style. Later, one of the investigators shouts “damn you and your sexy body!”, which is an impossible line to take seriously on its own, but doubly so when directed at a woman called Nutcracker as she flies through the air, boobs a-jiggling. Then one of the last scenes is a still shot of Madam with Urie's body half-stuffed in her gigantic gob. These parts are funny, and I'm perfectly okay with Tokyo Ghoul flexing its B-movie sensibilities now and then.

The big problem is that this is yet another messy action-focused episode that lacks the visual pop needed to carry its ambitions. The first two seasons of Tokyo Ghoul weren't animation powerhouses, but they frequently caught my eye with creative staging and composition. By contrast, Tokyo Ghoul:re has been far more conservative and utilitarian. As it jumps from battle to battle, it comes across more like a jumble of scenes haphazardly stitched together than a cohesive whole. This approach makes everything more difficult to follow or care about, especially when watched in weekly installments with no conclusion in sight. A lot happens, but it doesn't feel like it matters yet.

Of course, that's probably because it's all been setup for future conflicts. On the Quinx side, Mutsuki finally reunites with the rest of his family, and they all force Kanae to retreat. Sasaki, ever the caring leader and dad figure, has the injured Mutsuki retreat with Urie, but since Urie's still hungry for recognition, he purposefully takes the long way out of the building and “accidentally” stumbles upon the ghouls' escape route. Urie's not a bad person, but his ambition blinds him to the concerns of anybody else, and he doesn't think twice about possibly putting Mutsuki in graver danger. Fittingly, Urie soon finds himself in too deep (specifically too deep inside Madam's mouth), so now it's up to Mutsuki to save him instead. Meanwhile, Sasaki pursues Nutcracker with the remainder of the Quinxes but soon finds himself locked in battle with fellow half-ghoul Takizawa.

The rest of the CCG fares pretty damn poorly against the multiple ghoul threats. Takizawa mows down everyone, laughing all the way, until he gets to Sasaki. Nutcracker takes down an entire squad by herself, punctuating the battle with her titular move. Juzo is evenly matched with Ayato, so both of them retreat simultaneously. Ayato runs to help fellow Aogiri member Naki, who's not doing too hot against Akira and her dad's old patented spine whip. Then Juzo meets up with Urie and attacks the ghouls escaping from the auction. The Clowns battle another squad of investigators, who hold their ground despite Uta's manipulative face-shifting powers. Oh, and all of this is being manipulated by Washu, who's still overseeing everything from the safety of his monitors. Did you get all that?

Cramming all of this ensemble action into the episode leaves no room for even a pinch of reflection. Takizawa's reveal should be a big deal, but the revelation comes and goes with little fanfare. Naki is portrayed rather sympathetically as somebody who has fallen behind this war's arms race and built a family for himself that he's rapidly losing, but we just don't get enough time to explore these parts of his character. I also expected more to be made of Urie and Juzo indiscriminately slaughtering the ghouls attempting to escape. Obviously, all ghouls are monsters to them, and it's hard for me to feel bad for ghouls who had no qualms buying people too, but Tokyo Ghoul is notorious for refusing to dehumanize either side of the conflict, so this feels like a missed opportunity for nuance.

I'm sure these concerns will be addressed later, and that's fine. But as a discrete unit of storytelling, this episode does a heck of a lot without saying much. In an action-driven episode, I need the action to be impressive on its own, or I'm going to need something else to chew on. Historically, Tokyo Ghoul has always redeemed its shortcomings with strong and thoughtful character work, but episodes like this one leave no room to focus on anything interesting. Nevertheless, the battle rages on into next week.

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My Hero Academia - Episode 42 [Review]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdgI0zUVvBE

Since we've been easing into a new story arc, it was a pleasant surprise for me to learn that one of My Hero Academia's Big Exciting Moments(tm) was already just around the corner. The Vanguard Action Squad's attack on the training grounds commences, but it quickly becomes apparent that the story is mostly about Kota and Midoriya's fight with a single member of the villain group who arrives on the scene unceremoniously.

The member in question is a tall and strong-looking guy who Kota immediately recognizes as the murderer of his parents. This mystery man appears to be using the League of Villains as a means to an end, because he likes using his Quirk to kill people, which will tie into the episode's themes of heroes and villains wonderfully. The Quirk in question is super strength, not unlike Midoriya and All Might's, but his particular power involves all the gross sinewy fibers of his muscles exploding from his body, making for a much more threatening display than One For All that forces Midoriya to push himself harder than we've ever seen before.

I think season three is when I've really started to appreciate MHA's hero theming. I've never been especially drawn to the superhero aesthetic or ethos; as a playground for stories about chasing your dreams, I've always preferred the anarchy of One Piece's pirate world. But episodes like this do an incredible job of finding the beauty in what it means to be a hero, and MHA digs much deeper than anything I've personally seen from Western media. "I just wanted to kill, and those two wanted to stop me. It was a result of all of us doing what we wanted," is how the villain explains to Kota that there should be no hard feelings about the whole dead parents thing. Comparing this again to One Piece—a series whose protagonist is openly ambivalent about being seen as a hero—this sounds exactly like the kind of logic a villain would use to justify their misdeeds just before Luffy punches them in the face, not out of the goodness of his heart, but because he's got to stand up for his friends.

I believe the common prevalence of this protagonist-antagonist dichotomy in Shonen Jump is what allows My Hero Academia to find a new angle on it. We've already established that our main characters harbor some insecurity about being "fake heroes", which is a weakness just waiting to be exploited by villains like Stain or Shigaraki. Making "Number One Hero" a dream that characters can compete for does implicitly remove the sense of duty and responsibility that heroism ought to be about, and while heroes are often depicted as petty in this world, they're never been portrayed as unreliable beyond the understandable limits of their fragility. You can be the Pirate King and owe the world nothing, but if you want to call yourself a Hero, you have to put your money where your mouth is at some point and make sacrifices for others. This conflict feels especially organic this week by focusing on Kota, a kid who's lost faith in the concept of heroism. Because of his parents' deaths, he can only see the imminent pain that comes with a hero's broken promise, so if someone like Midoriya's ever going to restore that faith, he has to step up in ways that others haven't.

The big finisher where Midoriya nearly blows his own arm off three times trying to use One For All at full power against a relentless villain gets so insanely messy that it's almost avant-garde in terms of visuals. This enemy's muscle quirk allows for an intense and scrambled fight, and Midoriya's final stand is a remarkable experience of sight and sound. If you remember his fight with Todoroki, where he had to strategically sacrifice his own body, destroying each of his fingers over and over, this feels like an evolution of that idea that now uses his full arm, as he delivers successive punches that meld his own flesh with his opponent's.

This fight is going to be the one that gets everybody talking again, and for good reason. However, as a full episode it also highlights the series' occasionally limp structural instincts. This villain really feels like he comes out of nowhere, and if you told me last week that we'd immediately be jumping to such a massive emotional high involving a character we'd never met, I would have been shocked. Maybe that's just the speedier pace of the show, since it does allow a major conflict to be contained within a single episode, but it still doesn't feel quite right. It takes about half the episode to get into the fight in the first place, yet the time spent with the side characters fighting the other League members doesn't serve as build-up to this conflict either. It's really weird.

But that's such a minor nitpick in the face of an otherwise extraordinary episode. We're three for three on new MHA episodes really knocking my socks off, and this is easily the most I've ever been invested in the world and characters of this story so far. The title of this episode is "My Hero," and it fittingly manages to lend new meaning to the series' title. Kota has someone to look up to now in Midoriya, and that last shot of our broken and exhausted green son roaring with victory hits hard. Winning the battle isn't the part that feels good this time, it's hearing the word "hero".

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One Piece - Episode 834 [Review]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zM0cG1k8yZU

As of last week's episode, the Big Mom assassination plot's first main goal was accomplished when Brook snuck up on the framed picture of Mother Carmel and smashed it. The intended effect was for her to see the broken picture and enter her terrifying shriek mode, which is the tiny window of time where she would be vulnerable enough to hit with Caesar's rocket launchers. What the Straw Hats and Firetanks failed to predict was the exact effect that all of the encompassing chaos would have on her, so she spends most of the episode acting like a dizzied fighting game character, still unkillable because she hasn't decided where to focus her rage between the broken picture, the busted wedding cake, and all the treason. The alliance's next goal is to grab the pieces of the Mother Carmel picture and show them to Big Mom once again to ensure she panics in the exact way that they based their plan around.

But in order to do that, they have a much bigger fight on their hands as Big Mom's various children spring into action. For an episode that easily could have been a breather for the animation staff given the more significant story episodes ahead, the action looks fantastic. I think Sanji ends up getting the best stuff between casually dodging Pudding's bullets (he may have found her emotional sore spot, but she's not willing to concede just yet) and facing off with her older brother, Charlotte Daifuku. Daifuku's Devil Fruit summons a big genie from his belt that he commands like a JoJo Stand, though he brings it forth by rubbing his stomach in a provocative way, and that belt rests a little too south of his border for comfort. Penile genie smoke aside, the sense of energy and impact coming from Sanji's fights this week is really commendable. It looks great.

We're still hanging on to a chapter-per-episode pace to my delight, though this episode takes the chance to really expound on what was going on in the source material. The fights that ensue with the lower-tier Big Mom pirates leaves a much bigger impression, though I know most of these crazy-looking side characters, especially on Luffy and Jimbei's side of the fight, aren't going to be sticking around much longer. While the Straw Hats and Firetanks buy time to figure out how to get their plan back on track, Capone has to play the villain so that he doesn't raise the family's suspicions. Unfortunately, that can't last long because he's dealing with Katakuri and his Future Sight Haki, and by the end of the episode he's openly antagonizing Big Mom's scariest kid. "Even if we can't see it, we all have the right to change the future!" is a pretty cool way to confront a dude with clairvoyance. There's also the mention of Katakuri looking pale because he sees something disastrous on the horizon that nobody can stop.

Beyond the fights that the Straw Hats find themselves in, this is also a major turning point for Judge and the Vinsmokes, now that they're being forced to see the trap that's been set for them. Perospero has the whole family glued to their seats with candy, and all they can do is watch while the fighting happens around them and their imminent death is promised. The emotional position that the story puts us in with the Vinsmokes is pretty weird. This arc has finally wrapped up in the manga, so I can look back with hindsight and say that a further exploration into the backstory of Germa 66 isn't in the cards for Whole Cake Island, which is sort of necessary to understand what their overarching journey is meant to be.

It's been pretty clear that Sanji's motivation for saving his family has nothing to do with their value as people, but rather a simple instinctual obligation. He's working his own feelings out by taking action. The Vinsmokes can work as both the secondary antagonists and the damsels in distress at the wedding, but this scene has us facing a weeping, humiliated Judge who screams about his lost dreams as he faces the consequences of his thirst for power. He's confused as to why his sons are so calm and ready to accept their deaths, and Reiju promptly reminds us that he removed their ability to feel emotions in an attempt to make them super soldiers. There's an intimacy to this scene that makes it feel like more than a "Ha! Take that!" moment for the audience to get emotional revenge on Judge, but what that extra something is, I couldn't tell you. Based on my knowledge of what's coming, he's not on the verge of a traditional redemption arc, but there also feels like a deliberate juxtaposition between his dreams and Big Mom's that has yet to be explored to my satisfaction.

There's a lot of movement as we push on through Big Mom's tea party this week, but it's mostly trying to get us back to the point we thought we already arrived at last week with the Mother Carmel picture. I was surprised at how much mileage this adaptation managed to get out of what could have easily been an unexceptional episode, so I I have nothing but kudos on that front. Weeks like this start to give me hope for what's to come, because I'm getting exactly the saturated craziness that I've been asking for, despite the pacing only marginally improving. So let's see what happens next!

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