Hi all, sorry I’ve been MIA for so long– I wrote about why I wasn’t posting on BlueSky, then seemingly forgot that not everyone is on Bluesky.
Long story short, I fell and had a concussion in the middle of August, got a new job, among other things, and I just didn’t have the bandwidth for anime watching and reviewing. I was trying to make Karen’s Anime Blog a full-time job (with the intent of monetizing it through Patreon or something after building the site for a year or two), but the downtime allowed me to realize that I can’t just live in an anime bubble; fifteen years ago, I could, but things are different now. I’m glad I at least tried it, so now I won’t be stuck wondering if it would have worked or not.
I do plan on getting back to blogging, but not at the pace I was doing for the Summer 2025 anime season; I know I want to get back to blogging by the time Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End returns in January, if not sooner. Thank you to everyone who reads my little anime blog:)
Hi all. I fell and gave myself a mild concussion last weekend and haven’t been able to post for a bit. I’m fully recovered– at least, I hope so >__<, but I’m actually going on a family vacation, so I won’t be able to get back to aniblogging just yet. If all goes as planned I should be back to posting on Aug. 23rd or thereabouts. I will pick up with the episodes that are airing at that time because catching up on all the ones I missed is not feasible. I missed writing about the hard rock exorcism episode of Dandadan, lol. Oh well, I think the internet has pretty effectively digested that one by now.
Thanks to everyone who’s been reading my blog. I apologize for the downtime and I hope you’ll come back next week for more updates.
Watching television can be fun, but it sure does take time– time that you likely no longer have in the fast-paced world of today. Instead of laboriously tracking the output of the frighteningly prolific island nation known as Japan, we now provide this exquisitely-curated service to give you the main idea of everything remotely important that happened in the programs called “anime” this week. Now you can spend all that extra time eating Doritos, praying to Madokakami, or going on a food tour of Greenland.
Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show had a shockingly decent episode.
2. Teenaged karaoke tutor to a yakuza freaks out at an unexpected Dragonball Z reference; oh and the yakuza dude gets his car crashed and might be in a coma, should probably mention that.
3. Shifty-looking butler dude turns out to be no good; a diner cook nearly incinerates the highest court in the land in defense of his surrogate daughter. It turns out ok though, since the girl inherits a library full of cool books.
4. Two blondes have a fairly involved conversation about one’s true nature while supporting themselves precariously on the side of a cliff wall; they eventually do fall, yet survive because a bush saved them. Go berry bush!
5. A Beast Lord drinks the strange human invention “coffee” for the first time; decides humanity as a species is definitely worth keeping around for a while longer. Ok not really, but he should have.
6. Yamamoto and Wada manage to make up and save their friendship after a fight, only to imperil said friendship by buying each other the world’s ugliest bathing suits.
7. Renako can’t figure out why all the hottest girls in school are drawn to her. Maybe she should consider that it could be because of her shiny, vibrant, bubblegum-pink hair?
8. Kaoruko admits that she loves Rintarou…in episode six of Fragrant Flower. What? Wasn’t she made aware of the rules that she had to wait at least 60 more episodes for that?
9. In other romantic news, a butterfly grew out of Moi’s head and proved that he may someday overpower the Curse of Perpetual Friendzone.
10. THE GIRLS HAVE FOUND THE SAPPHIRE DEPOSIT! THE GIRLS HAVE FOUND THE SAPPHIRES!
11. Renji’s genius disguise is blown when the new girl takes his sunglasses off. Now his little sister knows that he’s been kind-of-sort-of dating her best friend! Audience shocked that this flimsy disguise didn’t last until the penultimate episode of the season.
12. Gaku’s potato-and-meat stew didn’t wow the kitchen staff at his restaurant, so he tried making a staff meal of meat and potatoes again, but this time made it more “cosmopolitan.” In lieu of nothing, his boss is a giant douchebag.
13. Dan Da Dan went totally metal in two different languages, and people who have read the manga died and went to heaven.
This episode starts on a nice domestic note, with Nelluru brewing coffee for Klen and Alicia. Sometimes, it kind of blows my mind that there are many people who don’t start their day with coffee– how could you live? Of course, coffee is an expensive trade good in Clevatess world, so Nelluru grabbed some when she was raiding Vroko’s pantry. Klen is pleased with the coffee, but disappointingly, does not declare that the human race is now okay in his book for making such a delicious beverage. While he’s drinking, Alicia comes back from scouting the town to report that the Kingdom of Hiden is very, very messed up right now. Having your entire ruling class killed in one night will do that.
Being the pureblooded Hidenean that he is, Luna knows a good thing when he sees it. Don’t worry kid, I wore my parents down and started having coffee at the age of 11, you can do it!
Alicia briefs Klen on the political situation, including Boelate’s invasion of Hiden and Esslin’s failed attempt at resistance. Interestingly, she says that Hiden doesn’t have any wizards because the king forbade the use of magic within his realm. That seems exactly like the kind of self-sabotaging bunk that I expect from royalty. Nelluru gives Alicia some coffee, which Alicia has never had because she was from a village that didn’t get much in the way of luxury ingredients. It’s probably not good that I’m more invested in the coffee situation than the invasion right now.
Even if your a walking corpse animated by dark ichor, that’s no reason not to enjoy a steamy brew of caffeinated bliss.
Alicia compliments Nelluru, which leads Klen to respond that even though she’s not very feminine, she still can’t “have a baby with Nelluru.” What? Where did that even come from? Flustered, Alicia explains that Nelluru is the first person she’s ever made happier with her sword, so she feels like she’s actually done something heroic. Aww.
Back on topic, Alicia points out that if Boelate succeeds in wiping out Hiden, there goes Klen’s grand plan of making Luna king; at this rate, if Luna is found, he’ll just be exploited for the Hiden royal bloodline’s ability to forge aranacite into weapons. Alicia believes that Drel must be leading the Boelate army, and then we get some more context to her father’s murder: Drel murdered the man, who had retired and was living a quiet life, because he wanted to prove that his magic was stronger than Alicia’s father’s great sword skills. What a stupid reason to kill someone. Before he died, Alicia’s father told her never to fight Drel because war is opposite of the path of the hero: “War makes the world of men smaller.” So now, even though Alicia clearly wants revenge, she’ll be disobeying her father’s last wish if she takes on Drel.
Alicia muses that she’s not a hero anymore, so perhaps her father’s warning no longer applies; surprisingly, Klen is philosophical on the subject. Who decides who gets to be a hero, anyway? What’s to stop Alicia from still calling herself a hero if she saves people, the way she saved Nelluru? I think Klen’s exposure to Alicia has given him a lot of respect for heroes that he didn’t have in episode one.
Klen reverts to his true form and runs off, presumably to deal with the Boelate army in some fashion. Whatever happened to keeping a low profile so no one knows he’s gone? I guess we’re past that. I’m actually a little concerned about him; sure, he’s wicked powerful, but that army was huge and they have wizards that can do magic Clevatess doesn’t understand. Our favorite dark beast may be in for a rude awakening.
We switch POV to the Boelate Army, where they are currently passing through another gate. The Esslin soldiers from last episode are still hoping to stop the invasion and plan on stopping Boelate when they cross a nearby river. A pink-haired Hidenean we saw in the first episode looks on, and I wonder: is that Luna’s father? All pure-blooded Hideans have pink hair, so the hair color alone isn’t a giveaway, but there’s some reason this guy is getting screen time.
Alicia, Nelluru and Luna enter the village of Shiron, where an escaped bandit from the Ravens’ camp is getting abused by some local men. Seems like the villagers have been hanging the escaped bandits, and I almost feel sorry for them, but they I remember what they did to Nelluru and I’m not all that sorry.
Some delightfully grim imagery for those who thought this show was too on the happy-go-lucky side so far.
Alicia, Nelluru and Luna enter an inn, and two brutes want to make an issue of the fact that Alicia is a mysterious woman with an eyepatch and a sword. Their Mom, Kari, who is about a quarter their size, puts them in their places and gives Alicia a chance to explain herself. When Alicia states that she and Nelluru are protecting Luna, Kari welcomes the trio to the inn. One of the men takes Nelluru’s luggage and staggers from the weight of it– what the hell did Nelluru lift from Vroko’s supplies? Solid bars of gold? After taking payment, Kari takes the trio to a plain but serviceable room where they can stay. Unfortunately, a creepy bug spies their whereabouts and Meynard is seeing through the bug’s eyes. Damn, it did not take him long to find them. Meynard sends his army of bugs into town, and boy it’s going to be hard for me to watch all these bugs swarming on screen; just the sight of them grosses me out.
I like Kari. I’m hoping against hope she survives what comes next.
A while later, as Luna naps, Alicia goes downstairs to bring up dinner. In the main room, the guys are talking about current events and blaming most everything on the heroes, who these men think are guilty of “dreaming too big.” Alicia notes the current opinion of her profession, but knows better than to say anything. As she’s going upstairs, something shatters a window. It’s a red ball that unfurls into a giant, uh….centipede? Mantis? I don’t know what kind of insect that’s supposed to be. It’s huge and quite gross though. Alicia reaches for her sword, and realizes she left it in the bedroom. Honestly, I don’t know if an ordinary sword would do her much good here; Clevatess should have left the Stream Splitter sword with her before he took off.
One guy tries to escape and gets eaten by the overwhelming army of giant bugs that have infested the town. That was less disgusting than it could have been, thank you show. Meynard introduces himself and claims he’s there to see if the Hiden baby inside is of royal blood or not. Upstairs, a different wizard is holding Nelluru in place by using the iron bedframe as a cage, while Luna cries. This mage is named Naie, and it seems like she has the ability to control metal.
Cute design, horrible wizard of the evil army. I guess you’re never too evil for girlish pigtails.
And that’s all for this week. Wow, things look bad. I don’t know how Alicia is going to be able to fight back in this situation, and even Clevatess may not be safe. I really hope Alicia somehow manages to kill Meynard sooner rather than later, his bugs suck and I hate the fact that he’s busting up Kari’s inn. The woman works hard to keep that place going! According to the preview, the Esslin guys are actually going to do something next time, so maybe they’ll hook up with our heroes somehow; I can hope.
Man, this episode. What the actual–? I was not expecting anything like this. I’m pretty sure we’ve gone beyond the realm of the first three RAAVM translated novels that I read, because I would have remembered this nonsense.
Well, let’s get started. Still at Origin Stratum, Hulemy has programmed the transport circle so monsters can’t use it. Wasn’t the whole reason Menagerie of Fools went on a monster hunt last episode because they couldn’t stop monsters from messing with the transport circle? Hmm, maybe Hulemy just needed more time. People are paired up to handle any leftover monsters, and Shui has officially had it with being stuck with Hevee. He makes some comments on how she’s a “frail young lady” and “emotionally unstable” and she starts shooting him with tons of arrows, which he easily dodges. I’m realizing that this show has the same mix of the super silly and super serious that Turkey! Time to Strike has, but it doesn’t bother me nearly as much here. Maybe that’s because the characters don’t act like idiots most of the time.
Shui does act like kind of a doofus here, but I would probably be at my wit’s end if forced to deal with Hevee for a whole day.
Kerioyl and Filmina invite the group to come visit the Menagerie of Fools’ base, so off we go. There’s some talk about how the group was started by Kerioyl, Filmina, Ako and Shiro, with Hevee and Shui coming later. Mishuel is perturbed about something and he tells Boxxo that it’s something he shouldn’t be speculating about; this mystery will be put to bed in about five minutes of screen time.
They reach the base, and it’s a totally unfinished wooden frame. The actual base is accessed via a hidden door in the floor. Once seated at the table, Kerioyl reviews that beating the lowest stratum lord will allow for a wish to be granted. Apparently the lowest stratum lord was defeated at one point, the wish was granted, and then the stratum ceased to exist. Then it gets confusing: they wonder if Clearflow Lake will cease to exist if someone gets their wish granted, but uh, wasn’t it just beating the lowest stratum that grants a wish? Now they seem to be saying that any stratum will do, but there’s only one level of the dungeon that’s considered “unconquered,” which I thought meant that the stratum lord wasn’t beaten yet. I’m really not sure what to make of this.
They go into a hidden room that Shui didn’t know existed, and it’s a room made up of crystals. There’s a large crystal configuration in the center of the room with a person sleeping inside. Keriyol and Filmina reveal that this boy is their child…and Ako and Shiro are also their children; they were triplets. This is what Mishuel was alluding to before, because he could sense that the boys had a similar presence to the parents. Why was any of this a secret? With Ako and Shiro, how much of a pain must it have been to pretend that their parents weren’t their parents when they were on missions and such? It’s not a completely insane plot twist, I just don’t see what the point of the deception was.
The third child has been placed in a crystal coffin, so he’s remained in suspended animation while Ako and Shiro have grown. The boy has a Blessing of Decay, a negative blessing that causes everything he touches to rot– shades of Rogue from X-Men here– and also causes his own body to decay. He also has the Blessing of Hyper-Recovery, which you’d think would be a good thing, but that just means he’s doomed to constantly be feeling himself rot and healing the damage, over and over again; he can’t even die. Well now, that’s pretty horrifying.
Obviously, the family’s wish is to get rid of the negative blessing. The crystal coffin won’t last much longer, so Kerioyl and Filmina are left with a choice: try to beat the stratum lord to get their wish the normal way, which will take too long, or join the Netherlord and take a quicker path to victory. They want Boxxo and co. to join them, but of course our heroes aren’t defecting to the dark side so easily.
As sudden as it is, I think this is actually a good plot twist, because Kerioyl’s family has a good reason to betray Boxxo, Hulemy, Lammis, Hevee, Shui and Misuel: They say they would do anything to put an end to their child’s pain, and as a parent, I can’t argue with that. I hate big betrayal scenes where it feels like everybody involved suddenly got a lobotomy off-camera, but this makes sense to me.
Hulemy points out that the Netherlord may go back on his word, but Kerioyl doesn’t care; as far as he sees it, this is the only chance they have. The two teams start fighting to keep Kerioyl’s family from defecting. This is different from fighting monsters though because they don’t actually want to kill each other, just defeat each other, so Lammis has to sit out; it’s too easy for her Might Blessing to kill someone. Boxxo extends his barrier so Hulemy, Shui and Lammis will be protected.
Okay, maybe it’s true I wanted Hevee to get a little beat up, but not like this.
Kerioyl takes on Hevee, while the twins fight Mishuel. Kerioyl manages to nick Hevee with poisoned blades, but the poison doesn’t appear to affect Hevee. The healer reveals that he has the Blessing of Sensory Manipulation, so he can just turn off his pain response. Briefly, Kerioyl perks up that maybe the Blessing could be used to put an end to his son’s pain, but Hevee explains that the Blessing only works on himself. I guess we can’t have nice things.
Mishuel defeats the twins fairly easily, which doesn’t surprise anyone. Kerioyl has had enough of playing fair and starts using his own Blessing, which turns off other peoples’ (or vending machines’) Blessings, so Hevee is suddenly in pain and Boxxo is without his barrier. Filmina uses a mist effect to cloud everyone’s vision, and the family escapes. Mishuel offers to pursue, but it’s too dangerous. Looks like Kerioyl and family won this round.
Director Bear! So glad to see him during these trying times.
The group reports these events to Director Bear, who puts the family on the Wanted list. Director Bear says he was “naive” not to foresee this, and uh, I don’t think it’s your fault, DB– no one saw this coming. For the time being, the family isn’t powerful enough with just four people to defeat a stratum lord, but there’s nothing stopping them from recruiting new people, or getting in touch with the two other extant Menagerie of Fools members who haven’t been mentioned until now. Apparently it was once Hevee’s job to track them down, but he got sidetracked by being put in prison for shoe-related debauchery.
The crew goes to leave Origin Stratum, but the transport circle appears to have been tampered with; Boxxo gets sent somewhere by himself. A few moments later, Director Bear and Hulemy teleport in, but there’s no sign of Lammis. Boxxo starts freaking out that he doesn’t know where his partner is, and that’s the end of the episode.
Well. So. That was an episode. I really was not expecting this show to throw such a big curveball halfway through the season, but I’m cautiously optimistic that the writers know what they’re doing. At least we’re pretty much guaranteed to get more Director Bear next episode, so you know I’m up for that.
We return to the dramatic notebook drop. Rintarou’s friends make the connection between Kaoruko’s name and the girl at the library, and Rintarou’s brain seems to pull a blue screen of death. Saku is particularly hostile, implying that Rintarou has been lying to them about her all this time. Eventually Rintarou squeezes out an “I don’t want to tell you,” and I continue to be impressed with how emotionally honest he is– well, to everyone but himself. He could have snapped “None of your business!” or something, but “I don’t want to tell you,” is both more accurate and more cutting.
The teacher gets on their case to stop arguing in the corner, so the issue is dropped for the time being. At home, Rintarou beats himself up for not checking the notebook more carefully, because he didn’t even know that Kaoruko’s tell-all Post-It note was there. Resigned, he realizes he should text Kaoruko the news that he passed the midterm and gets right on that. She’s delighted, but when she texts him back with a congratulations, he immediately thinks of Subaru’s warning about how getting involved with a Chidori boy could look bad for Kaoruko, and he puts his head down. Granted, I still don’t think this “scandal” would really amount to much of anything, but I can’t blame Rintarou for being cautious about her reputation.
The next day in school, Usami and Ayato are concerned: Saku and Rintarou still aren’t talking. Usami tries to cheer everybody up by suggesting some afterschool baseball practice to prepare for the sports festival, but nobody’s buying what he’s selling.
“Let’s play sports like manly men and sweat all our interpersonal problems away!”
Usami and Ayato catch up with Saku after school and find out what his problem is. He’s not mad at Rintarou for socializing with someone from Kikyo; he’s mad that Rintarou didn’t trust them enough to tell them about it. It’s not that he doesn’t have a point, but Saku kind of messed this up for himself by being so hostile to Rintarou in the classroom when the notebook was discovered. It was only natural for Rintarou to assume that his attitude was due to disapproval and shut him out.
This is hard for Saku because he feels like he owes Rintarou for helping him blend at Chidori; we don’t know exactly what happened (yet), but Rintarou clearly did something to help him fit in. Saku, who seems to be at ease with academics, does seem different from the other Chidori students and apparently there’s a story behind that, but we don’t get that story yet. The guys note that Rintarou is a pretty cool guy and they want to be there for him, so it looks like the drama bomb of yesterday was pretty easily diffused. Good, I really didn’t want to see Rintarou’s friends pull a stupid “How dare he mingle with the enemy!?” maneuver. Fortunately, they’re better than that.
At Plain, Rintarou is manning the counter with his mom, brooding. His mother thinks he’s bummed because he failed another test, but when he tells her he passed, she doesn’t believe him; worse, she thinks he might have cheated. I feel for Rintarou’s mom here; it’s not nice of her to think that her own son might have cheated, but if she’s used to him bringing home failing grades all the time, it’s hard not to think that way. Kaoruko comes in for some cake, and Rintarou adorably tries to hide behind the display case. Mom isn’t having that behavior for one second.
“Have you met my adorable idiot son? Free cake for life if you marry him and take him off my hands.”
Mom ducks out so Rintarou and Kaoruko can have some privacy, and Kaoruko insists they high-five for passing their midterms. Noticing that he seems out of sorts, she opines “When you’re feeling down, it’s good to eat a lot.” Kaoruko, darling, I have tried eating lots of stuff when I’m feeling down and I can promise you, it only makes me more down– not everyone has magical anime character metabolism. It’s adorable though, and Rintarou cracks up. After Kaoruko regains her composure, she gives him a look like he’s a shirtless hottie on the cover of a romance novel and takes her leave. Alone, Rintarou muses about what a nice person Kaoruko is. He takes out his phone and re-reads the texts she sent him again, and I just want to give him a big hug.
At the train station, Kaoruko is also looking at her texts from him when she gets a new text. Uh-oh, that can’t be good.
Above the cake shop, Rintarou and his mom sit down to dinner. As with most anime food, dinner looks amazing:
Fried Chicken! Excellent.
Rintarou and his mom have a fairly long conversation, and the main point of it is that Rintarou tends to give up on things, so his mom is happy that he chose to study for his exams and stuck with it; she’s more happy for that then the passing grades. She acts like she doesn’t know that Kaoruko is the reason he studied so hard, but I think she knows; she’s seen the two of them interact enough at this point that she gets it.
We change scenes to a park, and Subaru is sitting by herself. Kaoruko joins her, and we learn that this is the park where the two of them met, when Kaoruko saved Subaru from the bullies. Subaru has called Kaoruko here to tell her about her conversation with Rintarou at the coffee shop, but the episode ends before we can hear what she has to say. Is she going to tell the truth? Because if she says “I asked Rintarou to stay away from you and he said he wouldn’t, he likes you too much”, that’s likely only going to intensify Kaoruko’s crush on him, which Subaru doesn’t want. However, would she be enough of a garbage person to lie to Kaoruko about what he said to create bad blood and break them up? I hope not, but unfortunately, that would be the most dramatic twist so it’s definitely a possibility. Actually, if Subaru lied and tried to put bad words in Rintarou’s mouth, I think Kaoruko simply wouldn’t believe her.
This was kind of a slow episode featuring everyone coming to terms with the events of the season thus far, but we’ve got enough interaction between our two leads that it’s still compelling. I hope to see Rintarou reconcile with Saku, and for him to gird his loins to prepare for whatever nonsense Subaru has got cooked up.
Did someone come over to CloverWorks and bring a dump truck full of money? Because this episode is really well animated, and to be honest, the material doesn’t even call for it; it’s just extra. I’m not complaining, but I do wonder why this show seems to be getting special treatment among the three CloverWorks romances this season.
Marin is eating dinner over at Gojo’s house, and we learn that the business produces 200-300 hina dolls per day. Marin thought it was more like ten, and to be honest, that’s what I thought too. It seems like it’s too painstaking an art to be done in bulk like that, but I guess skilled craftsmen working in teams can handle it. I would be really interested in seeing more of Gojo’s family’s traditional doll business, but I think we saw all that we’re going to see of that in the first season. To explain hina doll production, the show briefly turns into a puppet show, harkening back to the NHK network’s long history of the art form. It’s amazingly detailed– even Puppet Marin has two-tone blonde and pink hair.
Mixed-media is all the rage this season.
The next day at school, Marin is tired because she got up early making lunch for her and Gojo. Gojo is afraid she made something inedible, so he spends the whole morning dreading the coming of lunchtime. Finally, she reveals that she made Spam-filled rice balls, and Gojo is so relieved that he won’t have to eat garbage cooking, he’s floating on cloud nine. Something I’ve been wondering about for a while is that when they make bento in anime, those bento boxes (or rice balls in this case) sit in their bookbags for the whole morning without any ice packs or anything. How do they not spoil? I wouldn’t want to eat Spam that had been sitting unrefrigerated in my bag for six hours, but maybe I’m just being persnickety and it’s not that risky.
Marin is overjoyed that Gojo is excited about her lunch, and she freaks out a bit about how much she loves Gojo. If these two don’t start officially dating soon, I’m going to start a petition to get that going.
“This is my cooking skill level, it’s got carbs AND protein!”
What follows is a montage of Marin bringing in lunches for Gojo while he sews the suit for the PrezHost costume. Later, Marin eats dinner with Gojo and his grandpa again; she seems to have practically moved in there.
Fish and daikon radish for dinner. It looks so nutritious.
Okay, enough about food, I need to move on. Back in school, the girls are planning Marin’s minute-long performance for the pageant. She’s going to do something called the “Champagne Call” for hosts, only shortened and with the references to alcohol taken out. They get off track and start geeking out over PrezHost some more, and Gojo gets dragged into it. Gojo admits he finds it hard to relate to the “princesses” in the anime, which somehow gives Marin the idea to start acting like a host and treating him like he’s a princess. Nowa joins in, pretending to be another “princess” at the club. Gojo blushes and sweats like crazy and is relieved to be pulled away to help with the physical labor.
Marin has a plan. Gojo: run far, run fast.
After Gojo and the others leave the room, Marin tries to sew a button on the costume, and naturally fails miserably. To be fair to her, I wouldn’t be able to do it either. That night, Gojo looks through a crossplay magazine and wonders how he can make Marin look more manly, like the models on the page. He’s really invested in this cosplay now.
The next day, Marin puts on shapewear and it makes her bust practically disappear. That’s got to be uncomfortable if you have any chest size at all, which Marin does, but I guess she’ll accept pain for the love of cosplay. She comes out fully dressed in the Rei suit and her classmates are floored at how good she looks. Gojo realizes that when he took the measurements for the suit he wasn’t counting on Marin wearing shapewear, so the jacket is a bit too big and will have to be modified. That’s a pain in the butt, but mistakes happen. Gojo wants Marin to focus on looking more masculine, like the way Amane acted feminine the whole time he was cosplaying a female character. Classmate Morita sees the photos of Amane and wants an introduction, but is crushed to learn that Amane is a guy. Thinking about his grandpa’s advice that he needs to learn to ask for help, Gojo goes up to Morita and asks him to help Marin refine her posing, because Morita has a very masculine affect. It’s a small thing, but I’m glad to see Gojo make that step; I don’t think he would have been capable of that during the first season.
Marin-Rei, not quite masculine enough yet.
Another classmate, Murakami, wants a picture of Marin in costume so he can show his sister, but is embarrassed to admit that he’s a fan of Prezhost. Gojo of course thinks there’s nothing to be embarrassed about, because he’s internalized the key message of the show: enjoy the things you enjoy, and don’t pay attention to the limiting labels that people like to put on different experiences. Murakami goes for it and takes a pic, but hilariously, he crops Marin’s head out of the picture, because he’s primarily interested in the Rei-suit. Marin blows up at him a bit, and the rest of the kids claim they want pictures.
And we’re done! I was kind of surprised this episode was still focused so heavily on the making of the Rei costume, assuming we would gloss over that a bit and move onto the beauty pageant, but I feel pretty confident that we’ll see the beauty pageant next week.
We start with a flashback to Sakuta’s middle school days. It’s just after Kaede’s bout with Puberty Syndrome started, and his teacher wouldn’t believe Sakuta that the phenomenon was real. A girl asked Ikumi to deal with the situation, and we learn that Ikumi was likely the class rep during Sakuta’s final year in middle school. That explains why she stands out in Sakuta’s memories so much, at least in part.
Flash forward to today, we see Ikumi looking at a flyer for a middle school reunion event. I would not go to a middle school reunion if you paid me…well, no, let’s be fair. I would go if you paid me maybe a million dollars, but not for much less. Credits!
Yokohama City University, computer lab. Sakuta is talking to the guy who invited him to the matchmaking party last night, Fukuyama, and Fukuyama wants to know why Sakuta doesn’t get along with Kamisato. Saki Kamisato is the girl who showed up late for the party, and the reason Sakuta had a bone to pick with Kunimi last episode. I totally forgot that Kunimi had a girlfriend, shame on me. Fukuyama jets off only to leave Sakuta with Saki herself; this is going to be awkward. Saki said she was invited just to balance out the numbers on the girls’ side, and I reiterate my complaint from last week: why invite people who are already dating to a matchmaking party? The fact that they had two committed people there just to “even the numbers” shows the numbers didn’t need to be even in the first place.
It turns out Saki is there with an ulterior motive; she brought Ikumi with her. The scene switches to Ikumi and Sakuta chatting outside. Ikumi gives Sakuta the flier to the middle school event, which Sakuta has no desire to go to. Ironically, since he’s dating superstar Mai Sakurajima, he has exactly the kind of status-type thing to brag about at these stupid events that people want, but he’s not dating her for that reason. Before Ikumi leaves, he warns Ikumi to be careful with her hero-of-justice nonsense; sometimes, when you try to change the future, something worse may happen. Sakuta knows that first hand from his experiences in Rascal Does Not Dream of a Dreaming Girl, although I’m unsure on how much of that he actually remembers. Even after Ikumi says she’ll be careful, he still thinks she doesn’t know what she’s messing with.
Cram school: Sakuta walks in to see Futaba tutoring the tall basketball player that Kunimi mentioned last episode. I can’t tell if he has a crush on Futaba or if he just can’t focus on the material. *watches again* yeah it’s a crush.
In his own class, Sakuta asks if his students have any experience with #Dreaming, and one girl says that she dreamed she would win a volleyball match with a final ace, and then she did. The other student says that she only scored the point because she practiced a lot, and “Don’t believe in the occult, believe in yourself!” That…would be excellent advice in most contexts, but not on this show. Not ever on this show.
Himeji drops in, and I think she’s the girl who got the teacher in trouble last episode, but to be honest there are so many female characters with similar designs on this show that it’s hard to be sure. She ends up sharing an elevator with Sakuta, and I’m really disliking where I see this going. Himeji drops something, and the two of them knock heads when they both try to pick it up– Oww. I did that with my Dad once, it really hurt. Himeji skates off, but I’m watching her.
“Hi, do you have any committed relationships I can ruin?”
Scene shift to Sakuta’s apartment, and a bunch of the girls are there: It’s Uzuki, Nodoka, Mai and Kaede for curry night. I’m actually a little surprised because I thought Kaede was living with her and Sakuta’s mother now, but it appears she still lives in an apartment with Sakuta. Waiting for more info there. Sakuta is concerned that Uzuki shouldn’t be hanging out at his apartment while she’s in such a crucial phase of her career, but she’s not stressing it. More importantly, the curry looks delicious:
I could have given you a picture of all the pretty girls, but instead, you get this curry pic. Those are big chunky vegetables!
Uzuki gives Sakuta tickets to Sweet Bullet’s next concert at the university, and I have to say: for a band that supposedly isn’t that successful, they sure have a lot of gigs. After Nodoka and Uzuki leave, Sakuta checks out a letter from Shoko Makinohara, and talking about Shoko leads Sakuta and Mai to chat about the past.
Mai wants to know if Sakuta has forgiven Ikumi for the fact that she did nothing to help him during middle school when everyone thought he was crazy for believing in Puberty Syndrome, but he doesn’t have anything against her. In an interesting twist, the pair note that if Ikumi is acting like a Hero of Justice, they’re acting like the supervillains trying to get in her way. Inspired by that, Sakuta makes a post to the #Dreaming tag using a fake event, and I’m not sure how to feel about this. I understand that Ikumi is messing with forces beyond her control, but just straight up trolling her doesn’t seem like it’s going to have the outcome they want.
Sakuta: “I want Ikumi to stop this superhero business.”
Mai: “Have you considered annoying the shit out of her?”
Sakuta: “It’s on my to-do list.”
November 6th. It’s the Sweet Bullet concert at the college festival. Sakuta, Mai and Kaede are all in attendance. The host asks for the girls to do an encore and they looked shocked, like they had never considered that this might be a possibility before. After the show, Mai and Sakuta go backstage and the Sweet Bullet girls give them a list of treats they want the couple to pick up from the festival. I like that Mai is down-to-earth enough that she’ll play fetch for other people. Of course, they get a few treats for themselves, including a taco, and I’m wondering if this is the first time I’ve seen a taco in anime. You expect to see takoyaki and chocolate bananas at a festival, but a taco? Interesting.
Drama at the taco booth when Saki and her fellow nursing students are the ones running the booth, conveniently in nurse costumes like Ikumi’s from last week. Saki sees Sakuta and immediately goes into a superb Resting Bitch Face. Ikumi comes by to help, but she has a broken arm, so the other students tell her they can handle it without her. Apparently Ikumi broke her arm trying to help someone on the stairs at the train station, so she’s getting in over her head.
Mai gives Sakuta permission to go talk to Ikumi, so he finds her sitting off to the side near a small pond. Mai looks at him as he walks away from her, and I’m beginning to think Mai is secretly not as okay with Sakuta always talking to all these different girls as she pretends.
With Ikumi, she brings up what Sakuta wrote in their middle school yearbook: “Someday, I’d like to reach kindness.” Interesting thought for a teenaged boy. After chatting some more about her superhero hobby, Ikumi gets up to go to her next #Dreaming event, only for Sakuta to tell her it’s a fake; that’s the fake post he wrote when he was sitting with Mai. To her credit, she’s much less annoyed at this than I would be in her situation. She tells him not to do it again, then falls over in a sudden pain: it’s Puberty Syndrome, a physical manifestation this time. Some weird bulge comes out of her back under her uniform, her hair blows backwards in no wind, and a gash opens on her leg. I want Touko Kirishima to show up again in her Santa suit and explain why she’s giving out Puberty Syndrome again.
A fun episode, even though I sense developments on the horizon with Himeji that I’m probably not going to like.
Watching television can be fun, but it sure does take time– time that you likely no longer have in the fast-paced world of today. Instead of laboriously tracking the output of the frighteningly prolific island nation known as Japan, we now provide this exquisitely-curated service to give you the main idea of everything remotely important that happened in the programs called “anime” this week. Now you can spend all that extra time playing Donkey Kong, painting a mural, or dusting your PVC figures– c’mon, you know they need it by now.
Nelluru offers premium Troll childcare services. Get yourself a wet nurse that can give milk and carry five times her weight in traveling supplies, your kid deserves it.
2. Some animators used a picture of real food to weasel out of drawing a picture of said food, and the internet went crazy with oden-lust.
3. Takopi’s Original Sin went full Doctor Who on all of our asses.
4. Anne Shirley got her second marriage proposal from a total doofus.
5. Infomercial for camping equipment poses the question “Why do people like camping?” The answer is “Because people like camping, that’s why.” Buy a new cooking stove, at Campmor!
6. A British father wants to know why an 18-year-old arcade employee is dating his-twelve-year-old daughter; he is assured killing is not warranted just yet, but it was a close call.
7. Yoshiki was possessed by a ghost made out of hair and nearly drowned a monster in his bathtub, but the monster fought back. Monster also really likes it when Yoshiki sticks his hand inside his chest, it tickles.
8. CloverWorks was like, “We’re such a good animation studio, we can even handle live-action puppet shows in our cosplay anime.”
9. Kyoto Animation was like “Oh yeah, you think that’s hot? Well look at us, we can animate nine different freakin’ shows at the same time, how do you like THEM apples, bitch?”
10. Secrets of the Silent Witch introduced a horse girl, in the sense of “a girl who rides horses”; Umamusume: Pretty Derby fans are disappointed, but they’ll take what they can get this season.
Two days after seeing the final episode, I’m unsure what to make of Takopi’s Original Sin. This is unusual for me, because as you may have noticed, I tend to be rather opinionated where anime is concerned.
First, the nuts and bolts. The animation, voice acting, and production in general were all fantastic. I have no complaints on that front. I don’t know if I’d call the writing good, in part because of my mixed feelings about the ending, but the subject matter was unusual for anime and it succeeded in covering very dark topics without feeling like it was just being dark for the sake of being edgy. All of these are considerable checks in the win column.
I have two problems: The ending takes the easy way out, and I’m not sure I agree with the message.
First, the ending. Azuma gives Takopi back the Happy Camera (with Marina’s blood conveniently cleaned off of it) and Takopi is able to use his Happy Power to use the broken Happy Camera one more time, at the cost of his life. Everything that happened since Shizuka met Takopi is undone, which means Marina and Chappy are still alive. Everything seems likely to go to hell for the same reasons they did in the previous timeline, but there’s a difference: now the characters have some kind of memory of Takopi, and that memory allows Shizuka and Marina to bond. In the after-credits scene, we see teenaged Shizuka and Marina hanging out together, and while everything is not sweetness and light– the scar on Marina’s face shows the abuse is still ongoing– it’s still a much better ending than any of the characters would have had otherwise.
Time travel was important in the show, but after accidentally killing Marina in episode two, Takopi says that was the end of his use of the Happy Camera, and that his “real” story had started. I interpreted that to mean that there would be no more time travel and everything that happened from then on would stick. For the show at the 11th hour to say “Oh, time travel is still on the table, let’s just undo everything!” seems like taking the easy way out. Also, Shizuka and Marina’s friendship relies on them having memories of things that haven’t actually happened, so you have to assume there’s some kind of timeline bleeding going on; if that was the case, it would have been better if people had been remembering things from previous timelines all along. Maybe it’s possible they did, and it was so subtle I missed it?
And yet, if Takopi hadn’t reversed time, what kind of ending would we have had? Marina would be dead, Azuma’s and his brother would have their whole lives potentially tarnished from their association with Marina’s murder, Shizuka would be entirely alone and barely surviving as an abandoned child, and so on. I don’t see how we could have gotten anything better than that, yet I still resent the time travel fix on some level.
And then there’s the issue of the show’s message. Given that the major change that allows for life to improve for everybody is the friendship between the two girls, the message seems to be “Life is full of a lot of horrible shit, but if you can make a friend to go through it with you, it gets better.” It’s not that I disagree with that on the face of it, but I just don’t quite believe Marina and Shizuka could ever be friends. I don’t think seeing a doodle of Takopi would be enough to change Marina’s whole outlook on life, even if she does have convenient memories from another timeline. I don’t believe telling people to make friends is that helpful, since most of us don’t have an alien octopus basically brainwashing potential friends for us. It makes me feel cold-hearted and small to admit that I don’t think I ever could have been friends with someone who bullied me, and I don’t like that about myself, but I don’t want to lie about it either.
And yet, so much about the show just feels so right. Shizuka’s breakdown, where she allows herself to finally feel everything that she’s been shutting out, was heartbreaking. The scene where Takopi sacrifices himself to create a better future for Shizuka, with her begging him not to go as he slowly fades away, was masterful. Going back to the previous episode, the way cute little Takopi violently slaps his mother with his tentacles, because humans have taught him how to cause pain, is a little moment that says everything about human weakness.
I have some less important concerns: How did Azuma get the Happy Camera back? Didn’t he give it to the police? Did Shizuka really kidnap her half-sisters and keep them prisoner for some undisclosed amount of time? Perhaps a longer final episode could have more effectively dealt with this material, but I do think the episode we did get had a kind of poetic restraint about it.
So, yeah, not sure if I can give a 10/10 to this anime; I may be too blinded by my own past trauma to be objective about it, with the full knowledge that “objective” isn’t the best word to use in regard to art, but it’s the best I can do right now. Ask me again in ten years.
Karen's Anime Blog 