Sekai Seifuku: Bouryaku no Zvezda – 09

Apparently it was onsen week, as Samurai Flamenco, Nisekoi, and now Zvezda all featured hot springs. Of the three, we’d have to say Zvezda’s offering was the most creative and impactful. Having both White Light and Zvezda hold their company retreats at the same hot spring, and not knowing the either would be there, is both silly and brilliant—as is having the elderly innkeepers be on opposite sides.

When White Robin bumps into Dva, one would think Robin would immediately engage in combat, but it doesn’t go that way; Dva buys her a soda and they simply relax in this neutral place. After all, both “companies” are there to relax; maintaining a truce with the enemy keeps things from getting unrelaxed. But thanks to White Egret, a battle breaks out anyway.

While not happy with Miki picking a fight with Dva, Falcon decides to launch an all-out assault. Watching different halves of the assembled “employees” pull off their robes to unveil their true colors was a great bit of stagecraft, and the innkeepers duelling as Kate dozes below them is both thrilling and hilarious (Kate shows a lot of her kid-side this week by being immodest in the bath, conquering milk, and getting drowsy when its her bedtime). What was really cool was how casually Renge learned that Egret and Dva were Miki and Asuta all along.

Asuta still doesn’t know Renge is Robin, but we thought it was significant that Robin saved Dva before she knew who he was—not because she was betraying White Light, but because she didn’t see him as a threat. Now she knows, and her immediate reaction is tentative. As the war between White Light and Zvezda escalates (it sure looks like Yase betrayed Zvezda and their HQ has been blown up), there will probably be more instances when Renge will have to choose what matters more: duty or love.

Rating: 8 (Great)

 

Nisekoi – 09

Chitoge’s interest has been piqued by the mystery of her first love, but further investigation is put on hold by “open-air school.” Maiko fixes it so their team consists of him, Raku, Ruri, Kosaki, Seishirou…and her. Once again, Nisekoi shows that nobody airing can match its close-ups of characters’ faces—not even Kill la Kill.

Whether its everyone’s reactions to learning they’re in the same group (and have to share the cramped bench in the back of the bus), or their hapless attempts at poker faces during a game of Old Maid (which had just as much intensity and pressure of a karuta match in Chihayafuru), this episode was a veritable cornucopia of heated emotions, not the least of which because Chitoge is starting to entertain the notion that Raku could be her first love. He’s got a scar, after all.

And in Anime Land there are few stages better-suited for the proliferation of high-level discomfort and tension than a hot spring inn, which is ironic, because in real life they’re probably exactly the opposite. Thanks to Claude switching up the gender-specific curtains the the bath entrances (which shouldn’t be that easy to do in the 21st century), Raku ends up in the enviable but potentially disastrous position of being a boy in the girl’s bath.

There are many obvious ways of proceeding with such a scenario; many of them involving much physical punishment and social ostracism being exacted upon Raku. To it’s credit, the episode doesn’t make Chitoge a conclusion-jumping idiot (this time at least), and not only doesn’t blame Raku, but even does everything she can to get him out of there without being seen. Despite some very close calls (and an accidental kiss to Raku’s upper backside), she even succeeds!

Rating:7 (Very Good)

Pupa – 09

This week Utsutsu is on the operating table being dissected by “scientists” who hope to learn more about the Pupa virus so it can help mankind. The question becomes, does a mankind in which sadistic monsters like these scientists exist really deserve help? We’re of the mind that there are boundaries you just can’t cross in the quest for knowledge.

Meanwhile, Yume is chained up in a room with puddles of water all over the floor, able to hear all of her brother’s screams. She’s probably also getting hungry, so when the white coats break out the chainsaw on Utsutsu, she’s had enough, breaks her chains, and leaps out of her chair at the armed guards, in a kind of girl-demon hybrid form. Make ’em suffer, Yume!

Rating: 5 (Average)

Samurai Flamenco – 19

Ah, the quiet life in a world with no evil, where there is only love, peace…and Maya Mari. Kudos to the show for putting all the world-saving on hold for a least an episode and putting the focus back on the lives of Masayoshi, Goto, and MMM (the Flamengers get abridged status reports, but they’re far less central characters).

While we knew the next global crisis was just over the horizon (being announced rather abruptly in the final minute of the episode), we’ll take all the Samurai Flamenco slice-of-life we can. Masayoshi learns Goto is going to visit his long-distance girlfriend back in his hometown. This is huge, as Goto’s girlfriend has been nothing but very animated texts since the beginning, and we thought we’d never see her face as following through with the joke.

Turns out it’s no joke at all, more of a tragedy, as Masayoshi learns when he tells Mari about Goto’s plans and gets sucked into a four-hour bullet train ride followed by some standard stalking. During the trip Mari suggests something we had been pondering for a long while, which the show hadn’t so much at hinted at: the possibility of Masayoshi going out with Sumi. It’s a new world, after all: there isn’t much to do besides settle down and find love.

It’s when they meet Goto’s mom, and then find Goto himself waiting at a bus stop with a bouquet of roses and, as always, his cell phone in hand, they learn the heartbreaking truth: Goto’s girlfriend in question was his high school sweetheart who got on a bus and disappeared years ago; he started texting messages to himself as her as a way of coping with the crushing grief…and never stopped. All the time the show had laughed off the fact Goto never had any real contact with his girlfriend is brought into heartbreaking focus…and now we know why he’s a cop.

Mari, who’s been pining for him all this time, is similarly devastated at being passed up for an imaginary girl, but at this point he’s been “talking” to her for so long, she may be just as real as Mari, if not more so. So while there seems to be no more evil in the world, there’s still pain, loss, anguish, and frustration. There’s still times when you just need your two friends to meet you at a hot spring to feast on lobster and de-compress.

Oh, and obviously, there still IS evil in the world, after all! What Samurai Flamenco did threatens all who—profit directly or indirectly—from that evil (the press and the police among them) The boy who shakes Masayoshi’s hand just before blowing up his apartment essentially tells him what Masayoshi (and Mari) were likely so uneasy about all along: that a world without strife is a world without movement or change, of stagnation and ruin.

Rating: 8 (Great)