GANGSTA. – 06

Nic spends the episode recovering from his injuries (Paulklee shot him with drugs, not bullets) under Nina’s admirable ministrations as the clouds continue to dump rain on Ergastulum, as if to wash away the blood of the last battle. But the duel with Doug and the shootouts that accompanied it may only be a taste of what’s to come, as the Corsicans are about to throw off the delicate balance that has been sustained by going after the Christianos, a family beholden to Monroe.

It’s fitting in an episode called “THORN” that everyone deals with various literal and emotional thorns in their sides or minds. Both Nic and Worick carry a lot of baggage from their highly traumatic pasts. Nic was the son of a prostitute shanghaied into mercenary service; Wallace is the unwanted and unloved son of a drunk, violent crime boss whose light we know is destined to go out.

Wallace got over his prejudice for his perceived low-rent bodyguard and befriends Nic and even teaches him to read and write, most likely out of a desire to have one friend in his life; someone who doesn’t curse his existence. While we’re still missing a couple of bits and pieces in the middle, the genesis of their friendship, which would persist for decades to the present, is making more and more sense.

Ally has her own thorn in the form of  withdrawal due to an appalling drug her pimp plied her with regularly in order to keep her submissive and in line. The horror movie scene that ended last week’s episode turned out to be hallucinations from that withdrawal, and Dr. Theo informs Worick that Ally has yet to fully recover, though it will happen with time. Some thorns can’t be removed too quickly.

When a shoeless, rain-soaked Ally kisses Worick on the street, it’s filmed as if it were a climactic, passionate romantic scene, right up until she tries to undo Worick’s pants and we realize she’s still hallucinating Barry, and is ready to do anything to him if only he doesn’t hurt her. Ironically, Worick does technically hurt her—by head-butting—in order to snap her out of it (not sure how that works medically, but whatever), but since her head’s harder than his he ends up hurting himself more.

At any rate, it’s one of the show’s best scenes, and combined with Nic’s recovery, the Handymen and their administrative assistant are back in business…just in time for another war. Even in his hospital bed, Nic looks as ready as ever to take on whole battalions on his own, but a part of me thinks Worick would really rather just kick back in his apartment and talk about his crappy day with Ally-chan.

Working!!! 3 – 06

Working!!’s frequent teases into serialized territory that don’t pay off or end in a slightly more amicable status quo can sometimes set me off, as they did last week, but I was happy to see it table the Takanashi/Inami saga for now.

The recent developments (or lack thereof) between both the two of them and Souta/Todoroki have not been lost on Souma, who laments that none of the four of them are particularly forthcoming about the salacious details (or lack thereof) he desires.

I didn’t hate Yamada as much this week either, because instead of braying on about natto and generally not making any sense in an unfunny way, she names Souma her big brother and becomes his sidekick in the acquisition of salacious details about their co-workers.

Takanashi is all out of sorts because of all his recent thoughts about Inami, so he feels he can find some comfort and solace in the simple petting of Popura’s head. Alas, he doesn’t find what he’s looking for, as he finds Popura grumpy and unwilling to talk to him or accept any food or drink.

Yamada posits that Popura is angry and stressed out from having to pick up the slack from everyone else (because they’re all in their heads about their would-be love interests). Her theory is not without merit, but it’s quickly debunked when Popura reveals she has a nasty canker sore.

The next day she stays home with a fever. As Nazuna fills in for her (as an unpaid intern), Popura starts having fever-induced hallucinations of a five-inch Satou, who charges her with saving the world from an evil version of Takanashi who is trying to shrink the entire world.

MiniSatou conjures up a shabby-looking stick, and Popura’s beam has no effect on Takanashi, but only makes her shrink to a smaller size than MiniSatou.  Finally, she wakes up, having slipped into a fever dream. This was a nice, imaginative departure from the usual restaurant setting.

Finally, we turn back to Yamada, which is usually a bad thing, but in this case her brother Kirio arrives to find her and take her home. I think I remember something like this happening in Working’!! 2, but I’m always happy when (almost) everyone is trying to inject some reality into Yamada’s life. At the end of the day she is a runaway who really should return to her family.

Only Souma suggests they send Kirio home for now, giving Yamada a reprieve from that reality despite the fact she left the attic he told her to hide in. I don’t know if she’ll ever go home, but it would obviously be better if it’s of her own volition and not by force.

Rokka no Yuusha – 06

Our boy Adlet is in a heap of trouble, with a most of the other Braves either suspecting him (Maura), ready to kill him (Hans and Chamo), or abstaining and letting the others do what they want (Fremy). Only Tania still believes in his innocence, and is both confused and outraged by the positions of the others.

When it’s Goldolf’s turn to offer his thoughts, he offers them in the form of a strike against Adlet, ignoring his princess’ doubts about his guilt. Hans joins in, and Adlet has no choice but to improvise, knocking Fremy out cold and running out of the temple. And thank God he does, too, because I was dead tired of that stuffy glowy room.

Adlet doesn’t get far, as Hans throws a dagger in his back and he passes out. While out, he helpfully dreams about his backstory, back when he wasn’t even the strongest boy in his village, to when he presented himself before his future master, a pitiful bag of bones, begging to be trained.

We don’t see the in between, when his friend, mother, and village are presumably wiped out by fiends. The longbeard begins the lesson at once by beating young Adlet up, telling him he must smile when things go bad and laugh at despair if he wants to become strong.

Adlet isn’t smiling much when he wakes up to find Fremy has saved him, but not only to prepare for what she calculates is just a 1% chance he isn’t the seventh brave and her enemy. Still, there’s something to the fact she didn’t make a lot of noise so the other braves could capture them. Perhaps she’s giving Adlet that 1% chance to convince her he’s not lying.

Adlet doesn’t do so well at first, but then starts to smile again, remembering the words of his master. No matter how dark the night gets, he’ll pierce it with his defiant grin. He doesn’t know how to convince Fremy that his theory about an eighth brave helping the seventh (who then framed him), but he won’t concede defeat.

Even though Fremy flatly refuses to help him, his boundless optimism moves her to ask him why he wanted to become a brave, a question that suggests, for the first time, that she has the slightest interest in anything about Adlet (other than her suspicions he’s the enemy). It’s not much, but Adlet—and I—will take it, and similarly look forward to the morning when he must figure out a way to prove his innocence and foil the real enemy.

GOD EATER – 04

This week Lenka’s charges are suspended and he’s officially assigned to Fenrir East’s First Unit, along with Alisa and Fujiki “Wears a hat and scarf like he’s cold, but wears a crop top like he’s hot” Kouta. While Lenka’s look is pretty understadted, the other two’s elaborate outfits seem laughably impractical, especially considering singular mission they’ve been tasked with: Save The World.

While Alisa wordlessly walks off when asked to join, Kouta drags Lenka out of HQ and into the slums where he grew up, including to meet his mom, who is very worried about him. They also check out the craters of destruction an aragami battle caused, watch food being distributed, and catch a glimpse of Aegis, mankind’s last best refuge, currently under construction.

The flashy new facility’s completion is dependent on the God Eaters securing the necessary amount aragami cores. The future of mankind rests with the likes of Lenka, Kouta, and Alisa. On them lies the future of mankind. Oh, by the way, DID I MENTION THE FUTURE OF MANKIND RESTS WITH THEM? Well, it does. “It” being…the future of mankind.

You’d think those upon which something so important rests would be trained prior to going out in the field, or would be discouraged from cool-looking but reckless and unnecessary actions, or punished if they blatantly disobeyed orders from their superiors. The six-man unit splits into pairs to hunt down six cores of a specific type of aragami, but the mission is pretty rocky, as Alisa ignores orders from Sakuya, Kouta fails at his job, and Lenka can’t finish a foe off in one blow, which he needs to do if the future mankind is to rest upon him.

So yeah, it’s a rough mission, but at least the flaws of the newly-formed unit are borne out in a relatively low-risk setting…right? They also come upon a group of wandering civilians and get to take them back to Fenrir. Lenka gets to see a sliver of the mankind whose future rests on him, including a cute little girl I knew was doomed.

My suspicion was confirmed when they get back to Fenrir and the civvies are turned back at the gate, because none of them possess the latent ability to wield a God Arc. Like the civilians on the aircraft carrier in World War Z, the only civvies who are able to live under the military’s protection are related to the ones doing fighting. It’s a raw but a practical, transactional one; at least more practical than Alisa and Kouta’s (and Sakuya’s) getup.

Anyway, Lenka learns he’s not necessarily fighting for ALL mankind; just the part of it that’s able to properly contribute to the war effort. The rest are SOL. And we learn a tiny little bit about him: he’s the kind of guy who is upset about such things. When he gave that doomed little girl water, he was convinced she’d be safe within Fenrir’s walls. And fighting for Fenrir must feel like siding with the people who sent that girl to her almost certain death.

Mind you, most protagonists would have a problem with this, and would react by clenching their fists with rage and indignation. And that remains GOD EATER’S problem, after just four episodes in six weeks: for all the distinctiveness of their outfits, I still can’t be all that excited about any of the characters. All their personalities are some combination of nondescript, dull, obvious, and one-note.

Shimoneta – 06

With the porn of Yotsuga Forest successfully distributed, Ayame decides the next issue SOX should tackle is the development and distribution of sex aids, from lubes to mechanical vibrators. These things have to be made/built from scratch because they’re no longer in store. Their task is akin to building the pyramids with only the original tech on hand.

It’s tiring work, most of all for Tanukichi, who has to endure a constant stream of dirty talk from Ayame and Otome, but is called “sick” and a “pervert” when he suggest they focus equally on male and female “products for health and beauty.” It’s a hypcrisy that persists in Ayame, who at the end of the day is more naive than Okuma, who had a father in the trade.

Tanukichi also falls victim to a misunderstanding when he pays a visit to Hyouka to pick up the wireless, remote control mini-vibrators she built for them. Not only is Hyouka naked under her robe (after accidentally falling into a water tank), but she wants Tanukichi to repay him by showing her how his “cucumber prepares for battle.”

They’re very close when Anna barges in, and Tanukichi has to come up with a lie to satisfy her in a hurry. He manages to succeed by offering one of the two vibrators to Anna, calling it a “Power Stone.”

Anna makes a blingy pendant of it, but when the remote malfuncitons, it’s stuck on, vibrating her bust, resulting in what can only be described as a hilariously ridiculous spectacle. It also turns Anna on, to the extent she dismisses Goriki, locks herself in the StuCo office with Tanukichi, and proceeds to hold him down.

Tanukichi, about to be raped by someone who has no idea what rape entails, finds his own member barely able to withstand the onslaught of Anna on top of him, but he manages to “preserve his chastity” until the vibrator breaks from overuse, ending the immediate crisis.

The longer-term crisis for Tanukichi, of course, is that Anna immediately demands a new “Power Stone” to replace the one that broke. Worse, whenever he so much as looks or speaks to another girl, Anna grows violently jealous. SOX has truly created a monster.

With the daughter of a high-ranking Morality official getting excited about SOX’s terrorist activities, it looks like he’ll soon have one more girl filling his ears with dirty talk and threatening to incur more of Anna’s wrath.

What had been Tanukichi’s Boring World Where the Concept of Dirty Jokes Doesn’t Exist has now become an annoying, stressful, often life-threatening world where dirty jokes—and acts—are rampant and unpredictable. But definitely not boring.

Durarara!!x2 Ten – 06 (18)

Yadogiri Jinnai is the undisputed Big Bad of this second cour of Drrr!!x2, and he calls in a favor from Adabashi, the stalker all the Dollars are talking about. In this episode that largely puts pieces into place for the big stalker arc payoff, we’re given new insight into Ruri-chan’s dark past (and present), Yadogiri’s hold on both her and her family, and her desire to protect her kitten, but Kasuka, even if it means sacrificing herself, knowing full well she may not  have the right to desire such things after all the murders she’s committed as Hollywood.

Those who adore Ruri the idol want the stalker taken out ASAP (some, like Togusa, are perfectly happy to take him out themselves). Mikado tells Kadota he’s still very much in the Dollars, but now believes part of the absolute freedom of the group includes his freedom to want to restrict the freedom of members he believes aren’t meeting the same standards of quality Dollarhood people like Kadota and Celty meet.

Meanwhile, Izaya, whom Jinnai had stabbed as a message that he can do whatever he wants whenever he wants, has been discharged, and the extend of Jinnai’s hold on Ruri, and his possibly intentionaly nurturing of the monsterous blood within her, adds new depth to the arc.

First and foremost, Ruri and Kasuka give their cat to Anri (who, through Saika and along with Celty, senses something strange about Ruri’s aura), and then have former stalker Mika test their door locks (the locks fail miserably). Ruri shows Kasuka the side of herself that is drugged and laid out on a table as rich old men in masques poke and prod her with scalpels and watch her wounds heal instantly.

Their manager seems to believe it’s a kinky adult video, but Kasuka, not shaken by these new truths about his companion, doesn’t rule out the fact the yellow-afroed dude might know more. In any case, despite the lock-testing and big bodyguards, and especially the fact that Ruri is a super-strong oddity herself, everyone seems highly vulnerable to the stalker this week.

Ruri and the stalker story dominate, rendering Kida’s return to Ikebukuro almost a footnote, but I like how casually the episode turns to his independent quest to right wrongs and clean up burned bridges. It doesn’t take long for him to spot someone on the streets he needs to apologize to: Shizuo, who’s with Tom and Varona. Shizuo barely remembers how Kido wronged him, but it’s water under the bridge after a powerful forehead flick. I can’t wait till he meets the New Mikado.

Finally, Shinra’s lock quandary becomes moot when Adabashi, failing at posing as a delivery man, helps himself in and beats the everloving shit out of Shinra. Shin knows plenty of people who can probably easily take on Adabashi, most of all Celty, but she and they can’t be of any service if they’re not there when shit goes down, as it certainly does here.

Charlotte – 06

Ah, now that’s more like it. Just when I was hankering for Charlotte to mix up its ability user-of-the-week formula that was growing repetitive, it does just that in its midpoint episode. Things are different this week, as the ability user has a potentially extremely dangerous ability (called “Collapse” by Kumagami), and may not be a stranger, but Yuu’s own adorable little sister Ayumi, who had just suspiciously taken ill last week.

Yet with all the weight of these new adjustments to the formula, the show still finds apropraite moments of comedy, like the best way to exclude Joujirou from their trip to see Ayumi. Yuu is about to swap bodies with him so he can make him jump out the window, but Nao beats him to it by simply dropkicking him out the window. It isn’t the first time Yuu and Nao are of one mind on an issue, and it won’t be the last.

A little more random peripheral comedy is found on their trip to the store prior to visiting Ayumi, in which Yuu’s practical purchases are augmented by Nao’s procurement of stewed mushrooms (apparently an excellent topping for porridge…Zane?) and most amusingly, a $20 tin of cookies Yuu has never seen removed from its dusty shelf, let alone purchased.

Yuu enters before Nao and Yusa, and finds a group of Ayumi’s classmates already there: the cornflower blue-haired and well-spoken class rep Nomura; the boy Ayumi rejected, Oikawa, and the gloomy, taciturn Konishi, who gives Yuu the evil eye on her way out. That look set off warning bells that she, not Ayumi, could be the Collapse user.

While Ayumi’s nose predictably becomes a nose fountain even upon her first glance of a heavily-disguised Yusarin, far more heartening was her attitude towards Yuu and Nao. The two are constantly fervently denying her suspicions they’re dating, or her assertions they make a good couple, even as they proceed to work well as a couple. Methinks they doth protest too much, and out of the mouth of babes (well, middle schoolers) comes the truth that they really are gelling nicely.

Yuu even heeds Nao’s suggestion Ayumi stay home an extra day even if she’s feeling better. But Ayumi is sick of being cooped up, and sneaks out of the condo complex and into school. There, she interacts with all the classmates who visited her, only now Oikawa is exerting more pressure for her to go out with him (What a creep!), forcing Nomura to swoop in and hold him back (Good for her!), and finally Konishi coming at her with a clicking utility knife (Yikes!)

Before she brandished that knife, I was still considering the possibility Konishi would use Collapse against Ayumi for stealing Oikawa from her. But once it appeared, it looked more likely that Collapse was Ayumi’s power after all, to use as a last-ditch defensive measure.

Once Yuu and the others learn Ayumi is at school, they rush there with speed. I found it notable that Joujirou’s ability was not utilized, though perhaps they felt adding more chaos to an already chaotic situation wasn’t the best course. (Yuu and Joujirou were also delayed by pasta, of all things!)

The result of that choice is that they’re too late, and Ayumi’s ability involuntarily manifests before Konishi cuts her. Everything beneath her—concrete, steel, glass, everything—crumbles to bits. She’s saved from Konishi, but falls victim to her own ability by being apparently crushed beneath the debris it created.

In a sudden state of panic and intensity we had yet to see in Yuu, he clambers to the debris pile that was once a corner of the middle school and starts desperately digging for his sister. In the process, an orange-haired girl who earlier flashed an ID to school security laments she too was too late (I gather she’s part of a team other than Nao’s charged with stopping ability users).

Then a concrete pillar falls on Yuu, and the scene cuts to black and the credits roll to a gorgeous, ethereal new ending theme that sounds like a lament, and an end to everything that’s come before. After those credits, we encounter Kumagami standing in the rain over debris stained with blood. This raises far more questions than it answers, to my considerable intrigue.