Shimoneta – 08

This week’s Shimoneta was a little limp, if you’ll pardon the expression, starting with Kosuri. Despite being excellently voiced by Hocchan, I was worried she’d come to feel like an extraneous character who wouldn’t add anything new to the equation but simply be another cute girl to tempt Tanukichi. The “guy wakes up with girl sleeping next to him” gag has been driven into the ground, as is the “threaten guy with deadly force with a smile” gag.

Worse still, we get introduced to yet another girl in Tsukimigusa Oboro, a novice Decency Squad prefect assigned to the school. Aside from confiscating anything vaguely stick- or hole-shaped, she’s all but devoid of personality; a stiff, wooden cipher. At least she doesn’t show any signs of falling in love with Tanukichi, but the fact she can be so easily convinced to overturn her judgment of what is lewd and what isn’t suggests she’s not very good at her issued job, lessening the threat.

As for Okuma-san, when talking about how he was recruited to SOX to Kosuri over dinner (she’s apparently moved in), his eyes sparkle and his tone suggests he has feelings for Ayame. Kosuri’s knowing look is the first sign she’s detected weakness in Tanukichi, and that’s one thing she doesn’t tolerate in colleagues, we learn, is weakness.

Anna’s messy mishaps always toe the line between hilarious and gross, but being “backed up” due to the prefect confiscating all the school’s TP was firmly on the gross side. Not that poop doesn’t have a place in sexual culture (I ain’t judgin’!), I’d rather have my Anna not almost soil herself while delivering a devastating kick to a member of Gathered Fabric (a group SOX doesn’t even try to deal with this week)…or randomly lick the StuCo table.

While Oboro remains undeveloped, after a night of education and a day spent infiltrating a neighboring school where Ayame wishes to distribute lewd materials and practices, Kosuri goes through some changes, and not the biological kind. She shifts from the cute little sister act to deciding to treat Takukichi like a slave, belieiving she’s far more useful to Blue Snow and he’s been dragging SOX down from the start.

And while she may have been right about that before, Tanukichi has grown less and less reluctant to assist Ayame, whom he’s come to respect and admire almost as much as Pre-Awakening Anna. What he doesn’t agree with are Kosuri’s manipulative methods, playing around with people’s hearts to get her way. Still, Kosuri is calling him out for perceived lack of commitment and usefulness, and the gloves—or rather the striped socks—have come off in a hurry.

Working!!! 3 – 08

Yamada may have moved back home, but she remains at Wagnaria after Otoo and Kyouko allowed her to keep coming in like Takanashi’s little sister to help out, and spending the night there when her mother isn’t home. So in a way, there hasn’t been a major change in the status quo, aside from the fact Yamada is usually going home and is now on better terms with her mom—though not her brother Kirio.

After that Aoicentric episode, this one is more of a grab bag, with a little story involving just about everyone from Otoo reuniting with his wife to Souta having to get a birthday present for Yachiyo (he actually gives her four for the four years he’s liked her).

Many of these stories involve a Yamato in one way or another. Takanashi is annoyed that Kirio is talking so pleasantly with Inami, because he likes Inami, but won’t acknowledge that. He ends up beating Kirio up too much, and must recite a long-winded compliment that Takanashi thinks sounds like a joke, and it’s also how Inami interprets it, embarrassing her. So no real movement there.

In another non-Yamada-related tidbit, Takanashi notices Popura may have shrunk, and Souma confirms she’s lost around 2cm, causing her to become depressed, because as much as she likes being pet by Katanashi, she also wants to grow more, not less. Turns out she actually did grow a centimeter, only because Takanashi grew three, she didn’t gain any ground, causing her to become depressed again.

Back to Aoi, who convinces her mom over a period of six weeks to buy her a cell phone, then sends her mom a text, waits 30 minutes, and gets a blank reply back. Kirio, full of hidden talents, interprets the blank text as a long-winded inner monologue going on in their mother’s head about what Aoi’s original text meant and how best to respond.

Finally, Kirio is sick of Aoi not acknowledging him as her true big brother (thanks to that natto theft incident), so he tries to become her big brother by becoming Souma’s little brother, which he attempts in the most ridiculous, true-to-the-Yamadas manner possible.

It’s actually Souta, whom Kirio asks for advice, who tells Kirio to take this route, in order to best annoy Souma as payback. But it isn’t long before the plan backfires and Kirio is annoying Souta to the point he must retreat from his own kitchen. Don’t get involved with Kirio; it isn’t worth it!

Charlotte – 08

Charlotte follows its best episode (and one of the best episodes of the Summer) with another powerful outing, though not quite packing the same punch. It has Yuu returning to school and to the routines he had abandoned after Ayumi’s death. It’s all here, from Joujirou’s fanboying and bleeding, Yusarin’s spells and music videos, Tomori’s standoffishness and drop-kicking.

But just when Yuu (and I) think the wet guy is going to show up with the next ability user, Tomori says he’s not coming. Instead, she has a second ticket to a ZHIEND show tomorrow, and wants one of them to go with her. Citing their honest ignorance of and disinterest in post-rock (look it up on Wikipedia), the process of elimination makes Yuu Nao’s “date,” and when she says it’s nice to have a breather now and then, he agrees and accepts.

Later that day while walking home, he bumps into a fuchsia-haired blind woman who mixes English in with her bizarre accent and is on a quest for “modern-yaki.”

Yuu takes her to a okonomiyaki joint for some hiroshima-yaki instead, and learns that she’s none other than Sala Shane, the lead vocalist for ZHIEND. Not only that, Sala is a remarkably down-to-earth person who picks up instantly on Yuu’s still-raw wounds of grief, and decides to spend the whole day with him.

Yuu calls Nao to join them, but she seems utterly disinterested, which I took to mean she might have somehow arranged this, because the fact of the matter is Yuu benefits from hanging out with Sala, even as he still reflexively pulls out his phone to tell Ayumi he won’t be home for dinner.

Sala once had the use of her eyes, and was once far bigger and more popular than she is now with her “dull” little post-rock band. But when things got out of hand with the fame and the money and the way the people around her changed, she gave it all up, making a deal with God to take her sight in exchange for a smaller, more peaceful life.

I couldn’t help but notice the similarity of her sitting in a dark, trash-filled house with nothing but the light of the TV to similar sights of Yuu in the same position. She remarks that the day may come when he too has to make a deal with God, and tells him to “handle it well” when it does.

We learn where Yuu is taking Sala when we see the rest of his phone call with Nao, in which he tells her he’s bringing Sala to her brother’s hospital, betting she might be able to help bring part of him back from the fog. Where Nao almost seemed annoyed earlier in the call that she’d jump at the chance to see her heroine (in stark contrast to Joujirou, who worships the dirt beneath Yusa’s feet), here she expresses gratitude as the sun sets before her.

The highlight of the episode is Sala’s stirring solo a capella performance to an audience of Yuu and Kazuki. Sala is old enough that she would no longer have a power, and yet there she is, soothing the soul of a fellow adult, as someone who still has their power listens intently.

Kazuki does come back; Yuu wins his bet, at least for now. Nao rushes to her brother’s side, then calls Yuu back to thank him from the bottom of her heart. Yuu doesn’t need Sala’s other heightened senses to detect Nao’s sincerity.

As for Yuu, he takes what Sala said to heart about him knowing good people, which have changed him without him knowing it. Last week, Nao straight-up saved him from falling off a cliff of despair. This week, without even thinking about it, Yuu repaid Nao’s kindness by helping her brother. Thanks to his experiences in these first days back in the post-Ayumi world, Yuu can see the light, and himself, and is happy with what he sees.

But he still gets nostalgic when he hears ZHIEND. Will he reach another breakthrough at the concert with Nao?

Durarara!!x2 Ten – 08 (20)

This marks the second-straight episode of anime, after OverLord – 04, in which a group or groups are ultra-confident to the point of arrogance they have the upper hand over a foe, when in fact, they’re hanging by their pinkie off the edge of a cliff. The one to show them reality in OverLord was Momonga; here’s it’s everyone’s favorite human observer / information broker, Orihara Izaya.

The confident parties include Heaven’s Gate, a group we were introduced to when Akabayashi broke up a drug racket in a club bathroom, and Amphisbaena, a rival group running underground casinos using cashless IC chips. Awakusu asks Izaya in investigate the latter, who knows he’s investigating them, and Heaven’t Slave knows too and wants to find a way to make it to their advantage.

Izaya by now has assembled his team of muscle made up of Zombie Dragons, martial-arts ace Sharaku Mikage, a girl who is a Saika vessel, and a due with a big hammer, and more. Yet, throughout the episode we cut from him interacting with both his team members, sisters, and Celty (to transport a laptop displaying GPS tracking data), to a man in his clothes with a burlap bag over his head being very lightly tortured by a very comely, well-dressed Amphisbaena member.

Heaven’s Slave crashes Amphisbaena’s party, which gets both groups in the same place, and then it’s time to unmask the captive. Both leaders get phone calls from someone with a disguised voice who momentarily gets them to believe they may have accidentally captured one of their own bosses, only for the captive to take his bag off and reveal it was Izaya all along, utterly unimpressed with Amphisbaena’s interrogation techniques.

Then Izaya’s friends storm the place and lay absolute waste. Again, like in OverLord, there’s no contest between those who thought they had everything figured out and those who actually do. Heaven’s Slave and Amphisbaena are humiliated, and their inexperience with how things are done in Ikebukuro—with supernatural beings and elite specialists in various fields—and end up looking amateurish. The lesson is: don’t mess with Awakusu…or at least don’t mess with them when Izaya is working for/with them.

From Izaya’s victory we cut to another conversation with Shiki in the back seat of his car. Shiki is pleased both the rival gangs were dealt with, but warns Izaya they know he went above and beyond, and not to overstep his bounds with his new over-leveled mini-gang, and to call Akabayashi as soon as it’s convenient.

Izaya acts the submissive part, as someone who receives “bliss” for being “used to the max” by Awakusu Group as an information broker. It’s not necessarily a dishonest statement, as his work does allow him to observe very interesting humans doing very interesting things. But I can’t believe he assembled that team just for that one job. There’s much more to observe and do.

OverLord – 04

Everything about the mages the Slane Theocracy sends to Carne, led by Nigun Grid Lewin of the Sunlit Scripture, indicates they’re tough customers by any measure, and there’s no better way of demonstrating that than by methodically beating down Re-Estize’s head warrior Stronoff with wave after wave of summoned Escaflowne-style mecha-angels.

Stronoff has offensive magic and is able to carve through a few dozen, but they just keep coming, and his soldiers aren’t strong enough to help him. On the edge of defeat and death, Lord Momonga—sorry, Ainz Ooal Gown—uses the item he gave Stronoff to switch places with him, with Stronoff ending up in the villager’s shelter and Ainz and Albedo facing off against a huge and confident Slane force.

Lewin and his forces look strong and they feel strong, and they definitely did a number on Stronoff. But as great and famed a warrior as he is, Stronoff is still only a human, and so are they. And the strength and magic of humans turn out to be of no consequence to Ainz and Albedo. He entered the battle prepared for a tough fight, but he turned out to be overly cautious. But that’s okay, because I expected them to put up a fight too.

Which is why it’s so strange that I don’t feel cheated in the slightest by the fact Luwin and the Slane mages are nothing but ants before the power of Ainz. After watching them have their way with Stronoff, watching Ainz utterly turn the tables by defeating every weapon at their disposal with comical ease was a lot of fun. I keep using that word because that’s what this show is: loads of badass, giddy, contagious fun.

Even Albedo (who granted is infatuated with Ainz) can’t restrain her glee at the spectacle she witnessed, setting aside her objections about him even bothering to face such puny opponents and reveling in his awesomeness, along with the way he used Stronoff as a pawn to collect more information on the strength of the local powers, which he’s determined is pretty pathetic.

Back home at Nazarick, Ainz declares his new name and orders the assembled guardians to make sure it becomes an eternal legend that spreads across the world. That, Inner Ainz believes, is the best way (not to mention the most entertaining way) for him to attract the attention of other human players from Yggdrasil. If they made the trip with him to this new fantasy world, he intends to find them.