OverLord – 07

This new world Momonga finds himself seems a little smaller this week, as the girl Nphirea likes (and is sadly unable to propose to) turns out to be Enri, the girl Momonga saved. She summoned helpful goblins who help keep the village safe and are even training the villagers to defend themselves. I for one am glad not all goblins are bad. Of course, Nphirea former knows him as Mr. Momon, while Enri knows him as Lord Gown.

Thus Momonga ends up getting caught in his own web of lies. Fortunately, Nphirea doesn’t have a malevolent bone in his body; he just wanted to follow and learn from Momon, and promises to keep the fact he has multiple identities a secret. Nabe offers to kill herself for blabbing about Albedo, but Momonga considers the incident closed and all is forgiven.

Nphirea asks Momon not to kill the Wise King of the Forest if he encounters it, lest the power vacuum of the forest lead to an uptick in monster activity (the King is the lesser of two evils). His domain is a lovely, lush, dense forest primeval that reminds me of Mononoke-hime, and Aura’s giant talking beast friends continue that theme…

…As does the unveil of the Wise King himself: a giant talking hamster. I…was not expecting that, though when I first saw the squirrel-like eyes in the dark I suspected something rodent-y. This is absurd and a little trippy, and Momonga, knowing an ally of his had a similar pet, doesn’t really want to deal with this guy, so I really like how everyone else is so in awe of this Wise King, despite being a giant hamster. Even Nabe sees power in its gaze (I didn’t catch a gender).

He also achieves what he wanted originally: to gain prestige and create buzz back in the city by capturing and registering the legendary beast, while inspiring Nphirea to ask if he can join his team. Momonga gently refuses, but promises he’ll help protect Carne, and in the meantime Nphirea is welcome to keep observing and learning from him.

Back in town there’s the sense that everyone had just undertaken a great adventure and are now back home sweet home. Nphirea himself is ready to settle in for the night when he notices his grandma isn’t around, and that’s when he finds Clementine lying in wait for him, offering her chilling sing-song “Hiiii.” This is not good news for our long-banged pharmacist, but it is good news for the show. Things are moving along, slowly but surely.

Rokka no Yuusha – 08

Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Hans is done talking with Adlet, who manages to escape using a smoke bomb, but Hans doesn’t let up in his pursuit, and they end up crossing swords once more. This means Adlet, who only proves Hans right if he kills a fellow brave, cannot achieve victory by defeating him or outsmarting him.

No, he has to convince Hans without a shadow of a doubt that he’s not the seventh brave. He does so by launching his sword blade at him, a move Hans did not predict, but Adlet intentionally misses, something the seventh would not have cause to do.

Hans seems to accept that Adlet isn’t a fake, while Adlet bets that Hans isn’t the seventh, or he’s set himself up for slaughter. Indeed, Hans tells him he’s the real seventh, and slits his throat—but it’s only a hallucination induced by the poison on the blade he cut Adlet with.

In that state, Adlet is incapable of lying, and looks like his time is up, convincing Hans once and for all that Adlet is a comrade, not an enemy. WHEW! And what do you know, now that Hans has proven he’s reasonable (and not the seventh), I instantly like the guy a lot more.

If only the others were around to witness their exchange. Instead, Mora and Fremy are off on their own, still convinced Adlet is the seventh and ready to kill him on sight, heightening the tension of the situation. Though at least Nashetania manages to convince Goldof that his prejudiced view of Adlet is a result of jealousy, since he believes Tania is driven by feelings for him.

Finally, after Adlet and Hans inspect the temple further, Adlet decides he needs to ask Chamot, who along with Hans are the only two people who weren’t briefed on how the barrier is activated.

Adlet doesn’t suspect Chamot, mind you, but Chamot is simply bored and does not care who is a real brave and who is fake. Just as the 16-year-old Goldof’s judgment was susceptible to his hormones, the even younger Chamot is driven by a desire to wrap things up quickly and neatly. If the seventh isn’t Adlet, it’s Fremy, or Kitty-san, or the Princess and her aide. Chamot is confident she can destroy the Demon God on her own, so she’ll kill everyone else to ensure they won’t get in her way (everyone but Mora, that is).

And I have to hand it to her, she makes a good case for why she’s good enough to take on the Demon God alone, as well as why Fremy ran the hell away from her rather than fight. Chamot eats her cattail and rather disturbingly vomits out a swamp, from which numerous squishy fiends emerge and attack Adlet and Hans. When they try to cut them down, they instantly regenerate and keep coming.

It’s a frightening, relentless attack, but Chamot’s comment about not killing Mora leaves open the possibility Mora could put a stop to her foolishness. She and Fremy just have to get there before Adlet and Hans buy it!

OverLord – 06

OverLord continues to plod along at a leisurely, deliberate pace, but there’s something to be said for a show of this genre to not move at such a breakneck speed that nothing that happens matters as much as what happens next. Momon is playing the long game here, so it makes sense for the show to focus on his first job as an adventurer, protecting Nphirea alongside the Swords of Darkness.

This episode was almost assured an 8 just for the scene of Demiurge walking in on Albedo in Ains’ bed with her recently-crafted Ains body pillow. Utterly ridiculous? Sure, but I won’t deny I laughed out loud at that ridiculousness. And Demiurge’s casual reactions completed the sale. Momonga’s changes to her character are locked in, he must reap what he’s sown. I wonder if Albedo’s obsession will only get worse to the point it becomes a crisis…but considering the comedy angle with the pillow, I also highly doubt it.

Back in the field, Momon gets a chance to both see the DarkSwords do their thing, and to show them what he’s capable of, which is bringing down a giant ogre with one swipe. Nabe takes two out with one lightning bolt, not even having to unsheathe her sword. The Swords don’t embarrass themselves either, as Momon notes how good of a team they are because they know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and work to close each others’ gaps. The ogre/goblin mob didn’t have a chance.

That night, the team feasts, and Momon runs into a practical problem, as he can’t eat or drink without exposing the fact he’s just a skeleton beneath his armor. But he has a bigger issue in that spending all this time with a tight-knit team of adventurers is incredible nostalgic, to the point of wistfulness and melancholy. He remembers he used to be like this with his comrades, and is resigned to the fact they may all be dead now, and he alone ended up in this weird new world.

It’s also nice to see people acknowledge responsibility for what they carelessly say to each other, whether it’s the flirty guy asking if Nabe is Momon’s lover (causing her to carelessly blurt out Albedo’s name) or the boy mage carelessly telling Momon he’s sure he’ll see his friends again when he doesn’t know that.

As for Clementine, she prowls the streets of E-Rantel, killing and torturing and un-killing for intel on Nphirea. But when she visits Khajit, the two don’t seem on the friendliest terms. Khaj wants to turn E-Rantel into a city full of undead, but doesn’t that mean Clementine won’t have anyone left to kill, torture, and turn undead?

How will she satisfy her “corrupt personality” in Khaj’s undead E-Rantel? The clash of Lawful (Khaj) and Chaotic (Clem) Evil makes for a good antagonistic duo, and Clem’s Yuuki Aoi really chews the scenery well with her up-and-down voice.  I just wish one of them would encounter and face off with Momon already.

GANGSTA. – 08

GANGSTA.’s finest episode yet gets off to a wonderful start, as the Handymen are…actually doing handyman work, fixing up Constance’s shot-up gun shop. They’re even wearing matching overalls. It shows us that their service to their community isn’t just “dirty work” involving intimidation, violence and/or bloodshed.

This show sometimes runs the risk of getting too serious, stodgy, or sappy, but avoids all of them by getting a little cheeky this week, from Constance grabbing what she thought was Ally’s fake boob (it isn’t), to her Granny sticking her cane into Worick’s buttcrack for loafing. These little moments of incidental comedy keep the darker stuff going on from taking over completely.

When Constance starts asking Ally innocuous questions about her family, Ally remembers she has a little brother at East Gate, but her memories of him are blurred and transition into more hallucinations of bloody Barry, indicating she needs to take her stabilizer. When her hands are shaking too much, Nic is there to calm her.

As you can see, the screencap can be very misleading; a big burly guy suddenly coming from behind would usually spell trouble, but here it’s Nic saving Ally from descending in a more serious episode. He brings her back.

Worick apologizes for letting Ally out of her sight, but it’s telling that Nic has his back even in this instance. He also tells Ally that her memories will return as the drugs leave her system. Ally really is in a kind of purgatory right now, without sufficient information to go one way or another. What Worick suggest, however, is that whatever her memories are, when she gets them back would be a good time to leave Ergastulum.

He can’t promise her she won’t end up back under the control of drugs or the heel of another pimp if she stays, because he’s not sure if he’s going to still be alive tomorrow. It’s a volatile place that just happens to be calm…now.

Also for now, Ally is for all intents and purposes, one of the Handymen, so Worick brings her along to a Christiano soiree at their nightclub, Bastard; a fitting name for a club where Twilights—essentially the bastards of science and humanity’s hubris—are welcome.

Once at the club, Ally curls up in a balcony window and loses track of Worick and Nic, who are busy rescuing Twilights from Anti-Twilight hunters. But on this otherwise clear, serene night, with her gorgeous evening dress and glass of wine, Ally feels perfectly at ease for the first time in a long, long time.

When she starts to hum the song being played downstairs, Loretta’s right-hand Twilight Galahad lets her in on Christiano’s under-the-table protection of Twilights, using the club as a front of sorts, just as the soiree is a front of sorts for the Handymen’s activities. Then he insists she take the stage and sing, which is why Worick brought her, having heard her humming before.

I don’t know if this is what Worick planned for all along (he’s a pretty sharp, chess-playing kinda guy after all), but when Ally is literally put on the spot, she doesn’t disappoint, giving a gorgeous, soulful rendition of a song that almost plays like a lullaby, a song about putting your fears aside because everything’s going to be okay, and a new day will come. The show expertly cuts from her singing to Worick and Nic brawling, and I drew a parallel between the soundless fighting and how it’s a lot like how Nic lives in the world.

The song takes up a lot of time, but rather than feel like too long, I almost didn’t want it to end. I love GANGSTA.’s penchant for giving parts of its episodes room to breathe, drawing us deeper into its world. And Ally’s song turns out to be a form of therapy when the blurry images of her little brother come into focus and she remembers singing it to comfort him when he was sad.

So her memories did come back just as Worick said they would, and faster than I expected. She’s also found out quite by accident that she’s not a bad nightclub songstress, further excising her of the persistent self-hatred and perceived worthlessness the drugs induced. So, will she stay or go…or go, find her bro, and come back?

Worick isn’t wrong when he says Ergastulum isn’t the best place for souls such as Ally’s, because the guys he and Nic were fighting were merely ineffectual foot soldiers. The elites have yet to strike, and when they do, they will surely destroy all of the peace and serenity Ally got a well-needed taste of that night.

Ally isn’t a Twilight, nor is she a soldier, but before she knows it, her present residence will become a battlefield, and Worick and Nic may not have an eye to spare for her in the impending chaos.

OverLord – 05

Momonga’s starts to fulfill his desire for the name Ainz Ooal Gown to become known far and wide throughout the world starts out modestly, by entering E-Rantel posing as a young adventurer “Momon”, accompanied by one of his battle maid Narbarel AKA “Nabe”. He knows that he can’t conquer a world he knows next to nothing about, and a great way to learn more is to play things by the book and rise in the ranks of the adventurer guilds.

Momonga is making a conscious effort to do things carefully and empirically, not making to much noise. Yet his potential to be a bull in the proverbial china shop is evident when he tosses a would-be bully across a tavern, knocking over another adventurer’s precious potion. He gives her one of his to make things right, but his potions are red, not the usual blue, so she takes it to the local pharmacist, Nphirea, who then learns about Momon and is intrigued.

By then Momon, needing coin but unable to secure high-level jobs, agrees to join an adventuring party, Swords of Darkness. Nphirea seeks out Momon, and both he and the Swords agree to accompany him as his bodyguards on an herb-collecting excursion. Even after annihilating an entire Slane army, Momon remains cautious and is hesitant both to guard Nphirea alone at his present state of knowledge of the new world, and also just plain doesn’t want to go back on his word to join the Swords of Darkness, instead including them.

Throughout all of this, Nabe remains dutifully by Momon’s side, voicing her displeasure with having to jump through hoops for human trash (though I understand why he didn’t bring Albedo along; she’s more powerful than the battle maid and hence hates being around humans even more than Nabe). There is something to both Momon and Nabe having to restrain themselves in order to fit in and get the knowledge and experience he wants out of this.

Meanwhile, the next antagonist in Momon’s adventure reveals herself to the audience with lots of helpful expository dialogue with another baddie. They’re members of the secret society of Zuranon, and she, Clementine, has secured a magical item that consumes the one who uses it. She’s heard about Nphirea in E-Rantel, and wants to use it on him, gaining the help of Khaj.

I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes, and the inevitable showdown between Momon/Nabe/Swords of Darkness and these would-be spreaders of chaos and death. But the long and short of it is, we didn’t get to see any of that in this episode; it was largely setup, albeit with some decent world-building.