Chio-chan no Tsuugakuro – 01 (First Impressions) – It’s All in the Journey

Sometimes Miyamo Chio is late for school. Sometimes she’s early. The reasons for either are many: staying up late playing video games, for instance. The point is, while on her route to school, something always happens.

That could be something small, like a closed road, that then turns into something much bigger, like a rooftop adventure with old man toothpaste spit, stepping on a rich guy’s alligator suitcase, or walking boldly out of a love hotel parking garage.

Miyamo Chio is, on the outside, a fairly average, unassuming high school girl who doesn’t like standing out. But inside is a seething cauldron of emotions that conspire to create a far more over-the-top dramatic event than one would think. She even has an assassin alter-ego based on her video game chracter.

Be it one, two, or more trips per episode, Chio-Chan no Tsuugakuro isn’t about school. It’s about getting to school, and everything that happens while attempting to do so. And thanks to some diverse and vibrant voice work from Oozora Naomi and nicely animated bursts of action, the journey is probably more fun than the destination anyway.

Hataraku Saibou – 01 (First Impressions) – Doesn’t Matter if You’re Red or White

Hataraku Saibou, AKA Cells At Work, delivers exactly what the title promises, only the cells in question are anthropomorphized. We’re introduced to a red blood cell AE3803, who is very new to her job of delivering oxygen and other nutrients to various parts of the body (and gets lost easily).

When a band of pneumococci (germs) invade, the red blood cells rely on neutrophils (white blood cells) like U-1146, who is initially all business (the germs have blood like people too) but softens a bit as he spends more time with AE.

 

AE and the remaining germ end up bumping into each other by accident, and U has to save her on more than one occasion as they traverse various parts of the anatomy, represented as parts of a huge bustling city. Cells at Work feels like a cross between Working!! and either Futurama’s “Parasites Lost” or the Magic School Bus book in which they go into the human body.

So yeah, it’s a bit of a silly premise, but well-executed, well-paced and full of fun little comedic beats that keep things from getting too clinical. Kanazawa Hana provides a manic energy and ebullience to AE. While this episode was primarily how a sneeze can occur (treated as a monumental rocket launch) I imagine future eps will cover other bodily functions, doubtless involving other cell-people.

Banana Fish – 01 (First Impressions) – Look Young, Live Fast

Banana Fish is a manga dating back to 1985, which makes it, well, old. Yet it looks to be a story about one young man getting suddenly, violently mixed up in the very complicated life of an even younger man. We spend much of the first half following the first young man around, one Ash Lynx, who has a lot going on.

Leader of a powerful multi-ethnic street gang in NYC, the 17-year-old Ash is also apparently the heir (and former lover) of the mafia boss Dino. Ash takes care of his big brother Griffin, who has been helpless and only mutters “Banana Fish” ever since he fought in the war and suddenly…snapped.

Ash ends up encountering another man muttering the same thing, ends up with a vial of some kind of drug, and starts digging, suspecting Dino is up to something and also eager to cure his brother’s condition, if he can.

In the midst of all this comes the mild-mannered, babyfaced 19-year-old Okumura Eiji, who is immediately both impressed and terrified of the wild young rogue Ash. Eiji is merely an assistant for a photojournalist looking to do a story on the street gangs, and young Eiji may be the key to getting Ash to open up.

The two meet and barely spend an hour at one of the gang’s hideouts until a plan is put into place which had been simmering beneath the surface of events the entire episode, involving a member of Ash’s gang and one of Dino’s bodyguards betraying Ash. They use Eiji and Ash’s young friend Skip as bait to lure him to a seedy warehouse where they have awful things in store for him.

When we leave Eiji, he’s freaking out a bit, just trying to remind himself that he’s currently dealing with a reality about as different from his peaceful life back home as is possible, while Ash commandeers his friend Shorter’s red motorcycle to give chase, playing right into his betrayers’ hands.

One wonders why it took 33 years for this manga, apparently a classic example of BL with wide appeal, to become an anime. This first episode doesn’t answer that, but the source’s age does inform the retro character design, while the soundtrack is more contemporary. It also achieves what any good first episode does: leaves me wanting to find out what happens next.

Steins;Gate 0 – 13 – Dark is Dangerous

The near-miss with the car brought back Kagari’s memories, but only some of them. She’s still missing a 12-year gap between 10 and 22. As a result, Kagari acts a lot more like a child than she used to, and treats a somewhat bemused Mayuri (who is mostly going with the flow) like her beloved “mommy.”

Watching a 22-year-old woman act so spoiled around her parents irks Suzuha, to the point they have a yelling match in the TV repair shop. Both sides regret the fight and plan to apologize, but Suzu learns something crucial from it: her and Kagari’s memories of how they became separated are very different.

After conferring with Tennouji, Rintarou begins to suspect Kagari’s strange memory gap is the result of foul play: brainwashing and mind control, just as Kiryuu discovers…something less than 5km from where Kagari collapsed. It’s a clue, but it requires they take a long drive.

Mayuri decides to celebrate the restoration of at least some of Kagari’s memories by throwing one of her patented parties, which she tries to make a surprise, but with her early memories restored Kagari knows when her Mommy is trying to keep a surprise party secret.

All the while, this ominous van drives around Akiba playing seemingly innocuous Mozart, and it’s clear the van is Bad News, whether it’s a van for kidnapping or simply for triggering Shiina Kagari. That perilous van hangs there, like Damocles’ Sword, over the remainder of the episode, as Mayuri & Co. prepare the party.

If the argument got the ball rolling on a theory about mind control, Kagari’s desire to properly apologize to Suzuha is the unfortunate side-effect. Kagari’s trip to the sweet shop isolates her from everyone else, who in hindsight are wayyy to loosy-goosy with her security at this point.

Indeed, in his desire for more clear answers about what’s going on, Rintarou is far, far away; in no position to keep her safe.

She hears the Mozart from the van (which is either planted there by “Them” to play specifically for her, or sheer coincidence) and more memories flow into her head: memories of being left with “doctors” by Mayuri, ostensibly to cure her PTSD, but the visits really comprise a kind of human experiment called the “Amadeus System”, of which Kagari is Sample #K6205.

The shock of this influx of memory sends Kagari into a trancelike state, and she drops the cake for Suzuha and her cell phone and wanders off who-knows-where, believing she’s hearing “the voice of God.” More likely, it’s the voice of those who did this to her to begin with.

Combined with Rintarou and Kiryuu discovering the facility, where Kagari was held in a cell for who knows how long, scrawling “Mommy” on the walls, Kagari’s vanishing from everyone’s sight (again) forms one hell of a thrilling cliffhanger for the second half of Steins;Gate 0.

While we may now know mostly what’s been done to Kagari, it remains to be seen who did it, why, and most important, how Kagari is linked to Maho and Leskinen’s Amadeus System. Was Kagari even a war orphan from the future? Will there really be enough cups and plates? We shall see…

Darling in the FranXX – 24 (Fin) – A Word They Were Never Taught

Despite the hope from their Squadmates that they’ll one day return victorious, there is every indication that Zero Two and Hiro’s insane odyssey through space is a one-way trip, at least in their current forms/lives. As they near the VIRM homeworld and fight off wave after wave of their warships, Hiro becomes a little more Zero-y, and Zero Two becomes a little more Hiro-y.

Back on Earth the gang returns to Mistilteinn, where they find things are growing again, and set to work rebuilding their food supply in order to survive without magma energy they relied on for so long. With Zero Two and Hiro’s lessons, as well as their own experiences, everyone ends up changing and growing up. Kokoro has the baby. The rejected parasites are brought out of hibernation, including Naomi.

Goro sets off on a journey of exploration on Earth seeking supplies and other lost children, making sure to kiss Ichigo before he leaves. After two years, the constant onslaught of VIRM has exhausted Hiro, allowing the enemy to “caress his consciousness” and knock him out, leaving Zero Two vulnerable.

They’re both saved not just by their own love, but by the fruits of those whom they inspired: Ai, the daughter of Kokoro and Mitsuru, named for the Japanese word for love, a word humanity had all but forgotten and which the children were never taught.

When the gang realizes the stone statute of Zero Two is a conduit through which both Zero and Hiro can hear them, they join hands and pray as loudly as they can for as long as they can, until their prayers get through to the two out in space. Hiro wakes up, green-eyed and blue-horned, rejects the pooh-poohing of the VIRM, and becomes even more one with Zero than they were before.

Apus is destroyed, but a new entity emerges; a total merging of Zero Two and Hiro, and they rend the VIRM homeworld asunder in a light that manages to reach Earth. The Klaxosaur fleets return to the earth and become one with it, and the green returns with it. Zero Two’s statue, no longer necessary, crumbles, leaving a small tree sprout.

While still hoping their friends will one day return, Squad 13 doesn’t assign them any time table, and instead begin writing their own stories. They help rebuild human civilization, without magma energy, while building families. Ikuno manages to slow their rapid aging, even though it’s too late for her. Ichigo and Goro have a kid. Futoshi finds another to love and has several kids. Zorome and Miku…continue to bicker with one another.  The more things change, the more they stay the same, and all that.

Then, centuries pass, Zero Two’s cherry tree grows larger and ancient, and a huge futuristic city rises around it, only no longer hidden within a plantation dome, and no longer populated by emotionless humans. It’s in this city built by love, the thing never taught its founders, where a boy and a girl one day meet who look an awful lot like our starring pair. Circle of life, baby.

And that’s a FranXX wrap. These last few episodes sure got BIG, as in expansive in both time, scale, and theme, culminating in a resolution for all of Squad 13 and an ending a franchise like Evangelion may never give us; instead of the story stopping before it ends, the book is closed on Hiro, Zero Two, and the others, and a new story begins, built upon what they started.

The VIRM may one day return, but mankind is in a much better position to oppose them, thanks to Hiro, Zero Two, and Squad 13 not living to fight, but fighting to live…and love.

(Belated) Programming Note

“Where…where are the new Summer reviews?”

We’ve been on vacation in Denver the past week (beautiful city), but now we’re back! Hopefully within the week we’ll be caught up on all of the new Summer 2018 shows at which we’ve planned to take a look that have aired in our absence. We apologize for the delay. —RABUJOI STAFF