Chio-chan no Tsuugakuro – 09 – A Need for You Somewhere

Chio was up all night gaming and not studying for the exams, so she resorts to praying at a shrine for divine assistance. Instead, they meet the creepy high school girl-obsessed “Master” whom their Kabbadi nemesis “trained” with in the park. While an unapologetic creeper, you have to respect the man’s commitment to his craft. He remembers his time as a high-rolling salaryman that women were only hired for their looks, not their academic bonafides.

Thus he and Manana try to give Chio a makeover, first with a blonde wig that ends up way too Showa Era, then a more classic old-fashioned wig that, while suiting her “plain face”, looks very odd when combined with her school uniform. Manana and Master’s running commentary is a constant source of laughs, as are Chio’s funny little background sounds.

Manana and Master perhaps praise Chio’s ‘do too much, for she starts to believe she’s “made it”, attractiveness-wise now, and decides to show them her sexy side by, ahem, pole dancing on the shrine grounds. Their reaction says it all. And the fact Chio picked up how to pole dance from a video game (and can pull it off due to her surprising athleticism) made it all the more wonderfully weird.

Speaking of weird, Chio appreciates things few other girls her age appreciate, like a pipe hanging over a waterway that’s made as hard to cross as possible…but for a valve that serves as a “safe zone.” Chio compares it to a strong, strict man who nevertheless has a kind side.

Speaking of such men, Chio and Manana encounter Andou numerous times during their walk to school, and it occurs to Manana that he seems to be trying extremely hard to impress Chio, and it’s working. She suspects (correctly) that he likes Chio and this is his way of courting her: using special moves to get papers in slots, smoking a cigar…you name it.

Then Manana imagines a future in which she’s still too poor to buy a small car, but Chio is living it up in her Porsche 718 Boxster with a very successful Andou by her side (and hilariously, sporting the same Showa hair/overdone makeup from the makeover segment)—with a haughty accent to boot.

Manana cannot allow such a future to occur, but Chio figures out for herself that Andou might like her (revealing to Manana that they have each other’s contact info). But Chio is immediately “proven wrong” when she and Manana spot Andou pressing another guy against a wall with his foot high up in the air.

Andou, wrongly assuming Chio was a hardcore fujoshi, decided to lift a special pickup move from a BL video…but Chio is still just occasionally glancing at the one mag she bought at the konbini. Instead, she assumes Andou is into guys and she and Manana give the men some privacy.

Later, Chio curses herself for ever believing anyone would fall for her, but Manana quietly insists she’s wrong. And she is! Who wouldn’t fall for Chio?!

Banana Fish – 09 – Dino’s Inferno

If it wasn’t clear last week, it certainly is now: things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better. Ash is in custody, on his way to New York. Eiji and Shorter are already there. Shorter is injected with Banana Fish and comes to think of Eiji as the manifestation of all his worst fears.

Eiji just manages to escape becoming just another one of Dino Golzine’s sexual conquests (he’s called away by Ash’s arrival). Yut-Lung, like Ash, is far more willing to get on with it for the sake of survival, and tells Eiji he should start thinking that way if he likes breathing.

Dino has a bit of a flair for the theatric, and so dresses up all of his hostages in black tie for a sumptuous dinner before getting to the “main event”, Ash having to watch Shorter kill Eiji with a knife. This is all just thoroughly unpleasant, especially with the younger Dawson brother doing his Mad Scientist thing and Arthur smirking and laughing through it all, having a blast.

The only—and I mean only—two glimmers of hope for any of the “good guys” are Yut-Lung escaping from the bedroom (though he doesn’t do anything this week, he only watches) and Shorter’s and Ash’s gangs deciding to join forces to spring their leaders.

But those glimmers of hope are too little, too late, as Ash’s chains are loosened and he’s given a gun with one bullet. He shoots Shorter before Shorter can kill Eiji, and to add insult to injury, Dawson drags Shorter’s body away to dissect his brain.

If it wasn’t already obvious, Ash and his misfit friends are so far out of their depth it’s not even funny (except to Arthur, who finds all of this hilarious.) It sucks to see Shorter go, and awful to see it happen by Ash’s own hand.

Now he, Eiji, Ibe and Max will have to hope either Yut-Lung makes a move on Dino, and/or Ash and Shorter’s men can turn the tables. But it is not looking good at all for our brash, handsome, precocious young gangster.

No Steins;Gate 0 This Week

Put that stuff away!

Episode 20 will air next week.

—P.

Overlord III – 08 – Never Root for Humans and You’ll Never Be Disappointed

In Demiurge We Trust remains the name of the game, but our gallant band of good-hearted workers end up pawns in his grand scheme to advance Nazarick’s stature in the world, and that leaves a rather nasty taste in my mouth, because they’re very likable pawns with a noble goal.

I know there’s a human in Ains Ooal Gown who probably shares some of that taste…but isn’t letting it get in the way of following the plan. In a way, he’s letting himself be a pawn in that plan; playing the role he’s been assigned.

The workers know they’re doomed as soon as they walk in the arena. Ains removing a ring so Arche can see how powerful his magic is (it’s powerful enough to make her vomit) only confirms what they already knew: they’re hosed.

When begging for their collective lives doesn’t work, the team does their best, but of course everything they can throw at Ains bounces off him harmlessly. The difference in power is simply too overwhelmingly great. So they work to get one of them away: Arche.

Unfortunately, while Arche can fly, she has nowhere to fly to; they’re not really outside but on the sixth floor of the tomb. Ains dispatches Shalltear to retrieve Arche and fill her with fear and despair before delivering a painless death.

It seems Arche is resolute to the end, and Shalltear failed in the first objective. but as Entoma ends up with her voice in a later scene, using it to describe all the ways her various parts were distributed among Lord Ains’ many underlings, her second objective of killing her did.

Not long after, the next stage of Demi’s plan is set in motion, as Aura and Mare arrive at the imperial capital on the back of a giant golden dragon to deliver a message—Lord Ains is pissed, and demands a personal apology or he’ll destroy the entire country.

To prove he means business, Mare rends a great crack in the ground, and all of the dozens of amassed soldiers surrounding the dragon fall to their deaths, leaving even the proud, fearless young emperor looking dumbstruck. He’ll no doubt have to rely on his grizzled head wizard Paladine at least a little longer.

Tenrou: Sirius the Jaeger – 06 – The Siege of Naoe Mansion

Having learned the Ark wasn’t even in the city the train was headed, Kershner declares the train-and-Frankenstein’s monster op a wash, and refocuses his efforts on eliminating the Jaegers who got in their way. Back at the Naoe household, V Company sits tight and awaits further orders.

Ryouko is scolded by her understandably protective father. He forbids her from ever touching another sword, but she won’t hear of it. If she’s to be a worthy successor, she needs to see more of the outside world and how it works; book studies won’t be enough.

After what he witnessed on the trian, Major Iba seeks out more intel from Willard’s bartender informant, but both of them are tailed by vamps in black coats, and when the bartender is alone, they strike. By the time Willard arrives for his regular visit and Mockingbird cocktail, he only has a few moments before his friend dies, handing him a note.

The vamps aren’t gone, but Willard demonstrates he can handle himself in a fight against a couple of grunts. Every bullet finds a vital target and no movement is wasted, save, perhaps, unloading a couple more bullets than needed into a vamp’s head. But considering what they did to his friend, it’s understandable. Willard calls Dorothea, who musters the Jaegers for a battle.

They play things stealthy at first, hiding in the shadows while the vamps run into booby traps, but there are just so many goddamn monsters out there the skirmish quickly becomes a tense siege.

As the buildings of the household start to burn, Ryouko, who led her father and servants to the storeroom, prepares to head out and buy them more time to escape, decked out in her samurai best.

However, her father stops her—not because he doesn’t think she’ll be able to put up a fight, but because he wants to go to heaven being able to face Ryouko’s mother, something he can’t do if he lets her sacrifice herself to save his sorry old ass.

Speaking of old ass, Kershner is in the building with Mikhail by his side, just as Yuliy and Phillip finish up with their monsters. Rather than let his brother choke the life out of his fellow Jaeger, Yuliy slips away from Kershner long enough to knock Mikhail away.

Protecting Phillip while fighting Kershner and Mikhail sounds like crappy odds. I figure Yuliy’ll need one more friendly variable on his side of the equation.

Attack on Titan – 43 – One Human or Less

Eren wakes up in the strange blue cave, a place he’s never been, but which he still finds familiar. Rob appears with Historia and tells Eren there’s a reason for that. Then Rob and Tori place their hands on his back, and the memories come back fast and furious. Not those of Eren himself, but those of his father, and how he came to inject his son with the royal power of Titans.

The memory awakening works both ways, with Historia suddenly remembering her half-sister Freida, who would periodically visit her to make sure she was doing okay, each time using her Titan “Scream”-derived power to wipe all of Tori’s memories before departing.

Rob completes the puzzle by combining Historia’s memories of Freida with those from Eren’s father Grisha’s POV, while also explaining the severe damage to the chapel above. Grisha came to steal the Titan powers from the Reiss’, specifically Freida, and while her Titan form was the most powerful, she lacked Grisha’s combat experience, and he ate her, thus stealing her Titan-controlling “Scream.”

Grisha then passed “Scream” to Eren via injection. To ensure no other Reiss would have the power, the Grisha Titan slaughtered Rob’s entire family. Only Historia wasn’t there, and she still carries the noble blood. Now that Rob has Eren, he no doubt intends to recover “Scream” for Historia. Whether she understands that will mean the end for Eren, I can’t yet say.

Back in the capital, Pyxis tells Erwin their coup is all for nothing if Rob Reiss obtains Eren’s “Scream.” They may have toppled the fake king, but they seem reluctant to let another take up the mantle of leadership so soon…not if they’re not sure it’s what’s best for humanity, which is all Pyxis cares about, and the only reason he sided with (the very sadistic) Zachary and Erwin.

Rob trusts Kenny, but he probably shouldn’t, if Kenny’s smirk and scoff upon turning his back on Rob is any indication. Not to mention the fact Kenny is an Ackerman, a clan of warriors who once served as the swords and protectors of kings.

They started to become persecuted along with the Asian races, both groups that were immune to the royal power to wipe memories. We learn this in a flashback in which Kenny talks with his grandfather who is on his death bed. We also learn of Kenny’s sister Kuchel, who was pregnant with (I’m guessing) Levi at the time.

In any case, if the goal is to save Eren from being eaten, Mikasa, Armin, Levi, Hange, Sasha, Connie, and Jean will have to get through Kenny and his slightly depleted but still formidable Anti-Personnel Control Squad.

Hanebado! – 09 – Turnabout is Fair Play

Ayano and Nagisa’s preparations for their finals match are interrupted by the inauspiciously conspicuous return of Connie Christensen, who wants a rematch with Ayano. Ayano, who as we know is not the same Ayano Connie embarrassed the last time they crossed, stays cordial, but her first words to Connie—that her panties are showing—demonstrate how unseriously Ayano is taking her.

Ayano’s attention turns to her broken Wei-Wei mascot on her bag, and Shiwahime invites her to a kind of Wei-Wei theme park with Connie (Erena also tags along). The Wei-Wei-ness is like catnip to Ayano, who switches off Badminton Mode and has a lot of fun for once, to the relief of Erena. Meanwhile, Shiwahime inadvertently sabotages Connie’s olive branch to Ayano in the form of a Wei-Wei keychain.

It turns out Connie didn’t return for a rematch at all; she came to express her desire to be a family with Ayano and her mother Uchika. When Connie finally gets the words out, Ayano completely brushes them off, and affably leads Connie to a badminton court, where her first devastating shot sends a clear message that it won’t be a friendly match.

We see more of the perennially lonely Connie’s past when Uchika takes her under her wing and essentially adopts her, while all the while Connie’s knowledge of the existence of a “big sister” who is Uchika’s biological daughter looms over her as a kind of challenge to clear. She wants the acknowledgement of both Uchika—who never once told Connie she was better than Ayano—and Ayano herself.

She doesn’t get it, and I’d argue she doesn’t really deserve it after how she entered Ayano’s life. Sure, Connie thought Ayano was playing mind games with her when they first met, but it doesn’t change the fact that Ayano sought a friendship in good faith, unaware of Connie’s identity.

That being said, Ayano lays the contempt on a little thick, as she essentially transforms into a Badminton Youkai, all crazy eyes and twisted smirks, in utterly rejecting Connie on the grounds she’s resolved to abandon her mom the way she abandoned her.

While Ayano refuses to forgive and forget or turn the other cheek, a dejected Connie returns home with Shiwahime to find the rest of her team has done all three, giving her emotional support when she’s never felt lower. Sorry, Hanebado, but this whole “actually Connie is the victim now, let’s all feel bad for her” isn’t quite working for me.

Who has two thumbs and doesn’t care about Yu’s attempts to get one of the male players to notice her? [holds up two thumbs] This guy. Also, I’m not confident Nagisa practicing until her knees give out is the best strategy for having a good match against Ayano. If Ayano doesn’t clean her clock I’ll be very surprised.

What could turn the tables slightly in Nagisa’s favor is the fact that Ayano returns home to find her mother, big stupid hair bow and all, waiting there to greet her like nothing’s happened. However unpleasant a character Connie may be, she’s no match for the awfulness that is Hanesaki Uchika, Ten-Time Worst Mother of the Year.

Happy Sugar Life – 07 – What are Friends? What is Love?

Satou’s teacher sees her with Shouko and doesn’t like the fact that she seems to be sharing “dirty little secret.” Of course, Sensei is operating under the assumption that Satou’s parents died early and she was brought up by her aunt in an environment devoid of the love humans need to grow up to become “normal.”

He believes Satou snapped one day, murdered her aunt, chopped her into pieces, and gave the bags to him to incinerate. It’s as good a theory as any judging from the evidence he has…but he doesn’t quite have enough for the whole picture, and as a result, he’s dead wrong.

Satou doesn’t take Shouko to the apartment where she lives with Shio; she takes her to her aunt’s apartment. Her aunt turns out to be very much alive, and the cops are at her door answering reports of a “suspicious smell” emanating from the apartment.

Satou’s aunt may be alive, but to the horror of both Shouko and the cops, she’s completely whacked out of her gourd. Seiyu Inoue Kikuko, a grizzled veteran of anime who’s played dozens of mothers, balances the sweet kindness of her voice with an underlying malaise.

Everyone who enters her apartment, and sees horrid room in which she sleeps, immediately wants to leave and take a shower. But before the cops can leave, having found nothing law-breaking, she literally jumps on the male cop, senses he’s lonely, and tells him he can do whatever he wants to her and she’ll accept it—sex, violence, violent sex…anything.

This, Satou later tells Shouko, is how her aunt considered “love”, being a receptacle for whatever other people wanted to give her, good, bad, and ugly…all of it. And she’s never changed, and likely never will, as the cops (and you could say society at large) are neither properly equipped or empowered to “do anything” about her.

The female cop manages to wrest her partner away (and turns down the aunt’s invitation to her), and then turns to Shouko, who she also senses is “lonely” and is looking for her “prince.” Satou comes between them and ushers Shouko out of the apartment. Halfway to walking her home, Shouko expresses herself honestly; that she thought Satou’s aunt was hella weird.

When Satou asks if, now knowing the woman who raised her and how she sees love, if Shouko will still be friends with her. When Shouko hesitates to answer, Satou tells her they can go back to being “just friends at work.” and leaves. Shouko wanted to know the truth, and she only got a small taste, and it was way too much, but she’s still ashamed.

After shedding her tail, Sensei, with some properly dominating language, Satou leaves her aunt’s apartment’s front door, marked 305, and walks up to her apartment with Shio, number 1208, where she continues her Happy Sugar Life, untroubled by what went down with Shouko.

But then we flash back to the rainy day she didn’t want to go home to her aunt anymore. Someone chatted her up, invited her to their apartment (1208), and asked her to model for them (they were apparently an artist). Now we know who she murdered: that artist and 1208’s previous occupant.

Grand Blue – 07 – Just Ask Her Out Directly and Get Rejected, Losers!

Unlike Chio-chan, which mixes its scenarios up pretty well and always keeps you guessing what will befall its characters from week to week, Grand Blue often follows a familiar formula.

In this formula, Iori and Kouhei yell at each other a lot with increasingly contorted faces, while Iori’s college classmates express their disapproval of the very idea of Chisa dating/living with Iori. They’re his friends…until evidence he’s close to Chisa emerges, and then they want to literally kill him.

This act is wearing a bit thin, to be honest, and the reason is in the title of this post: these assholes need to stop blaming Iori for their romantic troubles! If they like Chisa (which is dubious, as none of them actually even know her; they just think she’s cute, which she is), they should ask her out.

If they all get rejected (which they most certainly will be, which lets face it is why they won’t ask), well then, tough noogies! But they’d get closure on the Chisa matter. Instead, they take all their frustrations out on Iori, and we have to watch it. It’s not pleasant, nor is it that funny! Meanwhile, Chisa is pushed off to the side, barely involved aside from the odd glare or blush.

The show flips the script by giving us a doubles tennis competition with the Tinkerbell tennis club, whose blue-haired captain wants revenge for the pageant fiasco. He’s also not interested in playing fair, as he spikes all the booze of Peekaboo’s spectators, as well as the hard-hitting Ryuu and Shinji, with what seems to be Everclear.

In the midst of the matches, we learn that both Chisa and Iori are extremely competent at tennis and would even make fine members of Tinkerbell, if only its captain and other members weren’t such arrogant pricks. I also lked how Chisa punished Iori for his ill-conceived cheers by taking his sweats and wearing them herself.

In any case, Peekaboo manages to pull an upset, netting them enough funds to take a diving trip to Okinawa. Less pathetic, jealous college buddies, more fun diving trips, please! Fulfill the promise of that painfully upbeat opening!

Chio-chan no Tsuugakuro – 08 – The Rare Item of Friendship

One morning Yuki joins Chio and Manana…in her very tight and revealing new track outfit. She has no problem walking with them to school like this, and Chio quickly comes around…but Manana can’t handle it; it’s just too sexy.

To further test whether Yuki is naive or just an exhibitionist, Manana takes her to a busy konbini, where every guy proceeds to stare at her in a not-at-all stealthy way.

Manana can’t believe Yuki doesn’t notice…and she’s right not to, because Yuki does notice; she just doesn’t mind. After all, she’s used to big crowds at track meets.

When Chio changes into her soft tennis outfit, Manana deduces the reason why: Chio’s visor enables her to keep her face hidden, while the tennis skirt simultaneously serves as a semi-disguise while making Yuki appear less of an exhibitionist, since it’s two students in their club getup rather than one.

Even so, Manana intends to foil Chio’s plan not to stand out, pointing out to Yuki that they’re exactly 1500m from school (her favorite distance) and there’s a nice tailwind. Once she pops a popper from the konbini, Yuki is off and running, and Chio is exposed as the only remaining girl in an eye-catching outfit.

Chio later gets a measure of revenge by recalling the time Manana greeted her in her school swimsuit years ago, a moment Manana would rather everyone forgot.

Another morning, Manana has her head buried in her phone looking at ways to lose weight, while Chio discovers a kind of video game world in the small space betweeen two buildings she can easily scale due to her latent athleticism.

She ends up almost getting discovered by two office workers, while Manana meets the salaryman who ran with Yuki—and is impressed by how much weight he’s lost and asks for some pointers.

Manana is so engrossed she forgets all about Chio…until the man leaves and she spots her just a few vertical feet from the roof. Manana takes the easy way up there (pretending to be the daughter of another worker delivering her dad’s lunch).

Once there, Manana runs and jumps across the gap to scold Chio, but Chio bursts into tears, worried that Manana might’ve fallen down the deceptively high height in the gap between the buildings.

Indeed, when Manana realizes how high up they are, she faints into Chio’s arms. But Chio is just glad she has a friend who would risk her own safety to make sure she was okay.

In the shorter final segment, we learn the story of how Shinozuka Momo joined the Disciplinary Committee: she was always trying to share her abundant knowledge with her classmates and trying to improve their studying methods, but everyone derided her as an annoying Goody-Two-Shoes.

In her moment of greatest frustration, she’s stopped by the student counselor at the school gate…but not because she did anything wrong. He sensed she had something she needed so say, and needed someone to listen. He gives her the idea to join the committee so her words would carry more weight and more easily reach her peers. The rest is history.

We also learn why she has a thing for the counselor: when everyone else simply wanted her to shut up and go away, he told her that they actually needed her. Not someone like her, but Shinozuka Momo herself.

Banana Fish – 08 – A Very Bad Trip

I won’t mince words: this was a mostly thoroughly unpleasant episode to watch. While it’s not a deal-breaker when things never seem go the protagonist’s way, you have to throw the audience a bone once in a while. BF’s eighth episode did not oblige. Pretty much everything sucks for everyone.

Take the hostage situation involving JessicaJennifer and Michael. Lee’s thugs demand Max hand Ash over if he doesn’t want his family killed, but when they show up, the thugs are gone, replaced by police. Michael is fine, and Jennifer is alive (though it’s implied she was raped by one of the thugs).

While Ash and Max are gone, Yue-Lung makes his move, incapacitating both Ibe and Eiji and preparing to take the latter to his brothers in Chinatown. While paralized, Ibe can still see and hear, and so knows Shorter betrayed them, something Shorter is not proud of.

While he may have officially turned his coat against Ash, Shorter makes it his personal mission to see no harm comes to Eiji…which will be a tall order, as the Lees plan to hand him over to Golzine where he’ll be sold into sexual slavery just like Ash was. I’d point out that Eiji is not a “boy” but a 20-something adult, but the show is keen on him being the damsel-in-distress, while the paralytic completes his total loss of agency.

No, it will be up to Shorter to try to keep him safe (he vows to kill him and himself if/when that’s no longer possible) and Ash and his friends to rescue him from the clutches of the Lees and Golzine. But first, Alexis, the older brother of Abraham Dawson (and owner of the house where Yue-Lung was essentially squatting) shows up out of nowhere to inch the mystery forward.

Lex shows Ash and Max his hidden research room and the info they get from him indicate Golzine is doing a deal with the US Government to weaponize Banana Fish, which can be used to perfect soviet-era drug hypnosis. Then Lee’s men show up at Lex’s house, capture him, Ash, Max, and a recovered Ibe, and prepare to ship them all off back to New York.

Going to Los Angeles may have netted some answers for Ash & Co., but their presence there got Jennifer raped, Michael traumatized, and Lex’s lab torched. This is way bigger than revenge now where Ash likes it or not, but even assuming he frees himself from captivity and gets his .45 back, fighting Golzine and his government co-conspirators won’t be easy; perhaps the goal should be exposing them to the public.

We’ll also have to keep an eye on Yue-Lung, whose two half-brothers killed his mother in front of him when he was six. Despite his talk about it being in the past, it’s also in his back pocket, and he’s willing to go down himself if it means taking Hua-Lung and Wang-Lung with him. Perhaps he’ll eventually join Ash and Eiji to form a bad-guy-busting bishounen triad?

Steins;Gate 0 – 19 – First Attempt

In response to the shock of the evening’s events that have led to the destruction of the time machine, the recriminations fly between Rintarou, Daru and Maho. All of a sudden, Rintarou demands that Daru and Maho finish the Time Leap Machine so he can go back and try to undo what’s been done.

This leads Maho to admit that, at present, she doesn’t have the know-how to discover the secrets of machine by herself in time (it will only go back about 48 hours). That means having to sacrifice her desired quest to attain the same answers as Kurisu, and instead just be given the answers by Rintarou.

Considering the stakes and the tiny window of time they have to work with, it’s the only choice she could have made, though it sets aside her scientific pursuits and just getting the thing built ASAP, it cements her role as an official Lab Member, working together as a team.

While Rintarou verifys that there were no remains of Mayuri and Suzuha— suggesting they may not be dead—the time leap machine construction proceeds anyway, seeing as how there’s far too much uncertainty about the fate of the two young women to simply sit back and do nothing. (We don’t learn anything more about the nature of Mayuri’s text, or whether it was a D-mail).

Feyris and Ruka do their part keeping the machine-building team fed and refreshed as they work tirelessly for the next 48-odd hours, successfully hacking into CERN and even getting Tennouji to switch on the 42″ CRT downstairs. Rintarou observes that the lab is suddenly a lot “livelier” and more fun than it had been in a long time. It’s just too bad Mayuri isn’t there to see it.

But enough “too bads”; it’s time for action. After waking up and mistaking Maho’s sun-bathed black hair for Kurisu’s red locks, Rintarou gathers the troops, an in a speech (that unfortunately doesn’t devolve into the chuunibyou intensity of Hououin Kyouma), thanks everyone for their hard work, including Amadeus, who blushes when he calls her Kurisu.

With that, the Phone Microwave (Temporary Name) Unit-02 is activated, and Rintarou leaps two about two days before the shit hit the fan (July 7). With so little time having passed since his origin, Rintarou has little trouble convincing Daru and Maho that he is indeed from the future, and they need to get to work deleting Leskinen’s data to preempt his move against them.

Rintarou also arrives at the rooftop of the Radio building a full hour earlier than “last time”, and rather than getting shot by Suzuha, Mayuri is successful in convincing him not to stop her from carrying out Operation Arclight – going back to August 21st and convincing him not to give up on searching for the Steins Gate.

Unfortunately, Judy Reyes, Kagari, and Leskinen interfere earlier than last time. Suzu and Rintarou are able to subdue Judy (who apparently represents DURPA), but Kagari and Leskinen appear shortly thereafter. Thankfully, this time we don’t have to sit and listen to him explain his plan and laugh like a Bond villain.

Suzu and Mayuri seal themselves in the Time Machine and it begins to activate…but Leskinen calls his air support to fire a missle at the machine, and Rintarou is right back where he started. His purpose for going back—saving Mayuri, Suzuha, and Kagari—has failed, and he fears that like saving Mayuri in the Alpha World Line, there may be no way to save the time machine in the Beta.

However, there’s no reason he can’t go back to the lab, have Daru and Maho finish the machine, and leap back again—and that’s exactly what he does. s he said in his speech before his first attempt, he’s prepared to fail dozens, hundreds, thousands, even a million times, but he won’t give up as long as he has the means to continue. Maho tells him to tell all her counterparts he meets that she promises to help for as long as it takes.

However, something strange happens after his second attempt: there seems to be a longer delay before he actually leaps, and the screen that displays the date and time for us suddenly stops a July 6 and cracks. That doesn’t bode well for having a third attempt, let alone thousands more…not to mention there are only four episodes remaining.

Overlord III – 07 – Ain’t No Party Like a Nazarick Party

Just as the loose alliance of worker teams begins their infiltration of the mysterious ancient tomb, Momon leaves the rest to Narbarel and teleports back home to Nazarick…which is the tomb all the workers are infiltrating. Ains has orchestrated a kind of “open house” to test the mettle of the unsanctioned adventurers, and no doubt this is also part of Demiurge’s larger plan to create a name for Nazarick that will echo throughout the land.

Lord Ains watches from his throne room monitors with Albedo as the teams move in—all but one, led by a grizzled elder who decides to cede the exploration of the tomb to the other teams in exchange for ten percent of what each of them find. In this way, he’s making his party a tidy profit without risking any of his comrades’ safety.

Making the other teams their “canaries” would be a great plan…if five of the Pleiades Six Stars weren’t waiting for them outside. The five-man party would be no match for even one of the maids, but they’re not there to fight, only observe as the undead “Nazarick Old Guards” rise from the ground and take care of business. I must say, it is pretty cool to see so many powerful maids assembled, even if they don’t even lift a finger in the battle.

The parties within the tomb don’t fare much better. Some are teleported to some god-forsaken sub-dungeon of the tomb where a Cockroach King (possibly voiced by Hiroshi Kamiya?) greets them enthusiastically before feeding them to his vast “family” (who tire of cannibalism).

Another unfortunate worker ends up the singular captive of Nazarick’s “special intelligence collector” Neuronist, who fancies herself far more suitable a mate for Lord Ains than either Shalltear or Albedio. And then there’s the samurai-esque shitbag whose name I intentionally did not remember, because I didn’t like the fact he had three elf slaves (whose ears he apparently clipped).

Mr. Charming ends up facing off against Hamasuke, who’s been training hard with the Lizardman and has something to prove, which makes him far more dangerous than if is head wasn’t in the game. It’s great to see Hammy in action after so long, and hear his old-fashioned manner of speaking.

Hamasuke’s opponent proves no match for his speed, claws, and the Slashing Strike martial art taught to him by Zaryusu. As for the slave elves, after healing and buffing him once, he rushes back in and gets both hands sliced off, and from then on they wash their hands of him, grinning with glee as their master and tormentor is polished off by a giant magic hamster.

Thus ends a very small and minor mini-story within the story of a skilled but arrogant warrior who was also a monster. We were shown rather than told what the dynamic was, and were as pleased as the three elves when he got what he deserved.

Finally, the team we spend a lot of time learning about last week, led by the pauper noble Arche, end up teleported to an arena, where Aura serves as MC announcing the impending battle between them and the leader of the Tomb of Nazarick, Lord Ains Ooal Gown…whom I’m assuming will be holding back quite a bit.