The Dangers in My Heart – 02 – Battle Formation

Despite his silent objections, Yamada Anna continues to intrude upon Kyoutarou’s “holy space”, i.e. the library of loneliness. But he can’t deny it’s never a dull moment with Anna in there stuffing her face. When she has a complicated color-changing marshmallow candy set that requires water, she ends up spilling a bunch on the floor. He gets a cup for her, but by then she’s already mixing the candy by the sink.

When it gets hot, Kyou (along with the other boys) observe the girls sweating in their whites shirts, which is mitigated by fanning. The next time she’s snacking in the library, she asks to borrow his fan, which she says smells nice, then invites him to come in close and smell it too. Basically any excuse to get the little guy closer to Anna will do.

When Anna gets a text saying her “boyfriend” Chihiro (who is actually her closest female friend) is en route, she hides under the table where Kyou is sitting. Chihiro realizes pretty quickly the statuesque lass is under there, and lures her out by complimenting her. The reason Anna snacks alone is that Chihiro is allergic. She may be a space cadet, but she tries to be considerate to those she cares about.

More and more, Anna is making it clear that Kyoutarou is one of those people. When he gets guff from the boy trying to date Anna (who was also the first to fish his bike out of the river) for writing “Yamada” on tombstones on the class’ haunted house mural, he owns up to it so the real culprit (Hana, a girl) doesn’t get guff from the girls. But then Hana says she was just using common names like Yamada and Kobayashi. Anna realizes that Kyou was covering for Hana, and apologize for putting him in a spot.

Speaking of spots, Anna will be the class ghost for the cultural festival. She sidles up to Kyou at the sinks, and wonders if she’d look creepier with blood on her face. As with the mural, Kyou can’t help but suggest the right way to make something look spookier, and Anna leans in so he can apply the blood-colored paint to her face. All he can manage is a single spot before bailing from embarrassment.

On the day of the festival, Anna and her friends get picked up by three lads, but as Kyou observes, the girls are in a tight “battle formation” to protect each other from handsy dudes.

Kyou tries to swing around to keep tailing them, and ends up encountering Anna, who had strayed from her group. She and Kyou go in the classroom where there’s a map of the town from 80 years ago. Anna points out her house, asks Kyou where his is, then draws the distance with her fingers, touching his in the process.

When he asks if it’s ok to take a picture (of the map) she grabs his phone and takes a selfie of the two of them. Even if he maintains Anna will be his top “victim” in some rhetorical spree of violence he envisions committing, the bottom line is that Kyou is elated beyond measure to have such a photo, just as Anna is more than happy to provide it.

Loving Yamada at Lv999 – 02 – Being Selective

It looked at first like Akane woke up hungover in Yamada’s bed, but it turns out she’s in a tube top and jeans. He brought her to his place to sleep it off after she passed out at the izakaya, then washed her puke-soaked clothes. A mortified Akane prostrates herself then makes herself scarce, and Yamada notes that they’ll probably never see each other again. AS IF!!!

It isn’t until Akane showers, changes, and decompresses that she realizes she lost the heart necklace (seriously?) that was the first gift her boyfriend gave her. She concludes it must be at Yamada’s place, so she logs on and waits in her Guild hall.  When he arrives, he tactlessly complains to the guild master Rurihime about all the “trash” in the guild storage—gear Yamada thought would be helpful for newbies, but is just taking up space.

After telling him she was the culprit and being told to “be more selective”, Akane logs out and doesn’t log back in for days. After a disturbing dream where Takuma takes her back only to give her a box that contains his new girlfriend, she commiserates over lunch with Momo, who is honestly tired of hearing about Takuma and is not sure why Akane would care about a necklace he gave her when the guy dumped her.

While on the way home, Akane spots a scenario she once found herself in as a youth: a high school girl confessing to an upperclassman. The moment she hears his disinterested reply, she knows it’s Yamada. The reason he was drinking soda at the izakaya is that he’s a third-year in school. He tells her he’d hoped to see her again, because he actually found her necklace … unfortunately after stepping on it.

Now in possession of two broken hearts—the one in her chest and the one in her hand—she thanks him and runs off into the rain. Because Yamada is curt and often clueless but not heartless, he flags her down and gives her an umbrella to avoid catching her death, making clear she doesn’t have to return it. Akane, who had been crying tears in the rain, accepts it like a much more significant gift than it was meant to be.

That night Akane gets an extremely rude and unfortunately timed delivery: boxes upon boxes of all her shit from her childhood bedroom that her mom packed up and sent to her so she could have a workout room. Akane is overwhelmed and enlists Momo to help her go through the stuff, and Momo, already exhausted from work, proves merciless in culling just about all of the stuff. If it was truly that important, why was it gathering dust at her mom’s house?

Tossing all the stuff—including, apparently, the broken heart necklace—ends up being cathartic to Akane, having heard from both her best friend and a rude gamer bishounen that she needs to be more selective. She should also use better judgment with alcohol, as she decides to drop by Yamada’s in the middle of the night with an totally sloshed Momo.

Akane is a lot more lucid, and wanted to return Yamada’s umbrella and properly thank him for helping her, both at the event and all the times since. She then collects Momo (who is all over him) and goes along her merry way, but before he goes back to bed, Yamada tells her “the guild master” is worried about her, so she should log back on when she’s free.

I like to think his implication is that it’s not only the guild master who was missing her. Sure enough, after the ED he’s pressed into services helping her battle slimes, only to fall asleep at his computer, leaving her to fend for herself. Interrupting his sleep patterns is one more thing she needs to be more selective about!

Heavenly Delusion – 02 – Something Else Is Going to Fall

Last week we learned the youthful residents of “Heaven” were cut off from outside world. This week we learn they’re also horny as all get-out. Girls are making out, Mimihime is sending nude photos to Shiro, and Tokio likes Mimihime and yearns for Kona’s drawings, while she’s oblivious to her friend liking her.

Later, one of the more adventurous of them uses maintenance robots to climb up a column, but when they shut down he falls from a great height onto his back and is somehow completely fine. Between that and how nimble Kuku is, these kids are special in more ways than one. In the meantime, Tokio can’t stop thinking about the Outside.

On that Outside, Hiruko wakes up from her drugged slumber and rouses Maru; there’s a monster out there. The inn manager tells them to keep away but they believe they can take this guy. We then learn the manager doesn’t want them to kill the monster because she believes it merged with her son Yuto when it attacked him, and won’t hurt her.

This is promptly proven wrong when the monster slices her to bits right in front of Hiruko and Maru, and with the Kiru-Beam already out of power, Maru uses his special ability to grasp the monster’s Nokker-like core and pop it, causing instant death. This whole scene was gorgeously, starkly lit and animated, and the monster with its razor whips was scary as hell.

The next morning the two continue their journey to “Tomato Heaven”. Maru demonstrates he’s a good boy when he hesitates to retake the batteries they gave the now-dead manager. He’s rewarded with a hair-muss by Kiruko, which makes him blush. They then lower a raft kept afloat by jerrycans down a great cliff that leads to their destination. Neither of them know if there are sharks or crocs in the water, so they row as quickly as possible to land.

We learn that there’s someone else out there someone with Maru’s face, to whom he must administer a drug in order to presumably heal him of something. In a flashback, we learn that a dying young woman named Mikura was the one to sent Kiruko and Maru on their journey to the place called “Heaven”, and the Kiru-Beam to protect him.

He believes his look-alike will be in “Heaven”. Signs outside the “Tomato Heaven” farm compound warn that trespassers will be “killed mercilessly”, but when some farmers spot the girl and boy they’re a lot friendlier, and take them to their leader, Kusakabe. He leads a commune and a good portion of their crops is cannabis.

That night while having dinner, Kiruko and Maru learn that the farmers entertain themselves by getting high each night. Kiruko determines that the look-alike isn’t there becaue no one recognized Maru, but ironically someone recognizes her. He even has a photo of the person he calls Takehaya Kiriko, an electro-kart racer believed to have lost it after killing their brother in a race.

When Maru sees the photo, he’s amazed by the similarity to Kiruko, who insists she’s not that person. They then spot the same three-footed bird logo on a box that is on the Kiru-Beam, but the stoner farmers aren’t really sure where the box came from. The bottom line is, this isn’t the Heaven they’re looking for.

That night, Kiruko and Maru take a boat back to Tokyo (a service I’m surprised exists in such a dog-eat-dog world), and Maru admits he doesn’t care about finding Heaven anymore. He just wants to live on the farm with Kiruko, to whom he confesses and then suddenly leans in to try to kiss her.

Not only is Kiruko not interested in farming and getting high for a living, but she also politely rejects Maru’s advance and confession. Then she tells him something neither he nor I expected: while she has a woman’s body, her mind is that of a man. Now we know why she tried to kiss herself in the mirror last week. Could it be Kiruko really is Takehaya Kiriko, or her brother?

The two end this episode having hit a dead end with the farm and no closer to the Heaven of Tokio, Mimihime, et al. But regardless of whether and when they do reach that place, I’m enjoying the 86-style split narratives in wildly different settings, where despite those differences teenage hormones are running amok.

TONIKAWA: Over the Moon For You – S2 01 – Wedding Hell’s Bells

With a school dramedy seinen, a misfit school rom-com, and a college-age rom-com already on my list, did the Tonikawa sequel arrive too late to make the cut, even if we’re only in April’s single digits? Less than two minutes into this first episode, my answer was as clear and direct as Tsukasa’s when asked if she wants a wedding ceremony: Absolutely not.

Rather than being satisfied with the first season, I wanted more of Tsukasa and Nasa being the absolute cutest young newlywed couple on TV, and we get more here. They’re still living at the Arisugawa’s cozy guest house, and after Nasa wraps up his work stuff they go to a fancy movie theater.

The OP features a lot of scenes from Tsukasa’s past, and she may well be an immortal moon goddess in human form who has walked the earth since the days of the samurai … but at this point it’s almost part of the comedy that this is never addressed during the actual run of the show.

Tsukasa vividly envisioning a movie with flying sharks in the skies above a city and getting that “why the heck is this happening” vibe cheekily mirrored the experience of watching the OP of largely non-supernatural slice-of-life rom-com, which was one of the very best and most relaxing hangs of the season during its first run. Fun to think about, but not the focus of the show, at least not for now.

When talk of a wedding—as in, an actual formal wedding ceremony—is broached by Kaname (who wants a gondola and fireworks), Nasa asks Tsukasa about it during dinner, which is when she voices her vociferous lack of desire to go through such an ordeal. Turns out Nasa is hilariously ignorant to the cost and complexities of such events.

When Kaname drops by with an watermelon, she and Tsukasa experience the full extent of that ignorance, as Nasa assumes a wedding taking no longer than a week to prepare costing, oh, around $5,000. The thing is, that kind of is possible, as long as you’re creative and focused enough to avoid the all-too-easy pitfalls and excesses of traditional wedding planning.

In a way, Nasa’s lack of knowledge on orthodox ceremonies helps him stand out from everyone else who is simply overthinking things. They say a wedding is often not for the actual bride and groom, but for their family and friends. It’s what’s expected, not always what the couple actually wants.

While doing some ridiculously high-impact combat training in her courtyard, Chitose admits to her maids that if Tsukasa were to go through with a ceremony, she’d not only attend, but also not make any effort to ruin things. She wants Tsukasa to be happy, and also for her Gran to see Tsukasa in a wedding dress. Who wouldn’t?

After his evening bath, Nasa encounters Aya slacking off in the lounge with her handheld game, and she echoes a lot of Kaname’s sentiments about a wedding being a no-joke elaborate hassle-and-a-half. What’s funny is, while she’s aware weddings can take a year or more to plan, she’s not exactly quite sure why.

Enter Tsukasa back and refreshed from her bath, listing all the preliminary steps like invitations, RSVPs, seating charts, favors, et cetera, ad nauseum, e pluribus unum. The bottom line is, she’s not interested in all that effort. But Aya, no doubt wanting them to have the kind of wedding she’d want, tells them they won’t know if it’s worth it until they try.

That brings us to another generally-held conception among the populace—not just in Japan or America but everywhere—that the stress and complication is the point. It’s not just a celebration, but a trial by fire: if a bride and groom can get through their wedding, they’ll be well prepared adversity later in their marriage.

The wedding mag they obtain at the konbini is as thick as a phone book. Couples sometimes get into fights during wedding planning. But here’s the thing: Tsukasa just…rather wouldn’t? She likes things the way they are, all easy, breezy, and lovey-dovey. She loved the simple day she just had hanging out with her husband, and wouldn’t mind many more days like it.

Nasa, who was never particularly married to the idea of a wedding ceremony (no pun intended), is in full agreement that they table the wedding plans for now and take time to think about it. There’s every possibility they can also put their heads together and come up with a more scaled back, economical wedding that won’t take years or millions of yen to execute.

The couple then heads home, slips under the futon together, and have what might be the perfect ceremony for them, not anybody else. Reveling in the peace and relief that resulted by tabling more complex plans, they exchange quick and concise vows, affirming their love and dedication to one another, and kiss right there in the bed. Tsukasa may still don a wedding dress, but she’s perfectly fine with just Nasa seeing her in it, in private.

I’m proud of our newlywed kids for not falling down the rabbit hole of wedding planning hell, because at the end of the day it’s not for everyone and something no one should feel pressured into. I’m as content to watch their peaceful lovey-dovey lives as they are to live it. I’m also as unconcerned with their lack of ambition with wedding plans as I am with the show’s refusal to explain Tsukasa’s past. Mostly, I’m just glad Tsukasa, Nasa, and the gang are back!

Birdie Wing: Golf Girls’ Story – 14 (S2 E01) – The Sixth Bullet

Hello Friends. Welcome to A Tradition Unlike Any Other: Birdie Wing: Golf Girls’ Story, the finest anime in existence. Last season didn’t really end so much as pause, smack-dab in the middle of the All-Japan Girl’s Tournament. This season starts right up where the last left off, with the pair beating their quarterfinal opponents to

This makes Iijima Kaoruko and Iseshiba Kuyou Eve and Aoi’s next and most formidable victims opponents. Unfortunately for Aoi, her perfectly-struck ball hits an errant rock in the fairway, which means she doesn’t get the post-round kiss from Eve she was hoping for.

Coach Amuro Reiya meets with Eve the night before the semifinal, not so much to discuss strategy (Eve has none and wants none) but to basically do a heat check of his player. He mentions how one of the main reasons he himself gave up golf was because he was “killed in golf” by Leo.

While he may feel a slight pang of envy that she was chosen to inherit his Rainbow Bullet, Reiya is determined to see that Eve maximizes the abilities she’s been given…which includes revealing two of the seven Bullets he has yet to see.

When it comes to the actual golf (which is on a regular golf course and not some modular underground technological marvel) we get a lot more of the match from the perspective of Kaoruko and Iseshiba Kuyou. They are likeable shounen characters who feel like underdogs against Aoi and Eve.

Kaoruko was scorned by Reiya (who went to coach at Aoi’s school) because he tried and failed to impress upon her the dangers of relying so much on her golf power In The Zone. She doesn’t just want to beat Aoi and Eve, but prove Reiya he was wrong. Kuyou is well aware she’s not on the same level of Kaoruko but nevertheless is determined to give her absolute all to support her.

Kuyou isn’t just a hanger-on, either: her steadiness is crucial when Kaoruko’s inevitable overuse of In The Zone and its more advanced version Deep cause her a crucial momentary lapse in her abilities. Her golf falls apart, just as Reiya said. And in a one-on-one round against one of Aoi or Eve, that could prove fatal, golf-wise.

But Kaoruko isn’t alone, and when her shot falters, Kuyou comes through in the clutch to put the ball in a position for them to win. MAO and Arai Satomi really bring a lot of gravitas and appeal to these girls’ causes. It’s to the episode’s credit that they’re not painted as one-dimensional villains and obstacles to be overcome. If anything, Aoi and Eve fill that role for them.

Things take a sudden turn when Aoi, who had looked a little out of it at times, suddenly collapses, losing her own golf at the precisely worst moment possible. Her shot goes way wide into the trees, seemingly paving the way for an easy win for their opponents. Aoi, either exhausted, suffering heatstroke or anemia, or a combination of both, can’t continue.

But like Kuyou, Eve is ready, willing, and able to carry the entire load of the competition at any given moment. With a smile and a wink, she tells Aoi she’s got this, and Aoi smiles back warmly, with full confidence Eve will indeed get it done. Eve even relishes being all alone in this, as she was on the streets of her hometown.

Eve cleans up Aoi’s errant first shot with her own version of In The Zone, AKA the Orange Bullet. In her mind’s eye she’s handling a ridiculously long sniper rifle aimed squarely at the flag staff over the hole. And even though she knows it gives her headaches afterwards, she fires that orange bullet, which sends the ball right at the flag, which halts it’s momentum and sends it falling straight down into the hole.

Eve and Aoi got the ball in the hole in two shots to Kaoruko and Kuyou’s three, so they’ve go the win and move on to face Mizuho and Kaede in the final. In the process of using her Orange Bullet, Eve catches a glimpse of her birth parents, setting the stage for the family mystery and associated turmoil that will accompany the golf along the way. Perfectly timed to run parallel to The Masters, Golf Girls’ Story is back, and the Spring 2023 season has officially begun.