Horimiya: Piece – 07 – Weird Is Wonderful

This episode once again reinforces how deep a bench of lovable wierdos Horimiya has at its disposal. We get more Sakura, which is never a bad thing, and she loves to unwind from studying with a manga, and is specifically addicted to Skull Ninja Konoha.

She’s so excited for the next issue that she can’t help but sing a little Konoha song on her way to the bookstore, only to be crestfallen when it’s already sold out. Fortunately, Yanagi Akane is there, having bought the last copy, and like an angel (or Kaoru-san from the manga) is willing to give it to her.

While Tooru is her primary crush throughout the first season, it can be said that Yanagi is pretty much everyone’s secondary crush. He’s a friend to all, and extremely popular due to his delicate good looks, to the point that girls Yanagi and Sakura pass by think they look like a couple.

When Sakura increases the gap between them, Yanagi is hurt and asks why. Sakura says it’s because he’s big with the ladies since he’s so cool…but Yanagi recalls all the times Sakura has supported her friends and tells her, with brutal honesty, that he’s sure she’s way cooler.

When Yuki is reading a popular Your Name. style LN about body swapping, she imagines pairs of her friends swapping personalities, which makes for some fun little moments and opportunities for the voice actors to have fun as well.

Later, while alone in the library (or at least she thought she was), Yuki slams her hands on a desk, startling Yanagi and making him drop his books. As she helps him pick them up, the backs of their hands touch and she notices how cold her hands are.

She decides to check out Tooru’s hands too, and finds that while they’re also initially cold, once he’s with her, they warm up like hers. It’s just one more sign that she and Tooru have such an effortless rapport and closeness with one another—and Yuki both does and doesn’t want to get closer still.

Kyouko only has a couple of lines this week, but what Izumi we do get is him being both a good protective senpai and someone who understands what his kohai is going through. Two of Sawada Honoka’s classmates through her scarf out the window, he asks her if she’s being bullied, and she nonverbally confirms it. This leads Izumi to glare up at the two girls and mouth “Die, uggos”

Contrary to what Sawada thinks of Izumi, he does know what it’s like to not have friends and feel alone. And he didn’t go around begging his friends to be his friends; it happened naturally over time as he met Kyouko and found things to talk about and laugh about with the others. He believes she’ll be fine too. The friends will come, or they’ll be missing out.

Sawada gets further support from Remi and Yuki, who admit that Sawada is a little weird, but as Remi puts it, “weird is wonderful”, and both she and Yuki say in unison that the other is weirder than Sawada. Sawada also simply has a better rapport with third-years than her own year, but that changes when she overhears the art club members not getting enough recruits.

Sawada takes it upon herself to move the poster to a more visible and high-traffic area. Turns out her classmates were mistaken about this bulletin board being just for third years, as President Sengoku even gives her a ride on his shoulders so she can move it. The art club girls hear from another classmate what Sawada did, and they thank her for it. Thus, a conversation is started, and Sawada finally forms a connection with her classmates.

It’s all very warm and cozy and sweet, and the episode is given the perfect capper: the ED for the anime adaptation of the in-universe manga Skull Ninja Konoha. Even better, the catchy ending theme is sung by none other than Sakura and Yanagi’s seiyuu, Kondou Reina and Fukuyama Jun! That’s a really nice touch.

Reign of the Seven Spellblades – 06 – Mask Off, Mask On

My thoughts going in were They got this, right? Sure, Vera’s an upperclassman and mad scientist, but it’s 2-against-1 and we clearly haven’t seen all that Oliver and Nanao can do. And yes, indeed, they got this. But the boss battle is still steeped in danger throughout.

Oliver and Nanao prove a very effective duo, as Nanao launches forward attacks and Oliver bails her out when she’s too reckless. He also keeps Vera off balance with a creative array of spells. Nanao even shows she can deflect spells with her blade, as if it was truly the extension of her body she believes it to be.

Vera has a little too much fun against her kohais, allowing Nanao to slip behind her using a well-placed bounce spell from Oliver. She then reveals she has a second eye in her left hand, but faced with this unexpected tactic, Nanao continues to simply charge forward.

Rather than getting petrified or injured, her blade cuts through space and time to close what should have been an impossible distance and cleaves Vera’s hand clean off. To Oliver, this undefendable ability is none other than a heretofore unknown (and titular!) seventh Spellblade.

Godfrey and Whitlow arrive too late on an anonymous tip, interrupting Nanao’s attempt to get Oliver to give her a victory kiss. Oliver and Nanao both fine and will be fine, but worry about how Katie will take the betrayal of a senpai. But after she recovers in the infirmary and they tell her what happened, her reactions surprise them both.

Rather than despair in this betrayal, she turns the other cheek, then kisses Oliver and Nanao on theirs—simple tokens of gratitude for saving her. She then declares that she’s not going to let this get her down, nor is she willing to wash her hands of Vera. She forgives her, and vows to speak to her properly.

Vera’s betrayal only galvanized Katie’s resolve to continue toughening up while remaining quintessentially Katie Aalto: empathetic, emotionally intelligent, forgiving, and kind. She aims to graduate from a school a little kinder than when she first arrived, a declaration that brings tears to Oliver’s eyes.

Those tears are understandable; who wouldn’t be moved by Katie’s resilience in the face of face of betrayal? But I wouldn’t understand their additional meaning until later in the episode. As he expected and as Richard warned, Professor Grenville approaches him. Oliver leaves his friends to go with him, and on a path for which there may be no return.

Grenville explains the reason for summoning Oliver as they descend back into the Labyrinth. It was pretty evident by now, but the road of magical discovery is soaked with the blood of mages. When a powerful spell is too much for a mage, the spell absorbs him, and becomes even more powerful.

That makes it an enticing prize for the mage or mages strong enough to master that spell. Call it magical scavenging with a hint of magical cannibalism. It’s an interesting, and appropriately brutal mechanism for magical development, and explains why the mortality rate at a school is so high.

In keeping with the darkness of this magical world, we simply haven’t known Oliver’s Whole Deal all this time…until now. “Oliver Horn” is a persona; a mask he wore to stand out as a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none student who might prove a useful assistant.

Little did Grenville know he was recruiting someone who had a major vendetta against him. Oliver asks him where he was on a specific date and time seven years ago. When Grenville deflects, Oliver draws his athame and steps to Grenville. He then reveals that he is the Fourth Spellblade, using it to defeat Grenville with one move.

But he’s far from done with the man who murdered his mother. Adopting an entirely different demeanor, Oliver proves he’s both masochist and sadist when it comes to his bloody goal of revenge, explaining how he made sure to endure all 128 types of pain that were exacted upon his mom by Grenville and others seven years ago. That allows his own pain magic to exhibit those same 128 forms, which he uses one by one to torture Grenville.

Once Oliver gets to 57 (is the writer a Heinz fan?), Grenville finally says “the magic words” he wanted to hear: Please…end it. Reduced to begging for his life, Oliver obliges with all due haste. Immediately after, his older brother Gwyn, his sister, and his bodyguard Miss Carste appear before him, congratulating him for getting rid of the first of their mother’s murderers.

A whole army of young mages file in and bend the knee before Oliver, whom Gwyn calls by his real name, Noll. He places the mask from the OP over his eyes, the symbol of his right to lead the family, presumably as the inheritor of their mother’s Spellblade. But there is still much work to do. There were seven people involved in their mom’s demise, and six remain.

As he lists them like a magical boy Arya Stark, w learn they consist of other Kimberly professors we’ve met, who similarly don’t seem to suspect who Oliver is and what he wants. The fact he doesn’t look much like his mom, as well as concealing his true power, has helped him maintain anonymity.

Chief among those names, and likely to be Oliver’s final target, is Esmeralda, the current headmistress and someone who literally stabbed his mother in the back seven years ago. Notably, and crucially, it doesn’t seem like Emmy enjoyed having to do so one bit.

That makes me wonder: were these seven assailants simply Bad Guys trying to steal Oliver/Noll’s Spellblade, or is his family actually a serious threat to the magical world, making his mom a kind of WMD that couldn’t be allowed to live? Considering all the twists and turns I’ve endured thus far, I can’t help but consider all possibilities.

Oliver/Noll proves he’s no different from Vera: driven towards a singular goal: in her case, a future where demi-humans have equal stature and rights as humans; in his case, revenge for himself and on behalf of his family. And that’s where those tears at Katie’s words come back into play.

He wasn’t just moved by her resolve, kindness, and forgiveness. He wept because he believes he is beyond those qualities do not, cannot, and will never apply to him. He wears his royal mask with pride and conviction, but I can’t say with certainty that his Oliver Horn persona was merely an act.

And then, of course, there were Nanao’s prescient words: there is no joy in a blade wielded for revenge; only one wielded out of mutual love. I want to think Oliver and his siblings’ mom would not want them to sully themselves with the bloody business of revenge, which may offer some comfort and justice in the immediate, but is ultimately self-defeating.

Noll’s greatest enemy is himself. I believe Nanao, Katie, and the others have the power to deliver him from his ruinous path, but they have to somehow be made aware of it first. I don’t see Noll revealing who he is to them anytime soon, but at some point professors are going to start dropping, so one of his friends will surely catch a hint at some point.

Until then, this episode caps off the first half of Seven Spellblades by dropping some enticingly volcanic plot and character bombshells, and promises that the next seven (ha!) episodes will be must-see anime.

Rent-a-Girlfriend – 30 – Pillar of Support

Kazuya is constantly on the edge of a nervous breakdown thinking going off alone with Chizuru will be some kind of huge disaster, but Chizuru pushes past the awkwardness on the train and is legit pumped when they arrive at the picturesque off-season ski resort.

That said, she’s as shocked as he is to learn that Mini only booked one room for the two of them, but she accepts this and moves on, citing the need to save money. But also, if Mini is right about her (and I think she is) Chizuru doesn’t actually mind sharing a room with Kazuya.

After some location scouting and test shooting during the day, Kazuya pores over the footage and storyboards as Chizuru returns from her bath, resplendent in her yukata, which she insists she wears whenever she’s at an onsen.

She legit asks Kaz if it wouldn’t be best if he take a breather, but when he says he’ll rest after they film the post-midnight final scene, she’s again reminded of her stalwart late grandfather. It’s under the light of the starry sky that she finally gets around to saying what she struggled and failed to say before.

Kazuya is worried a confession is forthcoming, but I knew better. There was no way Chizuru was going to confess her love to him. That said, she tells him about how her dream of becoming an actor was originally tied to her gramps, and only after she died did she transfer that dream to her gran.

She doesn’t tell Kaz this, but as we know, her gramps was the one who told her to follow her dreams and one day she’d find her pillar of support. And Kaz seems to be that pillar. Before filming her scene, she makes sure he knows how happy it made her when he suggested they make a film, and how grateful she is for everything he’s done since.

They film the scene, and to Kazuya, after hearing those words, Chizuru has never shone brighter to him under those stars. Later in the men’s bath, he contemplates how this is all coming to an end soon, and how they’ll likely grow apart after the film is made.

But rather than stew in despair over that, he embraces how lucky he was to have been able to finish this project with her, even if he never puts as much of himself into anything else.

He returns to their room to find Chizuru already asleep, and unlike the first time they slept in the same room, he finds himself able to doze off almost immediately. Sure, they worked their butts off all day, but no doubt her words gave him comfort.

Ironically, this time it’s Chizuru who is having trouble sleeping, and wasn’t really asleep when Kaz came in. I always love it when we get her inner monologue, and I loved her characterizing this situation as “sucking”. Girl both wants and needs to sleep after such a full day. But something’s keeping her awake and that something is her steadily growing feelings for Kazuya, her pillar.

The next morning, they check out, and when the attendant refers to them as a couple, Chizuru doesn’t freak out or deny it; she’s simply silent. On the bus ride, Kaz tries some small talk about how great the resort was, and Chizuru comments that it would be a great place for him to take his “real” girlfriend.

Talk then turns to Ruka, and to his credit, Kaz actually puts it out there that Ruka isn’t someone he truly loves. Chizuru then asks about Mami, but Kaz assumes she’s already found someone else. We know better, but in any case who cares about Mami?

Through her pointed yet gentle questioning, it’s clear to Kaz that Chizuru actually cares and worries about him. The one thing that continues to hold Kazuya back is his insistence on losing his damn mind whenever Chizuru gets too close, either emotionally for physically. Case in point: when she nods off onto his shoulder while he’s expressing his gratitude to her.

She stays there asleep on his shoulder until they arrive at Iiyama…where to their horror, Ruka has come to put an end to what she deems to have been a night of carnality. Kazuya insists nothing happened, but when he asks Chizuru to back him up, she heads off to the bathroom, apparently disinterested. That said, it’s clear from her reaction upon remembering she woke up on Kazuya’s shoulder that she’s very much interested.

But Ruka remains Kazuya’s “trial” girlfriend until he dumps her, since she has no intention of leaving him. In perhaps one final attempt to maintain her grasp on him, she demands that he promise to do “whatever she desires” on her birthday. While I’m sure a virgin like Kazuya would like nothing more than to fulfill whatever that desire may be, I hope it never comes to that.

Kazuya needs to get real here: even if he still deems Chizru unobtainable and uninterested (and I fail to see how he can still feel that way), he needs to end things with Ruka, before he does something he can’t undo, for the simple reason that he knows full well that he prefers Chizuru.