Undead Murder Farce – 07 – Trojan Head

When the vault begins to flood, Holmes realizes he did exactly what Lupin hoped by telling him he could pick any lock. By shooting the vaults locks, Holmes ensured no one could leave, while Lupin ensured the water from the moat wouldn’t be enough to completely flood the vault, only to separate everyone from the heavy silver safe.

By the time Fatima blasts through the vault doors to free everyone and the water level falls, the safe is gone. As everyone warms up and dries off in Fogg’s study, Sherlock asks Ganimard for his handcuffs, then cuffs him with them, accusing him of being Lupin, only in a better disguise than the one he showed them before.

It is indeed Lupin, but while they have him, they don’t have the diamond. That’s where he’s wrong: the safe that the Phantom pulled out of the vault through the air vent with a rope lowered in by the pressure of the moat water doesn’t contain the diamond. Instead, it’s in Watson’s coat pocket…or it was, until Lupin realized it was there, snatched it, threw a smoke bomb, and fled.

In Fogg’s arboretum Lupin meets up with Phantom, who has the safe. But to both their shocks, the safe contains none other than Rindou Aya. Once the safe door opens, she calls for Tsaguru, who arrives bang on time while reciting the rakugo story “The Pot Thief”, along with Shizuku.

Reynold has seen enough, and decides that he’ll execute Lupin, Phantom, Tsugaru, and Aya one by one and recover the diamond. But he is interrupted by another blast that Lupin swears wasn’t him. It isn’t him. It’s Moriarty and his merry band of famous supernatural and occult figures.

Along with Moriarty himself there’s a hulking Victor (Frankenstein), the sultry vampiress Carmilla, Jack the Ripper, and Aleister Crowley. After effortlessly slaughtering all of the guards and cops in the main hall, the group splits up to find the diamond, while Aleister and Carmilla create a diversion.

While there’s a mention of over twenty deaths, the quick and dirty execution and the fact most of the victims are identical faceless guards dulls the gravity of the bloodshed.

Exceptions to this are the one guard who got concasse’d at the bridge, and the poor huddled maid who gets drained by Carmella.

When Reynold charges Lupin, he slips out of the way, and Tsugaru also dodges at the last second, so Reynold’s strike cleanly halves a nearby statue.

Meanwhile, Fatima has Phantom cornered, ditches her cloak, and shows off her prowess with double crossbows (i.e. Doubledarts), shooting one into his shoulder (and it looks like she has two more mounted on her hips). Phantom continues to not make much an impression here.

With Tsugaru and Reynold having run outside to chase Lupin (who still has the diamond), Aya asks Sherlock and Watson to take her with them as they investigate the supernatural intruders. They encounter Crowley first, and while he seems able to wield magic, he’s actually merely a talented illusionist.

Lestrade looks like he’s doomed to be Carmilla’s next meal, but Shizuku kicks her across the room and prepares to depart. Carmilla is insulted, and demands satisfaction, so Shizuku tells Lestrade to beat it and whips out her silver gunblade.

Outside, the three men chasing each other and fighting for possession of the diamond are briefly silhouetted by the full moon, their cartoonish cats-and-mouse game lending more credence by the minute to Aya’s assessment of this as one big farce.

Tsugaru is the last to have the diamond, and he prepares to swallow it for safekeeping, but Reynold kicks him and he spits it out, and it rolls to the altar of a chapel. This episode lives up to its title, “Free for All”, as after Lupin is unmasked all hell breaks loose, with Moriarty and his crew only adding more chaos and bloodshed to the proceedings.

While it’s packed with colorful characters, smart detective work, and inventive action, and Aya and Tsugaru are a delight as always, I can’t score this any higher than I did simply because the production values too often groan under the weight of the show’s ambitions. Also, at some point all the mustachioed characters kinda blended together. That said, I’m still looking forward to how this resolves.

Kaguya-sama: Love is War – The First Kiss That Never Ends – 03 – Dropping the Masks

Kaguya remains in Icy Mode, but her ice melts a little when she spots another one of Miyuki’s classic homemade bento boxes, a callback to the very first episode. Unlike that time, she’s determined to try a bite, and so loudly proclaims her hunger.

As she rejects Chika and Miko’s offers of food (and they both run off crying), Miyuki, who is sporting dark bags under his eyes from lack of sleep, insists that he “man up” and offer Miyuki a bite. But his octopus weiner slides off the toothpick, and a swooping Kaguya’s mouth closes on his finger instead.

When he tells her there’s ketchup on her face, she locks both his hands in hers and tells him to clean it off. Again Miyuki enters a “man up” spiral, and it eventually overwhelms him, causing him to faint and collapse. This is the reverse of what happened when Miyuki touched Kaguya’s cheek removing lint from her hair, which in hindsight should have been a hint of what (and who) was to come.

As for Ice Kaguya, she’s done, and wants to tag out with SD Idiot Kaguya, presented as her waking her up from a nap, the lump on her head from the gavel strike still fresh. Ice Kaguya tells her all she can do is hurt those close to her by being who she is, a personality forged in the crucible of a hard upbringing.

She’d known that her “true self” was harmful to others for quite a while. Her name and family brought people before her with ease, but all of them ran from her crying in the end. She resigned herself to solitude, enduring the loneliness because at least she wouldn’t hurt anyone.

Then she met Miyuki and fell in love with him. But now she’s hurt him too, with her aggresive, selfish, antagonistic, ugly self. so she wants to tag out and leave it to SD Idiot Kaguya, who can be kind to him. But Idiot Kaguya refuses.

She won’t let Icy Kaguya give up on her dream to kiss Miyuki. It goes without saying, but Kona Ali is so, so good throughout this scene, carrying on a conversation with herself.

When Icy says she doesn’t care, “Ribbon” Kaguya joins SD Kaguya in telling her that all of them (being Kaguya’s various personas) share the same dream, and all of them would die happy if the most high-maintenance, unpleasant of them achieved that dream.

The other two Kaguyas take Icy Kaguya’s hands in theirs, offering their support for her. When Kaguya leaves her mindspace, Miyuki is finally coming to, and that’s when Kaguya-sama legend (and unapologetic romantic) Doctor Tanuma Shouzou and his Nurse arrive to diagnose the problem.

As Ai comforts a thoroughly distraught Kaguya, saying all they can do right now is pray the President will be okay, Dr. Tanuma pretty quickly concludes that Miyuki, like Kaguya before, is suffering from heartsickness. At first, Miyuki doesn’t take this diagnosis seriously, but when told he can spill his guts to them without fear, he proceeds to do just that.

Like Kaguya, Miyuki has been hiding his true self. Also like Kaguya, he hates that true self. In her case, it’s a prickly, poisonous person who hurts anyone she tries to get close to. In his case, it’s a worthless failure. When Miyuki failed to get into a fancy kindergarten or elementary school, he could feel his mother losing interest in him. Then she left him and his dad and sister.

Miyuki admits that it was the hope his mother would return if he got his act together and started working his butt off. But then he encountered Kaguya, who was at the top of the class, embraced bravado as his StuCo senpais suggested, challenged her to a ranking duel, and won. It’s only natural for him to believe if he ever slipped up again, she’d leave him like his mom did.

Carrying on that social mask has caused a tremendous strain, and Dr. Tanuma asks if he could just lighten up and take it easy, but Miyuki rejects this. He believes to make Kaguya fall for him and stay in love with him, he has to “go far enough to collapse once or twice.”

This is where the Nurse steps in, much to Tanuma’s chagrin, and tells Miyuki what he needs to hear: that Kaguya was pale and worried as she sat by his bed. It always “gets to her” when she sees a gung-ho kid in a moment of weakness, and believes Kaguya feels the same.

Sure enough, it is, because Kaguya and Ai are eavesdropping on the session. Kaguya admits she loves the Miyuki who gives his all and achieves, but like the nurse she also doesn’t mind seeing him vulnerable. In any case, now she knows both of them are wearing masks, and being cowardly about exposing their true selves.

This is where Ai comes in and once again proves she’s the sneaky MVP of the whole series. Donning a paper Miyuki mask and armed with an open text line to a recovered Miyuki back home, she plays the role of Miyuki so Kaguya can practice being open and honest with him.

Ai texts Miyuki that Kaguya wants to be kinder to him, but her pride gets in the way. Kaguya then asks Ai questions she wants Miyuki to answer, and Miyuki starts to catch on. Even if he doesn’t know Kaguya is right next to Ai, Ai is close enough to know Kaguya better than anyone, so the text conversation feels genuine and stimulating.

When they kissed on the clock tower, Kaguya was heart-burstingly happy and thought it would last, but became devastated by the prospect of him never showing her all of him. That’s why she’s decided she’ll be the one to confess, and to tell him that she loves all of him, not just the overachieving President Shirogane.

Ai relays to Miyuki that Kaguya seeks a relationship in which neither she nor he hide their souls. But Miyuki is still convinced his “obsequious, cowardly, inept” true self simply won’t cut it, and he vows never to show it to Kaguya as long as he lives.

Instead, as the clock ticks to 12:00 midnight on Christmas Eve, he enters his room plastered with notes on how to win Kaguya’s heart, mans his desk, and prepares for another all-nighter of planning his romantic redemption. I just hope it doesn’t lead to a romantic impasse.