Solo Leveling – 02 – All By Himself

The “commandments” on the plaque in this chamber prove to be key to survival. Jinwoo figures out that approaching or making eye contact with the “god” statue will only result in a grisly death. Instead, he keeps his gaze low and prostrates himself to revere the statue. In response, it suddenly wears a Titan-like grin, stands up, and starts walking around, crushing people.

It isn’t until Jinwoo also figures out that “praising” the god consists of someone standing beside each of the statues with an instrument, which causes them to play music. He just manages to get to the last of these statues, the singer, to halt the god statue’s advance, but not before he loses his right foot. Joohee tries to heal him, but overexerts herself and bleeds from the eyes and mouth.

The final commandment, “prove your faith”, consists of everyone standing within the circle at the center of the chamber. There’s a red flame for each person, plus a ring of blue flames that constitutes a timer. If they simply keep their eyes on all the advancing warrior statues until the blue flames go out, they’ll pass the test and be safe. But that proves too much for all but three of them, who run for the open exit.

The leader of the party is fine to stay, but there’s a problem: Jinwoo can’t walk because he’s missing a foot, and Joohee can’t walk because her legs go out due to all the healing she’s done. So the leader has to be the one to carry Joohee out to safety, leaving Jinwoo to face the full wrath of the statues. It’s here where I had to particularly suspend my disbelief, as the amount of blood coming from his body looks like a lot more than the 1.2 to 1.5 gallons that should be in there…

However, he is still barely alive when he falls on the altar just as the final blue flame goes out. A pop-up dialog box tells him he’s passed the secret quest called “Courage of the Weak.” His reward is the qualifications to be a “Player,” and he’s given a choice: accept and live, or don’t accept and die. Obviously, accepting is the choice here.

Solo Leveling – 01 (First Impressions) – The Least of Us

One night ten years ago, gates to another dimension started opening. This dimension was full of magical beasts who could only be defeated with magic, or weapons imbued with it. Magic then awakened in various individuals, who became Hunters who go on raids defeating monsters and acquiring loot.

Hunters are ranked by their magical power, the most powerful are S-Rank and the weakest are E-Rank. Our protagonist Sung Jinwoo barely makes that rank, as he’s affectionately known as the “World’s Weakest” Hunter. He arrives at a gate for a raid still bearing the wounds from a previous one.

Jinwoo doesn’t fare any better on this newest raid, and were it not for his friend and B-Ranked Healer Lee Joohee, he’d have certainly lost his life to a goblin’s blade. Joohee doesn’t understand why he keeps throwing himself in to such dangerous situations.

She doesn’t have access to Jinwoo’s inner monologue, which reveals he no choice. His father is missing, his mom’s in the hospital, and his sister’s in college. He goes on raids to support his family; apparently a conventional job not involving monster hunting won’t cut it.

In this world, S-Ranked Hunters like the acrobatic Cha Hae-In are treated like celebrities, whether she wants to or not. Even while not on raids, she can use her ability to fight petty crime. There’s also an entire association that assesses, ranks and signs Hunters.

In the cold open we watched a lower-ranked party get torn to ribbons by an army of giant ants, while S-Ranked Hunters swoop in and handle the ants with ease. The Hunter Association’s chairman, Go Gunhee, wishes to harness the power of essence stones and mana crystals dropped by beasts as a clean energy source.

Chairman Go also impresses upon new recruits that the most important piece of advice he can offer is Be Afraid. When they find a tunnel to a boss dungeon, half of the party Jinwoo and Joohee are a part of want to press on and half, including Joohee, want to go home. Jinwoo breaks the tie by voting to press on.

Considering he just almost died, Jinwoo really shouldn’t have gotten a vote. As expected, the dungeon they end up in turns out to be a deadly trap filled with giant killer statues. One statue cuts a Hunter in half for trying to escape, while another statue fires an energy beam that incinerates another.

As the episode ends, it doesn’t look like a matter of if Jinwoo and Joohee are killed, but simply how quickly and painfully. Of course, I doubt he’ll be dying in the second of twelve planned episodes, so someone will either have to save him, or he’ll have to use his weakness as an asset somehow.

Based on South Korea’s most popular manhwa/webtoon, Solo Leveling is one of the most anticipated releases of the Winter season. I’d never heard of it, but it’s a solid enough start. A-1 Pictures and composer Sawano Hiroyuki’s score lend polish and gravitas to the production. The exposition can be clunky, there’s little action, and I’m not quite sold on Jinwoo yet, but it’s early. I’m intrigued enough to see where this goes.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 45 – Another Cog in the Wheel

The battle with Mahito continues on street level, and the iconic 109 tower is finally collateral damage. Yuuji doesn’t let the sign go to wast, as he ends up throwing it at one of Mahito’s mouth snakes. Mahito beheads himself and the head runs around while his body continues fighting. He creates some super-offensive transfigured humans, but while they pack a punch they can’t take but one from Toudou.

Up against the wall and running out of options, Mahito uses Doman Expansion, hoping that 0.2 seconds will be enough to unleash Idle Transfiguration, or something. Honestly I’m so focused on keeping up with the splashy battle animation that the narrator’s attempts to explain what’s going on goes mostly over my head. That said, it is fun to watch Toudou and the towering Takada-chan pair up to beat the shit out of Mahito in Toudou’s imagination.

By slicing off one of Toudou’s hands, Mahito thinks he had the guy beat, only for Toudou to clap Mahito’s hand. This fucks up his one remaining hand, but lets him swap with Yuuji, who delivers one hell of a punch directly to the face. Mahito, apparently sufficiently warmed up, casts Idle Transfiguration, and reaches the “true form of his soul”, which is a lot more monster-y and tough. Yuuji’s punches bounce off his skin like it’s hardened steel.

Mahito drives Yuuji underground, creating a massive sinkhole that reaches several hundred feet belowground. But Mahito ended up creating the perfect enclosure for his demise, as this sufficiently beaten-up Yuuji discovers he can pop off a Black Flash at will. Toudou returns and claps with his stump, switching Yuuji back into the perfect position for a decisive blow.

Now apparently running on soul-fumes, Mahito is suddenly terrified of Yuuji, who declares he no longer needs a reason to kill him or any other cursed spirit; he’ll simply kill and kill and keep killing until he “rusts” away to nothing. The setting changes to a cold snowy forest, with Mahito scampering away with rabbits while Yuuji and pack of wolves slowly stalk him. Ya know, subtle stuff.

Then Yuuji makes the mistake of hitting Mahito in such a way that he’s driven several dozen (or hundred) feet away from him. That allows Getou—or rather the entity that has hijacked Getou’s body—to appraoch Mahito and consider whether he should “save” him. I vote “nay”.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 39 – Murder Machine

Rather than escape Dagon’s beach domain through Megumi’s hole, Touji enters and joins the party. Only he’s not quite himself; the Old Lady’s technique was left on after she was killed, so he’s in a continuous state of murderous frenzy, drawn like a guided missile to the strongest one in range—in this case, Dagon. He “borrows” Maki’s staff then gets to work.

It’s a pretty fun (and very wet) battle, but we all knew it would end with Dagon gone and the beach domain with him, and what seemed like a temporarily alliance would break down. After all, this version of Touji likely wouldn’t join forces with the Zenins if he was in his right mind. He isn’t, and his next target is Megumi, apparently the next-strongest.

Just because he tosses Megumi out onto the street and joins him there doesn’t meant Nanami, Maki, and Naobito are in any better a way. In fact, this just isn’t their arc. Were it not for Touji, Dagon would have killed them all. But now that Dagon is dead, Jougo shows up to mourn his comrade’s death, then burns Nanami, Maki, and Naobito to a crisp. Then he senses Sukuna, or rather one of his fingers. Sure enough, Nanako and Mimiko are feeding one to an unconscious Yuuji.

Jougo shows up in a hurry and burns the girls, but they survive thanks to Nanako’s cameraphone. Jougo feeds Yuuji ten more fingers, so Sukuna can be temporarily awakened while Yuuji’s body takes time to repress him. It works, and Sukuna’s first act is to cut Jougo’s arm off then slice off the top of his head for not bowing low enough before him.

The Nanaba sisters raise their heads when ordered to and make their case: if Sukuna kills the fake Getou, they’ll give him another finger. This displeases him, and he beheads Mimiko in an instant. When Nanako screams in anguish, and prepares to attack him with her phone, he slices the top half of her head off, then cuts her into a gory fine dice.

RIP Nanako and Mimiko, trapped between allowing the fake Getou to continue desecrating the man they loved, and having to ask Sukuna for help. I guess they figured it was better to at least try with Sukuna. He wasn’t interested in helping them, but he tells Jougo he’ll fight for the cursed spirits if Jougo can score one hit on him. Like the sisters, Jougo prepares to go for it, because what the hell else is he going to do?

Jujutsu Kaisen – 38 – Mollusk Melee

When we left Mei Mei, she had been sealed in a coffin and buried under a giant gravestone within the domain of one of Fake Getou’s cursed spirits. While she’s able to break out of the coffin in under three seconds, thus avoiding her guaranteed hit of the disease curse, she knows she can’t keep it up indefinitely.

She determines that the attack targets the greatest concentration of cursed energy, so she momentarily diverts all of her cursed energy to one of the two crows in the domain. Then she asks Ui Ui if he’d die for her, and of course he will, because he’s infatuated with her, so he makes his cursed energy loud while Mei Mei turns hers off.

As a result, the spirit puts Ui Ui in a coffin, but in the moments before he’s buried and killed instantly by the disease curse, Mei Mei uses her remaining crow as a kamikaze bullet. In both Ui Ui’s and the crow’s case, putting their lives on the line is rewarded with a boost of cursed energy.

Mei Mei and Ui Ui make it out of Getou’s cursed spirit’s domain, but their reward is having to go up against him directly…but that’s for another week. The balance of the episode deals with Nanami, Maki, and Naobito doing battle against an octopus cursed spirit named Dagon.

Initially, it seems like a weakling. Nanami and Maki are certain the drunk Naobito will be of no help, but are shocked as he makes the first move, sealing the diminutive octopus in a flat frame and tossing him across the platform. A swole octopus man emerges from a great rush of water. The little guy was still in a larval state…but now he’s all grow’d up.

Naobito then exhibits his other superpower: being able to talk someone’s ear off. He has a particular axe to grind about the default settings of 4K HD televisions, specifically the “soap opera mode” that eliminates motion blur and the like. As someone who immediately turns all that shit off when I buy a computer, I felt seen. I like this guy.

But his ranting is germane to the battle, because his technique involves splitting seconds into 24 frames and being able to track and move within and through those frames. Contacting Dagon places him in the same time space as Naobito, only without the tools to operate. In this way, Dagon mops the floor with Dagon.

Unfortunately, Dagon isn’t damaged, either by any of Naobito’s attacks or Nanami’s, despite the two of them being Grade 1. When they and Maki try to launch a three-pronged pincer attack, Dagon uses Domain Expansion, which is appropriately a tropical beach.

Within this domain, Dagon can summon virtually infinite stream of sea creature shikigami. Naobito is able to hold out longer than the others with his anti-domain technique, but eventually all three end up mobbed by the shikigami feeding frenzy.

Maki manages to escape the first wave, already ashamed that Naobito had to save her earlier. But it’s okay, Maki isn’t Grade 1, after all. She’d be a goner a second time were it not for the timely arrival of Megumi, bursting through the wall of the domain and giving Maki a three-section staff to stay in the fight.

As Megumi fights to keep his domain within Dagon’s domain active, he’s an easy target for Dagon’s shikigami, but fortunately Nanami takes care of them for him. He’s missing his glasses and most of his shirt, and Naobito lost his right arm, but both are still able to fight, and do.

Nanami feels good about the current state of affairs, but he knows it won’t last. That’s when Megumi tells him his actual goal isn’t to play tug-of-war with Dagon’s domain, but punch a hole in it, large enough for Nanami, Maki, and Naobito to escape.

Lacking any better options, Nanami makes Megumi promise he won’t leave himself behind alone, he beckons for Maki and Naobito to hurry over. Before Dagon can respond in time, Megumi makes a hole in his domain. But before anyone can jump into the hole, someone else emerges…Touji. That’s…certainly not ideal!

With Yuuji KO’d and in Nanako and Mimiko’s hands and now this situation, the battles keep getting tougher and tougher. A lot will depend on what becomes of Yuuji and how well Mei Mei fares against Fake Getou, because I don’t see a battered Team Nanami being able to make a much of a dent in Touji.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 37 – Less Chatter, More Splatter

Yuuji heads for the station where Gojou is being held, but on his way he encounters a huge mass of people getting cut to ribbons by transmogrified humans and other cursed spirits. Being Yuuji, he can’t just run past all this and do nothing, but he also has a job to do, and it’s not this. Thankfully, Inumaki Toge appears and is ready to “salmon, salmon”, i.e. take care of this situation so Yuuji can go to ground…where he encounters Choso.

Even when he exhibited his ability to kill civilians with blood bullets, I’ll admit to having allowed Choso to fly under my radar. After all, he’s not Getou, or Mahito, or Jougo, or even Hanami. But he does have an axe to grind with Yuuji personally. He’s motivated and focused on getting revenge for his brothers, and he achieves first blood…never what you want from a blood manipulation user. Yuuji suffer multiple wounds but is so goshdarn tough he’s still able to get a couple licks in before he’s cornered.

His Mechamaru talisman speaks up again, telling him to go to the bathroom. When Choso follows him he finds all of the sinks and toilets are broken and the sprinklers are on. This dissolves his blood and makes it impossible to use his most lethal abilities: his hypersonic blood beam. Yet even with the odds seemingly evened a bit, he still proves deft at close-range hand-to-hand combat. He can also still use his blood manipulation for other things.

Choso doesn’t take Yuuji lightly. His brothers wouldn’t have lost to just anyone, and even though Yuuji only gets a grand total of three good hits on him, those three hits hurt Choso bad. At the same time, once Yuuji’s liver is pierced, he knows he can’t hold out long, but is resolved to kill Choso or die trying, giving others the opportunity to save Gojou. It’s a knock-down, drag-out fight that brims with evocative imagery, inventive acrobatics, punishing impacts, and masterful use of camerawork, lighting, sound, and color.

Then suddenly, when Yuuji can’t get up anymore, everything goes quiet and the camera goes still. We get a wide shot of him in the bathroom doorway, and hear Choso’s slow, measured steps before he appears from behind the wall like a specter. He’s about to deliver a killing blow, and Sukuna is disgusted. But Choso’s blow goes wide. His head filling with fuzzy VHS-quality memories that never happened, he loses control of his blood manipulation, and he wigs out. It seems Sukuna did Yuuji a solid…I wonder if he’ll ask for something in return.

Choso wanders off in his distressed fugue-like state, allowing Nanako and Mimiko access to Yuuji to “begin”…something. They seem like wild cards, what with the sense of betrayal they must feel towards whatever took over Getou’s body. Whatever they’re up to, Yuuji is in no condition to resist, or even get up.

This was a thrilling, immersive, and hugely entertaining tour-de-force of sight and sound throughout. The only two demerits that keep it from five stars? 1.) Some cheap-looking pans across still shots of the murder mosh in the beginning, and 2.) the narrator chiming in too often to deliver inessential details on the mechanics of Choso’s abilities, which I felt that hurt the flow of the battle.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 36 – Hammering In My Head

Mei Mei and Ui Ui had no trouble at all with the curses they fought, while Yuuji and Megumi have to catch a KO’d Ino out of the sky. He’s alive, so Megumi will stay with him while Yuuji heads back to the station. As for the people who did this to him, Granny gets her comeuppance when it turns out Touji’s soul was able to overpower her grandson’s body. She ordered him to kill sorcerers, and Touji starts with her.

Finally, Maki sends Nobara back up to street level with Nitta Akari to assist Ijichi, after word came down that supervisors were dropping like flies. They encounter the kid with the creepy hand-sword and blonde ponytail, whom Nobara assumes got to Ijichi. But the kid is sharper than he looks, and sends his familiar-like cursed tool after Nitta and handles Nobara with relative ease.

I’ll admit that watching Nobara get jobbed in the first time in forever we’ve even seen her fight is not the coolest, nor is watching blondie repeatedly stab poor Nitta in the leg and backside. But at least he pays dearly for these heinous actions when Nanami struts in, ready to rumble. He has no patience whatsoever for word-sparring, and instead just bashes the kid into oblivion when it’s clear he has no useful intelligence.

With the veil that was keeping sorcerers out lowered, Mei Mei and Ui Ui’s next opponent is a bit tougher: Getou, or as Mei quickly realizes, the fake Getou. She’s ready to fight him, but he summons a Special Grade Disease Curse called Smallpox Deity, who is able to use Domain Expansion to shut her in a coffin.

Mei Mei gets a kick out of having her life be seriously threatened for the first time in years. Nanami prepares to head down, and brooks no argument from Nobara when he tells her to stay put: she’s not Grade 1, which is the minimum level needed to fight the guys down there. That includes Choso, whom Yuuji runs into when he arrives at the otherwise eerily deserted station. Nothing’s going to come easy from here on out.

Goblin Slayer II – 02 – Stick to the Plan

The Boy Wizard is rearin’ to murder some goblins, but soon learns that it’s not quite that simple. He also seems to chafe at the Priestess being the party’s leader; surely someone so delicate shrivels into a tiny ball in the heat of battle, thinks the desperately green, compulsive rookie.

The party seeks information from a dwarf craftsman, who like our Dwarf loves to day drink. He says a party of five went in, including two women, but they were all Porcelain and Obsidian ranked. Considering how the goblins treat their captives, it might be best if all of them died.

The party heads in, and immediately the boy is shocked by the level of blood and gore. Even so, when he first heard there were potential hostages, he’s determined to blast through the many rooms of the mausoleum as quickly as possible so he can be the hero.

The other party members go about their usual business, but the boy messes up their pace when he falls for a simple trap of bones and guts that makes him scream in horror, alerting the goblins. He finds the female acolyte, who is alive but being tortured with wire and nails.

In a rare moment of selflessness, the boy warns the others not to come in as the acolyte was bait and now a giant troll has arrived. But Slayer and the others pay his warning no heed, and the Priestess lays down some Holy Light to enable them to fall back with the hostage.

In a brief moment of respite, the boy sees the Priestess laboring from her magic use, and is ready to apologize for insulting her earlier. However, he doesn’t get the chance, as the troll is still ticking, even though Goblin Slayer set his head on fire. I’ll also note that the Goblin Slayer couldn’t seem more put out having to slay something that isn’t a goblin.

That said, he uses a nifty bit of chemistry, having the dwarf summon rain to douse the troll’s flaming head, then using a tosses substance to quickly freeze the heated stone-like flesh. From there, the Lizard, Slayer, and Elf bring the big guy down and mop up the goblin dregs.

It’s a testament to their skill, experience, and teamwork that even with the boy committing numerous blunders that should have killed him and others, this party got through this with minimal trouble.

The party returns to town to celebrate, but it doesn’t feel like a victory for the boy wizard. He knows he fucked up royally, but also knows that even though the acolyte is alive and recovering, he knows that “simply being alive”, as the Elf says, isn’t enough.

The acolyte, the sole survivor of her party, could well be ostracized in the future for her failure. The boy doesn’t know how quick this cuts to the Priestess’ past situation. He also finally mentions the reason why he’s so desperate to get out their and kill goblins: his sister was killed by a poison blade.

It dawns on both the Priestess and the Goblin Slayer that this boy is the little brother of the female wizard in the Priestess’ doomed party. Slayer gets up and leaves, retiring to an alley to remove his helmet, vomit, and curse himself for not being able to save everyone.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 35 – The Slow Blade Penetrates the Shield

Takuma, Yuuji, and Megumi determine that the ones who lowered the veil keeping sorcerers out is actually positioned outside that veil, from a conspicuous vantage point. That point turns out to be Shibuya Central Tower (AKA Cerulean Tower), where they find and engage the three curse users stationed up there.

Using Megumi’s shikigami Nue to fly them up, Takuma engages the granny and her grandson bodyguard, while Yuuji and Megumi snatch up a swole mustached guy and send him plummeting to ground level.

Takuma demonstrates his ability to summon the powers of the Four Auspicious Beasts by donning a hood and serving as a medium. It’s a nifty ability, but the grandson proves adept at protecting his granny from harm as she chants.

Meanwhile, Mustache guy proves quite a tough cookie, as he suffers no ill effects from the sudden 41-story drop, while hand-to-hand conflict proves just as fruitless. Yuuji even gets scratched by his dagger, and he should consider himself lucky it wasn’t poisoned.

When Granny finishes chanting, her grandson transforms into Touji. In a flashback to 1989, we see her using the corpse of a target’s daughter to get close enough to stab him in the neck. She and Mr. Mustache were “free” back then to do as they pleased, and licked their chops at the prospect of earning a huge bounty from assassinating the newly-born Gojou.

Unfortunately, by the time they’re able to get close to him, his aura and mere gaze are so powerful they have no choice but to retreat. When Gojou was born, it upset the balance between cursed spirits and humans, and virtually everyone else has been paying for that ever since.

Back in the present, Mustache is in no hurry to retire or surrender; not as long as these whippersnappers don’t know his technique. Unfortunately for him, Megumi is quite astute, and correctly surmises that it’s Inverse, which reminds me of how personal shields in Dune repel bullets and knife strikes that are too fast.

Basically, the harder you hit him, the weaker that blow is, and vice-versa. After summoning a horde of hares to surround Mustache so they has time to strategize, Megumi and Yuuji then come at him with full force, to make him think they haven’t discovered his ability.

They then attack him simultaneously with both weak and strong attacks, and in this way they’re able to negate his Inverse and deliver critical damage to him for the first time.

Unfortunately, Takuma fares far, far worse atop the tower, as Touji pulls off his hood and proceeds to mop the floor with him. If he’s even still alive up there, he could use some backup from his underclassmen.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 34 – The Taste of Regret

A word from Gojou and the remnant of the real Getou’s soul still within his body starts to choke the person currently controlling the rest of his body, Fake Getou is impressed, but is able to regain control. The Prison Domain closes around Gojou and shrinks to slightly larger than a Rubik’s Cube. Unless Gojou kills himself (fat chance) the Domain is unusable as it only holds one.

One of now-dead Muta Koukichi’s “Insurance” devices drops into Yuuji’s ear and reports that the device would only be activated if Gojou is sealed. Mei Mei is initially skeptical, but Koukichi manages to convince her. She sends Yuuji out to warn the other sorcerers, holding off two high-grade cursed spirits closing on their position. Meanwhile, the three standby teams start to head into the first veil.

A pair of special grade cursed spirits roam Shibuya with the goal of killing all the assistant supervisors, i.e. suits. Yuuji emerges from the Veil, sees a horde of transfigured humans, and makes quick work of them, saving a handful of non-sorcerers.

He then climbs to one of the highest points in the district and shouts out a warning to everyone at the top of his lungs: Gojou has been sealed. As soon as Nanami hears this, he switches up the plan: he, Ino and Megumi will rendezvous with Yuuji.

As the Prison Domain processes all of the information that comprises Gojou Satoru, the cube is rendered too heavy to hold or move, making it vulnerable. Thanks to another Mechamaru device in the station, Koukichi is able to tell Yuuji that Gojou is immobile…but that likely won’t remain so for long.

Getou has to stay with the cube, so Mahito, Jougo and Choso all head out with one goal: kill Yuuji. Of the three of them, only Jougo wants to awaken Sukuna; the others just want to kill him. There’s also the matter of Mimiko and Nanako asking the Fake Getou to release his body, something he tells them he’s not going to do; he made a promise to them, not a binding pact.

Team Nanami meets up with Yuuji, and Nanami leaves Yuuji and Magumi in Ino Takuma’s care. Ino lays out the stakes: if Gojou dies, not only will the Gojou clan die with him, creating a massive political free-for-all, but the balance of power between sorcerers and curses will be upset, meaning the age of humans in Japan will be over.

One would hope Japan wouldn’t have to rely on one goddamn person to maintain its existence, but here we are. It’s up to Yuuji, Megumi, Nobara, and all the other sorcerers stationed there to rescue Gojou from the Prison Realm, or die trying.

Jujutsu Kaisen – 33 – Thirteen Orphans

Not gonna lie, while it was fun to watch Gojou have a little squash match—literally squashing Hanami into a thin paste on the wall—it was also a little unnerving.

For much of the battle, Gojou is sporting a giddy smirk usually worn by villains when they’re doing villainous shit. He’s enjoying this a little too much. And he’s also operating under the assumption that his enemies are underestimating him.

But as was mentioned last week, the reason they’re even there fighting him is because Getou is properly estimating Gojou and his power. He discusses the length of time and the amount of space within which Jougo & Co. have to keep him confined. Jougo thinks it’s crazy to think they can do that.

But Getou has this all figured out. While Hanami is lost, Jougo and Choso are able to keep their distance until a train finally arrives, from which Mahito and roughly a thousand transfigured humans alight. The crowds of people are slaughtered wholesale; those who fought to get to the front of the door first are killed first.

Mahito then destroys Hanami’s confining roots to allow another mass of people to fall to the level below, and Mahito and Choso combine abilities to tear them to shreds. There’s a method to this massacre: to further back Gojou into a corner where he can no longer logically calculate “acceptable losses”.

Once Gojou reaches that state, he unleashes his Infinite Void, instinctively only using it for two tenths of a second. For those two tenths, each and every man and woman around him will be in the hospital for two months…but they won’t die. It only takes Gojou 299 seconds to eliminate all of the roughly 1,000 transfigured humans. It’s Gojou going full Neo.

When he’s done, he’s out of breath and looking pretty haggard, and that’s when Getou gets him, revealing the proverbial “Thirteen Orphans” (his hand in the Mahjong game): the Prison Doman. The conditions are met, and Getou is in deep doo-doo. There’s just one problem: while the man before Gojou certainly looks and sounds like Getou Suguru, Gojou can tell it’s not really him.

Sure enough, “Getou” removes the crown of his head to reveal a brain with teeth; Getou’s body is only a host for that brain, and the person it belongs to. So that’s something. Even so, the brain’s owner is able to use all of Getou’s abilities, which is why he was able to checkmate Gojou here.

While still with Mei Mei and Ui Ui, Yuuji hears from a little Mechamaru earpiece that Gojou has been sealed. And since Gojou is the strongest of the sorcerers, it likely falls to Yuuji and his impressive potential to defeat the strongest alliance of enemies he’s ever faced. We’ll see if he and all the others can really make up for the loss of Gojou.

Undead Murder Farce – 08 – Moonlit Banquet

I haven’t mentioned it yet, but in the parlence of our times, the music in Undead Murder Farce fuckin’ slaps. The music is by Yamaguchi Yuma, who has only done the music for a handful of anime, none of which I’ve seen other than this. But the mood for each of the many battles that takes place simultaneously this week is set perfectly by Yamaguchi’s punchy combination of orchestral, jazz, and electronic themes.

Lupin suggests a truce with Tsugaru so they can deal with the powerful Reynold, and end up dropping an organ on him. Fatima is wounded by Phantom, who has used his years underground to become the master of acoustics. Shizuku looks well matched against Carmilla, until she starts feeling the effects of the vampire’s aphrodisiac venom.

There’s a lot going on, and all of it is fun. Holmes and Watson’s fight with Aleister Crowley is interrupted by the arrival of Moriarty, whom Sherlock had presumed died eight years ago, and his attendant Victor. Even when Moriarty proceeds to provide an infodump of how he’s built a small army of monsters, it’s still kept visually interesting.

His crown jewel is Jack the Ripper, who like Tsugaru is an artificially created hybrid. Tsugaru is a human-oni hybrid, but Jack also has the offensive and defensive prowess of a vampire baked into his DNA. I’m not sure quite what you call what he does to poor doomed Fatima (scalloping? filleting?) but goddamn is it brutal.

Moriarty happens to be the person who stole Aya’s body, and he’s been using it for research; Jack also has a touch of her immortality baked in. He and his troupe of baddies, named Banquet, want Fogg’s diamond so they can locate the last missing piece for his chimeric masterpiece: werewolves. Needless to say, Moriarty is in no hurry to return Aya’s body to her. His research and the discoveries it will reveal have only just begun for him.

Tsugaru might be able to tell he’s got one tough opponent in Jack, who has a lot more going on in his bloodwork than just oni. Jack also recognizes him as the only test subject to escape Moriarty’s dungeon-lab. Tsugaru gives it the college try, but Jack bests him, then deems him unworthy of even being finished off. Jack then fires a flare to signal to the other Banquet members that the diamond has been secured.

He doesn’t know it, but in doing so, he saved Shizuku’s life. Under the woozy sexy spell of Carmilla’s venom, Carmilla is about to slowly have her way with her when Carmilla finds Lestrade’s silver cross and stabs the vampire in the hip. Carm is about to go medieval on Shizuku, but the flare stops her, and she withdraws along with Moriarty and the others.

Aya, Sherlock, Holmes, Fogg, and the other detectives gather back in Fogg’s study to commiserate being well and truly beaten this night, and are joined by a still…amorous Shizuku. While Tsugaru fought Jack, Lupin fled with Phantom, and they presume they took the silver safe with them, as with everything going on Aya completely forgot about it.

As for the Penultimate Night…well, Jack is about to show it to Moriarty and the others when he realizes the pocket he put it in has a hole in it—a hole made by the sticky-fingered Tsugaru while they were tussling. I got a big dopamine kick when Tsugaru cheekily produces the diamond, which he ultimately kept out of both Lupin and Banquet’s hands.

Aya has already translated the writing carved within the diamond, and suggests they hold it up to an arc streetlamp. The UV light emanating from the lamp turns the Europium within the diamond a glowing red, creating a theretofore hidden word: Fangzahnewald, or Forest of Fangs, the location of the werewolves everyone seems to be searching for.

Needless to say, and to quote Sherlock, the game is afoot. Aya isn’t just going to let Moriarty keep her body. She wants it back! Nor does she want him to gain the power to dominate the world. If he did that, she wouldn’t be able to solve fun mysteries with Tsugaru and Shizuku by her side! So Moriarty and his merry band of weirdoes are the logical next target. Until then, this was a superbly fun supernatural crowd-pleaser.

Heavenly Delusion – 08 – Behind the Curtain

Dr. Usami takes Kiruko and Maru past a gauntlet of people who want to ask him about their prosthetics and leads them to the room with the curtain. Beyond that curtain is a young woman being kept alive by machines, calling to mind shades of Akira. Usami wants Maru to try to kill her the way he did the dormant Man-eaters in the garage.

Why not just disconnect her from the machines? Because they’re not just keeping her alive—they’re keeping her from becoming a monster. This is how Maru and Kiruko learn that all Man-eaters began as humans. Maru places his hand on her heavily bandaged body, and discovers that she has a core. He can do what Usami wishes and end her pain. But what does she want?

Thanks to a tablet, the young woman Hoshio is able to communicate her final wish: to see the sky. She’s been in that dark, depressing room for God knows how long clinging to both life and humanity. Kiruko and Maru agree that they won’t do as Usami asks unless Hoshio can see the sky, so Usami makes it happen.

The episode lingers on the logistics and careful maneuvering needed to move her and all her machines and cables just a few feet to the balcony where a impossibly gorgeous azure sky opens up above them. She stares up at that sky with her single blue eye, takes a few breaths, and then Maru lets her finally rest. It is without doubt one of the most beautiful and heartbreaking scenes I’ve ever seen, and not by accident: this episode was guest story boarded by a KyoAni veteran.

After she’s passed, Kiruko and Maru discover that Hoshio left a few final messages on the tablet, thanking Usami for letting her die as a human, thanking him for giving her his eye, and for everything, and telling him she loves him. Usami’s mask slips and he breaks down in big sobbing tears.

As all this was going on, Mizuhashi was apparently killed hitting her head when a rock was thrown by an Immortal Order member. Liviuman storms the facility, and IO’s staff and patients evacuate. Kiruko asks the IO folks about the photo of their Dr. Usami and Robin, and they recognize Robin, much to Kiruko’s delight. They could be inching closer to finding him.

But just as Kiruko and Maru are getting ready to escort Usami after he buries Hoshio, he shoots himself in the head on the roof of the facility, cradling Hoshio in his arms. He’s also holding the same button as the kids’ uniforms in Heaven. Just as he no longer saw any reason to continue Immortal Order with Hoshio gone, he no longer wanted to live in a world without her.

Faced with a dead Usami with a dead Hoshio in his arms, Maru begins to despair, saying that unlike Usami or Robin, his hands “only bring death”. Kiruko hurries to him and takes his hands in theirs, telling him that’s not true. Those hands, my God. Countless people have been saved by him killing Man-eaters. He’s saved Kiruko more than once as well. That matters.

While what happened to Hoshio and Usami is tragic, I’m glad the episode ends on a less somber note, with Kiruko and Maru closer than ever. No matter what happens in this world, if they can just stay together and keep surviving, you get the sense everything will be okay.

Only the episode doesn’t quite end with them. It ends with Mimihime’s dream of being in a dark and scary place, before suddenly being joined by someone who offers their hand (probably her crush Shiro).

When Tokio sees her grinning on the balcony, she asks what the dream was about that made her so happy, and Mimihime says she’s already forgotten. But even if the details of the dream are gone, the emotions remain.

Similarly, the precise nature and timeframe of the “Heaven” where Mimi and Tokio reside remains shrouded in mystery and intrigue, but what matters is that I desperately want to learn whatever answers Heavenly Delusion is willing to provide in its final five episodes.

CERTIFIED GODDAMN TEARJERKER