To Your Eternity – S2 20 (Fin) – Peace Taking Root

Fushi, still borrowing Bon’s body until he gets all his vessels back, per Bon’s wishes, enjoys one final meal with his friends and comrades old and new. After everyone discusses their dreams going forward, he declares that Eko has died, and she soon joins Ghost Bon in ghost form. Fushi isn’t ready to bring her or others back until the world is free of Nokkers.

March is understandably upset to be losing her child once again, but Fushi cannot continue spreading his roots to every corner of the world and defeat all the Nokkers without ceasing to be an individual person during that time. March still won’t leave his side, and is ultimately euthanized, which seems damned extreme if you ask me!

That said, March was on borrowed time and was resurrected by accident in the first place. It’s also not goodbye if she passes here and now, because one day Fushi will be back and so will anyone or everyone he loved, if he so wishes.

Another who cannot live without the being he was literally bred to love is Kahaku, who manages to off himself by jumping into the Bennett equivalent of Mount Doom and kill the Nokker living within him, releasing the vessels it stole back to Fushi.

Some time passes, and Fushi’s roots continue to spread throughout the world, becoming an omnipresent part of everyday life. Then one day, without warning, Prince Bonchien Nikolai La Tasty Peach Uralis returns to his family, who immediately glom onto him and shower him with love. Then, one by one, the Beholder describes how all of Fushi’s immortal allies die, each of them for better or worse living the lives they wanted to live.

Time passes…a lot of time. The days of Prince Bon, Uralis, and Renril represented a high renaissance-like era. But when he finally awakens as the Boy (at his original age), he finds himself in a modern metroplolis of skyscrapers, cars, cafés…and his roots.

In this age, the Nokkers are (presumably) all gone, and Fushi is everywhere. His eyes turn from yellow to purple, likely for good. As for what he’ll do in this age, who (if anyone) he’ll bring back, and who he’ll meet, we’ll have to wait for a confirmed Season 3. Until then, mata ne, Pink Blood.

Vinland Saga S2 – 05 – Pillars of Smoke

After four episodes focused on Einar and Thorfinn, we check in on Prince, now King Canute of the Danes and England during the same general time period. After succeeding Sweyn upon his death in 1014, Canute’s Viking armies have been laying waste to England for a year; fighting against a second king: Ethelred II, returned from exile.

But Canute is a big-picture guy, and at some point wants the war to end so that this new kingdom of his can thrive. He intends to meet with the Earl of Mercia to discuss terms. He also orders those among his forces who have pillaged, raped, and enslaved to be beheaded and displayed as a warning.

One of his ostensible allies, Thorkell, does not share King Canute’s desire or vision for peace. That’s not surprising; Thorkell only really feels alive when he’s fighting and killing. He publically chews out the young king as someone who is not yet worthy of Thorkell’s complete loyalty and support.

He also promises Canute that despite all his talk of parlays and truces, there will come a time when he’ll have to carve his path with blood and iron. Only then will he become a true king. Canute allows Thorkell to say his piece, because he knows Thorkell is, if nothing else, an honest and forthright person. His warning to the king carries a great deal of weight.

Upon meeting with Earl Eadric and his son at the agreed-upon site of the truce, Canute is presented with a giant pile of cash: 4,000 pounds of silver, with the promise of 4,000 more if he agrees to leave Mercia and never come back. Eadric calls this a good deal, and tells Canute he should take it.

Canute takes a good look at the loot, then starts walking on it, smirks, and says “That’s it?” But the bottom line is that no amount of silver or gold will dissuade Canute from the belief that he is the only true King of England. Paying him to leave his rightful territory makes no sense.

Canue’s counter-offer? Eadric will help him get rid of Ethelred II, which will end the chaos and destruction that has ravaged England so. Eadric balks at this proposal of betrayal, but Canute tells him he’s already betrayed Ethelred by offering to pay him off.

Canute then invites Eadric to join him outside, where his men light a gigantic pillar of wood. Once it is on fire, dozens of other signal fires are lit up all around them, far off into the horizon and beyond. It is a simple but powerful and terrifying proof that one word from Canute and Mercia will be reduced to ash.

Eadric apparently gets the message, as Ethelred II dies of an “illness” about a year later, in 1016. His son Edmund assumes the throne, but just seven months later he too succumbs to an illness. In 1018, Canute is officially installed as the King of England. He and Thorfinn couldn’t be further apart in their circumstances or stations. Canute has taken the ball his father dropped and running with it—quickly, yet carefully.

The Fire Hunter – 04 – The Dark Forest

The white dragon, which is the guardian of Kaho’s home village and has suddenly gone crazy, destroys the collection truck. Touko, Benio, and a still injured Kaho try to flee, but Benio is grabbed by the dragon and killed. Shouzou and Kanata lead Touko and Kaho into the forest before they’re all burned by the sparks of the ruined truck. RIP Benio—I wish we could have gotten more time with her.

Back in the capital, Hinako’s health continues to improve and she, Kira, and Koushi make for an affable trio of siblings. Of course, Koushi is forbidden from telling either of them about the skyfire he’s reading about and researching. He prepares a list of materials he’ll need and Yuoshichi, eager to accelerate Koushi’s progress, promises to fulfill that list.

Touko, Kanata, Kaho and Shouzou quite suddenly encounter the Treefolk, and it’s our first encounter with them as well. They’re definitely something other than human with their strange bark-like skin and glowing eyes. But they’re also kind, and agree to take the survivors to the nearest village. Unfortunately that’s all they can do; once there, they’re on their own again.

Koushi is granted access to the capital’s vast archive, where he runs into his old academy professor (and has to conceal why he’s really there) then finds a tome hidden away that lends him (and us) more information and context about this uncanny world.

That includes Tokohanahime, patron goddess of fire hunters, her sister Tayurahime, the nation’s “immortal guardian”, and a kind of prophesy: when the “Millennial Comet”—a man-made star launched from Earth long ago—returns and its fire harnsessed, mankind need not fear the Dark Forest any longer.

We and Koushi learn a bit more about the lore, while Touko’s journey is interrupted by tragedy, further delaying her arrival at the capital and eventual meeting with Koushi. Kira and Hinako come to the archive to pick him up and they all go to the decorated boat festival. Koushi and his sister look like he’s settling into his new life nicely.

I’ll admit, the show is still very heavy on the exposition, though the music does a lot of heavy lifting giving the onslaught of info gravitas. The animation is also…lacking many times, and herky-jerky at others. The postcard memories are beautifully rendered, but at the end of the day they’re just stills providing emphasis to certain moments.

Some technical shortcomings aside, I continue to be drawn into this offbeat, throwback-looking show with its haunting score and thick atmosphere of impending dread. Watching Hikari no Ou is like walking into a dark, unfamiliar forest—You never know what you might find in there.

Vinland Saga S2 – 04 – Thank You for Waking Me

Snake, the boss, turns Fox’s face into mush and scolds everyone for picking on the slaves. But having seen how Thorfinn reacted to Fox’s cuts, he decides to test him himself. Thorfinn’s body moves on its own to protect him from a surely fatal slash from Snake’s sword. Snake tells him that must mean his body wants him alive, so he’d better stay that way.

Maybe Snake doesn’t want to pay for needlessly killed slaves, or maybe there’s a shred of kindness in him, but he has Thorfinn and Einar escorted to Pater, who treats Thorfinn’s wounds so they won’t fester. When Einar tells Pater if Snake hadn’t intervened they’d have died for sure, Thorfinn says “the strong kill the weak” and that’s just the nature of things.

While Thorfinn is allowed to take the day off to heal up, he heads into the woods anyway, since his wounds are “nothing”. As he continues to fell trees like nothing happened, Einar asks Thorfinn straight up if he’s been to war, if he’s killed, and how many. Thorfinn truthfully answers that he doesn’t remember how many; only that he’s killed a lot. That tends to happen when you’d been a warrior since you were six.

After Thorfinn owns up to this, he apologizes to Einar, whom he thinks must hate him now. Indeed, that night an enraged Einar puts his hands around a sleeping Thorfinn’s throat and starts to squeeze. Thorfinn happens to be in his standard dream, a hellscape of a burning village where he must kill or be killed. Einar lets go, and when Thorfinn starts screaming, he wakes him up by grabbing his arm.

Einar asks Thorfinn if he really wants to die, and tells him he’s spoiled if he truly thinks nothing good has ever happened in his life. The very fact the two of them are alive is a good thing, made possible because someone kept them alive. Whether that’s Einar’s father, mother, and sister, or for Thorfinn, Thors, Askeladd, and others. A sulking Einar returns to his hay pile, saying it’s not as if Thorfinn personally killed his family.

Then Thorfinn says to Einar what he neglected to say to Pater: Thank you. Thank you for reaching out,: for pulling him from the hellish dreams of his sleep, if only for a moment.

In this tense and moving sequence, Einar learns more about who Thorfinn is (or rather was) and why he is the way he currently is. He also makes his peace with that, not letting his hatred for those who took everything away from him dictate how he treats Thorfinn, who had nothing to do with it.

Vinland Saga S2 – 03 – Death Is Our Product, and Business Is a-Boomin’

When Fox and Badger, two mercenaries hired to be Ketil’s bodyguard, try to take his failson Olmar drinking for the sake of fun, Olmar ruins that by being an unbelievably annoying, blubbering drunk. He has no idea what he’s doing when he challenges Fox and Badger, who quickly put him on the ground.

Fox tells him both they and his father treat him like a child because he still is a child, or is at least still half of one. The right of passage for true adulthood is to take the life of another. Olmar asks who he should kill.

You know who.

Einar’s peaceful morning is interrupted by Thorfinn’s blood-curdling screams, though he can’t remember what he was dreaming about that caused him to scream so. The vibes improve dramatically for Einar when the pretty young lady from the wagon the other day is by the well washing her face. She even compliments Einar’s face.

She introduces herself as Arnheid, and as women in Vinland Saga go, she’s definitely one of the fairest. That’s why I assumed she was Ketil’s daughter, but the truth is she’s a slave just like Einar and Thorfinn. Specifically, she’s Ketil’s personal attendant.

Einar’s morning is once again darkened by the arrival of Fox and Badger, who are there to take him and Thorfinn to their camp situated on the beach. Einar wonders what the heck is up, but he need only look at the faces of his captors and the weapons they bear to realize it’s nothing good.

It’s also possible Thorfinn showed a bit of precognition in sensing something was amiss, but not quite remembering what it is. Perhaps the horrors of his past informed his expectation of further doom in the future. It is, after all, all he’s ever known.

When Einar and Thorfinn are presented to an extremely anxious Olmar, whose sword clatters in his trembling hand, Einar isn’t ready to go down without a fight. He tells Thorfinn to run, rushes Olmar, and tackles him to the ground. But as they grapple and Einar continues to tell Thorfinn to get out of there, Thorfinn doesn’t move, and soon two swords cross his throat, daring him to flee.

When he sighs, calls this all a big pain, and volunteers to be cut down by Olmar if Einar can just get back to work already. Fox takes this as an affront to his profession, as warriors’ product is death, and if people aren’t afraid of death, that product has no value.

Alas, Fox has met someone for whom life has no further value. His thirst for revenge has long since dried up with his nemesis and father figure slain. Fox slashes him several times, but Thorfinn doesn’t flinch, or even blink. He just stands there, and that’s enough to make Fox mad enough to kill him himself.

But Fox stops dead at the sound of his name, uttered by his boss, Snake, who has just arrived from the cabin where he fell asleep reading. He moseyed is way over to the camp, observed what was happening, saw how Thorfinn was like cold hard steel when being threatened, and stopped his employee from killing a valuable resource.

Do I see Snake fighting Thorfinn next week to see what he’s made of? Most definitely. Can I also imagine Snake deciding to buy Thorfinn—and possibly Einar, who is if nothing else, big and strong—to join their merry band of murderers. In any case, the pain will likely continue for our pint-sized protagonist, but at least he has a sympathetic companion in Einar.

Vinland Saga S2 – 01 – Living is Winning

After a thoroughly badass James Bond-style OP followed by a downright poetic sequence about carving “that warmth” into anything and everything, Vinland Saga’s second season settles in the idyllic home of Einar, who lives there with his little sister Lotta and their mother. He’s practicing hacking with an axe in case their home is attacked again (the last time claiming their father), but their mother tells her children that as long as they’re alive, they haven’t lost.

Things don’t go well for Einar’s family, as their home is burned and pillaged. When the three try to flee, the mother is felled by an arrow, and neither Einar nor Lotta are able to leave her behind and keep running. Instead they are paralyzed by the prospect of doing so. When Lotta is carried away she stabs her captor in the neck, and is killed for it. Einar is taken away to be sold as a slave.

After a passage from the Old Norse poem Hávamál equating one with no love in their life to a fir tree on a barren land, Einar is on a boat filled with other slaves, one of the women can’t stop coughing. Their captors determine she won’t survive, so they toss her overboard to drown. Einar protests, but his captors are as cruel and unreceptive to mercy as the brooding ocean waves that churn before him. Once ashore, he and the others are washed and fed and put on display in the market.

Einar tries to escape, fleeing to a farm and stealing some food, but is immediately re-caught and severely beaten as a message to the other slaves: There’s no escape. There’s no going home. In this world, it is better to be a slave and be fed for their work than a runaway beggar. The world is utterly uninterested in your welfare.

Our first familiar face appears at the market, when the slaver presents Einar to Leif. Leif isn’t interested, as he’s looking for his relative, Thorfinn. But before departing, he grabs Einar’s arm and apologizes. It’s the first time anyone has apologized to Einar since he lost his home and family. He envies the man Leif is looking for, since it means there’s someone in the world who still cares about him.

Eventually a farmer inspects Einar and agrees to buy him, and escorts him to his sprawling farm, which reminds Einar of the idyllic home that was destroyed and stolen from him—the home and the family he was trying to defend, but could not.

At this farm, Einar meets the “blonde, small” guy Leif was looking for: our boy Thorfinn, who is chopping trees at the border of the woods. He has the look of someone who is carrying on with the same determination Einar’s mother demanded: to survive, and live at any cost, is what it means to truly win.

It may not feel anything like winning to Thorfinn or Einar. Their wait has only just begun, and may end fruitlessly. But as long as their wait continues, and their hearts continue to pump blood, they still carry the potential to carve their mark into the world. Maybe they can help one another.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury – 12 – School’s Out for Winter

As the Dawn of Fold attack continues, the Dads are on the move. Vim Jeturk decides to pilot his Sol Dilanza rather than be Shaddiq’s puppet any longer. Delling finds Miorine, but true-to-character, his first words aren’t “Thank God you’re alright” but “What are you wearing?” since she’s not in an evac suit.

Poor Suletta is still shut off from the rest of the plant by the emergency bulkheads, but Sophie spots her, and shoots around her area to try to goad her into running off to the Aerial. When Dominicus tries to subdue her with Antidote, Sophie goes up to Permet Level Four … nearly killing herself in the process.

Like the bloody epilogue that got Witch from Mercury off to such a stirring start, this season one finale really accentuates the essential frailty of human beings. Delling is seriously wounded by a piece of errant shrapnel, while using his body to shield his daughter. For all his abuse and neglect, when the chips were down, he chose her over everything else.

When Norea spots GUND-Arm’s spaceship—with Earth House still on board—she takes aim and prepares to destroy it as part of the mission to keep anyone from escaping. She only stays her hand when Nika flashes the correct code with a signal light. Nika saves everyone on that ship, including herself, but Martin sees her signaling to the enemy. The gig is up.

When Guel overhears that a Gundam from Asticassia is on Plant Quetta, he pilots a mobile suit and heads out, determined to move forward “after Suletta”. But in the heat of his first real space battle, he almost loses it. He’s able to do what is necessary to survive—i.e. kill someone—but the one he ends up killing is his own father, Vim.

Suletta manages to crawl her way through the plant and make it to Hangar 78 where Aerial is—just as Lady Prospera knew she would. Mercury gets there first, and is about to be discovered by Dawn when Prospera arrives and kills them all. Mercury is shocked, but her mother lays out the calculus. All she did was move forward and gain two by killing others to save her.

There’s a beautiful, heartbreaking shot of Prospera and Suletta on opposite sides of a doorway, splattered blood between them. It can’t be any clearer: this is where moving forward means you can’t go back. Suletta, so easily manipulated by her mother and their credo, steps onto that blood and crosses the threshold.

When Sophie arrives to play, Suletta is already in Aerial’s cockpit and deflects her attacks with her Bits, then fires up her rockets and shoves Sophie the hell out of the hangar, scolding her for behaving in such a crass manner. That said, it’s my assumption Sophie may never have had a mother to scold her.

Suletta doesn’t know it, but as she scuffles with Sophie and then Norea, she’s buying time for the authorities to arrive with reinforcements. Once an entire patrol fleet enters the area, Naji gives the signal to retreat. While she complains, even Sophie doesn’t disobey, and hopes to see her “Big Sister” again. I’m sure she will.

Shaddiq gets word that the Dawn’s operation failed, and he doesn’t really react, wearing the same serene smile as usual. While I’m sure he’s been careful in trying to keep distance between himself and Earthian terrorists, the fact he doesn’t have Aerial and Delling isn’t confirmed dead will surely come back on him in some manner.

But there’s is nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing more shocking and upsetting than the final scene of the season, in which Miorine is cornered by one straggling member of Dawn while pushing her injured father on a makeshift gurney. Before he can kill Delling, Suletta blasts through the bulkhead and smashes him with Aerial’s hand, turning him into a fine paste of blood and guts just inches from where Miorine stands.

Suletta hops out of the cockpit with her usual chipper demeanor, and even jokes about being such a klutz when she slips on the blood and guts. She reaches out her hand—which again, is covered in blood and guts of a man she just killed—to her bride. Miorine is quite rightly absolutely aghast and terrified at the Suletta before her. “How can you smile right now,” she asks, before declaring her groom a “murderer”.

All season Witch from Mercury had been lulling us into a false sense of security by showing us duel after bloodless duel at space high school. Well, graduation has come early for Guel, Nika, Miorine, and Suletta, in a cruel blast of twisted metal and a spray of blood. Nothing will be the same going forward for any of them. In other words, it’s Gundam being Gundam.

To be fair to Suletta, I’m not sure what else she could have done in that moment when it was either the shooter or Miorine. But now Suletta’s innocence is gone forever, Miorine will never look at her the same way again, and she isn’t even aware. For all she gained by following her mother’s motto to the letter, we’ve yet to see what she’ll lose. That will be revealed in season two this coming Spring.

Akiba Maid War – 12 (Fin) – Bacon Bad

Before Ranko went cold, I had a pretty strong inkling which way Nagomi would break in response. She tried to turn the other cheek and live by Nerula’s example, but losing Ranko was a pig too far. As a result, while her fellow Oinky Doink maids don black to grieve the loss of their 36-year-old big sister, Nagomi dons black to announce that she’s gone to the dark side—the way of the gun. She intends to kill Ranko’s killer with Ranko’s revolver.

Nagi didn’t order Ranko’s death—rather, it was someone who, like Nagomi, wanted revenge for the death of her fellow Wuv-Wuv Moonbeam maids, so stylishly slain in the first episode. In that regard, Ranko reaped what she sowed, which is why she died with a smile on her face. She owned what she did, and was happy to have found a home and family at the Oinky Doink.

But with Ranko gone, it’s once again open season for the pigs, as Nagi has ordered their extermination. Nagomi is jumped in the street by the cow maid she shot in the foot and beaten to a pulp, and after the police release her, she goes through Ranko’s bag and finds little mementos that turn her away from the darkness and back to the light.

The head maids under Nagi’s employ don’t want to shed any more blood lest they attract too much police attention, but Nagi wants this done, and she kills the head Bear and Cow maids to impress upon the others the price of questioning her orders. The next morning Nagomi, rejoins her fellow Oinky Doink maids in her normal maid outfit

They’re ready to join her in taking a last stand right there at their home against the other Creatures, and she tells them they’ll give their enemies a real “maid war.” They tuck into what may well be their last supper at the ramen joint below them, buying an extra bowl for Ranko and each of them taking a slurp from her bowl. Meanwhile, Nagi and her army are on the march.

When Nagi enters the ramen joint and the owner gets a little too sentimental, she kills him. He was one of the few people who knew her when she was an orphan taken in by Miss Michiyo, and who ordered a hit on her adoptive mother when she went non-violent … due in no small part to the arrival of young Ranko.

I thought we’d get one more elevator gag, but Nagi is all business as she walks down the hall to the entrance of Oinky Doink, her soldiers standing at attention. But even though she envisions herself being shot in the head before opening the door, she’s met by an entirely non-violent and very moe Oinky Doink welcome.

Following Nagomi’s lead, the Oinky Doink maids treat Nagi and their would-be murderers just like any other masters or mistresses who walk through that door: like they’ve come home to the pigsty. And to most of the maids’ shock (including Ranko’s killer), Nagi actually humors them, ordering everyone to sit down.

The main event of their hospitality is a song-and-dance by Nagomi that embodies the gentle, immortal spirit of moe moe kyun from which she, Ranko, and Michiyo all believed the maids of Akiba had strayed. Watching Nagomi perform…not so greatly reminds Nagi of Ranko when they were still sisters. She shoots Nagomi in the side, but it’s apparently only a grazing shot, because Nagomi keeps on going.

Nagomi’s performance briefly captures the enthusiasm of the crowd, but when it comes to a close it’s met by cold silence and a light smattering of applause. Nagi responds by shooting one of her own Dazzlion maids in the hands. Nagomi tries to get through to Nagi with sentiment and words, even telling Nagi that if she ever feels lonely she’ll always find cozy companionship at the pigsty. But Nagi simply doesn’t want to hear it.

The fact is, she’s seen and heard enough, so she fires the rest of her bullets at an off-camera Nagomi. But then something happens that she never expected in a million years: the former Wuv-Wuv Moonbeam, now Axolotl maid, who killed Ranko, shoots Nagi in the head.

Apparently, Nagomi got through to her. And getting through to one among the dozens was enough. Okachimachi finishes the job by throwing Chekhov’s sharpened bamboo spear through Nagi’s gut. We didn’t get any more Hirano Aya, but the panda had her day.

After a credit sequence altered to include visuals of and vocals by Nagomi, we flash forward to 2018, where we learn that in the end, Michiyo, Ranko, and Nagomi won. As it was when I visited, Akiba is a vibrant but peaceful place, where the maids are no longer packing heat. In a final welcome surprise, a wheelchair-bound but alive Nagomi carries on Ranko’s legacy at the New Oinky Doink Café—as a 36-year-old maid everybody wants to meet.

Akiba Maid War was exactly what was advertised on the tin, and more. At times totally ridiculous and bonkers and at others genuinely moving and compelling, it held true to its weird and novel premise to the end, framing those bloody times we witnessed as a dark chapter in the history of animal-themed café maids. The doves beat the hawks, not with swords or bullets, but with the boundless power of moe moe kyun.

To Your Eternity – S2 09 – A Horse of Course

The Nokkers attack the city, but as usual TYE has presentation issues when it comes to capturing the scale and complexity of the ensuing chaos. Events come down to Fushi in his various forms warning townsfolk to flee “east”, which seems somewhat arbitrary. People crowd and convene in the head church, only for that to be the location where the Nokkers appear. As Fushi battles, he loses his vessels one after the other.

By the time the sun rises and the dust clears, the Nokkers have been defeated, but untold people have been killed, while Fushi has lost Parona, Gugu, Uroy, Shin, and Ligurd. Bon and Kahaku are rightfully concerned: if he can lose five of his precious vessels in just one battle, he can scarcely afford to lose many more in the next. A kindly holy knight gives Fushi his blessing, but it’s not enough.

While Fushi has gotten a lot better at fighitng the Nokkers, we’ve arrived at a point where they’re a step ahead, hiding in quicksand and capitalizing on his lack of muscle (March can’t really fire arrows, for instance). The Beholder ends up bailing Fushi out with a Horse he created from a piece of Fushi’s flesh. The horse has a mind of its own, and keeps Fushi from rushing back into battle too soon.

While Kahaku shows that he can still fight the Nokkers off with his left arm, that arm Nokker relays a message from its fellow Nokkers who regard it as a traitor: they’ll be launching an attack on the largest human city in a year’s time. If Fushi wants his vessels back, he’ll go to that city and “play the game.”

Kahaku, Bon, and the forces of Uralis will aid the city in preparation and evacuation, while Fushi stays aboard a beached galleon from Uralis that Bon has designated his new base. There, he must learn how to create larger objects in order to gain a new advantage against the biggest Nokker threat yet.

Akiba Maid War – 11 – Reservoir Hogs

Business at Oinky-Doink is booming thanks to Nagomi’s Lady Omoe status—call it the Michelin Star of Akiba Maid Cafés—but just when things seemed to be looking up, the maids find their Panda (or rather the empty suit) strung up on the iconic Radio Building sign.

On the panda suit’s head is a letter from Creatureland formally disowning the Oinky Doink—an almost certain death knell for the Café, and possibly its staff as well. The outside of the Café is covered in slanderous flyers, and higher-ranked maids come to scare off customers.

This is an untenable situation, but Ranko believes it to be entirely her fault; her former sister Nagi, the head of Creatureland, has a beef with her, so she’ll go to Nagi and settle it once and for all, even if it means her death. The other Oinky Doink maids except this, except for Nagomi. It takes Ranko pulling a gun on Nagomi to make clear that where she’s going, Nagomi can’t follow.

But while everyone seems grimly resigned to letting Ranko sacrifice herself, the next morning they’re waiting for her at the entrance, ready to throw down right beside her. Ranko issues a heartfelt thanks that is interrupted by the elevator door closing on her head (this has been a very good running gag).

The plan is pretty simple: Yumechi, Shiipon, Zoya, Tenchou and Okachimachi storm Dazzlion and take their top maid hostage while Ranko and Nagomi infiltrate Creatureland HQ. Nagi sends an army of maids who have no compunctions about killing their hostage.

Ranko and Nagomi initially believe that leaves the coast clear for them, but HQ is also packed with maids, who escore them to Nagi’s office. Nagomi returns the Lady Omoe statue and sash and apologize for taking them, but in response Nagi simply smashes Omoe on Nagomi’s head.

Surprisingly, Nagi would rather not kill Ranko, just as Ranko would rather not kill her. Unfortunately, her one and only compromise is completely out of the question: she’ll give Ranko a leadership role if she kills all of the Oinky Doink staff.

Ranko instead prostrates herself and offers her life in exchange for letting Oinky Doink off the hook. Nagi stabs her in the hand, and she draws a pig with her blood, explaining to Nagi that she’s enjoyed her time with the Oinky Doink maids and wouldn’t trade their lives for anything.

When Nagi threatens to slash Nagomi’s throat, Ranko does something we’ve never seen her do: cry and beg, not for her life, but for Nagomi’s and the others’ (who are besieged at Dazzlion). She admits that Nagomi reminds her of their old gentle boss Miss Michiyo, the kind of maid Akiba needs.

When offered the chance to shoot Nagi before Nagi kills Nagomi, Ranko chooses neither; both women are too dear to her, while Oinky Doink is her cherished home. Her display seems to finally get to Nagi, who loses interest in the whole situation and withdraws the order of disownment…in exchange for ten times the sweets money.

When Ranko and Nagomi reunite with the other Oinky Doink maids, Tenchou asks why they couldn’t haggle, but the bottom line is everyone escape with their lives and the café is still in one piece, so it’s a win. They’ll find a way to make all that extra money. They wouldn’t have been able to do anything if they were dead.

But just when my guard was down, and Ranko and Nagomi are shopping for a hairpin to replace the one Nagomi lost, a pink maid assassin drives a blade through Ranko’s gut from behind. She knew what she was doing, as Ranko quickly bleeds out and dies in Nagomi’s arms while stunned bystanders refuse to call an ambulance, as that would be interfering in Akiba maid affairs.

Whether Nagi changed her mind and sent someone to kill Ranko, or someone acting on their own had a score to settle (Ranko did kill a lot of maids in her thirty-six years), her sudden death is a gut punch. The question is, what happens next? Will Nagomi hew to the nonviolent ideals that endeared her to Ranko, or will she seek to find and take revenge on her friend’s murderer?

Chainsaw Man – 10 – Toughening Up

In the aftermath of the attack on the 4th Division, Denji and Power are all healed up, and despite insisting otherwise, are by Aki’s side out of solidarity. They are, after all, three of the last surviving members. When the two leave shortly after Aki comes to, he asks the Curse Devil how long he has (two years), prepares to light a cigarette, and then can’t when he remembers Himeno.

Himeno gets her final wish: Aki lives to cry for her. As for Denji, he’s a little weirded out by how calm and cool he’s been about losing Himeno, the first person who wanted to be his friend. He wonders if he’d be just as indifferent if Power or Aki died. He even figures the loss of Miss Makima would only result in about three days of feeling bad, then he’d get back to living his life of meals and baths.

With Makima determined to strengthen what’s left of her now combined division, Denji and Power’s lives are about to get a lot less carefree. Deemed still too weak against the kind of devils they’ll have to hunt, Makima puts Himeno’s old sensei Kishibe (voiced by Tsuda Kenjirou) in charge of training them.

He immediately likes them, as neither are interested in revenge and will side with whoever will feed them (in Denji’s case) or whoever is winning (Power). They’re both the precise breed of fearless crazy needed to be effective devil hunters.

He pulls the two into a hug, and then casually breaks both their necks with his bare hands, leaving no doubt as to his toughness. After healing them with blood, he proceeds to kill or nearly kill the two again and again, deciding the best way to make them tougher is to hunt them until they’re capable of beating him.

While Denji and Power are enduring this, Kyoto’s Tendou and Kurose pay Aki a visit, and tell him it might be best if he quit while he’s still alive, like Madoka did. Unlike Denji and Power, Aki is still very much driven by the need for revenge against the devils that killed his family and Himeno. But to become strong enough to stay in the 4th Division, he’ll need to contract with stronger devils.

After Tendou and Kurose take their leave, a girl whose face we don’t see pays him a visit. While walking home from the graveyard, Denji and Power decide that the best way to defeat their new drunken teacher is to use their brains. Left unacknowledged is the fact that even if they put both their brains together they only end up with two balls of lint.

The next morning, they set up an ambush for Kishibe, all the while displaying a wholly unearned sense of confidence you can’t help but admire—they even wear glasses to look smarter. Kishibe easily defeats their surprise attacks, once again leaving them both on the floor, down for the count.

That said, he admired their attempt, and says he’ll give them the rest of the day off. The moment Denji drops his guard, he gets a thrown dagger to the forehead. Kishibe warns him and Power never to trust the words of someone hunting them. And so, the bloody trials continue.

Aki is escorted to the bowels of Public Safety headquarters by Tendou and Kurose, which serves as a prison for all of the devils captured alive. When Kurose asks if the girl at the hospital was Aki’s girlfriend, he says no; it was Himeno’s little sister, who brought letters Himeno wrote to her for Aki to read. Among them, Himeno discusses her unsuccessful attempt to get out of Public Safety with Aki.

As he contemplates his past, Tendou and Kurose take him to the cell of the Future Devil, one who took the eyes and sense of taste and smell from one human it contracted with and half the lifespan of another. Considering Aki has only two years left anyway (due to the Curse Devil), and his determination to destroy the Gun Devil, I’m certain the Future Devil can ask for whatever it wants, and Aki will sacrifice it.

To Your Eternity – S2 08 – Baron Spring Roll

Bishop Cylira is on the ground, as is the entire assembled crowd for the execution. But Bon lies dead, his bloody severed head next to his body, so Ligurd!Fushi was too late, right? Wrong. Bon wakes up in the brick shelter Fushi built, flanked by his dead companions, but he himself is still quite alive, thanks to Fushi.

Appearing as Rynn, Fushi explains that she studied Tonari’s journal and developed an easily-replicated poison that knocked out the execution crowd and gave her time to rescue Bon and replace him with a dead copy. Fushi makes clear that he wasn’t clever enough to come up with such a plan, but his vessels’ assembled knowledge (not to mention wings) aided him.

While the Uralis royal family initially believes their son dead, and Bon watches from on high (a bit like Huck Finn at his own funeral) Rynn!Fushi presents them with the still-alive Bon, and they gang-tackle him with elation and relief. That said, now that the church believes him to be dead, he can no longer carry on as Prince Bonchein.

That’s fine with him, as he cuts his hair and shaves to hide his past identity. He now realizes that he’s happy just to be with his family, and no longer thirsts for the throne. Todo is also reported to have died serving his prince, so the now skinny-from-malnourishment Iris sees no further need to hide her true self.

Meeting Iris, the girl he met at the palace who gave him the flower handkerchief, briefly breaks Bon, due in part to how he treated her when she was Todo. After meeting with Chabo, he sulks in his bedchamber, then chews Iris out, as he can’t believe she and Todo were the same person.

This leads Iris to run to the tea table to scarf down enough food to get fat again, but Bon stops her, apologizes for his harsh words, and asks her to stay at the castle with him and his family.

Fireworks memorializing Prince Bon light the skies, Iris agrees, and the two commit to taking care of Chabo; a new found family of three. It’s a beautiful, fairy tale ending for Bon, now known as Baron Spring Roll, Iris, FKA Todo, and Chabo. All thanks to Fushi.

As Rynn!Fushi prepares to depart for her next destination, Bon mentions how he said he’d reward her for her service. Bon probes her by asking how she’d feel if all her lost friends were immortal. But after asking this, Fushi feels a pang of pain—it’s Kahaku.

Distraught over the fact the Guardians are disbanding due to Fushi’s condemnation as a heretic and how he was rejected by the woman he loved (Parona!Fushi), Kahaku got ruinously drunk in the stables and tried to cut his Nokker arm off, but failed. The Nokker arm then grabs a knife, not to hurt anyone, but to communicate with Fushi.

It tells her that the Nokker are simply trying to “help everyone”, including their brethren imprisoned by the Beholder. Nokkers are souls, and wish to free the souls of humans from their bodies. “In death you can be free,” etc.  It also says that Fushi can revive the dead, but Bon erases those words from the dirt before they sink in for Fushi.

Finally, the Nokker arm reports that the next target for the Nokkers will be the head church of the Church of Bennett. That means the church’s only hope is the one they just executed for being a servant of the devil. Fushi heads to the church regardless; humans are humans, and they need his help.

Bon prepares to leave the palace for a while, perhaps to help Fushi, and Iris tells him she’ll wait as long as it takes for his return, which is hopefully before Chabo gets lonely. Bon also says that Fushi said he’d be happy if all his lost friends were immortal. If only he knew he could bring them all back if he wanted…

Chainsaw Man – 09 – Crunch Time

Whoever ordered the coordinated surprise attack on the Special Divisions, it seems to be going going off without a hitch. There’s no time to mourn any of the dead yet, and Himeno’s last order to the Ghost Devil before they both vanish is to pull Denji’s cord. The bad guys, as Denji calls them, may want his head (i.e. Pochita) but they’ll have to fight him for it.

Katana Man is wounded from his scrape with the Ghost and the Curse, and the reinforcements Sawatari (hoodie girl) calls are just ordinary humans. But Denji makes the mistake of thinking Katana Man cares about subordinates, and as a consequence both he and his hostage are halved.

He’s not the only one who makes a fatal error this week. The train crew thinks Makima is dead, and she certainly looks dead, but in an unsettling sequence of shots, suddenly she’s not dead, but standing in the aisle behind them with that serene Makima smile.

Hunters Tendou and Kurose are waiting for her on the platform in Kyoto when they hear that all four divisions have been massacred. When the train arrives and the doors open, all of the passengers run out screaming—all of them, except for Makima, covered in blood but cool as a cucumber.

She assures her subordinates that she wasn’t shot, then orders them to borrow a bunch of life-sentence convicts and reserve the nearest, highest-altitude temple. We witness the product of those requests first, as Sawatari and Katana Man’s underlings suddenly get a weird feeling, then pop like balloons one after another.

At the temple in Kyoto, Makima uses the convicts as sacrifices, asking them to say the names of those she wishes to kill. Once they do, she puts her hands together in various positions, and all the way in Kyoto the enemies die horribly in hideous, concussive bursts of blood and gore. One of the men flees in terror and tries to take a hostage, but he only ends up coating her in…in him.

When all the convicts are dead, Makima tells Tendou and Kurose they can remove their blindfolds, as she’s “done all she can” from there. The three then hop on the next train to Tokyo. But while her part in the counterattack is over, another unexpectedly alive member of the 4th Division shows up where Denji is.

It’s Kobeni, who was saved when Arai took the bullets meant for her. She then killed the shooter and came across Sawatari and Katana Man as they’re trying to get half a Denji in their getaway van.

She doesn’t let them, and even Sawatari’s massive summoned snake can’t stop her advance. She parkours across the snake, dodges bullets, slices off Katana Man’s hand and then shoots him several times with his own gun. With both of him and her in bad shape (losing fingernails like that can’t be fun) they beat a hasty retreat.

Kobeni then starts to cry-laugh with Denji in her arms, a sure sign that she’s losing it. Part of it is the absurdity of apologizing for trying to kill him, but it goes without saying that her actions today make up for it, as he’d 100% be in the enemy’s clutches were it not for her intervention.

I’m sure Makima will thank her when she sees her, which should be soon. Upon returning to Tokyo she’s met by Madoka, who announces that all four divisions will be absorbed into the 4th, that Makima is now in command of the new combined unit, and he is resigning. It’s probably the right move, as he’s lucky he survived this incident and unlikely to survive another.

Before parting ways, he asks Makima if she knew that all of this was going to happen, but as he’s no longer a devil hunter but a private citizen she cannot possibly comment. She heads back to HQ flanked by Tendou and Kurose, who make sure she understands they’re not joining her outfit, but are only in the city to help with training. Without looking back, she says that’s a shame, as the dining’s to kill for in Tokyo.

Chainsaw Man follows up last week’s nearly perfect episode with one that’s as righteous and unnerving as the last one was heartbreaking. Makima and Kobeni have been hiding in plain sight all this time, but now we know what they’re made of—and why Kobeni is probably in the right line of work, despite not being psychologically suited for it.

Himeno is gone, but thanks to her Aki’s not, and thanks to her and Kobeni neither is Denji. Through all of this loss and bloodshed, Makima never changed her composure for a moment. That cool head is what makes her a good leader in a tough job full of bad, bloody choices. The others will need that steadiness as they pick up the pieces and try to move forward.