3D Kanojo: Real Girl – 20 – Opening The Door To A Frightening World

“Never mind, I don’t care,” Takanashi lied. That’s where he finds himself at the beginning of this week: in denial of his feelings for Ishino and the feeling that he’s letting her slip away in his friend Sakurada’s arms. This week Sakurada is revealed as less of a character (or viable love interest to Ishino) and more of a catalyst for Takanashi to stop playing games.

When his mom ends up in hospital with a mild concussion, Takanashi hits the supermarket so he make hijiki for Anzu, and on his way out, he runs into Ishino, who can just tell something’s up. Takanashi resists the urge to tell her to butt out of his business (in fact she’s the one to bring up her meddling), but does tell her he doesn’t need her pity.

That grinds Ishino’s gears, as it should: forget never giving her the time of day: Takanashi has a serious habit of acting cool to hide his emotional struggles. He relents and asks Ishino to join him at his house, since she knows how to make hijiki.

Ishino also has a problem: it’s virtually impossible for her say “no” to Takanashi, no matter how selfish or mocking his request. But this isn’t about him playing games; it’s about him actually making some kind of effort, in his way, to let her know that her help at the house would be tolerated, appreciated…even preferred.

Meanwhile, someone who would prefer it if Hikari were to fall into a ditch and die is Iroha’s brother Chika, who has heard about the two of them going on an overnight trip. Hikari insists nothing will happen (which isn’t exactly fair to Iroha, if she wants something to happen!) and that the trip had to be postponed anyway; Chika gets his lick and death threat in anyway.

That feels like the first real ripple in Hikari and Iroha’s relationship in ages, and even then it’s due to a third party, not any conflict between the two of them. Back at Takanashi’s it’s pure domestic bliss—complete with spousal bickering, something Anzu probably isn’t used to considering they have a single parent.

Their argument is over whether Takanashi is justified in limiting Anzu’s exposure to Kaoru, or whether he’s just being  overprotective and even petty. Ishino and Takanashi make up in front of Anzu to calm her, but it isn’t long before they’re at it again, and this time it’s when he brings up Sakurada.

He asks, and almost orders Ishino not to go on the date with Sakurada, a serious request that he treats with his usual teasing jocularity (doesn’t want anyone taking his “pet”). While Takanashi is again trying his best to say what he wants to say, the fact is his best isn’t quite good enough. He has to be better.

He runs after a crying Ishino to apologize, and also properly explain his feelings: he feels like she’ll be an important part of his life, and if he lets her go on a date with his friend, he will regret it. So he asks if she’ll be his girlfriend, a question Ishino has been waiting for so long it barely feels real.

It’s been a recurring joke for him to immediately reject her when she asks him, but when he finally asks her, she’s just as quick in saying “yes.” Then he kisses her, daring to open a “door to a frightening world”, but opening it nonetheless. I have no doubt he’ll still tease her (and she’ll tease him back) but at least now there’s no doubt about his feelings.

Shifting from Newly-formed couples to Recently-formed couples, Itou ends up alone at Ayado’s house when something “comes up” with her parents. After four hours of wholesome video game-playing, Ayado can’t take it anymore: she wants to make out.

Itou worries that he’d be betraying her parents’ trust in him if he did anything with her, but Ayado disagrees. Ayado wants him to do something, and will be dejected and miserable if he doesn’t. You’re good, dude…Carry On. And carry on they do…though the episode is somewhat coy about how far.

Back to the couple that inspired all these new doors being opened: Iroha comes over for dinner with Hikari’s whole family again and has an absolute blast, as always. She loves how kind his family is, and how it explains why he’s so kind. Case in point: he offers to walk Iroha home, but she declines.

I can’t have been the only one to think that slightly awkward goodbye was foreboding, and what do you know, the next day Iroha is at the hospital talking with the doctor Hikari thought she was dating back in the beginning, telling her “it has to stop,” presumably due to her undisclosed health condition.

While new doors have been opened for the others, it looks like Iroha and Hikari’s is going to start closing. It’s something both of them have known would eventually come to pass. I just wish we had more of an explanation about why there’s such a seemingly firm clock on her life expectancy. At least Hikari deserves to know, even if it crushes him.

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Nil Admirari no Tenbin – 03 – Tsugumi’s First Suitor is a Book Burner

After Tsugumi spoils the lads with breakfast of a quality far higher than they get at the cheap restaurant down the street (and they all ask her to sing for them more), they go on their daily patrol…which the show skips entirely, probably because it knows it’s boring. Not to mention, it seem like having four people in a patrol is an awful lot, unless you expect a lot trouble every time, which seems paranoid.

And yet, even with four, they’re unable to stop a suspected cursed tome from being burned in a nighttime incident in which the thugs get away. Tsugumi can tell the book isn’t cursed, and meets its owner, doctor (and dreamboat)-in-training Sagisawa Rui, who comes out of left field to be her first (un-)official suitor of her new partoling-librarian life.

After Fukurou is assigned a police liason, Tsugumi hits the town on her own, visiting the flirty shopkeep who rudely propositions her once again despite the fact she has no interest (though his weird fluffy pet Perry is a hell of an icebreaker). Hey guy, maybe tone it down a bit!

She bumps into Sagisawa again, who is delivering his homemade kaleidoscopes for the shopkeep to sell, because in addition to being a sweet young doctor-in-training he also creates kaleidoscopes, which let you “look at the world in a different way”. Ack!

Oh and a guy with an actual cursed tome runs past, and before Fukurou can chase him down he ends up splatted by a subway car. Again, for a four-man patrol they’re sure aren’t very good at catching people they want to catch!

Furthermore, what could have been an opportunity to test Tsugumi’s toughness in the face of blood and death was squandered. Why present such a gruesome death as part of her job, then not have the MC react to it at all?

They suspect the book has been made cursed intentionally by a group they’re simply calling “Karasu” due to the crow feathers they leave behind as a calling card. That group is in opposition to Kagutsuchi, a group that seeks to find and destroy (rather than purify) all cursed tomes…and if a couple of uncursed tomes get burned, so be it.

Sagisawa Rui invites Tsugumi to a more intimate rendezvous in the park where he gifts her a kaleidoscope, and then gets into a rather unsubtle debate about whether to preserve or burn cursed tomes that betrays his beliefs on the matter to be in opposition to Tsugumi’s.

That night the police liasion informs Fukurou that Kagutsuchi is meeting on the eighth floor of a building in Ginza…but the building only appears to have six floors, not including the roof! Huh…

Anyway the leader of Kagutsuchi turns out to be Sagisawa. Why he put on that whole performance to Tsugumi before with the burning non-cursed book or the kaleidoscopes, I have no idea, but in the end the first lad who seemed to be a nice fit for her turns out to be a bad guy, at least from Tsugumi’s book-loving perspective.

After she declines his offer to join Kagutsuchi, he burns the tome in front of her and then leaps out the window, which would have been cool if we didn’t see him land on a tablecloth his henchman stretched out for him. For some reason that seemed really lame and caused me to laugh out loud.

So yeah, Tsugumi’s job seems pretty boring and tedious and full of unwanted passes by men…until it’s suddenly not, and even then gets rather silly because as I said, hot pursuit is not Fukurou’s forte. Maybe lose those bulky overwrought uniforms and…I dunno, run faster?

GOD EATER – 12

One thing you can always be certain of in GOD EATER: things will not work out the way people hope. The best-laid plans, be they made with good or bad intentions, inevitably turn to ash in this harsh world. Heck, the show itself couldn’t even air its last four episodes in the season it meant to.

The only thing that’s really worked out so far is that Lenka’s family was successful in keeping him alive and instilling in him a desire to survive and become strong so he can protect everyone still alive (which unfortunately does not include that family).

But he does have something of a new family in his unit, and when its “father” Lindow is in a tough spot, Lenka is there, and thanks to Licca, so is his rad new god arc, which cuts through the Aragami like butter, be it slashing or blasting.

But Operation Asteroid remains a big mess, as one of the luring devices has been sabotaged by an inside hacking source Tsubaki learns is Alisa’s personal doctor. So when Alisa arrives along with Sakuya, Soma, and that other guy, it’s nice to see the gang reunited, but I knew the happy feeling wouldn’t last becase A) Alisa is a ticking time bomb and B) the Pita Aragami isn’t going to be defeated this week.

Sure enough, the evil doc says a few trigger words into Alisa’s earbud, and she starts firing wildly. However, she doesn’t hurt anyone, and when Sakuya tries to slap her out of whatever is going on with her, the earbud falls out, and the doc’s plan is foiled.

Alisa reverts to her useless crying state, but Lenka manages to talk her out of it, trying his hand at field psychiatry. The results are favorable, as Alisa snaps out of her funk and returns to usefulness, but it’s a little dubious that Lenka’s words about toughness and inner strength could cause such an abrupt change in the behavior of such a scarred and unstable mind.

Once everyone is freed from the berserk trees, Lenka leads everyone to the dam town to take out the luring device and protect the people there, which Sakuya didn’t know existed until now. Lindow will stay behind and duel the Pita, but predictably, it goes pear-shaped in a hurry, as this particular Aragami possesses a keen intellect and ability to counter any tactics the wounded Lindow throws at him.

After the obligatory flashback to a younger Johannes attempting (but obviously failing) to commit suicide, overcome as he is by the loss of the mother of his child. The child remains as a painful reminder of what he cost, but Dr. Sakaki suggests that he wasn’t able to kill himself for a reason: that he was meant to stay on this world and try to save it before Aragami consume everything and reset the world.

The results of that plan are still pending, but Lindow wasn’t able to delay Pita long, and the last we see of him, his bloody arc arm is hanging out of Pita’s mouth. I honestly don’t know how they’re going to take this guy out, which should make the final episode interesting.