Hyakkano – 08 – A Time to Kiss

We know the stakes: Rentarou and Kusuri need to reverse the other girls’ affliction or they’ll remain kiss zombies forever. But because they have superhuman strength and speed, avoiding them on the way to the chem lab proves impossible. That said, they’re able to neutralize the vice principal by administering a face-melting drug that only removes her foundation, forcing her to reapply it.

When Rentarou realizes Nano has the girls using a pincer movement, he has Shizuka chase him, as he’s confident he can stay ahead of her due to her low base speed. But when she trips and falls, he has no choice but to run to her and take her to the nurse’s office to treat her. But while Shizuka’s slower and weaker than the others, she’s still a kiss zombie, and she makes her kissing time with Rentarou count before he leaves her hanging—literally.

Karane and Hakari won’t be so easy to neutralize, as the former launches the latter at him like a missle, leaving him vulnerable to both of their kisses. That said, a measure of their original personalities still remain, including their tendency to argue, so Rentarou uses this opportunity to push their mouths together. Since the potion makes you want to kiss the one you love, they end up making out with each other.

That leaves only Nano between them and the chem lab, but as a good chunk of her intelligence and analytical thinking remains, tricking her won’t be easy. Rentarou hides in a locker only to find Kusuri there. After she tearfully declares she’ll stop researching drugs after this fiasco, she produces a vial of reversing medicine.

Rather than give it to Nano as Rentarou thinks, she drinks it herself to grow to her normal size, which Nano won’t recognize. This backfires when Kusuri’s tendency to speak in the third person exposes her true identity, and Nano ties her up with the rope meant for her (and with bondage knots, no less!).

Rentarou decides he’ll use his love for the girls to break his own limiter and run away from Nano, but she eventually chases him to a classroom, smashes through the door, and greets him like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. We saw what happens when a kiss zombie catches you, and the result is no different here.

As Nano smootches away to her hearts content and Rentarou strays out of all reason, the end credits begin to roll. But this is not the end. By luring Nano away, Kusuri eventually shrunk back to chibi size, as she didn’t take a full dose of reverser. This enables her to make another dose in the lab, hurry to where Rentarou is, and administer it to Nano.

Nano, Shizuka, Hakari and Kurane come to in the nurse’s office, none the worse for wear. They also still have clear memories of what went on while they were kiss zombies, but since those memories include Hakari and Karane making out and not disliking it, they each very loudly proclaim that they actually don’t remember a thing.

All’s well that ends well, but Kusuri maintains that since she caused this whole mess, she’ll give up on her drug research forever. She loves Rentarou and the others and doesn’t want to make trouble for them. But Rentarou rejects her sacrifice.

He loves all of Kusuri, including and especially her passion for making drugs. So if she ever makes another mess with her research, he’ll be there to help her clean it up. A teary-eyed but joyful Kusuri leaps onto Rentarou to kiss him, while his manly declarations only reinforce why the other girls love him so.

This episode only reinforced my love of this series, as it once again balanced zany hijinks and steamy action with genuine emotional and dramatic stakes and compelling character development. Rentarou also continues to be the most honorable and rootable yet still relatable harem MC I’ve ever come across.

He remains as much a treasure as the girlfriends to watch, and is never not decisively proving why he deserves all of them and more … ninety-five more, to be precise!

Hyakkano – 07 – Love is the Drug

Rentarou has a horny girlfriend in Hakari, a tsundere in Karane, a shy bookworm in Shizuka, and a logical, cool beauty in Nano. We’ve seen her in the OP and ED, and this week it’s finally time to introduce Soulmate #5: the eccentric chemistry buff, Yakuzan Kusuri. He’s being led down the hall by the others when he and Kusuri happen to lock eyes in passing.

However, their formal introduction isn’t without a few bumps, as he initially made eye contact with a voluptuous beauty, and when he visits the chemistry lab he finds cute tiny girl akin to Shizuka instead. We soon learn that while Kusuri loves Rentaro, drugs are a close second, as evidenced when she has him drink a drug that magnetizes him.

She drinks the opposite polarity magnet drug and ends up sticking to him, which is when Rentarou learns something else: due to her obsession with experimentation, Kusuri abhors wasting time leaving the lab to use the restroom…so she wears diapers.

When the magnetization wears off, Kusuri shows Rentarou a number of other colorful drugs, then confesses to him and asks to go out with him. When he starts wretching into the sink she’s crestfallen, but he clarifies that he doesn’t want to be under the influence of drugs when he accepts her feelings.

That said, in addition to the magnet drug, his tea contained a love drug, which affects him adversely and causes Bocchi-like convulsions. Thinking fast, Kusuri takes the neutralizing drug into her mouth then administers it to him with a kiss.

He recovers, but to Kusuri’s shock he still seems to be infatuated with her, turning them both beet red. She prostrates herself and again asks to go out with him, but both hair and body start to grow until she take on the busty form of the woman he first saw. Naturally, they’re one and the same.

The neutralization drug also cancelled out the failed immortality drug she takes to shrink to a smaller size, shorter hair, and improves her vision, which makes her lab work easier. Rentaro learns that she’s actually a third-year and thus his senpai. But now that he knows this is the girl he locked eyes with, he officially accepts her as his new girlfriend.

If Kusuri has a problem being one of Rentarou’s five girlfriends, she doesn’t bring it up, and the others are used to this by now, so she’s cordially welcomed. She’s even brought personalized drugs for her new polycule partners. Talk of a bust-enhancing drug angers Karane until she hears how Rentarou described her to Kusuri (slender, beautiful, cute and shy).

When given a “hot stuff” drug, Hakari imagines her already ample bosom and bum growing to absurd size (with visuals akin a similar scenario in the 2000 horror film Faust: Love of the Damned of all things) but instead the drug makes her skin literally hot—so hot it melts off her clothes and underwear. As Kusuri puts it, nothing’s hotter than your birthday suit.

Rentarou comes to the rescue with his used P.E. uniform, the smell of which Hakari enjoys a bit too much (though she still rocks the bell out of it). Thinking of her love of fiction, Kusuri provides Shizuka a drug that gives her fantasy bunny ears that are sensitive in a specific way Rentarou doesn’t fully grasp.

Nano takes a drug that lengthens her hair and make sit prehensile, allowing her to grab Rentarou and draw him close with a kiss. She has other doses, but warns a side effect is baldness. Rentarou will love Nano with or without hair, but admits he loves her hair too, so Nano ditches the extra doses, in an instance of logic giving way to love.

Once all the drugs wear off, the newly-formed sextet some afternoon tea. Kusuri provided to different kinds for Rentarou and the others, but when he insists she go to the bathroom when she has a call of nature, she trusts them not to get them mixed up.

However, while she assumed the girls would consider the slender, “chic” red Thermos their tea, they pick the “utilitarian” blue Thermos because it’s bigger and there are more of them. So when she returns, the other four girls end up sipping tea meant for Rentarou.

This isn’t just a different blend: it’s a potion that was intended to give Rentarou an uncontrollable urge to kiss her. As the girls turn feral one by one, she further explains that it’s not meant for girls, and turns them into vicious “kiss zombies” with superhuman strength and speed.

When all hell starts breaking loose, Kusuri is again crestfallen, thinking it’s happening again … I’m screwing everything up. We see a flashback to everyone in her chem club eventually abandoning her, likely due to her eccentricity. But what she’ll come to learn is that everyone in this group is weird in their own way, and once you’re Rentarou’s girlfriend, he’ll never let you go.

The task before him and Kusuri is to administer the neutralizing drug to all four girls within one hour. If they don’t, they’ll be in this kiss-ravenous frenzy for the rest of their days. The episode ends on a cliffhanger and postcard memory, but I think I already know the solution: Rentarou simply has to have a mouthful of neutralizing drug for when each of the girls inevitably kisses him.

Kusuri marks yet another stretch into heightened reality and absurdity, as her drugs are essentially magic potions. That said, she’s not simply kooky comic relief, as I empathized with her desire to share her passion with others and avoiding loneliness, and her love for Rentarou (and his for her) is as genuine and endearing as everyone else’s.

The question is, will we proceed with just these five girlfriends for the remainder of the cour, or will the show switch up the OP and ED and introduce a sixth, seventh, or more? There are ninety-five soulmates to go, after all!

Tenten Kakumei – 05 – A Dragon and a Dance

Before they reach the battle zone where a dragon is causing a monster stampede and overwhelming the royal defenses, Euphie is worried. Before she hopped on the broom with her, she asked Anis what she would do with the dragon’s magicite. Anis’ answer—that she’d implant it within her body—is the primary cause of her worry. She doesn’t want Anis taking her dream to become a “real” magician too far, lest it change who she is.

But something Euphie doesn’t truly learn until this week is that Anis is in it to win it; she can’t hold back, not even an inch, in the pursuit of that dream, or it won’t happen. Anis drops in just in time to slash a giant monster in two before it kills two fighters, then chats casually with the captain of the knights and tells him and his peeps, and Euphie, to deal with the small fry and leave the dragon to her.

Euphie doesn’t like the idea of Anis going it alone, but Anis makes the very reasonable argument that she’s the only flying fighter they’ve got, and Euphie is still not experienced in aerial combat. She also pops some “magic medicine” that not only heightens her speed and stamina, but also makes her somehow even more unhinged than she usually is. Drugged Anis’ faces run the gamut between badass and, well, worrying.

When Anis finds herself surrounded by hordes of monsters, Euphie bails her out with an Explosion spell, showing Anis that not only is her magic beautiful, but also highly effective in a battle. All this commotion attracts the attention of their main target, the dragon, and once more Anis flies off on her own, confident of an easy victory.

And then her mana sword bounces off the dragon’s magical barrier. Honestly, I thought this episode would be a cakewalk for Anis, but unlike Euphie I had been completely taken in by her now apparent overconfidence in both her technology and the extent of her limits. This dragon is no slouch, and after a couple more failed strikes, Anis gets a taste of its dragon’s breath.

She’s only kept from being incinerated by her wrist-shield, but when it shatters, she’s knocked from her broom. She can’t re-summon the broom, and for a moment, thinks that this might be It for her. With the ground approaching fast at fatal speed, “Euphie” may be the last word she utters.

But Euphie spots Anis falling, and rushes to catch her. She runs faster than she ever has, and perhaps for the first time, uses her magic to turn her into a human missile. She catches Anis just in time. When Anis prepares to jump right back into the battle, a distraught Anis stops her and asks why, why is she going back in the state she’s in.

Anis simply says she’d cease to be a magician if she didn’t fight with everything she had to eliminate the thing keeping people from smiling. So Euphie, her eyes welling with tears says fine, if she has to go to keep being herself, then take her with her as well. Anis gives her a warm smile and accepts, and off they go.

With Euphie aboard, the broom is a lot faster and more maneuverable. The duo determine that hacking off the dragon’s wings will bring it down, and that means slipping around and doubling back. Euphie serves as a decoy, going straight up into the night sky and distracting the dragon, who is too late to spot Euphie bringing her sword right down on the base of its wing.

But the battle is only halfway over. The dragon may be grounded, but it still has its breath, and it prepares an immense ball of incredibly dense mana that will destroy the entire area and everyone in it…if Anis and Euphie don’t stop it. Anis removes the limiter on her sword, and the strain causes her to cough up blood, but Euphie is right there to keep her steady. When the ball of pure mana comes at them, they’ll either come out of it alive or not.

They end up surviving the full force of the dragon’s Ultima, as Anis’ unlimited mana sword cuts through it and delivers a fatal blow to the dragon. Then, as if this hasn’t been awesome enough, the dragon speaks to Anis, accepting his defeat and saying she can do what she wants with his corpse. It’s only when she says he must resent her that he decides he’ll hit her with a dragon’s curse before he dies.

What that curse will mean for Anis short or long term, we’ll have to wait and see. It and the magicite may lend her incredible power—it may even let her finally achieve her dream of becoming a real magician like Euphie—but at what physical cost? Will she still be Anisphia the Maurading Princess?

In an episode so packed even a seminal scene like Anis and Euphie’s first dance together has to take place during the end credits. Fortunately, those credits are timed so we see the best shots of these two abandoning the haughty victory party, declaring their undying affection for one another and committing to be by each others’ side forevermore, and then, yes dancing together (Euphie makes clear dancing with men feels oppressive).

We now have a strong contender for best episode of the season, if not all of 2023. It is the culmination of all the careful character work done in the previous four episodes. Truly, the emotional beats here would not have hit so hard had we not gotten to know and love these two leads.

We also got to see them at their most badass, making the impossible possible. While not ufotable-level, the battle animation still shone.  We didn’t need to see the prince show up too late, so we don’t. The only minor mark against this episode is that there’s no Ilia. There are certainly things to worry about down the road, but for now, life is good.

RABUJOI WORLD HERITAGE LIST

The Executioner and Her Way of Life – 09 – Too Much Is Different

Despite her priestess garb, Akari sticks out like a sore thumb among the aristocrats at the ball. Menou warns her not to eat or drink anything, then scouts around the castle grounds and ends up crossing paths with Princess Ashuna. Meanwhile, Momo again demonstrates her impeccable competence by knocking out the guard and gaining access to the Monstrine operation without breaking a sweat. Ashuna doesn’t know who Menou is (she hides her face with magecraft), but she can tell Menou is a strong fighter.

Unfortunately for Menou (but fortunately for us), that means Ashuna wants to fight her. A lusty battle ensues, with Ashuna hitting nothing but air and Menou showing her just how much more mastery over ether she has. Ashuna merely gets toyed with, but still has a blast…even when she’s almost literally blasted. Does Ashuna feels somewhat shoehorned in here just so she can spar with Menou? Maybe…but I don’t mind because even when she’s getting her ass kicked, Ashuna is awesome as hell.

Akari is lamenting how the ball is no fun alone when the big boom and column of flame occur. Then Lady Manon sidles up to her, wanting to know more about where Akari comes from. Akari tells the truth: there’s very little she remembers of Japan, but there’s something about the way Manon likens Akari’s hair her mom’s that suggests some kind of connection. After Manon leaves her, Akari Prime awakens, and is concerned: way to much is happening in Libelle that has not happened in previous loops.

Akari really wants Menou to kill her in this loop, but not having the advantage of knowing how the future will unfold will make that tougher than she’d like. Speaking of tough, Momo soon finds the Iron Maiden and lets her guard down when she frees the young bloodied girl inside.

Helping the girl—not opening the Maiden—springs an explosion trap, and Momo gets a poison spike to the side. Manon is alerted to the trap being set off, and revels in the possibility this could be the day she finally gets her revenge.

The next morning Momo wakes up in rough shape, but with a proud senpai standing over her and patting her head in gratitude. Either the spike or the poison would have surely killed weaker folk, but thanks to her massive stores of ether, Sicilia believes she’ll pull through. Menou, meanwhile, is fed up with half-measures. She wants the Fourth rounded up and their drug ring shut down.

Sicilia, noting how Flarette, unlike Flare, isn’t afraid to rely on others, grants an operation and goes to negotiate with the knights. The Fourth nobles are holed up in Manon’s castle, but suddenly they’re all frozen in time. Akari Prime emerges from behind a cabinet, intent on talking in private with the Lady of Libelle.

Is Akari trying to mitigate the fact she’s no longer sure what the future holds by securing an alliance with someone who can mess up her plans? We may not know what exactly Akari wants with Menou, but we do know her goal, and that she’ll stop at nothing to achieve it.

The Executioner and Her Way of Life – 08 – Better the Watermelon You Know

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Giving up on killing Akari in Libelle for now, Menou instead takes her target to the bustling marketplace, which is not only a festival of new sights, smells, and tastes for Akari, but establishes both ancient etheric tools as vessels for ether and the penchant of this new arc’s villain for using food as a means of control.

That villain, Lady Manon, is standing not ten feet from Menou when some members of Fourth attack and take Akari hostage, but Menou can only sense their boorish intent on attacking her. She dispatches them easily, but they soon transform into vicious monsters the knights have to then put down.

Libelle’s chief Faust Pastor Sicilia isn’t happy with Menou’s expense reports talking of delivering the still un-executed Lost One to the “Sanctuary”, and isn’t willing to spend further church funds on such vague and dubious promises. Instead, she’ll fund Menou’s pilgramage if she investigates a new drug called “Monstrine”, which the Fourth members took and turned them into monsters.

After delegating part of this investigation to Momo (who is all too happy to make life easier for her beloved Menou) and Menou defensively leaping out of bed when Akari tries to curl up with her, Lady Manon tightens her grip on the city’s elite by informing them she laced their food with Monstrine, then has one of them transform and strangle heself to death. The child she put in the iron maiden provides the Sin Magecraft source of the drug.

I’ll admit I was disappointed by the dearth of Princess Ashuna last week, but while her scenes with Momo are very choppily edited and suggest possible animation issues or shortfalls, it’s still great to see our swole queen, who can’t help but compete with Momo (whom she clearly likes) on the Monstrine investigation. Just seeing them having drinks at the bar…they just look right together, even if Momo’s heart belongs to another.

Speaking of, when Ashuna brings up an evening ball Lady Manon is holding tomorrow night, Momo learns in her next meeting with Menou that her mistress also got a ticket. Momo won’t let her pose as a simple priestess, but instead uses the opportunity to dress Menou up to the nines. To Momo’s later envy, Akari also tags along in an elegant priestess clothes.

As soon as Menou spots the hostess Lady Manon, I would hope she’d be extra-careful about what she eats or drinks. That said, Menou has no idea the lengths and depths to which Manon has gone specifically to take her revenge against Flare for killing her mother.

I imagine Akari’s presence at the ball may portend the use of time magic should Manon succeed in killing Menou. In any case, these two episodes did an adequate job setting the table. Knowing this series’ ability to ramp up at the drop of a hat, the resulting meal should be a good one.

P.S. Manon is voiced by Iwami Manaka, whom I will always remember as the voice of Honda Tooru, one of the kindest, gentlest characters in all of anime-dom. Lending her voice to an evil villainess must have been fun.

Vanitas no Carte – 23 – La Liberté de la Solitude

We’re into Unstoppable Force vs. Unmovable Object territory, with seemingly no good outcome that can emerge from Vanitas and Noé fighting. If Vanitas gets through Noé and harms Misha, Domi will jump to her death. But Vanitas doesn’t care. Neither Noé nor Misha have the whole story, and Vanitas is resolved to keep it that way—Noé and Domi’s lives are expendable to him.

This enrages Noé, but it doesn’t take long to figure out that Vanitas is intentionally provoking him to throw him off and force him to use too much of his strength. After all, he can’t get Vanitas’ memories from his blood if Vanitas is dead. The last thing Noé wants is to kill Vanitas, but he can’t lose Domi, either. It’s just a shitty situation all around…Thanks OMisha!

Vanitas’ little brother also tells Noé that Vanitas has hypnotized himself for one purpose: killing anyone who tries to suck his blood. Whatever genuine feelings of friendship or love for anyone or anything have been temporarily taken out of the equation, which combined with his considerable Chasseur skills (not to mention the freaking Book of Vanitas) make him extremely dangerous.

Unfortunately, it also saps his agency. This isn’t the Vanitas we know doing and saying these things: he’s basically in Fail-Safe Mode; his will and ego replaced by a rigid set of directives. He did to himself what Misha did to Domi, but Inner Domi throws a little wrench in Misha’s machinations by jumping without him telling her to, in hopes taking herself out of the equation will keep Noé from getting hurt.

Physical harm aside, nothing would hurt Noé more than losing her, but fortunately she’s unable to follow through on her suicide attempt, as Jeanne arrives and snatches her out of the air. She isn’t quite sure what’s going on, but her orders from Luca are to keep Domi safe, and she’s going to do that. Even if Misha is able to nullify her main weapon and Domi is still under his spell, Jeanne’s intervention allows Noé to focus on Vanitas.

Vanitas may go on about how Noé knows nothing about him, and that might’ve been true when they first met, but Noé is confident he’s been with Vanitas long enough to know what kind of person he is. For instance, he knows Vanitas considers solitude to be freedom, which is why he vows never to set Vanitas free.

That seems to break the hypnotic hold Vanitas placed on himself, but the episode ends abruptly without revealing the result of their fall. I understand having to save something for the finale, but it felt less like a cliffhanger and more like the episode just…stopped. That said, the second half should be something.

The World’s Finest Assassin – 09 – First Job

Lugh may be busy planning his first official assassination job, but his mom Esri is thinking bigger-picture. For instance, she’s excited by the fact that he’s “growing up” as dutifully reported to her by Tarte, and also has some fine young noble ladies lined up, one of whom she hopes he’ll marry and giver her grandchildren before she’s too old.

This is historically typical aristocratic mom stuff, but it’s also clear this isn’t just duty for Esri. There’s no one she loves more in this world than her son Lugh, and she only wants happiness for him. If that means not marrying a noblewoman and having a family with Tarte, so be it. She becomes a granny either way.

While Esri is looking forward to Lugh’s future as a Zaddy, Lugh and Tarte pay a visit to Pisear, the second-largest merchant town after Milteu and also the prime market for Count Azba Venkaur’s drugs. They both detect that the innocent girl selling gooseberry jam in a dark alley is actually being forced to sell the drug-laced jam to pay for drugs for her addicted mom.

Lugh and Tarte beat up the low-level thugs controlling the girl, and Lugh uses magic to lift the girl’s mom’s physical dependence, but he knows he can only do so much without dealing with the root cause of this drug problem: the Count bringing in the drugs to begin with.

While Lugh and Tarte took a street-level view of how bad things were, Maha used her not inconsiderable intelligence resources on Venkaur’s operation. Then she accompanies Lugh-as-Illig Balor as the directors of Orna, which just so happens to be the Count’s wife Bridgette’s favorite brand. On the wagon ride to the Venkaur estate, Maha asks Lugh if he’s made any “progress” with Tarte.

A month on her own has made Maha even more confident and direct, and she makes it clear to Lugh that she and Tarte don’t see Lugh as just a brother, friend, or young master any more, and it’s time for him to look at them in a different way. Maha, for one, is biding her time until she becomes utterly indispensable to Lugh, at which point she’ll be on equal footing to negotiate an arrangement. Call it the “To Big to Fail” strategy.

They arrive to find Countess Bridgette to be an exceedingly warm and lovely woman for someone of such high station, and Lugh gets to shake the hand of his target, Count Azba. As the evening rolls on and he charms his mostly female guests of the Orna-branded party, Lugh catches glimpses of both Azba and Bridgette. He really gets to know the people whose lives he’s going to ruin.

Azba is a bad guy who sells drugs that destroy people and families and the very social fabric atop which he stands. He doesn’t deserve the pure love of his wife Bridgette, but he has it anyway. Lugh doesn’t want to hurt Bridgette, who never hurt him and knows nothing of her husband’s dealings. But he has a job to do for the betterment of the kingdom.

Mind you, he doesn’t do it because it’s his job. He’s no longer the finely-honed but ultimately will-less tool he was in his past life. He chooses who to kill, and after seeing what his crimes do to people, he’s chosen Azba as his first target. Moments after taking the shot and ending his life from several hundred meters away, Lugh’s magnifying vision lingers on the balcony until he sees a heartbroken Bridgette run out, grab Azba’s lifeless body, staining her face (covered in Orba-brand cosmetics) and her fancy clothes with the blood of the man she loved most in the world.

And Lugh feels something, after having never felt anything after assassinating in his old life. A distinct and strong pang of pain. He hastens to clarify he won’t regret this first kill, but he won’t forget it either. When he one day looks deep into the eyes of his sons and daughters—whoever their mother may be—a part of him will always see the blood-stained face of the poor Countess Bridgette Venkaur.

SAKUGAN – 07 – FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS SUEÑAS

After the last few episodes took place in colonies or on a mission in a stationary place, this week is all about the journey. Memenpu, Gagumber, Zackletu and Yuri embark upon a road trip that soon grows monotonous in both scenery and routine. Yuri tries to spice things up a little with some lovely red flowers.

The only problem is, he picked flowers that look just like the flowers he wanted to pick, but these flowers happen to have psychotropic effects. As such, things get a little Hunter S Thompson, as the higher the rest stop numbers get, the higher Gagumber, Zackletu, and Yuri get. Memenpu, the one who is most with it, gets rid of the flowers and uses a native cactus to whip up an anecdote.

Alas, Memenpu mistakes the cactus for one that looks just like it that only makes the symptoms of the flower worse. This is hilariously depicted as everyone continues to get nuttier, with the three acting like they’re at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. They repeat the same lines but their words get more and more slurred. Their driving gets more wild and reckless. They can’t stop barfing.

Memenpu determines the only way for the other three to recover is water, rest, and luck. They do eventually find themselves (after she slaps them in the face several times) but Memenpu is having her own rough time. When under the influence of the flowers her dream got psychedelic, but when she buried the blooms they got more intense and violent, depicting Gagumber bleeding out and dying in the flower fields of her dream.

When Memenpu tries to get the others to hurry up and get to the place, Gagumber tells her to chill out and stop taking her dreams so literally, even saying “I thought you were smart.” When she tries to climb aboard their mech on her own, he pulls her knapsack and she loses her footing and falls hard, getting all scraped up.

Gagumber doesn’t apologize an the two drift apart as the trip continues, but Memenpu’s dream of him dying is obviously extremely upsetting, and she believes the only way to prevent it is to go there and check things out, and possibly meet Urorop, who always appears in the dreams. Only Urorop is already there, at their camp.

Is she just there to watch in the shadows, or will she engage with the others? The chaotic goofiness of the drug tripping combined with the dark turn Memenpu’s dreams have taken made this an edgy, unpredictable episode—befitting a proper road trip.

Shin no Nakama – 06 – The Champions of Here

Red is making a routine delivery to Dr. Newman when the two of them suddenly hear someone freaking out. They discover one of their neighbors has overdosed on that recently approved drug that has become popular as a narcotic. These opening events, and an episode title like “The Rampage Begins”, portend a not-so-quiet slice of Red and Rit’s quiet life.

…Or so you’d think. Instead, these suddenly unpleasant events don’t suddenly take over their lives. They still find time for a leisurely omelette lunch, or a day by the river in their swimsuits. They even share their first kiss. Investigating drug crime is not their job, and they’re fine with that. Their job is to stock the necessary ingredients to counteract the drug, and take it easy.

I’ve been a steady defender of both Red and Rit’s individual freedom to live their lives how they see fit…but neither of them is The Hero. I’ll admit to seeming a bit dismissive of Ruti’s fate, but I wish to dispel that right here and now by declaring her the show’s most tragic figure.

Ruti’s Hero’s Blessing is more of a curse, overriding her life 95% of the time. The rest of the time, she’s just a lonesome young woman who loves and misses her brother, and is crushed by the weight of a duty she never asked for.

I felt bad enough last week when we learned she can’t even sleep at night. This week we learn she’s resistant to nice weather as well as bad, and never gets hungry and so doesn’t eat food. I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t have a sense of taste…being a hero in this world means being anhedonic.

When a bloodied and maimed man suddenly rushes into the apothecary, Red treats him while Rit heads into town to see what’s going on. Turns out it’s nothing good: a number of members of Albert’s party are apparently tweaking out on that drug, which has turned them into rampaging killers.

Rit is content to knock them all out, but Albert kills them with bolts from his crossbow, then nonchalantly apologizes if his party members inconvenienced her from her slow life with her “fiancé”. Rit seems ready to fight, but then suddenly drops her twin blades—something she says is a ritual to “douse” her blessing’s urge to attack.

Possessed of Blessings far less intense than Rutis, Red and Rit are able to maintain their quiet cozy days, but Zoltan seems primed for a major drug and violence epidemic. Red’s ability to produce healing medicines will be key, while Rit may have to use a lot more of her Blessing’s skills than she’d liked in order to maintain peace. The two of them are two talented to sit on the sidelines for long if shit really hits the fan in the village.

As if to herald the figurative storm for which this week seemed like the uneasy calm that always comes before, there’s a literal storm that requires Red and Rit to close up the house shutters and prepare for a long night of rain and thunder. That preparation includes a cup of warm milk and honey Red serves Rit as a calming and sleeping aid.

It’s something Red once made for his sister Ruti when she was little. In a flashback to a similar big storm, we see that even as a young girl Ruti was already exhibiting the qualities of an unfeeling hero, even though it’s clear in her words and actions that she adored her big brother. It’s heartbreaking to watch Red (well, Gideon back then) explain the concept of emotions like happiness and affection and why he thanked her for saying she loved him.

Ruti knows the words, and maybe deep down feels the feelings, but her Blessing is constantly tamping them down. It’s why, in the present, Ruti laments in her own way that she can’t go to where her brother is, even though she once asked him to promise never to leave her. Because she’s the Hero.

The Promised Neverland – 21 – More Important than Revenge

By arriving just in time with Mujika and Sonju, Emma is able to talk Norman down and get him to drop his knife. Despite all the time they’ve been apart and the things Norman has done and planned to do, Emma still feels absolutely certain that he doesn’t really want to do those things he planned, even going so far as calling him an “arrogant coward”.

The show deems that she is correct in her assessment, and that, when offered, Norman is willing to share the suffering, pain and fear with Emma, Ray, and the others instead of shouldering it all himself. Mujika then goes around the town administering her blood to those who have degenerated, not only curing them but ensuring they’ll never degenerate again.

As Norman’s plan to annihilate the demons of the village is reversed, Barbara prepares to kill a demon girl and her infant sibling, but when she sees herself in the cowering girl, she finds herself unable to do it. We’re to understand this is the first time she’s been presented with the opportunity to kill a demon child, and was all talk before.

Norman and Emma emerge from the burning town, and Norman tells his comrades the truth: he didn’t want to get revenge on demons, but to save his family. He used the ticking clock on his life to justify taking a path he wouldn’t have otherwise chosen. And he lied about not having succombed to the same Lambda drugs as all of them because he wanted to project reliability.

Barbara, who just stopped herself of her own accord from murdering a child, can’t very well argue, and says Norman is more important than revenge. Cislo and Zazie are also extremely understanding of Norman’s coming clean. Vincent isn’t, but the others tell him to stand down.

Upon returning to the hideout, the kids there tell them they just got word from the Grace Field radio: Phil and everyone else are being shipped. We cut to a scene with Petri and Isabella, who have sent the message as a trap, knowing the kids who escaped will come to the rescue.

What’s odd is that Petri is talking with the demons like Norman and the others just escaped from Lambda; presumably that happened weeks if not months ago. And don’t get me started on Isabella, who we were led to believe was on a short leash, and yet has been allowed to fail for quite some time now.

Of greater import in this scene is Petri’s announcement that the Lambda materials weren’t lost in the bombing, and the entire high-class farming system is poised to be replaced by Lambda-style farming through drug-induced brain enhancements.

Ray rightly suspects the message about the premature shippings is a trap to lure them there, but it doesn’t matter, because they still need to return to Grace Field if they want to save Phil and the others. The fact we haven’t seen one second of Phil or the others at the farm somewhat dulls those particular stakes…as do the developments at the hideout.

Vylk, the grandpa who’d regularly visit the hideout—and who Norman almost killed—and his granddaughter Emma visit so he can tell a story about a small piece of a pen a dying human was grasping, and the remorse he feels for not using his blood to save others besides his own family. When screwed into Emma’s pen, it not only provides blueprints for farming HQ and the gate to the human world, but a cure for the side-effects of the Lambda drugs!

That’s an inordinate amount of coincidence and suspension of disbelief in one little flash drive! But even with all this new information, and with almost everyone on board with returning to Grace Field, the one holdout—Vincent—ends up betraying everyone by using the radio to exchange intel for a deal. I guess he wasn’t moved by the embrace of the Emmas…

Ikebukuro West Gate Park – 01 (First Impressions) – Just a Simple Fruit Vendor

In an Ikebukuro full of rival gangs like the G-Boys, Majima Makoto is a neutral mediator to whom anyone can come with a problem to solve. Thus he is one of the people helping to maintain a delicate balance in the town and keep it from descending into violence.

I’ve been to Ikebukuro, and perhaps due to watching a lot of Durarara!! prior to visiting, I got a very cozy, familiar feeling walking its streets. But aside from the Sunshine 60 building’s super-fast elevator, there’s nothing all that flashy about the town. It’s most prominent feature is a 600-foot…incinerator chimney.

Like the town where it’s set, IWGP is similarly restrained, un-flashy and ordinary. After a more theatrical cold open in which G-Boys leader Takashi is on a literal stage knocking out a junkie his gang has surrounded, things unfold relatively straightforward manner.

Takashi visits his old friend Makoto (who runs a fruit stand with his mom), and presents him with the 12-year-old Kurashina Mion, who tried to burn a whole building down because it was the hideout of a drug addict who hit her mom with a car. He’s hopeful Makoto can get Mion justice without violence.

Practically speaking, Makoto’s case is composed of a number of sit-down meetings in restaurants. That’s not very interesting, but it gradually emerges both to us and to an initially skeptical Mion that Makoto knows everybody who’s anybody in Ikebukuro, from gang higher-ups to cops, making him the best person to help her.

The fact Mion insists on tagging along even when Makoto cases a suspicious smoke shop, leading to her panicking and smashing a jar of “high grade herbs” and resulting in a chase. It’s here where Makoto’s encyclopedic knowledge of his town and its rooftops comes in handy, as he makes sure Mion can manage their escape route.

Makoto naturally also knows a super-hacker rather embarrassingly named Zero One, and once he gets the leads he needs from the official police, he relies on Zero and Takashi’s G-Boys to help stake out the smoke shop owner’s various properties.

Once they learn he’s almost certainly dealing illegal drugs, Makoto and Takashi discover the apartment is a marijuana-filled grow-house and drug lab. It’s here where I must assume that weed is still illegal in Japan (in many U.S. states you buy it legally for medical or recreational use), and that there are harder drugs than weed being made/sold by these guys.

Mion sticks her neck out to delay the smoke shop clerk from discovering Makoto and Takashi in the apartment. The clerk chases her down and nabs her, but Makoto comes to her rescue by delivering a devastating kick. It’s clear he prefers to avoid violence unless absolutely necessary, which makes sense as this is not a “stylized” version of Ikebukuro or Japan where anything goes.

In the end the bad guys are arrested for their illegal deeds, and Mion’s mom is released from the hospital with a clean bill of health. In the titular Ikebukuro West Gate Park, Mion thanks Makoto while introducing her mom. Thanks to him she knows that “some grown-ups are cool” and that she wouldn’t mind if someone like him was her dad.

Makoto and Takashi are confident the drug bust won’t come back on them since no one knows they’re involved…but their assumption is incorrect: someone is watching them, so there may be consequences that may threaten Makoto’s neutral status in the near future.

IWGP isn’t a show that will dazzle with its visuals, over-the-top action, or outrageous characters. It looks like it aims to be a more down-to-earth and realistic version of Durarara!! in which we’re presented with a complex tapestry of relationships and loyalties, with Makoto in the middle.

It’s a show with a quiet, confident competence. If that sounds like “boring”, it might be for some. But I for one enjoyed its relative subtlety and nuance, and will be back next week for more.

The Millionaire Detective – Balance: UNLIMITED – 02 – Unnatural Police

Whether Katou likes it or not, money and not hard work makes the world go ’round. When he stops to watch a pair of street comics believing they’ll benefit from a real audience, Kanbe simply deposits 10,000 yen and they immediately stop performing and go out drinking. Katou is right that they’d probably continue working if they didn’t get a windfall from Kanbe, but Kanbe is right that their end goal was cold hard cash, so why waste everyone’s time?

Just as it got Kanbe on the force in record time, money makes the wheels of justice turn a little smoother, even if the sound of those wheels doesn’t sit right with Katou. Kanbe got in at the ground floor, but clearly has big plans for his new official position, as he smells drugs on the pair of comics and brings them in for questioning.

An old-fashioned detective manages to get the name of their supplier, but Katou’s AI/AR glasses and deep pockets net the same result. This round may be a tie, but the perps wouldn’t be in her were it not for Kanbe’s (or his AI’s) sensitive nose. The dealer is a male model who is popular with female models from a certain agency.

Katou and Kanbe then engage in some good old-fahsioned stakeout on the dealer, and Kanbe tries (and not surprisingly likes) instant Cup Noodles for the first time. But Katou keeps the stakeout up far longer, and his stink intensifies as the junk in his car propagates. Katou learns with help from his human asset Mita that the model is getting his supply from a yakuza underboss, aided by a gorgeous raven-haired go-between.

Katou follows this go-between…to her and Kanbe’s house, or rather their palace. Turns out she’s Kanbe Suzue, and she’s either Daisuke’s wife or sister (they very closely resemble each other). If he’s James Bond, Suzue is both gadget-master Q and attractive information broker Moneypenny.

Suzue also seems to be a bit less of a stuffed shirt than Daisuke, donning casual work clothes as she works on various machinery in what could only be described as the Kanbe’s Batcave. The bottom line is that again Kanbe has acquired as much if not more intel from the power of his purse than Katou has managed with his vintage gumshoeing.

That doesn’t stop Katou from storming out of Kanbe Manor, reconvening with Mita, and securing a spot at the mob boss’s latest drug and sex party. Things start out fine as he nabs the distracted boss’s smartphone, but he doesn’t make it past the massive bouncer, and has to be saved by the police mascot “Patrol”, whom he assumes is Kanbe but is really Mita, who had been paid by Kanbe to secure the smartphone.

On the rooftop, Daisuke and Suzue arrive via goddamn Apache helicopter and, after purchasing the whole building, proceeds to gas the entire place, using the floor-penetrating missile devised by Suzue. The boss and twenty others are arrested for drug-related charges, as well as suspected in the murder of a model that came up in the beginning of the episode.

That something that felt like a throwaway line at the time grew into an entire season of The Wire (only with a happy ending) speaks to the strength and agility of the storytelling.

Still, Katou still isn’t okay with Kanbe’s methods. Katou feels insulted on behalf of everyone Kanbe pays off to achieve his goals, and yet he can’t argue with the results. Lives were saved, bad guys caught, and justice will be done, and all at the nifty price of US $770 million. All while he got bogged down and almost killed trying to do things his way.

I mentioned The Wire above because it did indeed take an entire season of episodes to achieve what Kanbe did in a matter of days. Katou feels a lot like a sober McNulty before the systems stacked against the Good Guys fully crushed his spirit. He’s good at his job; what one on The Wire would call “Natural Po-lice”.

Meanwhile Kanbe is about as unnatural a po-lice as you can get. But despite coming off as a bit of an asshole, he’s not in this for the money, but to do something good and worthwhile with it. As incompatible a package as Kanbe presents to Katou, the contents are the same. He’s good police too, and they’ll achieve a lot more good by working together.

P.S. The cars in this show are very well-cast so far. Katou drives a staid, reliable Toyota Corolla E160 Axio. Kanbe’s daily driver is a third-gen Bentley Continental GT. The casanova they’re tailing drives a loud bright-red Porsche Cayenne Turbo. And a woman no doubt after sesameacrylic’s heart, Suzue gets around in a slick yellow Alfa Romeo 4C, an appropriate machine for a true gearhead.

P.P.S. Unfortunately, this is the last episode of Millionaire Detective we’ll be getting for a while, as the remaining episodes have been delayed due to you-know-what-19. We’ll miss it, as it had Top-5 potential, and will most definitely pick it back up if and when future episodes air. UPDATE: It is now scheduled to re-air, starting with the first episode, on July 16. Fingers crossed!

Overlord II – 06

And now for something completely different. Head Butler Sebas Tian witnesses a man tossing a sack into the street; a sack containing a horribly battered and bloodied human girl. Because Sebas does not detest humans as many Guardians of Nazarick do, he takes pity on the girl, takes her back to the mansion, and has Solution heal her wounds.

Solution considers it beneath Sebas to bring human in, and beneath herself to heal her, but Sebas offers no explanations; he only issues orders, which Solution obeys. The girl is a new person when Sebas sees her post-healing, and offers her some porridge. The girl, whose name is Tuare, offers tearful thanks to Seba for saving her when no one else would.

Meanwhile, we check in with Brain Unglaus, who has been shaken to the core by his defeat at the hands of Shalltear. Gazef Stronoff plucks Brain off the rain-soaked streets where he had apparently lost the will to live, insisting he eat something before making the rash decision to go off and die. All Brain can think about is how weak and puny even the strongest humans are against the likes of Shalltear.

Sebas, Solution, Brain, and Gazef not enough for you? Don’t worry, there’s more: two kunoichi stealthily kill a patrol, then set a series of fields ablaze.

We learn the twin ninja are part of a group of powerful-looking adventurers determined to destroy as much of the of the super underworld syndicate Eight Fingers’ drug production and distribution network as possible. Solution mentioned that Tuare was most likely addicted to a drug; most likely the “Black Dust” the adventurers speak of.

Finally, we get a look in at a meeting between the leaders of Eight Fingers, including the one in charge of human trafficking and slaving, who laments he recently lost the girl we know as Tuare. Something tells me that as tough and connected as these guys might be (an adventurer says 8F can “topple nations”), they’re no match for Sebas, who won’t be letting Tuare get hurt anymore.

While I almost lament the conspicuous lack of lizardmen in this episode, a change of scenery is welcome. This is a huge, rich world, after all; focusing on just one small part of it would be a shame.