Kakushigoto – 11 – Out With a Bang

When Hime calls for a “family meeting”, the fact there’s no dedicated meeting room in their house becomes an issue. As Kakushi goes on a walk to ruminate about it, he encounters two others dreading their own meetings in Tomaruin and Ichiko.

Of course, when all three converge at a disused well (the ancient equivalent of a water cooler), they each assume the other two are talking about their own meeting, and come away with heightened opinions of each other. Tomaruin’s editor’s meeting results in him securing a fancy dinner for himself, Kakushi, and the Editor-in-Chief.

Kakushi interprets this as a signal that his manga is about to get the axe. The conversation remains vague and never gets to a point where Kakushi’s misunderstanding is resolved. When it does enter details, such as the EIC mentioning “colored pages”, Kakushi believes that’s finally being offered as a way for him to “go out with a bang”; in reality the EIC just thinks Kakushi wants colored pages after a long time without.

Kakushi then relays this misunderstanding to his assistance, and they not only take it well, they all believe the timing is perfect for them to travel, finish school, or work on their own thing. Because everyone thinks this is it for the manga and there’s nothing to lose, Kakushi goes all out, and both editors and readers respond favorably.

It isn’t until Hime’s friends’ detective agency locates a suitable spot for a meeting with her dad (i.e. another well) that Kakushi learns the manga isn’t going anywhere, and never was. Tomaruin loses the manuscript pages down a well, and when he’s counting them as he retrieves them, he sounds for all the world like a ghost.

This freaks out both Hime and Kakushi, postponing their meeting, and Kakushi has Roku pull Hime to safety before discovering it’s just his editor. Once he has the right of things, he informs the assistants, who were all gung-ho about moving on, and a dark cloud settles over their heads.

Ultimately the meeting Hime wanted was about learning to make karaage to bring to a friend’s birthday. Since she’s too young to deep-fry, she wants her dad’s help, and Kakushi warmly accepts. Fast-forward six months, and the eleventh episode portrays not one but two parties for Hime’s eleventh birthday.

The first one is a cookout with both Hime’s and Kakushi’s friends and associates, and a good time is had by all. The second is just for Hime, Kakushi, and Roku, with a cake and a gift of a music box. Hime looks forward to spending more years with her dad, thinking these good times will never end.

But at some point, we know they did, and Hime and Kakushi became separated…somehow. The show is still coy about the particulars, but the day Hime turns eighteen is decidedly grey and morose.  With a big old Roku beside her, Hime wistfully flips through the album of good times past and secures her music box.

Then there’s a sound at the door, and when she answers, a key and a map were left behind, along with a note stating “secrets lie here”, referring to the marked location on the map. With just one episode left, we’re sure to get the last pieces to make the clearest picture yet of What Exactly Happened between her eleventh and eighteenth birthdays, and—hopefully—What Will Happen Next.

Ai Tenchi Muyo! – 30

This is RABUJOI’s 3,000th anime review!

Wow, has it already been thirty episodes? How time flies when you watch something four minutes at a time. For the first twenty-nine, we’d only gotten the slightest hints about what exactly was going on, and not much at all about precisely what Tenchi was up to.

Now we get those answers all at once in an episode that does wonders for the cohesion of the overall show. The events of this episode take place before all the Junai High stuff, so it would have worked just fine as the first episode, in fact, but that would have been too dull. No, I like it right here, three-fifths of the way in, after we’ve already gone through many adventures with Tenchi and his students.

As it happens, Momo and likely Beni, are “temporal castaways” Tenchi was sent into the past to rescue and return to their rightful time and place. When that mission failed and another temporal rift opened, he found himself back in Washuu’s lab, while Momo and Beni ended up in the present day at Junai High.

Washuu convenes a family meeting with Tenchi, Ryouko, and the Jurai sisters, and formulate a new plan: Tenchi will infiltrate the school posing as a student teacher and gather information. That brings us to the actual, baffling first episode of the show, with Tenchi ending up in the middle of the forest. (Ha, I thought Kurihara-sensei was Washuu…what a FOOL I was!)

So yeah, this was a very informative episode that puts everything we’d seen before in a new and more coherent light, and will inform the show’s final two-fifths.