Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Swordsmith Village Arc – 04 – In Their Feelings

As Tokitou is running past a Kotetsu about to be killed by a mutant fish demon, he remembers Tanjirou’s words about helping people coming back to help you, so he spares a few minutes to take the fish out. Kotetsu rides along as Tokitou heads back to the main battle.

Tanjirou is also isolated by the winged fragment of Hantengu. He gets hit by a sonic attack, but he learns that when he chops the demon up, their individual attacks grow weaker. The demon’s talons are a problem, but Tanjirou is hanging in there.

He’d really like to get back to Nezuko and Genya, who are dealing with the other three fragments of Hantengu: anger, pleasure, and sadness. Genya manages to knock off the Sad one with a combo of his shotgun, sword, and staunch refusal to die; he’s a tough cookie.

And then there’s Nezuko, who kicks the shit out of Pleasure and burns him with her blood. It’s great to see Nezuko actually fighting and doing a pretty good job of it. Her attacks and acrobatics are certainly some of the prettiest of the show, but she suffers a setback when Anger stabs her in the throat and starts hitting her with electricity.

Tanjirou finally uses Joy’s flight ability to his advantage, correctly deducing that the demon must be super light. He skewers him through the face and basically uses him as a glider to get back to the building where Nezuko and Genya are flagging.

Once back in the building, he slices off Joy’s foot and uses it to deflect Anger’s lightning, then slashes Anger’s tongue to buy time to free Nezuko. Anger nearly stabs Tanjirou in the throat, which would have been unpleasant, but Nezuko manages to stop the thrust with her immense strength.

Joy then swoops in and hits them with his big leaf fan thingy, which is essentially a wind and gravity-based attack that disables both Nezuko and Tanjirou. The timing of this is bad, as a huge horde of those mutant fish demons start to invade the village, whose swordsmiths are far better at making weapons than wielding them.

It’s fortunate, then, that Mitsuri was not stationed far from the village, and thanks to her crow, is on her way to spell Tanjirou, Nezuko, Genya, and Tokitou. She comes with a full head of steam and her trademark positive attitude, a ray of sunshine who will surely turn the tide.

Tenten Kakumei – 06 – There’s Something About Lainie

This episode wisely doesn’t attempt to top last week’s action and romance-packed dragon-slaying thriller. Instead, it does a lot of heavy lifting, plot-wise. Now that she has dragon magicite, Magical Girl Anisphia heads to Tilty Claret’s manor in order to harness it for her purposes. Euphie knows Tilty only through her reputation, which is that she’s an unstable individual who performs dangerous magic.

It’s not surprising that after supporting Anis and essentially keeping her from getting killed in that intense battle, Euphie is determined to protect Euphie from any and all threats to her person. What she doesn’t understand is that Anis considers Tilty a kindred spirit; someone just as kooky and willing to push the magical envelope as she is.

Anis presents Tilty with a proposal for implanting the dragon magicite into her body, and Tilty approves it, while Euphie is justifiably weary. But Anis doesn’t consider the dragon’s curse to be a bad thing, but rather a valuable opportunity to gain esoteric magical knowledge and power.

That venture is briefly interrupted by the king, who summons Anis to the palace where she sees that her mother the queen has returned alive and well from her travels. We don’t get a great sense of their relationship, but for all Anis’ rough edges her mom does trust her intuition and value her opinion on the matter.

The queen and king ask Anis to join them for a meeting with Lady Lainie Cyan tomorrow, in order to get to the bottom of her brother Al’s annulment. Anis agrees, but in the meantime, she has Tilty give her a totally badass giant back tattoo. I mean, as if Anis wasn’t cool enough already!

From the information she has, Anis already has a hypothesis about Lainie’s whole deal, and reveals to Ilia that her new tattoo, made with dragon magicite ink, will serve as a “countermeasure” when she meets with Lainie tomorrow. She also wants Ilia to join her.

At the royal audience, everything goes down pretty much as Anis expected. The moment Lainie opens her mouth and delcares that she didn’t have strong feelings for Al had no intention to wreck the royal wedding, everyone present immediately sympathizes with her without any further questioning.

Everyone, that is, except Anis, who uses that good old line “kimochi warui” to describe how Lainies words affect her in the same moment they charmed everyone else into siding with her. She asks to speak to Lainie one-on-one in private. When Al’s ally Lord Chartreuse protests, she stands her ground, and her parents back her—a testament to their love and trust in her.

Once Anis is alone with Lainie (with Ilia there as a kind of control) she inspects her body, and confirms it: Lainie is unknowingly using magic, because she has magicite in her heart. Specifically, the magic of fascination. It works indiscriminately, such that most people instantly like her, which often causes conflict between those people.

While perhaps not quite as gentle and caring as she is towards Euphie, Anis nevertheless treats Lainie not as someone who has done anything wrong, but as someone who has been afflicted with what amounts to be a curse. It’s a curse that has served her well socially at times, but also led to her being bullied and abused at others.

Anis relays her conclusions to her mother and father, and her mother, clearly a pragmatic sort, immediately remarks upon the great threat to the nation someone with Lainie’s power poses, especially since she’s apparently unable to control it. Anis instead says she’ll take Lainie in … before remembering she already has a pretty assistant at her villa!

Indeed, while Lainie had no knowledge of her power and meant no harm, it already has caused Prince Algard to cancel his engagement with Euphie. Does that mean that the entire incident with him publically bashing her was nothing but the result of him being “fascinated” by Lainie’s innate magical power?

Well…no, at least not entirely. Prince Algard clearly has a plan, and Lord Chartreuse informs him that Anis has discovered Lainie’s little secret, he intends to accelerate his plans. Algard is particularly villain-like in the way he looks, talks, and is lit here, speaking of Anis’ “weaknesses” he can exploit—no doubt considering Euphie to be one of them.

Is Algard still operating under Lainie’s influence? Or is he well aware of her power and thus has a resistance to it, and is using Lainie as a useful pawn—a wife who will bring anyone and everyone to his (and his allies’) side? Also, he doesn’t seem to be in charge of this plan, but is himself a pawn of Chartreuse and others hoping to depose the king.

Be it a battle of wits or magic, I’ll put my money on Team Anisphila any day. But despite her immense intelligence, her love for her brother and the sense of security her powers lend her may be causing her to underestimate him and those using him. In other words, I believe she’ll need Euphie more than ever as things look primed to get uglier.

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

Tenten Kakumei – 04 – Breaking the Mold

Anisphila, clearly sleep-deprived from making Euphyllia’s new magic sword, nods off in her lap for quite some time, and thanks her for it when she awakens. Euphie is just glad to be “somewhat useful”, unaware that she’s been Anis’ magicological muse for years.

Ilia, who continues to slay in every scene she’s in, scolds Anis for leaving herself so vulnerable “to the person she likes”, then lays into the princess for stinking and having messed up hair. It’s as if Ilia isn’t a maid at all, but the big sister Anis never had.

Euphie can’t help but feel smitten by Anis, who mistakes her for having suddenly come down with a cold. Into bed Euphie goes, and Nurse Anis prepares some medicine, even patting Euphie’s head like she’s her little sister. As Anis talks spiritedly about Arc-en-Ciel, Euphie simply watches her admiringly, as a beautiful bird that flies as far as it wants. Meanwhile, Euphie feels like a bird that just can’t stop falling.

She feels empty. Anis seems to sense this, and takes Euphie’s hand. Euphie asks what she should do; Anis of course says “whatever you want”. And if she doesn’t know what that is, that’s okay, they’ll take their time looking for that together. That’s when, after weaving her fingers into Euphie’s, Anis draws closer to Euphie, who starts to panic until it’s clear Anis is just touching her forehead to check for a fever. That negative space tho…

After a few moments like this, Euphie relaxes; she likes the feel of Anis’ warmth. She nods off, and when she wakes up, Anis is still there holding her hand as she sleeps, glowing in the sunlight, so bright and beautiful it makes Euphie’s chest ache.

Anis may have minced no words about her prospective romantic intentions with Euphie, but little by little Euphie is coming around to the fact that this girl is special, and makes her feel like no one else in the world ever has. That’s powerful, and I love how gently and poignantly the girls’ love is developing.

We briefly check in with Prince Algard, who is under house arrest after his little stunt. The head of the Ministry of the Arcane pays him a clandestine visit, no doubt to inform him of the appearance of the dragon in the cold open. Then we get right back to Euphyllia secretly watching Anis practice swordsmanship.

Ilia spots Euphie and tells her that the princess has taught herself most of her skills in battle, but then changes the subject to Euphie herself. As Euphie awkwardly follows Ilia as she does chores, Ilia asks her if she finds it hard to voluntarily do things outside her given role; her mold.

Euphie then states that she’d always worked towards becoming the best duke’s daughter and future queen she could be; an ideal Ilia tells her defined her self-worth. Ilia too was once fitted into a predetermined mold, and even offered to an old, rich man for marriage.

That mold was shattered by none other than Anisphila, who took her in, and demanded not to be treated like a princess, but something like equals. Ilia adds that it’s okay for Euphie to worry, because Anis will see to it she has all the time she needs to figure things out.

This lovely heart-to-heart is interrupted by Anis boisterously rushing at them with News: there’s a stampede of monsters, caused by the appearance of a dragon—and she’s going to take it down! It’s the first Euphie is hearing that Anis is not only an adventurer, but a Gold-Ranked one at that. She’s utterly stupified that a princess, even a princess like Anis, could go off and battle monsters.

And yet, Euphie remembers that Anis is a bird who can fly as far as she wants, looks at Ilia, who wordlessly tells her there’s no talking Anis out of this, and tells Anis that she accepts her flying off into danger to battle a dragon…but she’s coming too! Considering she’s a magical genius and has Arc-en-Ciel, I have no doubt she’ll be able to contribute.

Anis and Euphie unknowingly steal a march on Prince Algard, who barges into a royal council meeting and declares to his father that he’ll slay the dragon if he can get what he wants—Lainie Cyan’s hand in marriage. He tells his father and his courtiers how he’s always heard people saying “if only” his sister was a man.

Orphans can tell that after Anis and Algard got along famously as little kids, a rift grew between them when Anis discovered magicology. The resentment and bitterness have been stewing within his only son. He also knows that Anisphila could most definitely assume the throne, and perhaps do a better job than Algard—but made a conscious choice to reject it for Algard’s sake.

But while Anis’ intentions were good and loving, a part of Algard must also feel patronized by his amazing big sister. So the king isn’t going to hold him back from trying to stand on his own two feet and prove himself. The only problem is, I seriously doubt he’ll get his chance at the dragon before Anis and Euphie take care of it.

After two episodes off it’s good to have Algard back in the mix. I still hate him for what he did to Euphyllia, but I also understand why he did it. I can also understand how he wants to be with the woman he loves, not the one chosen for him. He’s an ass, but he’s also a compelling character who wants to break out of his mold.  I can’t wait to see him, Anis, and Euphie in action—either together or at cross purposes.

Tenten Kakumei – 03 – So Far From Me

It is a crying shame that such an intelligent, capable, and beautiful young woman as Euphyllia finds herself in such an existential purgatory. She’s immediately sympathetic as someone whose life has taken such a sudden, sharp turn, she’s still recovering from the whiplash. This episode focuses on the young lady and the unmoored feeling that now suffuses her days.

There’s no morning bed talk between Euphie and Anis, as the latter had flown of on her broom at dawn. She reappears during Euphie’s breakfast, setting off the house alarm system she invented, and offers Euphie a chance to ride the broom. While Anis promises not to let go, she does so, and Euphie takes to the skies full of joy and excitement. It’s only when she realizes Euphie isn’t behind her that she comes crashing down.

It’s a fitting practical symbol of Euphie’s difficulty acclimating to the sudden freedom Prince Algard’s shunning and Princess Anis’ friendship has afforded her. Ilia, the not-so-secret MVP of the show so far, assures Euphie that Anis was once even more absurd, idiotic, and insane, while at the same time calling her duty to her mistress a perk.

Ilia tells Euphie if she “doesn’t like” the current arrangement, she should say so now and save both of them. But Euphie doesn’t dislike it, she simply doesn’t quite yet understand Anis, saying she feels “so far from me.” Iwami Manaka delivers this line with such longing and vulnerability, I almost felt like Honda Tooru had entered the room.

There’s some foreboding about Euphie’s audience that day, but once it takes place I see that I had nothing to worry about. Both her father Duke Grantz and King Orphans contine to be the Best Dads. Both the prince’s and his friends (themselves sons of powerful nobles) have one version of the story, while Euphyllia has another.

Neither man questions Euphie’s version of events nor blames her for giving Lainie Cyan advise. Euphie refrains from vilifying Algard, as even in the moment she was being insulted and humiliated, she felt more righteousness than malice, like the prince was yanking against that which tied him down.

In this scene Iwami Manaka once more shows how good she is, resigned as she is to the fact the prince’s heart never had any room for her, but that fact isn’t a source of great pain. What she truly feels is nothing; numbness. While her father meant well, telling her she doesn’t have to worry about the future, and there’s “nothing for her to do” might just hurt her more than Algard did.

When she pays a visit the royal servants who had been preparing her portrait and wedding gown, Ilia mentions how bad Anisphia is at maintaining her measurements, and how it requires constant mending of her dresses. At the same time, Ilia adds that Euphie is now free of corsets and bustiers. There’s nothing to tie her down. Nothing at all.

The next morning, a totally sleep-deprived Anisphia bursts into the dining room like a bat out of hell, wearing practical work clothes. She’s extremely excited to present Euphyllia with the magical tool she promised to make. It’s a sword that allows Euphie to summon and focus all of her various magical skills. Fittingly, Anis names the sword Arc-en-Ciel.

This is another subtle yet effective nod to Anis’ past life in our world, as it is a French word for rainbow. Rainbow also carries double meaning as a reflection of the many colors and kinds of magic Euphie can wield, as well as its status as an LGBT symbol. With Arc-en-Ciel, Anis hoped to unlock Euphie’s smile, as well as to see her magic, which Anis considers more beautiful than anyone else’s.

So much great dialogue and vocal performances and nuanced facial expressions fills this episode, which is the most melancholy of the three and the closest look yet into Euphyllia’s personality and present situation. It all culminates when after Euphie’s badass demonstration, she and Anis sit under a tree together to rest.

Anis, who stayed up all night working on Arc-en-Ciel, nods off and rests her head on Euphie’s lap. But before she does, she says the sword and Euphie are a “perfect match” because Anis always thought she was “pretty as a rainbow”, and “so pretty it’s unfair.” It’s the first time anyone’s rested their head in her lap, and it makes Euphie cry.

She cries because she envies Anis so much for being who she is, and how badly she wants to be “even the least little bit” like her. But after harrowing days of being told she has nothing more to do, nothing to worry about, and nothing tying her down, here’s this feral princess literally weighing her down, keeping her tethered to the ground, with her. It’s something that must feel so good one could cry.

Euphie may still be overwhelmed by a personality so opposite hers, but at the end of the day, she has a good heart and kind soul just like Anis. In time she’ll surely feel more comfortable and more like she belongs. She may even find some of the Euphie she envies so rubbing off on her—and vice-versa. Freedom can be terrifying, so it’s best to have a guide.

Urusei Yatsura – 04 – As the Crow Flies

Ataru and Lum are playing Shinobu and Mendou in a spirited game of doubles tennis, and Lum ignores pleas not to cheat by flying. Her resulting point soars so far it smacks one of the tengu crows carrying a capsule containing a slumbering space princess. It slides down the hill and flattens Mendou, and Ataru pounces on it as soon as he sees the face of the occupant.

The crow attendants are impressed not with Ataru, but with Mendou’s “slicked-back” good looks. They believe he’ll be the perfect mate for their Princess Kurama to engage in “amorous congress” with. They urge Mendou to kiss her so she’ll awaken and get down to business.

Naturally, Mendou is a little hesitant, but Ataru isn’t, and steals the kiss. Lum immediately zaps him into the stratosphere, so the first thing Kurama sees is Mendou’s handsome mug, and assumes he’s The Guy.

The four crow attendants are fine with this, but their elder is against it. Tradition dictates that the one who awakened her with a kiss become her mate, and that’s the Ataru clown.

The others want to keep that a secret, and so does Lum, who agrees to help them ensure the princess ends up with Mendou. Kurama then arrives in class and is all over Mendou, causing a huge uproar among his many admirers. Both Ataru and Shinobu try to tell her the truth, but are tied up by the crows and Lum.

Lum and the crows then set to work building an impromptu “love nest” right in the schoolyard, into which Kurama drags a still-hesitant Mendou. While he recognizes her beauty, he still feels things are going way too fast. That’s when Ataru drops in, still tied up, to tell Kurama the truth: he kissed her.

The elder crow backs this up and says tradition must be adhered to. But when Kurama asks specifically why that is and what the consequences are, he has no idea. So the crows set up a device so he can confer with the past elders of the past of their homeworld.

The elder ends up going back to the very first elder, who admits to having created the tradition from whole cloth simply because it was the way he met his own bride after a long and exciting adventure.

At the news of this, Kurama smashes the miraculous device and says to hell with such a sappy, meaningly tradition. She storms back into her nest, and Mendou follows her in to commit himself to her as her groom.

That’s when Ataru puts a big ‘ol record scratch on their moment by dropping a giant temple bell on top of Mendou, sending him into his darkness basketcase raving mode. Kurama is instantly put off by such a pathetic display and leaves.

Freed from what ended up to be a capricious and arbitrary tradition, she’s raised her standards for who should be her husband, and sets out to find someone who “checks all the boxes”, marked by an inspiring postcard memory.

Princess Kurama is another fun new character with a cool, striking design and voiced with exquisite haughtiness by Mizuki Nana. I also enjoyed her crew of adorable doting crow tengu. While I salute her for washing her hands of Mendou and Ataru, the fact she’s just as shallow as they are suggests she won’t enjoy the best luck in her pursuit of the perfect man.

Urusei Yatsura – 03 – In Flies Another Hassle

It’s just another day in Ataru’s class with Lum hanging off of him and Shinobu throwing chairs and desks at him in, but then the mega-rich transfer student Mendou Shuutarou leaps out of one of his family’s fleet of private helicopters and is hit by one of the desks Shinobu throws. Shinobu approaches him to apologize and is immediately smitten with Mendou … giving a concerned Ataru a foot to the face.

Ataru doesn’t have to worry … much, as the moment Mendou spots Lum floating around class, he loses all interest in Shinobu. Unfortunately for him, Lum only cares about her Darling, Ataru. Mendou arrives on the day of the election for class president, but worried his administration will be too punitive towards his fellow male students, the lads nominate Ataru to run against him.

When the two tie (Ataru getting all the boys’ votes, Mendou getting all the girls’), Mendou challenges Ataru to a traditional Mendou family duel: a William Tell routine, but with cannon instead of pistols. In order to commence the duel Mendou has to throw a glove at Ataru, but finds it impossible due to Ataru’s ninja-like elusiveness. He ends up hitting Lum with his duel glove instead, and she zaps him for his trouble.

Despite the principal insisting students aren’t allowed to parachute into school, Mendou arrives the same way as his first day, only this time Lum runs into him instead of a desk, and the two get tangled in his parachute. Lum was searching for her Darling, who slipped away to have a private chat with Shinobu.

To Ataru’s dismay, Shinobu plainly admits she has the hots for Mendou and sees no reason why it’s any of his lecherous, cheating-ass’s business. Just then, the parachute falls, and Mendou ends up on top of Shinobu, who is as elated by the experience as Ataru is mortified.

When the class goes on a team-building trip to the woods, we see Lum in human clothes for the first time, and it’s clear she’s got fine fashion sense. As usual, Ataru would prefer to be alone with Shinobu than her, so when Mendou asks Lum if she’ll accompany him to explore a nearby limestone cave, Ataru invites Shinobu.

All four know that a cave means the potential for scary darkness and clinging to the one you like. The only problem is, everyone likes someone who doesn’t like them: Lum wants Ataru, Ataru wants Shinobu, Shinobu wants Mendou, and Mendou wants Lum. It’s a perfect romantic Ouroboros!

As expected, Ataru never ends up with his preferred clingmate, despite conspiring with Mendou to turn out their flashlights simultaneously. He first ends up with Lum while Shinobu gets Mendou. The next time they try it, the two boys end up with each other.

That’s when Ataru learns that Mendou becomes terrified to the point of tears and raving when he’s in a confined dark space … but only when girls aren’t looking at him. As in, even if Lum and Shinobu are right there with him, he wails like a baby when Ataru covers the girls’ eyes.

If it wasn’t clear from our previous dealings with Mendou, he’s just as much a lady-obsessed chowderhead as Ataru, only richer. He’s also voiced by fellow comedy vet Miyano Mamoru, one of the few seiyuu of his generation who can go toe-to-toe with Kamiya Hiroshi.

When the flashlights crap out for real, Lum is fed up and uses her electrical powers to light the way. But by doing so, she activates some kind of alien spaceship that was embedded in the rock, causing it to launch and create a huge hole in the caverns.

Everyone’s safe and sound, with the boys and girls embracing one another this time, but the ship attains Earth orbit and its passenger looks poised to awaken at any time … let’s hope next week. The more zany characters the merrier!

Call of the Night – 02 – Not Just Any Neck Will Do

Kou and Nazuna met quite by chance, so it’s not surprising the next night when Kou looks everywhere and can’t find her. They set neither a time nor a place. Fortunately fortune smiles upon him as Nazuna eventually drops in on him, saying she was busy looking for some rando to drink blood from.

Since Nazuna told Kou before that drinking blood is like eating and “copulating” at the same time, he’s a little miffed that she’d copulate with just anyone, but she tells him that’s just what vampires do. Different necks are like different kinds of food to them.

What matters is they found each other, and Kou wants to make sure it’s easier next time, so asks if they can exchange numbers. Only problem is, Nazuna doesn’t have a phone. Well, she does, but she apparently bought it in the 80s, because it’s almost the size of her boombox.

Nazuna led Kou to her place to find said gigantic phone, and once they’re there, she soon plops into bed after a long night of searching for necks to bite. Kou isn’t sure what to do until she opens the covers so he’ll join her. But the prospect of her sucking other necks sticks with him.

That’s when Nazuna confesses she was looking for him all night too…she was just too embarrassed to say it. Kou accepts her apology, and unlike the last time when he whipped out his neck willy-nilly, here he gets the timing right, and she leans in for a drink.

Both the character design and Amamiya Sora’s voice acting really nail that combination of predation and vulnerability has always made vampires so fascinating. As she dozes next to him, happy as a clam, Kou is relieved and happy not that she finds his blood tasty, but because they both felt the same way: they wanted to see each other again.

The next night they have an equally hard time finding each other, but the inevitably do, and Kou presents her with a solution to her problem that avoids her having to buy a (new) cell phone: a pair of receiver watches. While a desperately dorky thing, I’m not surprised that Nazuna is into it and wants to play with them.

This leads to Kou telling her a story of how he bought a pair when he was younger, even though he didn’t have a friend. Instead of making one, he hid the watch hoping someone would find it, but while it was eventually taken, he never worked up the courage to use it to call that person (or rodent).

Nazuna is right that it’s a bleak story on its face, but Kou is also right that being around people can make some people more lonely than being on their own. The two dorks proceed to have a grand old time communicating and laughing together on their watches, culminating with Kou remarking that they’re like a couple that just started out.

Nazuna puts the perfect capper on the evening by giving Kou another aerial ride over the city lights, this time to a new insert song. At times, the pair look like they’re dancing in the sky, ’cause they kinda are. The puppy love is strong here, and these two are simply the cutest.

Nazuna lands them on the school roof, and even though Kou hates school during the day and has not been going, the night makes it a more enjoyable place to be. Nazuna walks up to him and casually sucks his blood for the first time outside her apartment—and at school, no less! As she puts it, “Talk about indecent behavior!”

But while Nazuna is super casual about drinking his blood, showing a lot of skin, and saying “copulate”, Kou soon picks up that when it comes to love and romance, she gets super-embarrassed, which is how Kou “gets back” at her stolen neck bite by calling her by her first name and adding “-chan”, which turns her beet-red and has her covering her face with her awesome cloak.

On the way home just before daybreak, Kou wonders if the blue receiver watch he left atop the mailboxes is still out there somewhere. Just as he’s dismissing that idea, he gets a signal from his red receiver watch, and a girl in a school uniform and messy dark hair calls him by his name…

Call of the Night – 01 (First Impressions) – Carpe Noctem

Now that’s what I’m freakin’ talkin’ about! Call of the Night is a pitch-perfect vampire rom-com from start to finish with a keen understanding of how to set tone and atmosphere, and the entire episode takes place over a single night—one of my favorite settings, being a night owl myself.

The infrequent scenes from Yamori Kou’s ordinary middle school life are shot relatively normally, but the light (and indeed, normalness) of those scenes feels oppressive, while the sprawling, shimmering night feels like a release. Kou doesn’t get things like “crushes” and “confessions”, but this place? This time? He gets it.

Surfing the web for remedies to his insomnia, many bring up booze as a surefire way to eventually lose consciousness, so he walks up to a very brightly-lit beer vending machine, and just as he’s making his selection, a sinister figure wreathed in shadow sidles up to him, questioning his legal age to purchase alcohol.

But the girl is only playing around; she has no intention of snitching. Indeed, she tags along with Kou as his night continues, passing by three older dudes who took the advice of the internet and got rek’d. Kou is awed by how she can so casually high-five strangers, but that’s what the night is all about: it’s a time of freedom; of casting off inhibitions and living.

When Kou is starting to feel a little tired, the quirky lilac-haired girl invites him up to her place, a sparse studio with a futon on the floor. The girl disrobes—as in, removes her robe, not all her clothes—but reveals, well, a revealing crop top, which catches the romance-averse Kou off-guard and makes him wonder what this girl’s intentions are.

She tells him: there’s nothing in the world wrong with two people simply sleeping in the same bed together. Even though the weird girl remains very much awake and basically stares at him the whole time, Kou can’t help but feel far more relaxed with her beside him than no one at all.

Kou is also good at pretending to be asleep; so good that the girl assumes he is, the light suddenly changes from deep purplish blue to warmer fuchsia, she bares her fangs and sinks them into Kou’s neck. For those not paying attention, yes: this chick is a vampire.

If a series is going to spend so much time at night, it had better know what to do with light, shadow, and color, and boy does Call of the Night ever know. Some scenes even reminded me of Fantasia. When Kou wakes up with blood on his neck, her fib about a giant mosquito doesn’t hold water (or blood).

That said, he keeps his head as the girl causally admits what she is, though he wonders why he hasn’t become a vampire. Here’s where the two find they share something in common, besides a love of the night: while some vampires go around making a whole mess of offspring, she’d…rather not. Just like Kou would rather not participate in all the junior high drama.

Perhaps it’s because she feels as comfortable around him as he does around her, the girl lets slip a truth about vampires: one way to become one is to have your blood sucked by a vampire you’re in love with. One thing I love about this girl is that she can get just as frazzled talking about this stuff as Kou.

She redirects the conversation to ask him how his first night “taking a step outside the norm” felt, out here in the place furthest he can hope to get from the things he thinks are a pain. He asks her formally to let him fall in love with her, but she promises nothing. She’ll just keep sucking his blood; if he wants to fall for her, he can go right ahead.

Now that they’re in agreement, they exchange names—her’s is Nanakusa Nazuna—and she resolves to “infuse more night” into him and his blood, which she maintains tastes best at night, just before going to bed. To that end, Nazuna kicks him off the roof of her high-rise apartment building…only to catch him in the blink of an eye long before he hits the pavement.

Thence, Nazuna princess carries Kou on aerial tour of the late night cityscape, flipping him upside down for an even more unique perspective. As he simply sits there in her arms in quiet but intense awe at what’s happening, Nazuna seems to take a great deal of pleasure from it as well.

And that’s the key to this: for as traditionally horny as vampires are depicted and as revealing as Nazuna’s garb is, this is a surprisingly sweet and innocent love story in the works. It’s about two outsiders in their happy place, staying up late and embracing the freedom of the night. With this banger of a premiere, the summer season has finally kicked off in earnest!

Vlad Love – 10 – The Incredible Cyber-Franken-Kong

I have myself been blasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed.—Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

In a return to “conventional” Vlad Love, Chihiro-sensei introduces the new transfer student to the night class: Franken Yasohachi, an immense part-robot, part-golem who must be plugged in to operate. Mai also recognizes him as…her fiancée. Needless to say, this is problematic for Mitsugu. Mai tells the story of how this came to be, starting with when she once ran away from home to escape one of her awful previous step-moms.

While picking petals to determine whether to kill her, lil’ Mai is approached by Franken offering her a single flower. While initially startled, Mai is charmed by his face and accepts the flower, which in vamp society is how one proposes marriage. The night class soon learns their new transfer student has the brains of geniuses both scientific and musical and the body of an olympic athlete. He can even heel-toe an AE86 Trueno GT-Apex!

But even with a newly-installed battery, Franken can only operate unplugged for three minutes, and charging back up takes three hours—almost as slow as the GM EV1. As such, during off-hours he’s stored in a closet, while Mitsugu gets to hang out with Mai. Mitsugu is happy it’s a quiet night, seemingly oblivious to the giant electrical storm outside that brings Franken to wireless life.

Woozy from her blood dinner, Mai mistakes Mitsugu for “Daddy” and wants to share her closet with her for the night. Mitsugu swallows hard and decides to see how this will play out, but the scene is interrupted by the suddenly berserk Franken, who is a bit too aggro in offering Mai another flower. Mitusu and Mai escape on Mai’s umbrella.

During their escape, Franken is hit by lightning again (a one in 9 million chance!) and transforms into a Hulk-like green rage monster who starts stomping and smashing his way through Minato, Tokyo. We’re treated to some cool cityscapes as the JSDF scrambles apaches, while Franken-Hulk climbs Tokyo Tower like King Kong climbed the Empire State Building.

After an interminable call with a half-asleep Chihiro who can’t be otherwise bothered, Mai and Mitsugu learn how to switch the monster off: land on his head and twist the bolt on his head, and he goes out like a light. The city is saved from total destruction (again), and the dynamic duo of Mitsugu and Mai were the ones to save it.

Franken is returned to his closet, unplugged and insulated to prevent further power surges. The flower meant for Mai remains in his hand, wilting away. Who knows if we’ll see Franken again, but he was a fun new member of the class while he lasted.

Vlad Love – 02 – The Blood Defines the Drinker

It’s been over a month since the first episode of Vlad Love,but five more episodes have arrived just in time for Valentine’s Day. I just wish the episode had a little more vlad and love and less of Mitsugu’s classmates. The opening act takes place entirely within the confines of the nurse’s office, which grows both stale and claustrophobic after a while.

She’s been able to recruit a fair number of students to donate blood, but the vast majority are horny boys. Mitsugu makes it known she doens’t want Mai to drink boys’ blood, as it could adversely affect her loveliness. Only three girls end up donating, each representing a different blood type that reflects their personalities—though Nurse Chihiro insists there’s no scientific proof of that.

Mitsugu takes the three girls’ blood to Mai, and much to her consternation, Mai can’t help but drink all three bottles, perhaps due to pent-up hunger. Sure enough, with each blood type she drinks she exhibits the same characteristics of the donor, thus proving Nurse Chihiro wrong. The only apparent side effect of mixing the blood types is that Mai jumps from one personality to the next.

Hidaka Rina clearly has a ton of fun voicing all these different Mais, culminating in her singing karaoke on the table before collapsing from overexersion. She begs her host for more blood, but as Mitsugu is thawing her last pouch, Mai finds and drinks the blood of a 2,000 year old Mesopotamian demon, which had resided in one of the archaeological artifacts in Mitsugu’s house. Mai starts “buzzing” and eventually fires eye lasers at a wall, busting out to go on an evening “stroll”.

The stroll consists of Mai using her vampire umbrella to fly across the nightscape as the morning sun begins to rise. Mitsugu grabs on for dear life and is initially terrified, but eventually calms down, as she is, after all, in the arms of a surpassingly cute girl.  Mai eventually “runs out of gas”, sending the two plummeting back to the earth, and because this is a show where physical harm has no lasting effect on anyone, Mitsug survives the fall, though she and Mai end up in the literal lion’s den of the local zoo.

Much to Mitsugu’s surprise, Mai is able to talk to the lion and other animals (likely due to the demon blood), and she releases them to join her on her stroll, resulting in a rampage that makes the newspapers. As Mitsugu celebrates the fact she can create “the ideal girl” by tailoring Mai’s blood diet, Mai sleeps one off on a pile of zoo animals in the kitchen.

While it has some pacing issues and much of its comedy is trying too hard to be zany, I can’t deny I’m glad Vlad Love is back, from the moment I saw it’s OP, which is the season’s best by far. The show doesn’t look or sound or act like any other show airing, which is enough to celebrate its existence, while the winning central queer romance is as rare and refreshing as, well, a donation-addicted chimera-blooded protagonist!

Otherside Picnic – 03 – It Takes a Village

It’s just Sorao and Toriko this week, as Otherside Picnic sticks to a simple formula: the two meet up, go to the Otherside, encounter something dangerous, then make it back safe and sound. Rinse, repeat. Throughout each of the three visits we’ve watched, Sorao wonders if she really should keep hanging out with Toriko, but hasn’t been able to keep herself from doing so—in large part because Toriko is fun and pretty.

This week while searching for the supply point where Toriko first found her gun, the two go into the nitty-gritty of how to search for glitches along their path. Wide shots of the two give a sense of scale of their surroundings, but because they’re rendered in clunky CG it pulls me out of those scenes every time.

The “Big-Heads” who inhabit the village are initially creepy, but as soon as there are dozens of them rendered in CGI, they look more goofy than anything else. And while they end up chasing the girls, one could argue they had a right to be mad about their friends getting shot by intruders.

During the ensuing chase, the girls stop numerous times while Big-Heads don’t, yet they’re never caught.  Also, both Sorao and Toriko stumble, but neither of them help the other up. They end up escaping back to their world through a miniature shrine, showing that there are many different ways in and out of the Otherside.

It’s somewhat deflating that even after Toriko expresses genuine affection for her, Sorao ends up in the precise same headspace as the beginning of the episode: wondering whether she should rethink continuing these excursions with Toriko. The kids chasing each other in masks that were the same colors as the Big-Heads was a neat little detail. Otherwise, three episodes in I must admit I’m getting a little bored with this.

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle – 08 – The Nightmare Continues!

Hero Akatsuki’s comrade Kisho is able to open a mini-wormhole using the gem in the princess’ tiara, but it’s only big enough for Akatsuki to pass his hand through and tap Syalis’ head. This apparently causes her to have “nightmares”, so she crashes a Big Ten meeting to tell everyone about it so she’ll feel better. At no point is anyone able to stop her from doing this, once again demonstrating the true Master of the Demon Castle.

I put “nightmare” in quotes, because what she really has is a dream about Akatsuki when they were kids. Of course, he’s so forgettable she refers to him as “A-whatsisname”. Though he’s just presenting her with a bouquet, when he trips on a rock it ends up in her face, complete with thorns and a bee. She also details a “race” they had that ended in his apparent death, only for her to forget him when he returned alive.

The kicker is that she describes this forgettable person as her fiancee, which leads the Demon Cleric (and no one else) to assume she’s talking about Akatsuki. Due to talking about her “nightmare” Syalis is able to go back to sleep, while the Fire Venom Dragon must head into battle with the heroes without a sendoff party, the poor guy!

In the next segment, Syalis writes a death letter to her mother, even though she’s merely suffering from a bad cavity. We quickly learn that she’s overdramatic when it comes to any malady that befalls her, as well as perhaps the worst patient a doctor (or in this case dentist) could have.

Her big hang-up is an absolute refusal to show anyone (aside from her loyal Teddy Demons)  the inside of her mouth, for a reason she keeps secret until the very end: her tongue is apparently a little shorter than average. Due to her histrionics the entire Demon Castle gathers in the operating theater, and we get a cameo from Cubey, another member of the female demons.

In the final segment (there are notably no sleeping quests this week, even though she’s asleep at the end of each segment), Fire Venom Dragon returns to the castle, utterly defeated after a three-day, three-night battle against Akatsuki. When he tells them his bag of items meant to help him in his battle had been replaced by…other things, they all assume it’s more Princess mischief.

However, as he further details the items he found in the bag, one by one his allies remember having placed those items there for various reasons and forgot to replace them with the proper weapons. Of course, each person, including Twilight, is so embarrassed, they take the easy out and falsely accuse the Princess of doing what they did.

This whips the dragon into a rage, but they all hold him back, knowing full well Syalis doesn’t deserve to be chewed out, at least this time. As for Syalis, she’s reading a difficult grimoire, eating avocado, and drinking a potion like a sports drink. Looks like a pretty good night!