Insomniacs After School – 06 – Their Circumstances

The Astronomy Club has settled into a nice routine consisting of hanging out in the observatory, even on a hot day when there’s no A/C. Isaki’s solution is to “borrow” Kurashiki-sensei’s fan, which causes the teacher to chase her with a net. Yui critiques Ganta’s beach photo as a good image of the starry sky, but says more adjustments are needed to properly capture their reflection in the ocean.

Ganta is scanning through his photos when he comes upon the one of Isaki smiling on the beach, which Ukegawa catches a glimpse of. When Ukegawa encourages him to take more, Isaki is embarrassed and shoots Ganta an angry look. When they leave the mall, she puts quite a bit of distance between them.

When Ganta follows to apologize, she asks to see the picture, and is amazed and a little embarrassed by how big a smile she has in it. They go over the details of a potential training camp, then prepare to part ways once the traffic light changes to “walk.”

While waiting, Isaki tells Ganta to take more pictures of her…to leave a trace of her behind. After showing her taking pills last week, this is another ominous detail that’s too overt for me to dismiss, and I reiterate in no uncertain terms that I will not be okay if this show kills her off.

Obviously, neither is Ganta, who wasn’t witness to the pills but does know that she used to be sickly. It’s just another thing that keeps him up all night, on top of the anxiety over organizing a proper viewing party.

Organizing that party means dusting off his social skill in order to recruit helpers. He starts by asking Isaki’s friends, and in doing so, both he and we are allowed little glimpses into their lives and circumstances. Nono is a talented and focused artist. She agrees to help if he and Isaki model for her, then she makes their dancing pose the poster for the party.

When Ganta asks Kani, she refuses outright, making clear that while she’s friends with Isaki, she’s manifestly not friends with Ganta. This, despite the fact she pays enough attention to him to want to compete with and best him in all things. Frustrated by her attitude, he returns to the observatory to find Isaki sleeping soundly in a box, and he recommits to protecting this place…their place.

The next person he aims to recruit is Anamizu, who is in the middle of softball practice. While her friends regard her as a jock, she’s kind of a disaster at softball, and Ganta watches as her coach verbally abuses her, as is probably standard practice in such situations.

She’s surprised he stuck around, and tosses him a glove so she can practice her pitches. To his credit, Ganta hangs in there as she lobs pitch after wild pitch at him, until finally landing a strike right down Broad Street. Both of them are elated by the accomplishment, and you get the feeling they’ve been through something together.

More importantly, Ganta helped Anamizu find her pitch not by yelling at her or insulting her, but simply being there for her. She was always going to help out with the viewing party, but offers perhaps even more valuable advice in telling Ganta not to asking Kani again.

Sure enough, the first viewing party organizational meeting is interrupted by the arrival of Kani, who is upset she was left out even though she turned Ganta down.

At the arcade, Ganta asks Yui to join him and Isaki on their training camp, but her face turns red and she smacks him with the broom, calling him a “philanderer.” But after she’s calmed down, she tells Ganta she has no problem with him and Isaki going together, as long as they “do it right.”

While Nono is an artist and Anamizu an athlete, Kani is a cook, having grown up in the kitchen of her family’s okonomiyaki restaurant. When the group meets there and she serves them the special (so called because she made it), her folks pop by the table to thank them for putting up with “Princess Motoko”, so-called because she’s used to being the center of attention.

In the process of recruiting help for the viewing party, Ganta’s anxiety is only compounded, since learning more about his recruit’s lives and whole deals made him realize they all have a lot going on, and he’ll be troubling them all if the even goes badly.

While outside the restaurant on his own, Kurashiki-sensei joins him (and to vape) and tells him, essentially, “flaws are just talents for which we haven’t yet found the right purpose.” The viewing party may not go perfectly, but what’s important is that he’s branching out and putting in the effort needed for a good party to take place.

I am not a fan of the little ominous moments that keep popping up threatening some kind of Isaki-related tragedy on the horizon, I still liked how this episode fleshed out her friends, who are all very different in both their interests and how to approach them.

The detailed animation of Nana’s drawing, Anamizu’s pitching, and Kani’s cooking was top-notch, as was the newest batch of adorable Isaki poses and expressions. The music is also doing a great job contributing to the lush, cozy feel of the show. I truly can’t wait for the next episode to air.

Fire Force – 06 – Wherein Opposite Paths Converge

As shounen heroes tend to do, Shinra struts into Princess Hibana’s lair and prepares to go a second round, despite having learned nothing about how to defeat her ability that had him flat on the ground. He’s confident that between his talents and determination he’ll figure something out and rescue Iris. Hibana is ready for him, but because she’s a shounen villain, she explains what her ability does, which enables Shinra to resist it.

Of course, heating up her opponents so they become lightheaded ragdolls isn’t Hibana’s only trick. She conjures up scores of flowers to launch at Shinra, and finally releases her featured attack, which bears more than a passing similarity to Captain Kuchiki’s Senbonzakura.

Hibana is convinced that the world is made up of the burned and those who burn, and ever since all the sisters but her burned in the convent, she’s dedicated herself to…herself. Burning whoever and whatever she needs to to get ahead. It’s how she became a successful researcher, and it’s how she became Captain of the 5th.

But here’s the thing: Iris survived too, and Iris is still around and kicking despite not becoming “the devil” to the god Sol everyone prays to. Which means there were obviously more than just the single evil path Hibana took. Iris continued her sister training and became a good and caring person who helps comfort people both during and at the end of their lives.

As we see in the expanded flashback, Hibana was unique among the other sisters in her ability to manipulate flames into beautiful flowers, and change their colors with chemicals. Iris and the others loved her flowers, but the nuns in charge discouraged her, warning that she was, well, playing with fire.

But Iris never forgot their promise: that if she overcame her shyness, Hibana would show her her flame flowers once more. This time, defeated by the flames she believed only served her, and by someone she deemed just more “gravel” to be trod upon, the hard crust that those old flames created around her heart shattered, revealing her heart wasn’t hardened to the core.

Princess Hibana is redeemed, the 5th and 8th cease hostilities, and she even develops a little crush on Shinra, who after all managed to defeat her, making her reconsider whether his prattle about heroes and saving people without getting anything in return was just empty BS.

As for Captain Oubi, after the credits he calls Hinawa, announcing he’s finally ready to join the fray, only to be told that it’s already over, and the dramatic battle music stops abruptly.