DanMachi IV – 20 – Her Justice

A week of absolutely sterling anime continues with this, the long-awaited (and feared) definitive depiction of the demise of Astrea Familia and Ryuu’s subsequent fall from grace. Jura and Rudra Familia, working under Evilus, did indeed set a trap for Astrea, but it didn’t work. However, detonating all of those bombs awakened the Juggernaut, which turned even a dream team like Astrea into mincemeat with sickening speed and efficiency.

It’s a tough, horrific watch, as it should be. And even if we haven’t spent nearly as much time with the various members of Astrea, all I needed to do was imagine if it were members of Hestia instead dropping one by one to understand the weight being placed on Ryuu by Alise to “live enough for everyone”. Alise trusts Ryuu to always “do the right thing”. Alise, Kaguya, and Lyra die, but they go out fighting in a literal blaze of glory.

The weight proves too much for Ryuu, and she is soon consumed with anger and hatred. She leaves the goddess Astrea (though is able to keep her blessing) and transforms into an angel of death, tearing through every Rudra Familia and Evilus stronghold, hideout and hovel and leaving no one alive in her path, like a merciless calamitous gale wind.

Once her twisted form of justice is finally complete when she finds, corners, and stabs the shit out of Jura (whom she only learns much later survived), Ryuu feels like an empty husk, hollowed out by all the hatred and murder. But when she collapses, it happens to be near the tavern where one Syr Flover works, and that’s all that’s needed to know that the gods aren’t done with Ryuu quite yet.

She’d go on to not only work with Syr and the other ladies at the tavern, but to swoop in and save the lives of Bell, Hestia, Welf, Lili, and everyone else, more times than Bell can count. She may have thought she was simply continuing her quest of vengeance, but to Bell, it meant she was his hero, plain and simple. He came back for her at the Coliseum because it’s what she’d do for him, and he won’t leave her behind because his justice is making it home alive with her.

Bell admits he didn’t know the “old Ryuu”, and that she may have made many a mistake in her past. All that matters to him is how many times he and his Familia would be dust without her. Without Ryuu even realizing it, the justice of her Familia lived on, and continues to live on.

When a Barbarian busts through the wall and Bell looks like he’s knocked out and about to be eaten, Ryuu desperately cries out his name, only for him to kill the monster and reveal he was playing possum, causing her to blush profusely.

The two eventually make it to a spring beneath the Coliseum, and they might just be the first two adventurers to make it there. When Bell collapses from exhaustion into the water, Ryuu gets in with him, cradles him, and heals him. Let those waters cleanse Ryuu of the hate, grief, regret and anguish she allowed to define her for so long, as well as the notion that she doesn’t deserve to live, or to love.

What happened to Astrea Familia was a abject tragedy. But it wasn’t her fault, and it was a blessing that she survived, because it meant she was alive to rescue Bell & Co. all those times. Now that they finally have a place to rest and heal, and the Xenos contingent aren’t far above them, it’s looking like both Bell and Ryuu are going to make it out of this. They won’t be the same  people they were when they first fell down there…but that’s not a bad thing.

DanMachi IV – 19 – No Time to Die

This week starts with a flashback chat between Ryuu and her diminutive colleague Lyra (a prum like Lili). Lyra warns Ryuu not to try to create the answer to “what is right” by gathering everyone else’s opinions, but to determine what that means for herself. Knowledge is a weapon, info is a friend, and wisdom is what is needed to use both to save others, and oneself.

At this point on the 37th floor, Ryuu’s only remaining purpose in life is to make sure Bell is armed with as much knowledge and information as possible so he can turn them into his own wisdom, just as she did. She is now the teacher Lyra was to her, and she’s able to come up with a plan Bell would never have thought of.

They can’t go around the coliseum—they have to go straight through it to reach the normal route and the stair to the higher floor. But with the monsters in the coliseum infinitely battling each other and re-spawning the instant they’re killed they won’t be able to fight their way through. So they wear a skull sheep pelt, cover themselves in barbarian heart blood, and try to sneak their way through the closest thing to hell we’ve yet seen in the Dungeon.

I was a ball of anxiety throughout the sneaking session, just waiting for one of the monsters to notice them (or for Bell to step on the pelt and expose them). Turns out the former happens when a skeleton grabs him, and from there it becomes a race to the other end of the coliseum before they’re completely overrun by the beasts zeroing in on them en masse.

When they reach a certain point, Ryuu asks Bell to go to the other end of the bridge and clear the way while she holds off the monsters on her side. Bell says “I’ll be right back” but after he kills the monsters on his end, Ryuu uses her wind magic to fly him to the other side of the bridge…and then collapses the bridge. She’s ensuring none of the coliseum monsters can get to Bell…and also sealing her fate.

When Ryuu contemplates her imminent demise and reunion with her long-lose Astrea companions, saying it was worth it if Bell survives, Hayami Saori does some of her absolute finest work. But unlike Ryuu, I had a distinct feeling Bell wasn’t sprinting as hard as he could towards safety. Instead, he ran all the hell the way around the coliseum to meet back up with Ryuu, and is ready with his signature Bell-Tollin’ Firebolt to deal with the monsters surrounding her.

When Bell unleashes that Firebolt and sets the entire coliseum and everything in it ablaze, he is making his ideals a reality, exactly what Arise told Ryuu is what true heroes are capable of doing. Ryuu misunderstood something crucial about Bell. No matter how scared he was or helpless he seemed, there was never any chance he’d let her sacrifice herself to save him.

I know Ryuu has a low opinion of herself for being the sole survivor of the extinction of Astrea, and many of the awful things she’s done since then. But for all her amassed knowledge, she didn’t have the wisdom to realize she wasn’t going to get one over on a hero, or that sometimes it doesn’t matter what you think of yourself, but what others think of you.

Bell considers her a dear friend and mentor, not an irredeemable wretch, and used the power he had to stop her from sacrificing herself. She can call him an idiot, but until she can start turning ideals into reality, she’d sure as hell better accept his idiocy, ’cause he ain’t changing!

Bocchi the Rock! – 08 – Everything Is In Reach

The sky is dark, the rain falls hard, and the lone and level sands of the empty STARRY stretch far away. P.A. hopes Kessoku Band aren’t too heartbroken by the small crowd. Seika says “real” bands get “screwed over by life” all the time, so it’s a teachable moment. But form the way Seika is hiding her face, P.A. can tell she’s hiding tears, and offers a hanky.

Seika’s little sister Nijika, whom she wanted to shine so badly tonight, tells her bandmates they just need to take this in stride. Her cheerful exhortations inspire Bocchi to be her best self for this concert. In turn, Bocchi’s goofiness with her star sunglasses and fake mustache lighten the otherwise somber, almost funereal mood.

Then we hear the door to the club open, and what do you know, the first person to arrive is our favorite bass chaos gremlin, Hiroi Kikuri, who as it turns out was Seika’s kohai at college, and at least to her has somehow become an even larger pain in the ass. But when Kikuri showed up, my spirits soared; she’s so awesome, it would be fine if it was just her, Seika and P.A.

But the door to the club opens again, and my dopamine levels rose still higher as the two yukata girls kept their promise to watch Bocchi play again. Of the twenty tickets Kessoku Band sold, the only three who show are the ones who heard Bocchi play. The other seven who show for a total crowd compliment of ten came for the band that plays after them. They’ve never heard of Kessoku Band, and dismiss it as “a waste of time.”

Sadly, Kessoku Band plays down to those expectations in their first song. It’s an unmitigated disaster, and Bocchi points out all of the ways they utterly fail, from Nijika being a beat too slow with the drums, and her and Ryou oddly being out of synch, to Ikuyo playing far worse than she did in practice.

It’s as clear as the day is dark that the band is letting the typhoon and the mostly disinterested crowd get to them, shifting them out of the good vibes and camaraderie they’d built up to that point. After their first song, they look and sound lost and defeated, and not a single person claps when the song mercifully comes to an end.

It’s at this point in the concert, with the first song over and the second yet to begin, where for once Bocchi doesn’t fear and expect the worst case scenario and descends into a pit of despair with the others. Instead, she recalls how amazing it felt to play in front of people on the street with Kikuri and watch their faces become laced with joy.

She decides, on her own, that she won’t let this concert stay the way it’s been so far, and opens up a defiantly wicked string of riffs that zap her bandmates back into coherence. At first Ikuyo, Nijika, and even Ryou simply watch their guitarist shred epically, but then they see the wave she’s built up and jump on and ride it.

Bocchi’s abject refusal to let their concert bomb lifts the rest of the band, and their second song lifts every face in the audience from their phones. The most introverted and neurotic member of the band is the one who forces these ten people to pay attention, because there is fucking rocking going on.

The ensuing progression of the song to its completion comprises some of the very best minutes of anime I have ever seen in terms of pure emotional resonance and intensity. Bocchi rages against the dying of the light, drags the others with her, and they pull out their best performance ever. Polite and thoroughly surprised applause ensues.

While I would have been fine hearing their third song, we really didn’t need to; the second song, in which Bocchi got everyone back on track, was the crucial one, and it ruled, hard. Instead the episode skips to the afterparty at an izakaya, where Hiroi Kikuri’s name is finally uttered on camera as she introduces herself as a genius bassist and unparalleled bass lover.

Not surprisngly, fellow bassist Ryou has been to some of Kikuri’s shows, which tend to be what she calls “blind-drunk concerts” where at one point Kikuri stepped on Ryou’s face. What’s more cot-damn rock-and-roll than that?! Seika asks Ikuyo why she Instagrams so much, and Ikuyo actually gives a very apt reason: “it’s like giving people a piece of the fun” she’s having.

This is Bocchi’s very first time in an izakaya. She’s surprised to find they’re quite fun, and when she wonders if they’ll be more fun when she’s old enough to drink, she notices a pair of salarymen at the bar (in a very different and more severe art style), one of whom suspects his wife is cheating because he works such long hours. In an episode full of great lines, Bocchi’s reaction to this scene—“Is life just an unrelenting hell?” might just take the karaage.

She then slips into Bocchi Time, complete with a stop-motion Game of Life analog and another peek into a bad future where she lives in her dark closet and chugs shochu. This busts Bocchi, but her friends are able to pull her back to reality. Ikuyo’s name is also finally uttered—by Ryou of all people—exposing her complex about her name sounding like a pun: “I’m here! Let’s go!” The afterparty is a brilliant collection of character moments and interactions.

Kikuri actually heard Bocchi’s ramblings about supporting herself with a guitar and becoming a NEET, and encourages her to simply chill out and enjoy herself. P.A. and Seika add their voices to this approach, as keeping the “weight of success” on one’s shoulders constantly will only cause misery. It’s important to enjoy the process; the ride.

When Bocchi notices Nijika isn’t around, she steps outside and finds her standing alone, getting some fresh air. This felt like another big step forward for Bocchi, who is able to take enough of a break from all the shit going on in her head to notice that someone might be up with one of her friends.

When Bocchi started righteously shredding earlier, Nijika says she realized Bocchi was “guitarhero” from YouTube. Cornered, Bocchi admits she is, even if she considers herself far from a hero, and wanted to wait to tell Nijika and the others until she “fixed” herself.

Nijika then opens up to Bocchi like she never has before, saying how her mom died when she was little and her dad was never around, so her sister was her family. Her love of music sprouted form attending Seika’s concerts out of necessity, and she believes she inspired Seika to quit her band and opened the club in part for her sake.

Nijika then tells Bocchi her dream isn’t just to play at the Budokan, but to create a band popular enough to make STARRY famous. And since she’s started that venture, every time things seem like they’re at their worst, Bocchi is the one who “breaks through it” for them. Nijika tells Bocchi that she was unassailably a hero to her today.

This sharing leads to Bocchi sharing back: her dream is to make Kessoku Band the best band it can be…and become successful enough that she can quit school. Nijika appreciates Bocchi’s honestly, giving her a sun-bright smile as she heads back to the party, telling her she hopes Bocchi will keep showing them more of “Bocchi’s Rock”—or “Bocchi the Rock!”

Following that titular line is a cut to black and a vertical crawl of credits over a new ending theme. And honestly? This could have been a fitting end to the series. But I’m glad it’s not. I want to see more of Bocchi’s Rock too! I don’t know if what follows will ever be as good as this, but I sure am looking forward to finding out!

RABUJOI WORLD HERITAGE LIST

Isekai Ojisan – 07 – Power Trip

We witness along with Takafumi and Fujimiya Ojisan’s continued misinterpreting of Elf’s words and actions (ironic considering his translation ability), accusing her of being a thief for insisting on keeping the hoodie she believe was gived to her as a gift.

That said, Elf did give Ojisan something in return: her sparkly green dress you can bet cost a lot more than the ratty hoodie. Ojisan lets Fujimiya try it on, and Takafumi admits she looks good in it. The trio are trying to determing how Ojisan’s “Wild Talker” translation is triggered, but Fujimiya is called away on an errand.

Takafumi and Ojisan keep watching, and come upon the first time Ojisan met Alicia (Toyosaki Aki) and her party-mates Raiga and Edgar, who came to fight a horde of goblins and assumed Ojisan was one of them due to his looks. The group then teams up to fight the actual goblin horde.

That said, Alicia’s party doesn’t get to do much but watch as Ojisan puts on an amazing display of magic. Ojisan claims that playing Golden Axe on Genesis prepared him for this fight while the opposite is true. That said, he prevails, and as the party heads to the village for their reward, Alicia takes Ojisan aside and tells him she witnessed him raising the barrier protecting Luvaldram.

Rather than trust her to keep the secret (and she says she will), he wipes her memory and those of Edgar and Raiga, ending their friendship before it could really take off. However, Ojisan soon encounters the three again, this time assuming he’s the beast they were sent to slay due to his appearance It’s not deja vu for them since all memory of him was wiped.

When they describe the beast as a prickly hedgehog that rolls up into a ball to attack, Ojisan’s mind naturally wanders to visions of Sonic. However, the actual beast turns out to be a biologically correct hedgehog, and thus unrecognizable to Ojisan. Worse, when he uses Wild Talker to converse, he learns the giant hedgehog is a sadistic monster, and incinerates him on the spot.

Suddenly a phone rings; Fujimiya’s phone, which she left at Takafumi’s. He enlists his uncle’s aid in flying him to Fujimiya’s college where they spot her being hassled by a skeevy looking dude. Ojisan leaves the handling of the situation to his nephew, lending him his powers for an hour, just in case.

But when Takafumi gets a better look at the red-haired menace who is all over Fujimiya, he suddenly recognizes him as her cute little brother, Chiaki…who is still in the fourth damn grade. Similarly, when Chiaki realizes it’s Takafumi, his twisted, grotesque face (a quality his older sister shared at that age) suddenly becomes flush and enthusiastic.

Chiaki looking like a skeevy twenty-year old while he’s actually Fujimiya’s fourth-grade brother is an amazing joke that had me rolling, especially due to the consistency with which young Fujimiyas are depicted as more orc (or goblin)-like than everyone in the other world regarded Ojisan. As a little kid, he has also never heard of most of the stuff Ojisan talks to him about, once he joins the group.

When Fujimiya asks what Takafumi would have done if Chiaki had been an adult guy flirting with her, he shows off his temporary uncle powers and makes the two of them invisible, creates two holographic decoys, then teleports them to Fujimiya’s lecture hall several stories up.

Fujimiya is impressed by how quickly Takafumi has managed to master Ojisan’s magic, and notes that this situation reminds her of when he stood up for her when she got shoved by three boys back in grade school. Takafumi decides to tap into her memories and project them as Ojisan does so they can take a look at what happened.

Naturally, things unfolded much differently than either party remembers. Fujimiya wasn’t shoved, she was the shover, and was probably going to do more had Takafumi not arrived to “rescue” her. But even though she was the instigator, Fujimiya was happy then, just as she’s happy now to know he’s got her back.

Takafumi then meets Sawa, Fujimiya’s friend since high school, who tells him Fujimiya has gotten quite popular with the guys since “becoming cuter” in the last six months. Takafumi, still drunk on Ojisan’s temporary power, demands to know the names and locations of said guys (so he can wipe all memory of Fujimiya from their heads).

This protectiveness/possessiveness and his blushing when Fujimiya leaned in to whisper to him suggest there’s something there, but she has a long way to go to get out of the Friendzone. Back at Takafumi’s, he and Fujimiya watch as Alicia reveals herself to be the Hero, AKA “Shining Crusader”, just as I suspected she would be. I look forward to her future interactions with Ojisan.

Isekai Ojisan – 05 – Another Region Code

It’s clearly become a daily habit for Fujimiya to come by Takafumi’s place where they watch video of Ojisan’s isekai adventures. They’re basically couch potatoes watching fantasy reality TV. But hey, if it’s entertaining, and there’s no other way Fujimiya knows of to hang out with the oblivious Takafumi, so be it!

The latest “episode” they tuck into is when Ojisan was “nearly assassinated” The identity of her assailant in the night is made plain by her ice sword and silvery blue bangs. It’s Mabel, whom Ojisan scorned by ignoring the hints she dropped and defeating the Blaze Dragon without the god-freezing sword.

No sooner does Ojisan express worry about whether Mabel is eating well does she pass out, and she wakes up in an inn. When he asks what happened to her life of leisure, she says the village cut down the tree she lived in and gave her an ultimatum: get a job, or become the village pet. She chose neither, and instead froze everyone from the hips down and dropped icy water down their backs before fleeing.

She now finds herself aimless, but Ojisan tells her she already has the means to live the life she chooses, not just with the ice sword, but with a Cosmite ring he slipped on her finger while she slept. When Mabel considers reforming her gloomy personality, Ojisan rejects the notion that being an introvert is a bad thing, and says her eyes are attractive.

Between the ring and the compliments, Mabel has the distinct feeling she’s being proposed to by Ojisan. She offers him the ring back, but her claim about having no romantic feelings is debunked by the fact the ice seal on the sword (and thus, her heart) is melting like gangbusters behind her.

When Ojisan insists she keep it and that they should turn in for the night, Mabel’s first instinct is to ask for change for the public bath. That’s when Ojisan breaks her misunderstanding by saying once she sells the ring she can get change for the bath and everything else for the remainder of her life. Realizing this was not a proposal, her heart and the sword freeze so violently Ojisan takes defensive action.

When Elf hears the commotion and comes in the room, she finds what looks like Ojisan magically tying Mabel down to have his way with her, so she snaps his chains and lets Mabel free to encase him in ice for the night. The two women find kinship in their mutual emotional suffering at the hands of Ojisan. Mind you, he isn’t doing this intentionally…his brain just has a different region code.

The idea of being able to translate body language, sarcasm, and innuendo is expanded as the story continues, with Mabel and Elf chatting while Ojisan stands frozen. Takafumi and Fujimiya are intrigued when they hear Mabel say the word “Japan”, and starts to tell a story of another traveler from Japan who came to their world and was greeted by a god who bestowed upon him a divine power.

Mabel creates beautiful visuals for her story with ice and tells the story well, but it’s a story Elf has already heard, and she harshly cuts her off, resulting in having to comfort her with hug when she breaks down into tears. Back in our world, meanwhile, Ojisan feels cheated: when he ended up in another world, he wasn’t greeted by a god or given any divine power.

That leads his audience of two to insist that he rewind his memories all the way back to 18 years ago when he was 17 (and actually young looking!) and first arrived in the other world. While rewinding, he passes by dozens of instances of him being hunted, captured, persecuted, and nearly executed in a number of different ways, underscoring how rough Uncle has had it and how amazing it is he’s as well-adjusted and untraumatized as he is.

But the elegantly set up joke is that a “god” did in fact speak to him when he first arrived…he was just too busy being beaten up by adventurers who thought he was an orc to hear. Also, the “god” in question was simply a recording in Mandarin, which when Takafumi translates with his phone, reveals that when Ojisan was being beaten, he wished to be able to understand the language of his attackers, and that wish came true.

While we know from his misadventures over the next eighteen years that this didn’t make life in this new world much easier, it did make it possible, such that when he did come upon a couple of souls like Elf and Mabel who were willing to see him as more than just a hideous orc variant, he gained companions.

Of course, with Ojisan’s brain region coded as it was, simply speaking the language wasn’t enough. He missed the nuance and context of their words and actions and almost always completely misinterpreted them. One wonders if Elf and Mabel themselves were bestowed with divine patience to endure his infuriating conduct without murdering him!

Isekai Ojisan – 04 – A Pinch Is a Chance

In one of Takafumi’s memories from grade school, he’s bullied by some boys for reading an innocent fantasy LN, only to be bailed out by Fujimiya, who may still looks like a demon to lil’ Takafumi’s eyes, but he’s genuinely moved by her support. Present-day Fujimiya remains mortified that this is how Takafumi viewed her, especially as she became more girly in middle school.

But that was then and this is now, and Fujimiya has high hopes for her newly-rekindled relationship with Takafumi. When she learns he got cash from Ojisan for his birthday which he spent on a coffee grinder and some fancy beans, she decides to send him a “gift” of her own.

This comes in the form of a photo of her in a swimsuit from middle school, which while cute, even she realizes in hindsight might’ve been a questionable choice. But hey, watching your crush’s childhood memories in which you’re a loathsome devil spawn does weird things to the mind!

That said, Takafumi couldn’t be more tactless when his first instinct is to ask Siri how to delete the photo from SM, and then he gets an alert about a sale on coffee beans and once again leaves Fujimiya with his uncle. When he almost spills his coffee, he casts an ice spell that freezes her, then melts her with flame.

The result of all this is that Fujimiya is soaked and needs to take a shower to warm up. Ojisan leaves the apartment to give her her privacy, but Takafumi enters when she’s wearing one of his shirts and nothing else. Again, after watching a younger Takafumi portray her as a monster, seeing him react to seeing her inspires her to uses this “pinch” as a “chance”, in Ojisan’s words.

Unfortunately, Takafumi proves as dense about Fujimiya’s feelings and intentions as Ojisan is about Elf. He considers it shameful that he should feel this way about looking at a “good friend”, and when Ojisan arrives on full battle alert (due to Takafumi using the wrong flag signal) Takafumi asks him to delete his memories of seeing Fujimiya. Of course, Fujimiya stops the spell, and warns Takafumi she’ll dress like this again if he wipes his memory.

When Fujimiya turns twenty, she and Takafumi and Ojisan have a modest but warm celebration drinking their preferred choice of canned alcoholic beverages and watching more of Ojisan’s misromantic adventures with Elf. Elf is astonished he was able to restore the city barrier, and also recalls when Ojisan (or “Orc Face” as she calls him) saved her from a venom dragon.

After a bit more of their usual repartee, Uncle suddenly takes her by the hand and draws her to his side as they walk through the town market. Elf is shocked by this sudden bout of lovey-dovey behavior, but she can’t hide her enjoyment of it either. When it looks like he’s ready to take her up to his room, it isn’t until he gets his door open that it’s revealed he only needed someone to lean on.

He slams the door in her face, locks said door, and falls immediately asleep. The next morning Elf shows signs she cried herself to sleep. In short, Ojisan’s an unintentional villain, and Fujimiya must do everything in her power to keep Takafumi from turning out the same way.

In the present, Ojisan demonstrates how he can in no way hold his liquor, and then offers to take Fujimiya home via flight. Ojisan, Fujimiya, and Takafumi end up flying through the air upside down, with Ojisan merging the fantasy of the game he was playing with reality, and his nephew and his friend are simply along for the ride.

The end credits are cut short by an extra segment in which Ojisan once again gives Elf the wrong idea by sucking out poison that turns out to have aphrodisiac effects on Elf. When his doting closeness gets to be too much for her, she merely socks him in the face with a swift kick. Fujimiya asks Ojisan if he still has some of that poison so she might be able to use it on Takafumi…because a pinch is a chance!

Isekai Ojisan – 03 – The Things We Do for Views

Takafumi returns home to find Fujimiya and what looks like Elf from the other world where his Uncle lived. It’s definitely an effective hook, and then the episode rewinds an hour and change to a stark reality of YouTubers in February 2018: if you didn’t meet a certain subscriber and view quota, you’d be cut off from what had been a nice little revenue stream.

Takafumi discovers that one reason their channel is struggling is Ojisan’s tendency to type elaborate but ultimately awful replies to each and every commenter, many of whom are then put off and unsubscribe. This current dilemma reminds Ojisan of when the barrier of the Sealed City fell and 1,000 beasts arrived at the walls.

Naturally, his nephew wants to see and hear about this, so Ojisan switches on the ol’ memory recorder and plays back the events of those days. Notable is how pretty much everything Elf says to him could come across as verbal harassment (rather than the tsundere flirting it is).

When Ojisan nonchalantly shatters the barrier and the beasts arrive, Elf is resolved to fight them all herself while he runs—she likes him that much. But after a serously badass weapon unsheathing sequence and blasting herself towards the walls like a missile, she ends up splatting on the newly-formed barrier, the result of Ojisan asking the spirits to repair it.

No matter; Elf doesn’t tell any of the townsfolk that he dropped the barrier to begin with, and in exchange simply asks him to buy her dinner. But Ojisan, who always interprets her words and body language the wrong way, instead leaves the city without her.

Takafumi hugs himself in despair, and this is what Fujimiya sees when she arrives, trying to make a habit of being around her old friend. The thing is, Takafumi remains disturbingly oblivious to her affections, and even leaves her alone in his apartment to take care of some random errand.

Ojisan may not have much real-world romantic experience, but he can tell Fujimiya’s a good girl and she wants to be closer to his nephew. Unfortunately, Fujimiya does not want to talk to some frumpy uncle about this, so Ojisan borrows Elf’s appearance and voice and insists he’s Takafumi’s “aunt” so they can engage in girl talk. That brings us back to the cold open.

In order to get to the bottom of why Takafumi stubbornly only thinks of Fujimiya as a friend, he taps into his memories and then visualizes them. in them, a cretinous child mercilessly beats upon a helpless young Takafumi. Fujimiya asks where she is…and then it dawns on her: she’s the cretin. Form her perspective back then they enjoyed a “bittersweet” relationship, but just like Ojisan with Elf, Takafumi saw it more as bullying and abuse.

Elf!Ojisan marvels at how his nephew even managed to recognize a grown-up Fujimiya on the street, but Takafumi says he’d never forget her, and holds up a fist for her to bump while blushing profusely. Takafumi then decides that he and Ojisan should record a video of “her” playing Guardian Heroes.

Ojisan is naturally psyched…until he sees the final product: the video doesn’t show any of the actual gameplay—just Ojisan in the form of a sexy elf girl in a long hoodie playing off-screen video games. Ojisan is shocked and appalled, but the video goes viral, with 200,000 views and counting. Takafumi celebrates the great success of his hunch, while Ojisan reverts to his normal appearance before a terrified Fujimiya. I could honestly watch this offbeat, eccentric dynamic packed with amazing reaction faces all day!

Isekai Ojisan – 02 – Neon Genesis Osananajimi

Ojisan’s Youtube views are dropping, so he institutes austerity measures in the home budget—though only after he orders a copy of a video game magazine listing the final results of Sega Saturn reader’s choice. He learns that one of his favorite games, Guardian Heroes, was only ranked 197th. I never played that, but I did play the heck out of a Genesis game by Treasure called Gunstar Heroes, which was immensely fun.

After summoning lighting to sufficiently punctuate his moment of shock despair, Takafumi gets him to stop talking about video games and show him another recorded memory from his time in the isekai. When the village elder shows him to the Frost Clan member Mabel, who goes ahead and tells Ojisan what’s needed to unfreeze her heart, only for Ojisan to ignore all that and defeat the dragon without her Frost Sword.

First Takafumi’s uncle misinterpreted elf’s tsundere behavior as shit-talking, then he totally circumvents the other world’s “quest”. Those blunders aside, Takafumi still thinks enough of his uncle to give him a Sega Saturn for his birthday, which they play to ring in the year 2018.

Ojisan also shows Takafumi how the other world celebrated the new year, only for him to simply eat some chicken by himself and retire to his room. When he mentions Mabel visited in his room later that night, Takafumi switches off the Saturn and demands to hear more.

Turns out Ojisan convinced Mabel that her ennui and reclusive behavior were simply living her truth, and that there was nothing wrong with that, and she should go on doing it if that’s what she wanted. It is, and she does, which even Takafumi can tell is both teaching and learning the wrong lesson!

When Fujimiya Sumika first encounters Ojisan, she assumes he’s a rambling old weirdo and commits to walking a different route. However, it’s thanks to this route that she’s unexpectedly reunited with her childhood friend Takafumi, who has since grown taller than her. Sumika, who we see was once very attached to Takafumi when they were kids, is clearly jazzed to see him again.

She accepts his invitation to stop by his house, which she does after dropping off her groceries, only for the same weird old man she saw in the park to come in through the balcony sliding door. Ojisan initially treats Sumika as an enemy and tries to wipe her memory, but Takafumi intervenes, resulting in quite a bit of physical contact.

Sumika shakes off the attempted assault, but immediately takes the stand that Takafumi shouldn’t be letting his old uncle mooch off of him. When Takafumi confirms that his Ojisan actually does have magic powers he gained in another world, Sumika says what we’d all say: “So show me.”

It doesn’t take long even for someone like Ojisan to pick up on Sumika’s attraction to Takafumi, though she may deny it, leading him to bring up Evangelion, in which Asuka was a famous early example of the tsundere archetype (something Oji has yet to catch on to when it comes to Elf).

Sumika is actually moved by Ojisan’s sad tale that is actually ripped directly from the Saturn game Alien Soldier, at which point Sumika is fed up with having her emotions toyed with. Then Ojisan reads her mind, revealing she showered and changed before coming to Takafumi’s, and was disappointed to learn he had a roommate.

But while she’s disappointed, she also seems to still like Takafumi enough that she’s not going to stand by and do nothing while Takafumi is leeched on by a layabout charlatan. As with Elf and Mabel, I love Sumika’s dynamic character design. She’s cute, but still the tough kid she was when she first fell for Takafumi. It’s a shame Takafumi is 100% oblivious to her long-standing crush, but she and Mabel are fine additions to this colorful cast.

Isekai Ojisan – 01 (First Impressions) – SEGAwakening

Isekai Ojisan (Uncle from Another World) starts off efficiently and confidently. Takafumi’s uncle suddenly wakes up after 17 years in a coma. At first his nephew things he’s gone insane because he’s speaking in a bizarre language. But then Ojisan switches to Japanese, and demonstrates that he can do magic. Takafumi, who was about to basically kick his uncle to the curb, decides to rip up that paperwork and welcome him into his modest but too-large-for-one apartment.

There, Takafumi supplements his part-time job (or possibly replaces it) by making YouTube videos where Ojisan demonstrates his magic powers. They get decent views but also a fair share of haters, which disturb Ojisan. Since he hasn’t been in this world since 2000, for a Segaholic like him the Dreamcast was the pinnacle of gaming…and life.

Takafumi discovers that all phones are boring touchscreens now, and is crestfallen that Sega is no longer a console superpower. But Ojisan’s superpowers enable him to fly to the locations of Amazon and Ebay purchases so they don’t have to pay exorbitant shipping fees. He can also show his nephew his memories as if recorded with a 360-degree camera.

This is how Takafumi first sees the elf woman who apparently followed his uncle around for years and berated him. Little does the obviously romantically-stunted Ojisan know that Elf is of the type that would by 2004 be clearly classified as tsundere (though Asuka Langley Soryu was around three years before he was sent to another world).

There’s a running gag that his somewhat homely looks made most everyone in the other world—who is handsome, hot, beautiful, etc.—believe he was some kind of orc mutant. There’s a memory he plays (without audio) of rescuing three siblings from a real orc, and then they’re so horrified by his appearance the eldest bravely sacrifices herself, thinking he’ll kill her.

Visually speaking, the drab and de-saturated palette was a little concerning at first, but when we went into the other world where he lived, everything is bright and lacks the same rough texture—it’s a great contrast that also accentuates the heightened beauty of the other world and its inhabitants.

Overall it’s a great-looking show with a simple fish-out-of-water premise that’s easy to get on board with and enjoy the ride. The comedy hits, the faces are tremendous, and the cute tsundere elf girl is cute and tsundere. While it’s unfortunate the show is experiencing delays due to Covid, that affords me time to catch up.

Fabiniku – 12 (Fin) – From the Heart

When Tachibana’s rants and rampage convince Jinguuji that the best thing to do is to disappear from her sight, Schwartz rises as the true hero of this story by smacking Jinguuji in the face a lot harder than Will smacked Chris. Tachibana doesn’t want him gone, she’s proud to be his best friend, and now she needs the kind of praise only a best friend can give.

What snaps Jinguuji out of his long-standing stoicism isn’t just Schwartz’s smack, but him saying it’s normal (and thus totally okay) for guys to be jealous when their friend—another guy—is with someone else. He’d always been told baring his heart to another is weakness, but he can see how it’s always been Tachibana’s greatest strength.

So Jinguuji bears his heart—while parrying the berserk Mehpon’s attacks—by telling Tachibana that far from having “nothing”, she has so much that he doesn’t. Just when he’s getting through to her, Kalm intervenes, sending Mehpon into berserk mode. But with Schwartz covering him, Jinguuji manages to scamper right up to Mehpon, climb and gain acces, where he finds Tachibana lying in the dark.

He then starts praising Tachibana, but not for his appearance, but for all the things, big and little, that he loves about her. Things only an old best friend would know. They run the gamut from her always being considerate to how she kept whiskey at home even though she hated it because he liked it. Shocked by this newfound honesty, Tachibana resurfaces from his self-loathing tantrum.

The two then emerge triumphant, barely escape Mehpon’s self-destruction, and return to the capital together apologize to the king for all the trouble they caused. The king feels just as responsible since it was his daughter who started the rebellion (Yggie herself is wonderfully uncontrite). Then Tachibana and Jinguuji learn that the Demon Lord’s castle is the big white star-like thingy that’s been in the background all along!

Splitting form Schwartz and Lucius (yet not quite able to shake free of Shen) the two head towards that castle. The night before they say their goodbyes and begin their journey, they have a quiet night of relaxation back in Tachibana’s apartment, where she becomes Charmed for the first time—in this case from watching Jinguuji change.

Thus the two find themselves in a hurry. They need to defeat the demon king and restore Tachibana to her manbod pronto, lest the two of them fall in love, get married, and have a kid. But wait…would that really be so bad?!

Tokyo 24th Ward Dropped

Somewhere between the far-fetched lightning episode, the flashback episode that didn’t move the story forward, and the show not airing at all last week, I lost interest in this show. The first half of this episode did nothing to re-spark that interest.

The ham-fisted political commentary now dominates everything, leaving our characters nothing but pawns darting across a breakneck plot while two bad guys on opposite ends of the spectrum weave their respective webs. I’d have preferred more of RGB solving trolley dilemmas interspersed with slice-of-city-life moments of earlier episodes.

Fabiniku – 11 – Gundam Tantrum

The Head Maid Kalm’s plan to set the humans against each other fails when the entire army is converted into happy naked farmers, dispelling her mind control and replacing it with…something else entirely. Despite spending a whole year on this plan, Kalm pulls the plug and goes with Plan B: Just Blow the Whole Kingdom Up!

Do acquire the weaponry needed for such a plan, Kalm and Vizzd lead both Yggie and Tachibana to the royal armory, where two Royal Crests are needed to unlock the vault. Fortunately for the Head Maid, Tachibana’s crest serves the same purpose as a member of royalty’s, and she’s exhausted and super out-of-it thanks to her increased Charm power.

Once they’re in the vault, Vizzd boards the gigantic bunny-like Mech, Mehpon and begins a march towards the capital. While Lucius finds it quite cute and the King himself says it was a gift from their beloved Goddess, it’s clear to all when Vizzd just misses blasting the tallest clock tower in the city into smithereens (while also blasting a hole in the mountain beyond), this adorable giant robot is a serious threat (with the same freakish mouth structure as its much smaller, fuzzy counterpart).

It’s because of that—and because due to his distance from Tachibana he’s has just his usual above-average-for-a-human strength, Jinguuji leaves it to Schwartz to defend the capital and everyone in it from Mehpon’s attacks. At first Schwartz is weary of fighting alone, but when push comes to shove, he and his Holy Sword Gram are more than enough to deflect the mech’s beams.

When Vizzd announces that she has the Hero aboard, Jinguuji fairly deduces that the closer her gets to the mech, the stronger and more able to support Schwartz he’ll get. He’s also certain Tachibana would never voluntarily launch an attack that would hurt or kill others. Sure enough, Tachibana is still quite out of it, floating around Mehpon’s interior with a great view of the action but unable to affect it.

That is, until Tachibana realizes that she can indeed take control of Mehpon whenever she wants. When Vizzd loses control, all she and Kalm can do is bicker through the mech’s video communication system, and I love me a good villain bickering sesh! These two are consistently hilarious in their hubris and ineptness and I was just waiting for Jinguuji and Schwartz to make them sorry they ever took Tachibana hostage.

However, even when they finally get within spitting distance of Mehpon thanks to a trusty Crocodog, Jinguuji’s power doesn’t return. Moreover, Tachibana takes over the mech’s PA system and declares that she will defeat…Jinguuji?!?! Apparently both her time apart with Yggie and her time floating about totally out of it inside Mehpon has caused a lot of pent-up resentment to come out.

As she recounts memories of Jinguuji being excellent and her being nothing but a hanger-on, Tachibana gets more and more upset about how Jinguuji, who is constantly praised, has never once praised her. When he takes Schwartz’s advice and gives her random praise with nothing behind it, it only maker her madder, and he has to deploy the apartment door to shield himself from Mehpon’s beam.

Tachibana has felt “worthless” to Jinguuji, and feels that other than having him as a friend, she has “nothing.” Of course, neither of these things are remotely true, but it stands to reason there’d eventually be a blow-up like this regarding the two friends’ wide margin of general ability.

There are plenty of things Tachibana has, and can do, that Jinguuji doesn’t or can’t. Hopefully Jinguuji can convey what those are in a manner that calms rather than stokes his best friend’s fury.

Fabiniku – 10 – It’s Only Natural to Help

Without having really thought through a promise like “I’ll do anything for you!”, Tachibana proceeds to serve as Yugrain’s sister-in-arms in the burgeoning rebellion against her father. Men loyal to the king proceed to list the particular type of woman who would sway him to their side, and when Yugrain can’t be that girl, Tachibana picks up the slack. Before you know it, they have a huge army!

Just as Tachibana and Jinguuji stumbled upon a captive Premier a couple episodes back, Tachibana just happens to encounter Maria, whom we know failed her intelligence mission, tied up knots that are almost too specific, like someone well-versed in rope play was simply showing off. Tachibana is distracted and only makes the knots worse rather than loosen them…which kind of describes her and Jinguuji’s fight this week!

Yugrain’s Head Maid, who on the one hand crafted both the cute idol costumes and strategy for the princess’ rebellion, seems to be hiding contempt for Yugrain, and is revealed to be an agent (if not general) of the Demon Lord when she gives Tachibana an otherworldly massage after a tough day of rabblerousing and worried about people seeing up her way-too-short skirt.

Clearly the Head Maid intends to turn the power of Tachibana, the hero of the Goddess of Love and Beauty, to the Demon Lord’s advantage. While working on Tachibana, she falls asleep and dreams of the day she first met Jinguuji. Tachibana was the victim of bullying, but Jinguuji put a stop to it with his overwhelming strength and sense of honor. Tachibana wonders if all along she was simply causing more trouble for him.

Back at the palace, Jinguuji is distracted from being worried about Tachibana for at least a little while by the arrival of Schwartz, who Lucius has taken under her wing. Schwartz may not know much about court etiquette, but he and Lucius are there to help the king put down his daughter’s rebellion, preferably without bloodshed.

Schwartz ends up harnessing the newly-recovered holy sword Gram by slicing through not only the rebels’ weapons and memories, but their clothes as well, sending them into confused retreat. Lucius only lets him bask in the light of his own magnificence for so long before giving him a punch back down to earth.

Schwartz may also still be a bit high on his victory when he teases Jinguuji, saying he’s this out of sorts after Tachibana “cheated on him” just a little. Even a joking implication sends Jinguuji into a heretofore unseen bloodlust as he tries to extract further intent from a terrified Schwartz’s jibes. However, this interaction is interrupted by an earthquake felt by all…are the demon lord’s minions making their move?