NieR: Automata Ver 1.1a – 06 – Do Androids Dream of Electric Lambs to the Slaughter?

Lily keeps shooting looks 2B’s way, and this week we learn why. She once met an android that shared 2B’s face: No. 2, an previous-generation model. 2 was a lot more animated in their speech, and she led an early YoRHa squad that, like the resistance, had been hung out to dry by Command. Back then, Lily’s resistance squad was led by Rose, who decided to join forces with No. 2 for a mission that neither of their groups could accomplish alone.

While there was initial distrust on both sides, Rose’s decision to cooperate rather than fight paid off and the “family” thus grew. There’s both an 86 and Iron-Blooded Orphans vibe to this group of misfit fighters who got the short end of the stick. Their familial chemistry and rapport with one another felt lived-in and genuine; everyone supporting one another and staying in good spirits to distract from their unfair plight.

One day, Lily was not looking well at all, and her eyes suddenly turned red: a sign her data has been overwritten by a logic virus. This is actually the first time I realized that Lily and the other members of the resistance were also androids (unless they aren’t, it’s not made crystal clear). But Lily definitely is, and even though Rose’s first instinct is to kill her before the virus spreads, No.2 deflects that bullet, and eventually everyone helps hold Lily down so No. 21 can purge the virus.

But saving Lily delayed the combined unit’s plan to infiltrate the target server facility, which is overrun by hundreds of thousands of enemies when they arrive. The Bunker will not provide backup, but the mission must be executed no matter what, so one by one Lily’s comrades sacrifice themselves so she can get to the server. She does, but at the cost of her entire family, including her big-sister figure Rose.

In the present Lily is far calmer, more composed and confident, but she remains haunted not by dreams—as 2B says, androids don’t dream—but memories of the things that happened, and regret about what could have happened to possibly save some of the people she cared for. In lieu of dreams or souls, androids are who they are due to their accumulated memories and experiences.

2B leaves Lily with a comforting rhetorical question: what if someone from her family were still alive out there, somewhere? And sure enough, a long-haired woman with the same beauty mark as No. 2 and 2B is revealed to be still out there fighting the good fight. Will Lily and her savior No. 2 unite, and what will happen when 2 and 2B meet? Whatever happens, I hope they can all be allies. Nothing can happen in this world without them.

Love After World Domination – 01 (First Impressions) – Opposite Factions Attract

Aikawa Fudou is Red Gelato, leader of the Freezing Sentai Gelato 5. Magahara Desumi is the Reaper Princess of Secret Society Gecko. They should be mortal enemies, but when we meet the two, they’re having an adorable third date together, and contemplating holding hands.

The prospect of holding hands seems far too advanced for these two romantically stunted people. But when Blue Gelato enters the frame, Fudou and Desumi have no trouble holding hands…as they grapple in a sudden struggle of life and death between hero and villainess. Or at least that is the illusion these two lovers must maintain.

Love After World Domination isn’t what I expected. I thought that Fudou and Desumi were simply actors in some kind of super sentai show. But there’s every indication the Gelato 5 are actual superheroes, while Desumi really is an actual villainess. They all may have their downtime in civilian clothes, but when it’s “showtime” they’re fighting an actual war against each other.

About a week before their third date, Fudou delegates the defeat of Gecko’s boss in bear form to the others Gelato rangers, while he takes on the Reaper Princess by himself. She’s impressed that he can keep up with her, while he’s astonished by her beauty, grace, and ability. In other words, it’s love at first sight for both of them, totally irrespective of their firmly opposite affiliations.

Professor Big Gelato, who is in charge of the Gelato 5, hears Fudou imply that heroes can’t fall in love and smacks him in the face, oficially ordering him to tell the woman he loves how he feels. Little doe Professor Big know that the woman in question is one of the Gelato 5’s greatest foes.

Meeting Desumi one-on-one in a particularly romantic moonlit setting, Fudou comes right out and tells her he loves her…in the first episode. Desumi tries to point out all the reasons why no one could ever love her, but Fudou is a regular on her social media accounts and thus has learned a great deal about her and has fallen for her. She’s not not open to the idea of dating, even if she knows nothing about dating.

Fortunately, Fudou knows fuck-all about dating too, which means they’ll be fumbling through it together, which will make it that much more fun to experience, as well as for us the viewers to watch. The premise of enemies falling for one another is a simple yet immensely powerful one, hearkening to Romeo & Juliet and before.

But integrating the quirky dynamics of sentai heroes vs. occult baddies is an inspired choice, and the execution is competent as it is cute. This episode got me thoroughly excited to see how far these two goofy lovebirds will go with their forbidden love.

To Your Eternity – 17 – Her Pet Immortal

After knocking Fushi out with her Morning Glory potion, Hayase gives a somewhat baffling speech to the throng about how she’s going to build a new army to protect the immortal boy from the Nokkers, and immediately ceding the leadership of Jananda she won to Tonari. This immediately makes Tonari a target, and she and the other kids make themselves scarce.

Despite having no interest in ruling Jananda, Hayase very much seems to want to control Fushi, who is clearly more valuable than the entire rest of the island. Her repeated licking of his face is akin to marking her new precious property, and by disrobing she seems intent on becoming one with him. It’s very twisted…and very Hayase.

Her fun is interrupted by Tonari & Co., who come to Fushi’s rescue only to be met by Hayase’s Yanome guards and Captain Skyfish, who can see which way the wind is blowing and knows he probably shouldn’t be on the wrong side of someone as evil, dangerous, and unhinged as Hayase. In fact, he’s probably there specifically to makes sure Tonari and the other kids don’t throw away their lives in a futile effort to save their immortal friend.

Fortunately, the kids inadvertently buy time for Fushi to sneak up on Hayase with a sword to her neck, having created an empty husk of himself for the guards to carry away. Hayase is unmoved, but agrees to his proposal to remain on Jananda with her if she lets the kids and Pioran leave safely. New Leader Tonari announces to the rest of the island that all small children will also be boarding the ship, to grow up somewhere where they’ll have more choice in their lives.

Tonari is among those on Skyfish’s ship, though of course Hayase can’t resist drugging her and her friends to keep them from getting up to something. Interestingly, Tonari’s body is extremely efficient at filtering out poison, as she’s the first to come to, hours before the others. Enlisting the help of her boss (with an assist from Skyfish), she boards a dingy with Ligard, who apparently wasn’t badly injured by Hayase’s arrow.

Determined to add to the story within the thick tome tied to her belt, Tonari is resolved to rescue Fushi, alone if she has to, so he can be a part of her future. Watching Parona!Fushi get so mad at Hayase over killing the real Parona showed Tonari that Fushi wasn’t just a peculiar immortal thing, but a peculiar immortal thing with a measure of humanity she saw in herself.

While it was great to see evil old Hayase throw her weight around, this was the first episode where I couldn’t not notice the frequently cruddy character modeling, sketchy animation, and use of still images that all spell budgetary and time constraints. Between that and Hayase’s rather scattershot actions and intentions, this episode just barely held together…but it definitely had its moments.

Tokyo Revengers – 02 – Done Running

MPD Sergeant Tachibana Naoto has been busy since Takemichi told him the day and manner of his and Hinata’s deaths. At first Takemichi think the kid has gone off the deep end, until he remembers that Naoto is only here because he can, in fact, travel back in time. If he’s a Hinata-saving, gang-stopping time agent, Naoto takes up the mantle of his operator, briefing him on what actions should be taken once he returns to the past.

Naoto’s first task is simple: try to cut off the head of the Tokyo Manji Gang in the past before its the big deal it is in the present. That means Takemichi needs to make contact with its two founders—Sano Manjirou and Kisaki Tetta—and ensure they never meet.

As for how he’ll get back to the past, that’s solved pretty quickly: he just has to shake hands with Naoto again and he’s back in his middle school body, just in time to take a knockout punch to the face. Honestly, the “science” of his time travelling is unimportant, so I’m glad Revengers doesn’t dwell on it.

Unfortunately, the meat grinder doesn’t end with that single punch. Older delinquents like Kiyomasa and his henchmen had money riding on their “slave” putting up more than a fight, so they punish him by beating him again. Takemichi then makes things worse for himself by mentioning the two names Naoto said he had to meet. Kiyomasa takes a wooden bat, beats him bloody, and threatens to kill him if those names come out of his mouth again.

Having suffered three brutal beatdowns in less than a day, part of me wonders exactly what kind of high-strength alloy Takemichi’s bones are made of…but then this is a shounen series, and as such carries with it a heightened sense of reality with an appropriate suspension of disbelief.

More to the point, Takemichi is emotionally beaten, and all he wants to do now is run back to the present. His life there might suck, but it doesn’t involve the regular beatings of his tortured youth. He goes to the Tachibana residence so he can shake hands with Naoto and end this charade…but Hinata greets him instead.

Their exchange goes pretty much the way it did the other day, with her scolding him for fighting (not understanding that it’s the last thing he wants to do), but this time she laments not being a boy, because she’s sure she’d be stronger than him. In fact, since she knows karate, she probably is stronger than him, regardless of gender.

Knowing she’d go to bat for him soothes Takemichi’s bruised heart, and he thrusts his fist out promising to protect her, he accidentally blurts out the shortened form of her first name—Hina—causing them both to blush. Hinata tells him to call her that from now on, and insists that she’ll be the one to protect him.

Considering how Takemichi’s interaction with Naoto saved the guy’s life and set him on the path of law enforcement, part of me hopes these new exchanges with Hinata he never had in his first go-around may similarly influence Hinata’s actions and choices. If he can just stay with her, protect her, and let her protect him, maybe her death can be prevented.

But for now, Takemichi still has to at least try to meet the founding members of the Tokan Gang, and after meeting with Hinata, he no longer wants to run; he wants to fight with everything he has, even if it’s not much. He’s further inspired to action when he watches his friends offer emotional support to Takuya, whom Kiyomasa has chosen to fight next despite (or maybe because of) his frail constitution.

When he first arrived in the past, Takamichi thought his pals were as pathetic and lame as he was when he first saw that bright hair in the mirror. But now he sees he was lucky to have such good friends, whose bonds never broke no matter how much the older kids stomped on them.

Takamichi interrupts the conspicuously in-the-open fight club match (where are the cops? I guess there are lookouts) before Takuya has to fight, and challenges Kiyomasa himself to a fight, billing it a “king vs. slave” match. Crying and running has gotten him nowhere but a shitty life and a dead ex-first-and-only girlfriend. He’s done with both. He has to be: for his sake, his friends’ sakes, and for Hina’s sake.

Talentless Nana – 05 – Photo Finish

As evidenced when he immediately blackmails Nana into being his girlfriend, Hatadaira Tsunekichi is clearly a scumbag, and thus not really worthy of any sympathy. Of her victims so far, he’s the one least interested in being a hero. But he’s also a big ol’ weirdo!

Perhaps due to a life lived knowing what the future holds via photography, he’s adopted a habit of having dialogues with himself as he holds up his two hands. It’s not his scumbaggery, but his mental instability that makes him such a wild card for Nana’s plans.

Nana could have reasonably expected Tsunekichi to try to make an unsolicited move on her their “first night” together. Instead, he’s primarily concerned with keeping her holed up until the time of the damning P.E. shed photo arrives. Since he’s still alive in the photo, he feels untouchable enough to fall asleep with Nana in his room.

That’s when Nana watches his precog photography in action—it happens when he’s asleep—and one of them in particular makes her do a double take. She seemingly hides that photo but Tsunekichi finds it on her person. And as soon as I saw it—depicting her being strangled—I assumed she staged it so he’d believe he’d turned the tables in their future scuffle.

But even with such a predictable development, thinks don’t go exactly as planned for Nana in that P.E. shed. That boils down to her not being certain that the fate of the photos is inescapable. Tsunekichi can only take five future photos at a time, so who’s to say there isn’t another limit he hasn’t revealed? Nana changes the time on his watch to make him ten minutes late for the fated encounter, but he manages to free himself from her jump rope hold.

It turns out he’s “hyper-aware” of time and knew she changed his watch, but he assumed he’d was the one to pill her top off based on the photo of her being choked. Sure enough, it was a selfie she staged, and Tsunekichi didn’t notice it wasn’t one of his. Due to her her position on the floor, she was able to grab a poison needle that was out of reach when he first entered—and stick him with it, killing him.

But what of the real fifth photo she replaced with her selfie—the one that gave her a double take? As Nana says, that’s where “the real ordeal begins.” It’s a photo of Kyouya and Michiru entering the shed and discovering her with Tsunekichi on the ground. Naturally, Nana plays the victim, using school scuttlebutt that day about Tsunekichi calling her his girlfriend.

When Michiru is unable to find a wound or heal Tsunekichi , Nana details his attempted blackmail of her with what she says were nude photos of her. With a reliable ally (and surrogate to the rest of the class) in Michiru beside her, Kyouya’s alternative theories can only go so far, not matter how close they are to the reality of what happened.

Even so, Nana is sloppy, returning to Tsunekichi’s dorm and being caught there by Kyouya. Fortunately, at no point does he see the incriminating photos, but as we learn from both his and Nana’s inner monologue, he’s sharp enough to latch on to even her smallest mistakes.

Under the circumstances, it’s impossible for her to be perfect, but going forward she has to be as close to perfect as possible if she’s to succeed in the mission. Before she commits to doing so, another imperfection reveals itself: she only has four of Tsunekichi’s five genuine precog photos…the fifth one—the one we saw last week in the cafeteria—is missing.

It’s the photo of Nana pushing Nanao off the cliff, and it’s not in Tsunekichi’s dorm, nor did Kyouya find it. Nope, it’s kind, trusting Michuru who finds it on Tsunekichi’s person while trying in vain to heal him! I was expecting her to find the puncture wound and extract the poison, but it looks like the book on Tsunekichi is closed.

Finding the photo now puts Michuru square in the crosshairs…unless Nana can somehow convince her to keep quiet about it. Considering how sinister Nana’s aura is when she walks into the shed, you could assume Michiru’s time on this world grows short—especially considering she’d already fulfilled her task of compiling a list of the other students’ Talents.

Will Nana have to get rid of Michuru earlier than scheduled—or will she find another way to spin straw into gold? As always, I’m eager to find out!

Talentless Nana – 04 – A Useful Idiot

Nana contemplates her next target when the two class Gals pick on Inukai Michiru, the meekest, most guileless member of the class, with a love letter Nana knows is just a fake. Michuru spots a scrape on Nana’s leg and proceeds to reveal her Talent: a tongue that heals all wounds. It’s a scene that happens so suddenly you almost overlook the yuri/BDSM subtext.

Nana also determines that Michiru could cause the deaths of 150k (still not sure how that algorithm works), and thus as good a next target as any. The only problem is, Kyouya is still breathing down her neck. Nana decides she’ll play her part, first in informing poor Michuru that her after-school rendezvous will be a bust (the love letter was fake), then cheer her up with some lunch.

That night, Nana arms herself with an icepick to do the deed, but finds Kyouya sitting right outside her door, “guarding”, i.e. watching her out of “concern”, i.e. suspicion. She then proceeds to play loud music and sneak out her window—which she should have done in the first place! It appears as though Nana is going to stab Michiru in the back, and Kyouya hears a scream from Michiru’s dorm…but when he arrives, it is Nana on the floor with a stab wound.

She claims she heard the Enemy’s inner-voice and raced to save its target, Michiru. Detective Kyouya can use this latest incident and connect it to past info however he wishes, but everyone else in the girl’s dorm is immediately united behind Nana when they see what she did for Michiru.

Kyouya later considers that Nana could have stabbed herself—which of course she did—but Nana presents to him and everyone else a lie (an invisible monster) more feasible than the truth.

Kyouya’s lack of concrete evidence to support his accurate suspicions to a class now fully trusting of Nana essentially paralyzes him. His theories remain in his brain, harmless to her efforts. She’s even able to get Ice Prince and Fire Thug to agree on something: that SHE should be their new leader in Nanao’s stead. Since her self-inflicted attack is accepted as an attack by an invisible Enemy of Humanity, she can use them as cover for all subsequent killings. Nana is flying high—ultimately too high.

Her arrogance gets the better of her when she instructs an enthusiastically willing Michiru to talk with all of the other students and record their Talents in a book. This would seem to be a no-brainer considering what a Chatty Kathy Michiru is (and she can be offed when no longer useful), but the benefits are quickly nullified by an unexpected setback: Michiru’s probing tips off Hatadaira Tsunekichi, a psychic photographer who has acquired a photo of her killing him in the future.

Whelp, there’s the concrete evidence Kyouya needs so desperately to prove his suspicions! Thankfully for Nana, Tsunekichi comes to her first. He demonstrates with devastating accuracy that every photo he takes ends up happening without fail. Even when Nana changes her order, she ends up with a face-full of soba. Then he pulls out one more dagger: a photo of her shoving Nanao off the cliff.

This would put Nana in check, but for the fact that, as far as we know, only she and Tsunekichi have seen these photos. Tsunekichi also seems to have doomed himself: If there’s a photo of him being killed, and everything in his photos happens, then he must be resigned to die. So, will Nana succeed in killing him before anyone else sees the photos? Or will they be leaked, forcing her to use all her leader capital to defend herself?

It’s definitely a tricky new corner she’s been pushed into. Like Michiru, Nana considers Tsunekichi an imbecile, and I definitely can’t rule out her managing to outwit him and turn him into another victim of the Enemy. But his power exposes a huge flaw in her execution of this mission: Why the heck did she start killing anyone before she learned the powers of everyone? Assuming she gets out of this fix, what other surprise Talents could compromise her, all because she killed too fast?

Toaru Kagaku no Railgun T – 25 (Fin) – Another Lovely Day in Academy City

Last week ended with Mikoto firing and Doppelganger seemingly fading into white, but the Railgun missed on purpose. Mikoto wanted to give Doppel a chance to stop fighting, shed all the slime mold, and live a normal life as she is. But ultimately Doppel doesn’t want to go on living.

Her threats were just a smokescreen for her true objective. She never actually gained a soul, which makes her continued existence a torment. By destroying herself she’ll end that torment, and by destroying the dataship and killing Kuriba, she’ll prevent another her from being created.

The dataship crashes and much of Doppel’s body blasted away, but Mikoto doesn’t kill her, and Kuriba survives. The chief doesn’t believe Doppel has no soul and even pulls a gun on Kuriba, resulting in her accidentally getting shot in the gut. The chief flees, but Misaki tracks him down and “rewinds” his memories so he’ll start over from “behind square one”.

Thanks to Shirai arriving at the scene, Kuriba is poised to make a full recovery, while Doppel was allowed to die with dignity. The next day is bright and sunny and Mikoto enjoys a nice coffee al fresco with Kuroko, who can’t help but ask for a kiss in return for her help. Kuroko, in turn, is teased by Misaki, and when Saten and Uiharu show up, they are in awe of the “Queen” and Hokaze Junko.

We cut to a parting scene with the Scavengers, who learn that due to their client’s bankruptcy they won’t be paid for their work. Leader once again proves her title is well-earned by fighting to get her team’s levels increased as consolation for the cash falling through, while it’s ambiguously revealed when Naru strips him down that Seike is a boy, or the “blue” ranger of their group.

More season housekeeping ensues, including the triumphant return of a fully-recovered Kongou Mitsuko (how I’ve missed her) finally getting to (accidentally) meet Mikoto’s “sister”, whom she nicknames “Ii-chan” (after “1”0032). We also see Misaki with Mitori and Dolly, and they agree to take things slow in terms of loosening their dear friend’s training wheels of normal life.

As Kuriba convalesces in hospital, she has a dream with Doppel, who notes that her creator has always been unable to separate her research and objectives from the rest of her life. To that end, she offers Kuriba a list of issues with her present cyborg designs that she should iron out. When she wakes up, Kuriba thought at first it was her guilt causing the dreams, but admits the possibility of a part of Doppel (beyond the organs used to save her) lives on in Kuriba.

Mikoto then departs the hospital with her schoolbag behind shoulder, and back out into the lovely sunny day in Academy City. Kuroko, Saten and Uiharu are waiting up for her, eager to go someplace good to eat. Mikoto doesn’t care where, as long as they’re together.

With that, Railgun T (as in “T”hird…I can’t believe I never realized that before) comes to a pleasant and satisfying end. Well, satisfying in that everything was resolved nicely, but to be honest I’d much rather watch a fourth Railgun than a fourth Index or second Accelerator. I’m among those who watched the first Railgun prior to watching the first Index, and while Index is regarded as the flagship series, Railgun has been and always will be my number one.

Toaru Kagaku no Railgun T – 24 – Taking It Up a Notch

Once Doppelganger creates a giant concrete kaiju, my first question was “Why doesn’t Mikoto just do the same thing with metal?” She then smirks and proceeds to do just that, answering another question in the process: “What if Mikoto went pretty much ALL out?” Seeing the Railgun’s sheepish grin at the prospect of having to up her game a couple of notches, and then doing so, ranks right up there among her best and most badass moments.

Misaka Mikoto isn’t someone who isn’t sure about herself or her abilities; on the contrary, it’s almost scary how quickly she can power up to the point her colossal electro-iron-sand puppet is railgunning huge holes in Doppel’s rubble puppet (ruppet?). It’s just too bad the kaiju battle is a feint. Doppel’s true target is the stealth dataship, which she locates thanks in part to all the iron sand Mikoto sends into the atmosphere taking out all of the gas tanks Doppel tries to toss at the populated part of the city.

Things even get a bit Evangelion-esque when Doppel pulls out another party trick: the ability to spontaneously generate enormous masses of matter in a similar manner to slime molds and zombie ant parasites. She uses a gigantic clone of herself to grab hold of the airship and render it visible. At this point the real Kuriba Ryouko pleads with her mechanical double for just “two more months”, whereupon she’ll be able to eradicate her own soul and allow Doppel to take over her body fully.

The thing is, Doppel is no longer interested in Kuriba’s body, or in simply existing as an individual anymore. Kuriba falls off the airship, but the Scavengers chip in to locate and pluck her out of the air; Leader’s thank you to Mikoto for her earlier assistance. She uses her ability to serve as spotter for Mikoto as Doppel attacks her with more slime mold-esque clones.

Bottom line: Doppel wants revenge against humanity, beyond simply destroying her creator. By the way, she’s ready to do that and level the city thanks to rigging twenty huge fuel tanks in strategic locations. Having been taught emotions by the researchers, she can’t help but feel envy and hatred to humans.

Mikoto’s answer to this threat is to fire her Railgun directly at Doppel’s core body, but Leader ominously warns Mikoto—albeit too late—that there’s a problem with her line of fire. Doppel is consumed by the light from the railgun blast…but that’s as far as the episode takes us.

With a preview full of Railgun’s friends and frenemies, I imagine Doppel is either destroyed or otherwise neutralized—but we’ll see what cost is incurred as a result. Until then, this will go down in the annals of all-time best-looking duels, and as always it’s an absolute delight to watch Mikoto do her stuff.

Toaru Kagaku no Railgun T – 23 – Koncrete Kaiju

Leader is Leader of Scavenger for a reason: not only is she smart as a whip and good at thinking on her feet, she’s also pragmatic. When the Railgun arrives, she knows there’s no use fighting her or getting on her bad side. Leader has a mission that needs accomplishing, so she tells Mikoto she’s an  undercover member of Judgment tasked with retrieving the doppelganger.

It’s fun to watch Leader navigate a virtual minefield with her subterfuge, not knowing how the Railgun will respond to what she says. Luckily for her, she can relate to Seike as a fellow “civilian” aiding Judgment since she does that for Kuroko and Uiharu all the time. Leader also lucks out when she learns Mikoto is big Gekota fan…but is less enamored of Leader’s praise for fellow Level 5 Shokuhou Misaki.

Leader is ultimately successful in getting Mikoto to help her, and it’s a good thing she does, because the doppelganger is far, far beyond the talents of the members of Scavenger alone. She also gets to watch firsthand just how much of a badass the third-ranked Railgun is against such a foe. The doppel, for her part, wants to “level up” some more before properly fighting her.

Leader has Mikoto lure the doppel to a district of abandoned warehouses. It makes sense to Mikoto because that area will result in the fewest casualties, but she asks Leader to evacuate the district of all Skill Out members. Leader wants the doppel in that district because that’s where Scavenger’s contract says to make the exchange with the lab coats. Yakumaru performs a lovely bit of theater convincing a bunch of punks to be chivalrous for a change, helping her warn others to evacuate.

As Mikoto pokes, prods, and analyzes the doppel while air-boarding on a scrap of metal, Leader makes contact with the researchers, and when they quibble about the details, Leader loses her patience. She and her comrades have almost died five times over trying to capture this subject, and their client’s van isn’t going anywhere (thanks to Seike) until their Joan Hancock is on the bottom line of that contract.

But while Leader and crew escapes with the signed contract, their reputation on the mend, Mikoto’s left holding the doppel bag, her sparking hands having become decidedly fuller as the doppel grows to the size of a kaiju.  It’s also the case that Leader feels kinda bad about deceiving the kind and well-meaning Railgun, but she’s not loyal to Judgment; she’s loyal to the Dark Side, and to her organization.

Toaru Kagaku no Railgun T – 22 – A Run of Bad Luck

When Scavenger is hired to recover Kuriba Ryouko’s doppelganger, they’re upbeat confident they can get the job done, despite having suffered a humiliating defeat in the Accelerator spin-off that I ended up skipping. In fact, Naru (the one with pink hair) sees this “small” job as a stepping stone to regaining credibility among the Dark Side organizations.

The real Ryouko tells Mikoto and Misaki about the dangers of an “untethered soul” of the kind residing within her doppel. It can possess and control any material it pleases and even spread across all of Academy City if left unchecked. She also started the Dream Poker fad as a kind of crowdsourcing for a solution to dealing with the doppel’s soul.

When Ryouko leaves, there’s a bit of tension, as she urges Mikoto not to get involved, but she soon wonders if turning away the Railgun was the right move. In fact, she immediately regrets that when the doppel confronts her, easily chases her down, and promises to erase her existence; clearly the doppel wants to be the only Kuriba Ryouko left standing.

Ryouko is able to use a stun grenade-like device to break Ryouko’s hold and create a smokescreen that allows her to flee. Ryouko would have surely given chase immediately provided she knew which way to go, but she is confronted by Scavenger, who keep her occupied for the rest of the episode.

I’ll give this to the members of Scavenger: they seem an organizaed and competent team under usual circumstances; unfortunately for them there is nothing usual about the doppel. Leader is able to locate the doppel with the Predator skill, while Seike (who is apparently a boy) is able to manipulate friction; between him and the doppel it’s an all-barefoot fight.

Rounding out the group is Yakumaru (an expert in various chemical and explosive agents) and Naru (who can manipulate paper). The four are able to not only stop the doppel in her tracks but restrain her as well. When Leader noticed a second Ryouko flee the area, she sends Seike after her, wrongly assuming the doppel is under control.

The doppel grabs Leader and twists and breaks her wrist. This leads Naru to enter her next-stage “rabbit mecha” form (in which she’d be buck naked but for a few scraps of paper) to separate the two.

The doppel is damaged (which wasn’t part of the job) but unfazed, and uses the power of the soul within her to basically steal Naru’s paper, ripping off an arm of her rabbit mecha and grafting it onto her damaged area.

After their meeting with Real!Ryouko, Misaki shows Mikoto the girl’s memories, and Mikoto learns that she was both researcher and subject in being cut in half as part of her lifelong effort to save her mother, who took a turn for the worse after donating a lung to Ryouko.

With a better understanding of Ryouko’s intentions and motivations, she ends up tracking Ryouko down again, which is fortunate for Ryouko, as Seike tracks her down first and roughs her up a little, just because he can. Enter Mikoto, whom Seike initially doesn’t recognize as the Railgun due to her a sorta-disguise.

It doesn’t take long for him to learn who he’s dealing with, and before sending Ryouko off to safety, Mikoto officially offers to help her with her problem, and Ryouko accepts, thus righting the wrong of their first meeting.

Now armed with part of Naru’s mecha, doppel prepares to crush Yakumaru’s head, but Naru is able to regain control of enough of her paper to stop Ryouko in her tracks, enabling Yakumaru to toss an explodey device that allows Scavenger to flee and regroup, battered but alive.

After making quick work of Seike, Mikoto proceeds to confront Leader, Naru, and Yakumaru. Considering this group already had an ill-fated encounter with the Accelerator, Leader was sure the chances of them coming afoul of another top-ranked esper to be infinitesimal.

Alas, now they have to deal with the Railgun. My advice to them is to surrender peacefully and avoid the same unpleasantness Seike endured. Perhaps they’ll end up joining forces to restrain the doppel…or perhaps the doppel, like Mikoto, is simply out of Scavenger’s league.

Chihayafuru 3 – 24 (Fin) – Gathering the Wind

Goddammit! This is a dark fucking period!—Dewey Cox

In the wake of Taichi’s sudden departure, the Mizusawa Karuta Club is still able to recruit four new members—two girls including one who is Class A, and two boys—and rather than quit like everyone expected, Sumire takes the lead on showing the newbies the ropes.

She has to, because Chihaya is too out of it. The cards “turn black” for her as well. Fukasaku advises that she “learn something”—anything—because karuta and the hundred poets can’t be all that holds her together.

As Mizusawa’s club loses its founding members, Arata remains determined to start one at Fujioka East. For that, he needs at least two new members, so he goes class to class in his black yukata, starting with the first-years and working his way up.

When he tells Yuu how he saw her as part of his team when they were caring for his grandpa before he passed, she decides to volunteer to join if he’s a member short—but he gains one more than he needs.

Wanting them to see one of the best at what they’re setting out to do, Arata arranges practice matches at the prestigious Fujisaki High, but Sakurazawa is the one to break to him the news that as he’s starting a new club, Chihaya and Taichi have quit theirs. He’s so shocked he can’t focus properly, but he’s still the only one on his team to come away with wins.

More importantly, he learns a lot about how a karuta team must be run and who must run it. It’s rare that a great karuta player is also a great leader. Fujisaki’s best player is Rion, but Hyuuga (“Cheers”) is better at rallying the team. Mizusawa’s leader was Taichi while its best player was Chihaya. Seeing them create a team inspired him to do the same. But he just can’t fathom what happened to cause both of them to quit.

However, he knows instinctively that as a member of their triangle it’s his turn to try to cheer them up, as they once did. So as his team is heading home, he takes a selfie of them bathed in the light of the setting sun. He assures Chihaya that Taichi “will be back”, and that the two of them have to get stronger to prepare for his return.

I don’t share Arata’s optimism, as Chihaya’s response to Taichi’s confession seemed like the final nail in the dual coffins of friendship and karuta. This season ends with us not even 100% sure Chihaya definitely quit, we only hear it second hand, while Arata has no idea what happened between Chihaya and Taichi. That’s a lot of balls in the air for a fourth season. Hopefully it won’t take six years to come!

Astra Lost in Space – 03 – This Is NOT It!

Aries has heterochromia. It’s a detail I never noticed in the first two episodes, until it was explicitly mentioned this week. I thought I was so sure they were the same color, but I looked back on those episodes, and sure enough, one of her eyes is more yellow; the other more green. My eyes just…didn’t notice.

It’s a subtle and clever way for the show to communicate not only that one’s eyes (or other senses) can fool them, but that things could be going on right out in the open and we may not even notice them until it’s too late. The same goes for Kanata, who both suspects and doesn’t suspect everyone. Like us, he may suspect Yunhua and Ulgar the most, but just because we know the least about them.

On their twenty-fourth day in space, Zack anounces that the Astra has arrived at Planet #2, Shummoor, but the rest of the crew is too busy shooting the breeze, which should be seen as progress. Then Funi (and her puppet) start talking about how she was adopted the same day she arrived an an orphanage, and how she overheard adults saying “put her on Beego and we’ll illuminate them all.”

Change “Beego” to “B-go (or 5)” and “illuminate” to “eliminate”, and it sure looks like everyone was put on this ship because they wanted to get rid of them in one fell swoop. With this theory afoot, Kanata decides to tell the others that there’s a traitor in their midst. Ulgar finally reveals something about himself: he’s the estranged son of the school vice principal, a man able to transfer students and choose who goes on what team.

I loved that this exchange marked the return of the haunting music that backed up the first episode’s cold open; a piece that captures both the unfathomable size of space and the equally unfathomable variety of perils it offers. And yet the greatest danger to everyone may be someone among them, not anything out there.

All this talk of a traitor is too much for Quitterie, who loses her composure, even pushing Aries away when she tries to comfort her. The fact is, no one can prove they are or are not the traitor. So Aries decides to table that particular dilemma for now, and have some snacks before heading down to the planet.

Both in this defusing of a volatile situation and in the insight she offers vis-a-vis the possibility of the traitor being on the kill list themselves, making theirs a suicide mission—Aries proves she’s far brainier and tougher than her space-cadet-with-a-photographic memory exterior would suggest.

In the midst of the discussion about this potentially suicidal traitor, another act of apparent sabotage goes down: a hole is blown in the ship’s hull, rupturing a water pipe.

Charce finds fragments and determines that it was an accident, not treachery from one of their own: a meteor pierced the hull, causing damage that if not repaired will spell the end of the ship. It’s actually comforting that it was a truly random, chaotic event, something that happens in space all the time, and something even the traitor did not expect to happen when it happened.

After reciting a couple more lame, vague “survival tips,” Kanata quickly and decisively assigns tasks to each member of the crew, each according to their strengths as he knows them. And after the events of last week, where he made decisions and acted when no one else could, the crew responds by going along with his assignments without protest. He also instills in everyone a palpable sense of “we can do this” by dint of sheer charisma.

The crew springs into action…well, all but Yunhua. Yunhua gets water in her face and some of it ends up down her throat. Because water forms balls in zero-G, she starts to drown, but Quitterie, the closest thing to a medic on the crew, acts quickly to save her, absorbing the water with a cloth. Yunhua is left alone to rest, and while it’s highly unlikely she meant to almost drown, I couldn’t help but think she was up to something arranging to be left on the bridge with no one watching.

Once a series of cables connect the backup generator with the gravity reactor thingamajig (technobabble), the system still throws and error due to a weird bird/bug-like critter flying about that the computer does not recognize. If they can’t nab it, they’ll plummet to their deaths.

The resident marksman, Ulgar, volunteers to shoot the thingy with Luca’s glue gun, as Luca and Kanata keep him steady. He succeeds, and the ship’s gravity and power are restored, halting its death dive into the planet’s atmosphere. Thanks to the talents of the individual crew, and their ability to work together as a unity under Kanata’s direction, the latest crisis is averted.

But that doesn’t change the fact there’s a traitor in their midst. As Luca praises Ulgar’s marksmanship and claims that with a real gun he’d be “unstoppable,” Kanata retorts that guns haven’t been legal in a very long time. And yet there Ulgar goes, into his quarters, to pull out a case containing…a gun.

Could it be as simple as one of the most obvious suspects in the crew actually being the traitor? Or is the reveal of the gun more misdirection? Like Aries’ different colored eyes, the answers may have already stared me in the face long before I discover them for myself…

TenSura – 06 – Fire and Slime

Kaval, Eren, and Gido are the adventurers who Rimuru briefly encountered. We learn their guildmaster is quite the taskmaster, sending them back out to Jura to further investigate the disappearance of Veldora after just three days of rest. They are accompanied by a raven-haired young woman in white cape and mask named Shizu.

Meanwhile, Rimuru surveys the fruit of his overpoweredness, as the Dwarves he brought to the village immediately begin to make a big impact on the goblins’ development. He also names 500 more goblins to evolve them so they won’t be wiped out in the power vacuum caused by Veldora’s vanishing.

The adventurers soon get in over their head, and end up getting chased by a pack of giant ants. Shizu uses her mastery of fire and not inconsiderable combat skills to destroy the ants and save her comrades, but ends up missing one, and almost fainting just before she can kill it.

That ant is destroyed by Rimuru’s Black Lightning, and he introduces himself to them all, including Shizu, whose mask came off in the hubbub, revealing a face Rimuru saw in the crystal ball; the person he’s “destined to be with.”

Rimuru takes them back to the village where the goblins put them up in a hut and feed them meat, and they have their introductions. Shizu is putting out all kinds of Japanese vibes, and turns out there’s a reason for that: she was summoned to this fantasy world from the same real world as he was, only in her case, it was during an bombing raid in WWII, just after her mother was killed by debris.

While the details are scant, Shizu was apparently summoned (by at least 30 mages, according to Veldora) to serve as a weapon. At first the big cheese in charge of bringing her there doesn’t think anything of her, but then has none other than Ifrit use Shizu as a vessel.

Shizu seems glad to have met a fellow Japanese, and even happier when he shows her his memories of how well the country has fared since she left. But there are times when she collapses; perhaps a symptom of the “curse” she bears. And then there’s the whole reason she’s there: to serve as a weapon formidable enough to defeat, say, a dragon…or even, perhaps, a slime that ate a dragon? Whatever her motives, I’m glad we’ve finally been introduced.