Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End – 01 (First Impressions) – The Unchanging One

As the title indicates, Beyond Journey’s End isn’t about how a party consisting of the hero Himmel, the warrior Eisen, the priest Heiter, and the mage Frieren defeat the Demon King. We only see them returning from their ten-year adventure after they’ve successfully defeated said king. This is the story of what happens after the foe is slain.

Of the four in the party, Himmel and Heiter are mere humans, while Frieren is an elf and Eisen a dwarf. As such, they perceive time differently. The party is welcomed to the great capital to jubilant celebration, yet they seem content to enjoy a quiet moment together witnessing a once-in-50-years meteor shower.

Frieren parts ways with her party-mates, embarking on a journey of her own to find new spells. When fifty years pass, she returns to the city to find the hero Himmel has aged, well, fifty years. As an elf, she hasn’t aged at all. Her appearance is identical to the statue of her erected half a century ago.

This is the simple, quiet magic of Beyond Journey’s End. So much goddamn time passes in so little runtime, and yet I felt every bit of that time pass, even as I acknowledged that it didn’t feel like so much time at all to an elf like Frieren.

There’s also a profound sense of happiness that accompanies Frieren taking her party-mates to a spot where she had promised to take them fifty years ago, to watch that same meteor shower. You can see that happiness, that contentment, in Frieren’s face.

That happiness dissipates when Himmel passes away. And while I’d only known him for around five minutes, I actually started tearing up before Frieren did. She cries not just because a friend has passed, but because it feels so unfair to her that he passed so quickly by her reckoning—before she believed she’d even gotten to know him.

The party that defeated the Demon King traveled together for “only” ten years, but that decade feels like a drop in the bucket to Frieren. Still twenty years after Himmel’s death, she visits the holy city where the priest Heiter is still kickin’.

She’s guided to Heiter by a little girl named Fern, an war orphan Heiter took in. Heiter also has a grimoire for Frieren to examine said to contain lost spells of resurrection an immortality. He also admits to fearing death more than when they last saw each other two decades ago.

In addition to asking her to decipher the grimoire to give him a bit more time, he asks Frieren to take little Fern on as an apprentice, as she shows great potential as a mage. Frieren tells him she can’t in good conscience do so, noting the mortality rate of mage apprentices.

But when Frieren witnesses a demonstration of Fern’s power, then asks her if she likes magic, Fern answers “somewhat”, mirroring Frieren’s own position. So it looks like she’ll take her under her wing after all.

Beyond Journey’s End starts strong with an epic, sprawling tour-de-force of quiet, teeming grandeur. We’re dropped in Frieren’s shoes as someone detached from time as humans know it; I grieved the passing of Himmel as she did, and was shocked by how much had changed as she went off on what she perceived to be a brief jaunt.

She is the unchanging one, who with her party-mates helped save the world. Now she lingers on, wandering the earth searching for the next great truths, but with the arrival of Fern in her life, she appears destined to not wander alone for long.

I couldn’t help but be reminded of Elrond’s haunting prophecy to Arwen in The Two Towers. But like Arwen, Frieren’s future need not be marked with darkness, doubt, longing and despair. For while human lives may only be fleeting, they live on in their progeny. When Heiter passes, a part of him will live on in Fern.

This was the first of four episodes of Frieren released all at once…I’ll be getting to the other three soon!

Loving Yamada at Lv999 – 01 (First Impressions) – Not Just a Band-Aid

Kinoshita Akane (Minase Inori) had a boyfriend who got her into MMO gaming, only to dump her for another girl he met in-game. The guy’s last text to her is asking her to return a rare item she borrowed from him. Her BFF Momoko is sympathetic, but urges Akane not to wallow in heartbreak too long. Plenty of fish in the sea, etc.

Despite the game being the source of her pain, Akane can’t quit it, and in fact logs in to murder some minor monsters to blow off steam. She then meets a stoic mage in a Noh mask, then explains her current situation in far more detail than is needed. The mage, named Yamada, isn’t a chatty fellow, nor does he seem too interested in Akane’s problems.

When an IRL event is announced, Akane spares no expense on a day-long glow-up to look as cute (and make her ex as jealous) as possible. But at the event, she spots her ex with his new beautiful GF, and ends up tripping and falling. The tall, dark, handsome fellow who retrieves her shoe is none other than Yamada from the game—Not only is he just as cool and curt IRL, but her ex idolizes him as he’s an elite pro gamer. So Akane bribes Yamada with a rare item coupon to pretend to be her boyfriend.

That night, Akane and Yamada go to an izakaya, though only Akane drinks beer to drown her sorrows. Her victory was a hollow one; she may have shown up her ex, but at the end of the day he has a real girlfriend and she has…this guy, who doesn’t understand and has no interest in romance. That said, he’s not so cold as to abandon her while she’s clearly going through it.

It isn’t until Akane feels like she’s on the verge of tears again and goes to the bathroom that she notices her clothes are dirty and ankle bleeding from her fall. That she was so emotionally distraught and out of sorts that she hadn’t noticed her physical state speaks to just how overwhelming heartbreak can be. So it was a truly sweet moment when Yamada tenderly applies a band-aid to her ankle.

Fast forward a few hours (and beers) and a hungover Akane groggily awakens to the voice of someone talking. It’s Yamada on his gaming headset, and Akane is naked (or nearly) in his bed. Did something scandalous occur in the preceding hours? Or did Akane simply pass out and Yamada let her crash there?

Hot and good at games as he is, Yamada will need a different kind of “leveling up” to be sufficiently emotionally available to Akane. But considering the title, he also wasn’t a one-time Band-Aid for her.

With Minase Inori bringing an instant likability and genuine pathos to the relatable Akane and Madhouse making the whole show look great, I am definitely on board with this college age rom-com.

Takt Op. Destiny – 01 (First Impressions) – Settling the Score

It’s 2047, and music is banned. If it’s ever played, fearsome alien monsters called D2 arrive and fuck shit up. So when young man sits at a lovely upright piano and bangs out some Beethoven, a D2 comes running…right in the middle of an unassuming town full of unassuming people. The D2 looks like it’s about to obliterate the pianist for sure…but he’s saved by a ridiculously strong young woman.

She is Colette, AKA Destiny, a Musicart, and he is Takt, her Conductor. Transforming into a Musical Magical Girl, Destiny easily defeats the mid-level D2. The brief but wonderfully precussive battle set to a more symphonic arrangement of Symphony No. 5 IV. Allegro is a feast for eye and ear. This is what happens when Madhouse and Mappa join forces.

Takt and Destiny were just passing by the town while on a long and interminable road trip to New York City, where their self-appointed leader Anna hopes they can have Destiny “tuned” to be more efficient in her fighting, as she always ends up exhausting Takt. Destiny loves eating, but also has to due to her extremely fast metabolism. Takt should train, but all he cares about is music.

Destiny is feeling particularly brash, and Takt is sufficiently beat and confident in her skills, that she goes off on her own while he and Anna wait in a remote highway diner (one wall of which Destiny destroys as she exits). She ultimately fails to eliminate the D2 in the area due to their boss being a particularly tough customer, as she regales to them with cute Panty & Stocking-style visuals.

Her mistake was going off without Takt, or rather Takt not accompanying her (neither of them listen to Anna’s directives, a fun running gag). But then Destiny rushes back to town with her super speed, picks up the piano with her super strength, and rushes it back to the abandoned factory where the boss lurks. There, her Conductor starts to play Moonlight Sonata, and it’s off to the races with a sakuga-fest of a boss battle that ends in a victory.

As a weapon, Destiny comes off like a piano: capable of great bluntness and great precision; capable of being extremely quiet or loud. More than anything, she’s only as good as the person making use of her. Takt is a brilliant musician, but has a lot to learn about Conducting. If they’re ever going to get to New York—much less save the world from the D2—they’re both going to have to step up their games.

Takt Op. Destiny is a crisp, bright disco ball of luscious anime goodness. Will every episode look this good? Who knows, but if you want to hook an audience right from the get-go, this is how you do it! Play it again, Takt.

Sonny Boy – 05 – The Creator

If you thought Sonny Boy was going to pick up right where it left off with the Bond Girl-like arrival of a teacher (like ahem me) well…you haven’t been paying proper attention. Sonny Boy, you see, picks up where and when it feels like it: in this case, a 2D Pac-Man-like world that Nagara, Nozomi, Asakaze and Mizuho manipulate in order to “liberate” all of the digital mice.

Their “reward” for “conquering” (i.e. clearing) this world is a corded desktop mouse with the power to unravel things, from computer code to sweaters. Turns out each time a world is conquered, a new power is “unlocked”. Back at Rajdhani’s lab on the beach, he’s recording and cataloguing all of the team’s successes and failures, gradually narrowing down what can and can’t be done…slowly unraveling the big tangle that is their predicament.

The rest of the class probably would have tolerated this as long as they were kept fed and busy, but along came that Aki-sensei, who claims to have been sent by “God” and only seems to be their to stir up some shit. She immediately plays favorites with Asakaze, and encourages him to take up the mantle of the class’s savior. With him, she’s less Swiss Family Robinson and more Mrs. Robinson.

She also insists that no matter what they do, none of the students will ever be able to return home. She also assigns a scapegoat in Nagara, cultivating the idea that the only one of them with the power to teleport was trying to escape the world they came from, and happened to drag them all along with him. The StuCo brings Nagara before the class, but due to his social anxiety and ineloquence, his answers only make them more suspicious and angry, and even Hoshi can’t sway them to take it easy.

Happily, Nagara at least gets a small respite from all the finger-pointing when he joins Nozomi for some nighttime fishing. When she spots “guardian angels” in the otherwise inky black water, she dives in without hesitation, and pulls Nagara in with her. Under the water they soon become surrounded by a shimmering silver school of minnows, a wondrous and beautiful moment in an episode full of bleak cynicism. Nagara is glad he jumped in. He’s also glad he met Nozomi.

Things go south when Nagara is again confronted by the class, with Aki-sensei apparently trying to get everyone to turn against him as the one villain on whom they can pin all their blames. One student even shoves Nagara to the ground, causing him to run away once again. As she pulls Nagara down she builds Asakaze up, as he demonstrates he can cut through the world Nagara teleported them to and return to the island.

But that’s the first clue that Nagara’s power isn’t actually teleportation. He ends up escaping to a burned version of the island from before they set up a barter system that obeyed the world’s rules of fair exchange. Nozomi, Mizuho, and Rajdhani end up being able to travel to this burned island where they find Nagara. Mizuho in particular masks her genuine concern for him by being super prickly with him upon their reunion.

But the fact that the burned island wasn’t healed, but a second island created, seals one of the many theories Rajdhani’s simmering in his head: Nagara isn’t a teleporter…he’s a creator. Each and every one of the worlds they’ve visited was made from his power.

With Aki-sensei grooming Asakaze into Nagara’s nemesis, destroyer of those worlds, and savior of the class, all while painting Nagara as the devil, it seems like it’s only a matter of time before things boil over into something ugly.

Sonny Boy – 04 – Monkey League

While cliff-jumping into a pool of…voidness, Nagara is almost dashed on the rocks, but his latent power kicks in, transporting him and everyone else seemingly back home, if only for a moment. Everyone, especially Asakaze, is convinced that Nagara can get them home if he would just give a shit and try. The thing is, I’m not sure Nagara cares what world he’s in. He’s just not tied to the world he came from like some.

But enough about that; let’s play some baseball. Yep, after Nagara and Mizuho’s friendship was forged in last week’s buddy detective story, this week is a straight-up sports episode. Turns out there’s a baseball diamond on the island, which is used by a league of mysterious invisble monkeys who were taught the rules of baseball. Cap bends everyone’s ears off singing the praises of that noble league.

Nozomi and Mizuho, who settle into a nice rapport this week, are eager to see these monkeys, requiring a special flashlight only Ace, the pitching star, possesses. His girlfriend, however, doesn’t like Mizuho or Nozomi, so no dice. Ace decides to challenge the two girls and Nagara to a one-inning game. If they win, they get the flashlight. If he wins, well…he only whispers to Nagara whe he gets in return.

The ensuring three-batter game starts as you’d expect, with Mizuho wildly whiffing far too late to catch up to Ace’s fastballs, followed by a more capable but still outmatched Nozomi striking out. It’s all up to Nagara, who at no point throughout their rigorous practices had any confidence whatsoever he’d ever be able to hit one of Ace’s pitches.

Even so, the story of the Monkey League umpire who ruined an immaculate game for the pitcher, his team, and all of the amassed spectators resonates as Nagara prepares for the third pitch. That monkey umpire did not bend to the will of the people, but held fast tot he rules of the game as they stood.

His call was correct and just, but it didn’t matter; he was killed by the mob. Nagara ends up using his warp in the middle of his at bat and adopting a more assured stance, but still swings and misses for strike three.

That means Nagara has to do what Ace asked of him: use his power to warp him and everyone else home without delay. Ace, you see, wishes more than anything to return to the place where he’s “properly appreciated.” But since Nagara doesn’t share that wish, he’s unable to warp them back home. Indeed, he confirms he has little to no control over where he warps.

Just when Nagara was being primned to be the savior of the class, he lets most everyone down when they all return to the beach, having gotten all their hopes up and then dashed them. But just when they return, they spot a woman coming out of the surf: one of their teachers, Aki-sensei, who declares that the “fun and games” are over.

This was an episode that really got lost in its invented Monkey League lore and quick-and-dirty underdog sports story, but also managed to develop Nagara’s ability while giving us some fun Mizuho-Nozomi camaraderie. Still, Cap’s elaborate stories did go on a bit long, and if they referenced real-world Japanese baseball history, it went entirely over my head.

Sonny Boy – 03 – The Detective Is Already Snarky

Nozomi, Nagara, and Asakaze have turned out to be a pretty good survey team, with Nozomi locating new worlds with her Compass, Nagara being able to access them, and Asakaze bailing them out with his powers of flight.

When we check in they’ve already found thirteen new worlds, and Rajdhani is soaking up the data like a sponge at his beachfront laboratory. Their survey work is interrupted by an unsettling trend of students starting to freeze in place and turn pitch black, like voids in human form.

Since she’s the one with the most time on her hands owing to the immense wealth her power provides, Mizuho is put on the case, and she chooses Nagara as her Watson, partly to share what sounds like a hassle of a case, but also because Nagara…was nice to her previously, and she enjoys his company.

That said, she still initially treats him as a rank servant, making it clear that this isn’t a collaboration of equals. That said, she still orders a gaudy couch big enough for both of them, and even gets Nagara the same fast food order she got. When it comes to sharing the wealth, she’s fine sharing it with Nagara.

The uniting quality of the two students (who later become three, then four) who fell victim to the freezing phenomenon is that they kept to themselves, hardly anyone noticed them when they were around, and no one noticed when they suddenly vanished.

While Nagara is busy with Mizuho, Nozomi and Asakaze fail to find any new worlds. Despite this, Asakaze drops in specifically to tell Nagara that he’s not needed and that Nozomi doesn’t care if he doesn’t come back. Nagara brushes this off, and that ineffectual passivity irks Mizuko.

Eventually, Mizuho and Nagara break the case wide open when, no doubt due to Nagara’s unspoken power even he may not even be aware he has, they discover a portal to the space where the four students ended up.

They walk through a honeycomb of blackout curtain walls separating the four spaces of the students, all of whom are content to stay right where they are and keep doing what they’re doing indefinitely. It becomes evident that while they may be content, this wasn’t originally their doing, but another rule of the world, separating those no one else wants around or cares about.

After Nagara and Mizuho’s nightly debriefing with Cap and Pony, a minor disagreement causes simmering underlying resentment to boil over for both of them. Mizuho points how how watching Nozomi follow him around like a puppy grosses her out; Nagara accuses Mizuho of lying to show off and being “ill-natured” because she’s just another recluse; Mizuho tells Nagara to die and storms off.

It’s a testament to how much these two have come to know each other that they each know the precise buttons to press to sting hardest.

But because the two really do care what the other thinks of them despite words to the contrary, both of them feel bad about the spat. Fortunately, back at Rajdhani’s lab, Nozomi offers a clue Nagara hadn’t considered, and he texts an apology to Mizuho, along with a promise to be waiting by the blackout curtains tomorrow.

Armed with Rajdhani’s bizarre, whimsical instruments, the two get down to business lifting the blackout curtains and freeing the students. This is Sonny Boy at its most Eizouken, particularly with the fantastical machinery and Yuuki Aoi lending Mizuho such a wonderfully husky, distinctive voice.

With the case solved and the afflicted students retrieved, Nagara and Mizuho make up with a handshake; what was said when heads were less cool and frustration was mounting is water under the bridge.

As much if not more than their surreal surroundings, what I enjoyed most about this episode was just reveling in this nascent friendship between two people who don’t normally do so well around others doing just fine around one another. I daresay I wouldn’t even mind a whole cour of these two solving cases together.

On the periphery were some interesting inroads into the larget questions about this place, with Hoshi admitting a voice told him this would all happen, and Nozomi being the first to suggest that while she can spot new worlds, Nagara alone has the power to create portals between them.

Sonny Boy – 02 – Kindle Blue Fire

While technically a beach episode, there’s not a ball or a bikini to be found. There are crabs—you gotta love crab—as well as a makeshift open-air classroom with rows of desks and a chalkboard, but otherwise the sand is just another flat surface for Nagara to lie on and wile away the hours.

When Nozomi catches a crab, it cuts her hand up pretty badly with its claw, but she soon heals; just another one of the rules of this “This World”, as the egghead Rajdhani calls it while explaining the situation.

While most of the class is in tents on the beach, Mizuho has, presumably through the three cat Amazon power called Nyamazaon, built a Disney princess castle full of stuff, but otherwise isn’t that different from Nagara in her fondness for straight chillin’.

Another girl steals makeup from Mizuho’s vast collection of things with impunity, but that and other items acquired from Nyamazon start to burst into blue flames, rumors spread that Mizuho is doing it intentionally.

Mizuho doesn’t help matters by stirring the shit on social media that the recent election was rigged in Michi’s (AKA Pony’s) favor—which is the truth; the extremely Kyuubey-like Hoshi helped rig it. Pony and Hoshi learn Mizuho is behind it and try to exact an apology, but Mizuho is stubbornly refuses.

When they confront her at the front gate, Hoshi uses his power of showing everyone potential futures to depict the entire island covered in blue flame; everything destroyed. On top of it all, Mizuho is exhausted and filthy from looking for one of her cats, who has gone missing.

While the rumor may have well gotten started since Mizuho is a natural target for envy and resentment among the other students due to her extremely cool power, Nagara still blames himself for blabbing about Mizuho knowing something about the flames, which got twisted into “Mizuho is responsible for the flames.”

But thanks to Rajdhani’s research and a retro Game Boy, it is determined that the blue flames appear every time someone receives something without a fair exchange. Among the things that burned-up, only Raj’s Game Boy was exchanged for some toys he made with his power, and only it escaped those flames. Therefore, it isn’t Mizuho’s doing, but the Rules of the World.

Among the students, most of whom end up in the “Punish Mizuho” camp/mob, only Nagara and Nozomi want to help her. They both know she’s not doing this, but also know that she hasn’t explicitly defended herself, which isn’t doing her any favors. Nagara also finds the missing cat, and unlike two previous instances of letting birds die, this time he takes care of the animal like the non-heartless person he is.

The two decides to go to her—nay, run to her, just as she’s literally making it rain fat stacks of cash, which soon burn up and set fire to the whole island. Mizuho, overcome with relief her kitty is safe, admits that she should have simply stated her innocence from the beginning. It’s an all-around wonderful performance by Mizuho’s seiyu Yuuki Aoi—which comes as no surprise as she’s one of the best in the business.

Nagara, Nozomi, and Mizuho oversee the ruined island—the realization of Hoshi’s vision—and concede the fact that they can’t live there any more. But then something happens: as the sun rises over the ocean, the island essentially resets itself to before everything burned up.

It’s as if the island, which set the rule of fair exchange, is forgiving all of the students for their stumblings as they learn of those rules and correct their misunderstandings. Mizuho comes down from her castle and apologizes, but only for making it rain flammable money…not the stuff she was accused of doing but didn’t really do.

Mizuho also stops by the beach where Nagara is lying to give him a token of her appreciation for finding her cat: a hat to keep his face out of the sun. When he asks if he needs to give her anything in return for it, she says with a gentle smile that it’s “her treat” before walking away.

This episode was significantly less weird and frightening than the first, but that tends to happen when you take the inscrutable black void out of the equation. What it was was another relatively straightforward exploration of how the court of public opinion can be wrong—in school or life—and it’s up to those who know it’s wrong to speak up. Nagara grew as a person in this episode, as did Mizuho, and they each gained a friend in the process.

Credit also goes to Rajdhani for not giving up on trying to make sense of the place, thus confirming the injustice being done to Mizuho, as well as Nozomi, for lending Nagara the encouragement to correct the injustice. Just as she’s the “Compass” who can see the ways out of these other worlds, she’s also a moral compass; a check against both rampant authority and rampant apathy.

Sonny Boy – 01 (First Impressions) – Rules are Rules

Welcome to RABUJOI’s belated reviews of Sonny Boy! I will try to catch up before the end of the cour, but no promises—Braverade

More than anything else, this episode is full of uncertainty. Why is this school suddenly in a black void? Why do only some students have superpowers? Who did this, if anyone? What exactly is happening, and how is it happening? Will it stop, and when? Nothing is certain…hey, kinda like the times we live in. But enough about reality, let’s step into the land of surreality.

The void is intentionally creepy, both in its impenetrable darkness and its haunting stillness. I’ve always been drawn to voids in fiction, because they typically have a way of simplifying the universe down to…the contents within the void that are not the void.

While one egg-headed student is asking these questions, everyone else is going full Lord of the Flies (or at least that’s the vibe I’m getting; I only skimmed the book but I watched the Simpsons episode that references it). The approaches to coping with their new abnormal are as diverse as the personalities of the 36 students.

The three-person StuCo doesn’t have time to ponder the big questions; they were the authorities before the void, and if they don’t claim some degree of power and control everything will soon devolve into pure chaos. The little guy Hoshi may already have some answers, but he’s also shrewd enough to capitalize on the asset that is the class’s popular, if oafish, baseball star in Cap.

It isn’t long before the order that is established (through social media, natch) is challenged by some of the power-havers, who are already well on their way to drunk on that power, like Asakaze. He’s not about that with great power axiom; for him, if he has a power, he should be able to use it to his heart’s content.

If he’s drunk on his trippy glass-shattering power, Cap delivers the hangover in the form of a PENALTY, which asserts itself as a frighteningly sudden big black X on the faces of those who receive them. They are then forced to do something—in his case, long division of pi all night.

Hovering around the periphery of all this political push-and-pull are two outcasts in Nagara and Nozomi. Nagara would rather stay out of sight and out of mind; Nozomi would rather do what she wants when she wants to. She doesn’t have the power of the others but they share a distaste of authority.

When she politely declines the smartphone Cap offers her, then takes it and smashes it on the gym floor, she’s not immune to the PENALTY: a hundred laps around the school that leave her flat on her back on the homeroom floor—Nagara’s usual position as he apparently yearns to be one with said floor.

After a very unsettling shot of the school apparently very slowly sinking into the inky void, we get a flashback of sorts to just before the school went into the void.  Nagara finds Nozomi tearing up some workbook she got from the faculty office, and invites him to join her. Not eager to do anything with anyone, he turns to leave, saying he has stuff to do.

But he’s pressed by Nozomi about whether he actually wants to go somewhere and do something else other than where he is and what he’s doing. All the while, storm clouds obscure the blue skies. When Nozomi puts her hands on Nagara as he’s trying to leave, a lightning bolt flashes and just like that, the school is in the void.

Whether Nagara caused this on accident or not (and whether Nozomi was the catalyst for him doing it, making them partners in crime, like Flowers of Evil), it’s certainly not something in his control, nor was it ever. The StuCo is suddenly ambushed by power-havers who twist the school into either an Escherian nightmare…or a Katamari.

They declare that they’re in charge now, but Hoshi is unimpressed. Cap PENALTYs Asakaze’s two associates, but as he hasn’t broken one of the agreed-upon school rules, the PENALTY “power” doesn’t work on him.

Still, Cap uses brute force by hitting Asakaze with a baseball bat. Since that breaks the rules, it’s Hoshi who PENALTYs Cap into stripping naked and hopping around. Hoshi then drops another hint that he knows a lot more than everyone else, including the egghead (who is probably not on the right track trying to apply things like physics to this predicament).

When Asakaze won’t stand down, Hoshi demonstrates his apparent power: showing everyone a future where no one ever escapes the school and eventually become desiccated corpses seated beside each other. It’s the most overtly spooky and unnerving sequence in an episode full of weird shit.

Once again on their own wavelength, Nozomi takes Nagara by the hand, avoids all of the StuCo versus Supes drama, and seeks out that bright spot in the void she saw before. It turns out to be the same white feather she plucked from Nagara’s face in the episode’s opening moments.

She then decides to put her life in the hands of fate by performing an experiment to see what happens when you leap from the physical school into that endless black nightmare. In a show with 36 characters, I wasn’t 100% sure this wasn’t the end for Nozomi just as soon as we met her.

Instead, Nagara grabs her arm just in time. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter, as the rusty railing breaks, sending them plummeting down the void until, suddenly, it’s not a void anymore. Their bodies and the piece of railing must’ve “popped” the void, revealing that the school is sinking into an unknown ocean, just off the coast of an unknown island with both lush green jungle and a slim, jagged alpine mountain peak, like the Matterhorn stretched vertically.

It’s probably simplistic to say this episode was a trip, but it was a welcome and thrilling one. Even at its most quiet and mundane, primal dread emanated from every nook and cranny. Nagara is somewhat of a nullity so far, but Nozomi, the StuCo, and the bristling supes are all fun to watch. I’m eagerly awaiting the next episode; whether it delivers answers or more questions, I know it’ll be another weird trip presented with a strikingly austere beauty.

No Guns Life – 09 – Bucking Colts

In what can best be described as a respite/setup episode, a lot of time is spent at Berühren HQ, where we finally see that the board of executives occupy a colossal many-faced robot/idol…thing. It’s pretty trippy. Cunningham beseeches the faces for another chance to redeem himself after a string of failures and is granted that shot.

From there we move on to Juuzou, who is back at his office, being courted by the others for some hot pot togetherness. Mary also announces she’s moving in with him, for various reasons. While undergoing routine maintenance, Tetsuro asks Mary why she became an Extension engineer.

Her reluctant answer? In short, so that she’d one day cross paths with…someone she’s been waiting for a long time. We later learn that someone is her brother, Victor.

When one of Mary’s clients, Colt, passes out outside the building, she fixes him up, and she and Tetsuro learn that the news reports about Berühren offering restitution to the families of testers killed by their latest research is B.S. As payment for her work, Colt offers her a fancy extension hand and forearm assembly that she geeks out on—turns out it was build by Victor.

But Colt also steals something of Mary’s, and Tetsuro spots it and follows him. After a brief scuffle, Colt asks Tetsuro to join him on his “job” which inevitably involves something bad. When asked if he wants to do it, Colt only replies only people with futures have stuff they want to do. Everyone else does what they have to.

No Guns Life – 08 – The Justice in Personal Motives

As she rides a taxi to the memorial with Tetsuro to help Juuzou, Olivier recalls when her MP father first told her he’d be assigned to Norse Scott, a job he said “someone had to do.” Olivier didn’t like how her dad was an MP at all, and dedicated herself to rising to the ranks in order to fire him.

Turns out she didn’t reach those heights in time; Gondry murdered her dad along with sixteen others, and all she got out of it was a bouquet and a can of very bad-smelling food. But Gondry was just a puppet, utilized by Armed, while Juuzou is another person he has to erase in order to preserve the progress he believes he’s made with Extended-Anti-Extended relations.

To that end, he crushes the last of Juuzou’s medicinal cigarettes, which results in Juuzou going berserk and revealing heretofore unseen arsenal of weapons and directives. Once he’s in battle formation, the protocol governing his operation awaits “authorization” from an operator called “Hands.”

Ironically, he remained utterly harmless until Armed attacked him, after which the berserk Juuzou mops the floor with him. Olivier eventually arrives, having heard Armed blab about his grand corrupt plan and his inherent egotism; but manages to wake Juuzou up by lighting up one of the cigs Tetsuro brought and blowing the smoke into his mouth—in other words, kissing him.

The awakened Juuzou regains his senses, and resists the urge to kill Armed, even though it’s what his client Olivier wants in the moment. Instead, he’s to face a court, while Juuzou is carried off by Tetsuro. But as he rides in a paddy wagon with Olivier, he asks what court would try him?

Olivier and Juuzou have stepped into something probably better left alone, now that they’ve come to the point where there will be no true justice, since powers far above her authority have already tacitally (if not directly) approved Armed’s actions.

Additionally, since Armed has info that could harm those powers that be, he is killed by Pepper—using Harmony to operate a Gun Slave Unit whose name we learn is Seven—by blasting a huge hole in the wagon. It’s just one thing after another…

No Guns Life – 07 – You Can’t Put the Bullet Back in the Gun

As Olivier is suspended and replaced as EMS director for failing to take care of Gondry and acting on her own, Juuzou and Kronen battle Gondry, whom the former learns is a tough customer, but one whose extended components use up a huge amount of energy.

When Kronen’s paralysis needles fail due to him being unable to his Gondry’s internal sub-brain, Juuzou engages Gondry in a battle of stamina, constantly wailing on him until his armor finally cracks and his sub-brain overheats. It’s reckless and crude, but effective.

Last week I lamented that so much time was being spent on what I deemed to be a one-dimensional crazy-evil villain, but Gondry proves more than that. Unbeknownst to either Juuzou or Kronen, Gondry was being controlled remotely via Harmony by a pink-haired woman named Pepper, whose partner is a Gun Slave unit like Juuzou. That’s an interesting twist!

It also means when Pepper’s link is severed, Gondry has no idea what’s going on, and sounds like he thinks the war is still going on. That means all of the murders of his old unit might have been done using his body, but without his consent or knowledge. Now I kinda feel bad for the ugly bastard!

Turns out he may not have done any of the murders after all. That’s because once Armed realizes Juuzou and Kronen intend to get intel from Gondry about the old days, he turns on both of them, declaring them collateral victims of the overarching need to protect the Extended industry and the money it brings the nation.

This is good stuff. First you have the wildly popular and esteemed war hero Armed possibly being a big ol’ fraud, who might even have orchestrated the murders himself—if Pepper didn’t do them through Gondry…unless Pepper is working for Armed. There’s a lot of neat angles to this. And Armed even has a good big picture point, even if it boils down to ends justifying the means.

At any rate, there’s no way he’ll succeed in killing Juuzou or Kronen. Aside from the fact they’re tough bastards in their own right, Tetsuro managed to escape protective custody by inhabiting a guard thru Harmony. His goal is to get Juuzou the cigarettes to which he’s so addicted. Mary hints that they don’t just ease the pain of his Extended parts, but could be suppressing…something.

It’s a nice secondary plot thread that continues to fester in the background, and could come to the fore at the worst time for Juuzou, who it must be said doesn’t seem to have the best luck. But hey, at least he’s got good friends, or in the case of Kronen, people he doesn’t like he can trust nevertheless.

No Guns Life – 06 – Watch Out for the Little Kid

With Mary, Tetsuro, Scarlet and her dad all in safe EMS custody, Juuzou can focus on tracking down and apprehending Hayden Gondry, who just happens to be the first renegade Extended case. Why he was being transported in an ordinary paddy wagon with three other prisoners is beyond me (if it were me I’d keep him on the prison island) but he’s loose, and he’s already murdered three people.

Olivier (whose compulsion to smell really bad smells is an interesting detail about her) warns Juuzou to take their arrangement seriously and bring Gondry in alive so he can face a formal trial. Judging from the photo on her desk, Olivier seems to have a personal stake in this case: either Gondry killed her father, or is her father.

Juuzou visits the mansion of the latest victim, walking past a photo that could be a young Mary, but his work is interrupted by the arrival of Section Chief Kronen, and the two fight until the latter is out of poison needles. Juuzou makes the connection between the three victims—they were all “extension subjects” for the first-generation unit, Tindalos.

He also knows who the next victim will be, so Kronen gives him a ride in his vintage Corvette to that next victim’s present location. That would-be victim, the famous and well-loved world’s first full-body Extended, Tokisada Mega Armed, is inspecting a massive statue being constructed in his honor. On the way to Armed, Juuzou encounters a cute young child who isn’t scared of his gun face.

As Armed is moving through a crush of admirers, Gondry strikes—and is instantly captured by Juuzou. Gondry breaks free, and Kronen hits Juuzou with more needles because he’s in the way, but then Kronen launches a kick at Gondry but hits Juuzou, whose head smashes what is revealed as a Gondry mask—only a decoy.

Meanwhile, Armed has gotten away—incidentally, with the same cute, innocent kid with whom Juuzou crossed paths. That turns out to be bad news, since the kid is actually the real Gondry, who is able to change his form and use holography to mimic the girl. We’ll see if Juuzou and Kronen can put aside their differences, because it will probably take both of them (and possibly more) to bring the guy down.

While there are a couple moments of decent humor and action, this episode was a bit of a drag, groaning under the weight of too much exposition and setup surrounding someone who is, so far, a two-dimensional murderous baddie. I also missed Mary and the others; while it’s logical to detain them for their safety, it would have been nice to cut to them at least once.

No Guns Life – 05 – More Faces, More Problems

This week introduces a number of characters who have been previewed in the OP and ED (the latter sporting very different character design). We start with Juuzou’s new landlady Christina, his “barber” who is best at cleaning his gun components and calls him “Zippo-chan”, and the barber’s daughter Scarlet, who seems to have a thing for the big guy but often stumbles on her words.

The more the merrier, I say, particularly where quirky colorful characters are concerned. They add depth and dimension to this cyberpunk world, and this week underscore how tenuous Juuzou’s grip on his freedom and the safety of the civvies he knows is, especially now that he discharged his head to defeat Spider-Ende.

The woman in charge of keeping Over-Extendeds in line, immune or otherwise, is the blue-(and very full)-lipped EMS director Olivier, who storms the barbershop in the blink of an eye with her Extended SWAT team. Juuzou pretends she’s not even there and asks the barber to keep cleaning his parts.

When Tetsuro and Mary come with leftovers for the Barber and Scarlet, they end up in the middle of things, and all of them end up arrested along with Juuzou. But turns out it’s all for show: Olivier and Juuzou have an arrangement where she smooths out any legal problems he causes, and in exchange she does something for him.

In this case that means capturing two of the seven prisoners who escaped from a van during transfer from the remote, supermax Over-Extended prison Wunder Bender to Berühren (a different arrangement between EMS and the megacorp in exchange for tech EMS needs). One of the two makes it easy and shows up to disrupt the EMS convoy, sending the wagon with the civilians (which Juuzou asked to be brought along for their protection) over a bridge. Somehow they all survive…I guess people are just tougher in this world.

Anyway, the escaped prisoner is called Hug Bear, and loves to give his victims bear-hugs with his meat grinder-like Extended muscles. He takes out some of Olivier’s men and is about to turn on Scarlet, Mary and the others when he is immobilized by yet another new character, Section Chief Kronen. That leaves just one prisoner remaining, who happens to be the most dangerous. What a coincidence!