Hell’s Paradise – 01 (First Impressions) – Do It for Her

The ninja Gabimaru, known as “Gabimaru the Hollow”, is ready to die. He’s killed countless people and claims to have no attachments to life. Leaving his home village of Iwagakure (which is forbidden), he finds himself condemned to death by a magistrate. But for whatever reason, he’s just…not able to die. No matter the method—swords, fire, bulls, oil—he endures.

A young and extremely focused inspector records events as they unfold and interviews Gabimaru nightly after the failed execution attempts. She gets the distinct feeling that all this “hollow” stuff may just be branding, and that Gabimaru is actually resisting death rather than wishing it would come and not being able to die.

Turns out Gabimaru has a wife back in Iwagakure. She alone treated him not like a tool for killing or a monster to be feared, but as her darling husband. She taught him how to act like a proper, normal spouse, and wanted nothing more than to live a simple life with him as his wife.

One day, Gabimaru is taken to a dark cellar where the inspector is waiting for him with katana in hand. Turns out she’s the Yamada Asaemon Sagiri, an elite executioner who answers only to the shogun. Unlike the previous methods of his demise that failed, Sagiri is fully capable of killing Gabimaru…if he let her. Instead, he simply proves her theory right by dodging her killing strikes.

He can vehemently insist he’s hollow and has no attachments to life, but words are wind, and his actions say otherwise. Once Gabimaru has stolen a guard’s katana and he and Sagiri have crossed blades for a while, she presents him with a full pardon from the Shogunate. Her mission here wasn’t to kill him, but to test and recruit him.

An island that once only existed in myth and legend has been found far to the southwest, and the Shogun believes the Elixir of Life can be found there. Sagiri was tasked with recruiting capable individuals on death row who have a strong will to live. And despite Gabimaru once leaving his wife, perhaps out of fear his line of work would endanger her, he most definitely still wants to live to see her again.

Sagiri knows this now, and formally invites Gabimaru to join her on this expedition. He’ll be competing against other criminals—the worst of the worst—as the pardon will only go to the one who finds the elixir.

The magistrate objects to surrendering his prisoner and has his guards threaten Sagiri, so Gabimaru grants her previous request to see some of his ninjutsu, and in the blink of an eye the guards are nothing but a pile of smoldering bodies. Knowing the gig is up, Gabimaru relents, and he and Sagiri have a deal.

It took a bit, and I have another episode to watch, but I finally got around to watching Hell’s Paradise, and I’m very glad I did. Just about everything about it works: the dialogue and direction, the animation and character designs, the music, and the dark humor.

Hanamori Yumiri excels as the sardonic, deadpan Sagiri, while Gabimaru is an instantly sympathetic character despite his bloody past. I know it won’t be easy by any means, as it entails going to paradise and back and not turning into flowers…but I want him to come home to his love.

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.

NieR: Automata Ver 1.1a – 05 – It Takes a Village

Lily sends 2B and 9S on a delivery mission that takes them through a derelict shopping center. The extreme wide shots that dwarf the two androids, the merging of nature and the man-made, and that terrific Okabe Keiichi score all conspire to set the mood exquisitely as always. After showing his cruel side when he extinguished the ML “family”, 9S seems back to his chipper self.

He dreams of a day when the fighting’s over, the mall can reopen, and they can spend the day shopping for T-shirts. 2B says she has all the clothing she needs, and that “emotions are prohibited”; ironic considering she’s clearly had her share of emotional reactions in the past four episodes. She’s someone wrestling with the contradiction between her programming and directives, and the things she’s been feeling.

If last week’s amusement park demonstrated that the MLs emulating humans without proper context results in a state indistinguishable from madness and psychopathy, this week’s ML village demonstrates that a more tempered and realistic form of humanity mimicry can be replicated by the androids’ enemy. Led by the green-eyed gentle giant Pascal, a large population of MLs live in harmony completely severed from the ML network.

In a scene that is half-Laputa, half-Ewok Village, all shapes and sizes of MLs have their specific functions in the village, but rather than working like a well-oiled machine, their movements and behaviors are thoroughly human. They also have familial connections such as big and little sister (with the big sister being smaller). 9S is simply astonished that Pascal is able to converse with them so eloquently.

2B and 9S are given freedom to explore the village, and when they find a ladder that plunges far below ground into the darkness, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Thankfully, there are no flayed androids, but there is a very strange large head that is neither android nor ML. When 9S hacks it, a number of strange images of fellow androids flash by before his connection is severed.

Pascal joins the two and notes that this giant head is the one who inspired him to stop fighting (something he’s apparently done for thousands of years), and is now an object of worship. 9S gathered enough data to identify it as a creation of humanity of yore, perhaps also as a weapon, but like Pascal it seems to have found a new reason for its (now sedentary) existence. The vivid palette of Pascal’s memories is a neat contrast to the subdued earthy tones of the village.

The more 9S observes this seemingly perfect society, the more he resents them as “selfish” for deciding to suddenly stop fighting a war both they and the androids were designed to fight. It’s clear that like 2B, there’s a part of 9S that wants the fighting to stop, and a part of him that believes its the only reason he exists. For her part, 2B asks her assistant bot to properly map this place so that she and 9S can return someday, to buy those T-shirts. The clouds part, and 9S’ mood brightens when she says this.

When the two return to the village to say their goodbyes, they see a group of ML “kids” bickering and getting violent over a music box one of them found, so like humans, the ML village isn’t without its problems.

What was the deal with the images 9S saw when he was hacking the head? Was the visual glitching he experienced—during which time the very environment around him and 2B changed—related to that hacking session? As an anime-only NieRer, I’ll have to wait to find out.

As for Adam and his brother Eve, the two highly evolved MLs are evolving steadly, going from wearing tighty-whities in the cold open to full-on pants and gauntlets in the parting shot. They don’t just look dangerous, they look just like YoRHa androids. Coincidence…or design?

NieR: Automata Ver 1.1a – 04 – The Play’s the Thing

After a three-week, Covid-induced hiatus, NieR: Automata returns, opening with the Machine Lifeforms doing weird-ass Machine Lifeform shit. To whit: they’re putting on a play. MLs play the roles of characters and act out the parts, MLs sit in the seats and watch and applaud…and a captive audience of flayed but still alive androids are strung up around the theater.

2B and 9S return to the resistance base and give their report (Jackass also made it back and provides much needed comic relief). With talk of MLs evolving to a state they feel something like emotions, Lily and Jackass wonder if there’s an opportunity to at least negotiate a ceasefire. But here’s where 9S’s programmed orthodoxy is laid bare: there will be no ceasefire or quarter given: the mission of all androids is to wipe out every last ML and reclaim Earth for mankind.

Perhaps due to the fact her memory file is longer than his or possibly because she’s been doing a little evolving of her own, 2B doesn’t fall into lockstep with this hardline view. Their next recon mission from Commander White (who tried and failed to get them YoRHa backup) takes them to an active and bustling amusement park full of non-hostile MLs.

They find the black box signals of the androids in the theater, and are ambushed by a giant mutated Machine Lifeform that has taken on a prima donna personality…and wears the still-living android bodies like jewelry. A vicious boss fight ensues, with 2B and 9S just barely able to keep up with its myriad attacks. They’re also enclosed within an energy field, so retreat is not an option.

2B covers 9S as he tries to hack the ML, but he ends up overwhelmed and controlled by the imagery within the boss ML’s brain, as if it’s hacking him. There, he finds that personality that constantly needs affirmation that they’re beautiful, which nearly leads to him being swallowed up by a giant mouth and into the spinning meat grinder within. He’s saved at the last second by 2B, who breaks protocol and uses her hacking ability, deemed a risky action for B models due to the possibility of corruption.

2B didn’t have any other options, and seemingly comes out of the situation none the worse for wear. She exposes the boss’ core and the Pod blasts it to smithereens. Not long thereafter, an ML “mother” with a bouquet of roses and her “daughter” arrive; the mom pleads with the androids not to harm them, as they only came to watch the play.

9S’ chilling reaction underscores his inflexibility when it comes to any kind of negotiation of compromise with the Machine Lifeforms: he walks up to the two MLs, crushing the roses under his boot, and destroys them both, then turns to 2B and tells her they can’t hesitate.

But something in the way 2B reacts tells me 9S may ultimately be on the wrong side of this issue. Eve was born from the rib of the destroyed Adam and is still out there, evolving. At what point does mimicry of human emotions and behavior simply become…human emotions and behavior? I think we’re approaching that point in real time.

NieR: Automata Ver 1.1a – 03 – This Cannot Continue

Lily brings 2B and 9S to their ad hoc base, and does not get into why she shoots so many intent looks in 2B’s direction. Could Lily have known a former version of this 2B? Did she know 2A, since she recognized her as “Number Two”? We also meet Jackass, who really wants to take the YoRHa androids apart to “collect data”, but is content to drive them to their recon site.

The truck ride, and really all establishing shots in NieR succeed in creating a vast sense of both scale and desolation, especially when we see the half-buried ruins of our familiar civilization (Saturday is apparently post-apocalypse day for me—not that I’m complaining). The grandeur is enhanced with the score, with themes perfectly suited to the base, desert, and the orbiting YoRHa base.

When they encounter Machine Lifeforms wearing tribal masks and markings, 2B and 9S get to work trashing them. But when 9S hacks the biggest bot, he gets a lot more than he bargained for. These MLs are among those that have absorbed knowledge from the library of humanity of yore, and he ends up in the middle of a Mesopotamian-style  ritual.

With this group of bots defeated, 2B, 9S and Jackass trudge on into the ruined city, where all communications to YoRHa HQ are being jammed by an unknown power source. They keep exploring, and locate a group of android corpses, including the missing YoRHa liaison. That the corpses aren’t totally destroyed but in various states of dismantlement bodes ill for our two androids.

2B and 9S fall though quicksand and into a yawning undergeround complex. They come upon a circle of yellow-eyed, non-hostile MLs both reciting and emulating various human emotions and activities, including copulation and childrearing. All of this makes 9S particularly uneasy, since this is not the way the enemy should be acting. But then things get even weirder when one comment from a red-eyed ML—“this cannot continue”—sends the yellows into a frenzy.

The MLs climb columns made of the fossilized bodies of their dead, and huddle together in to the super-brain thingy teased last week. The mass opens and out pours an approximation of an android that quickly grows skin and stands up, part Terminator, part Sephiroth. 2B and 9S’ first instinct is to kill it ASAP, even though he is not immediately hostile to them.

While they successfully break his energy shield and impale him with their blades, a second, unharmed ML android emerges from the lifeless body, good as new, and this one is a lot more aggressive. 9S is just able to grab 2B and leap out of the way of the android’s devastating main weapon. The resulting cave-in apparently crushes the android, but as we saw that’s not going to be enough to do it in.

We learn from Commander White up in space that she didn’t send 2B and 9S to assist the resistance, but to use the resistance as a shield and decoy in order to facilitate their real mission, which has now borne fruit. Not only do they know what became of the liaison, but they’ve uncovered a potentially game-changing development in their once-primitive foe.

NieR: Automata Ver 1.1a – 02 – Blood and Lilies

In episode two, perspective shifts from the YoRHa in their pristine orbital headquarters to a battered but still operational Machine Lifeform (ML). Curiously, despite having apparently been created by “Aliens”, they have a very similar bootup and heads-up display as the humans’ androids.

This single ML unit starts to walk, creating a sense of scale and grandeur to the ruined landscape. Upon returning to a base, it finds a book, and in that book, a bookmark with the image of a white lily. Scenes of ML are interspersed with a childlike narrator telling the story of the MLs with colored paper compositions.

This particular ML develops an “emotional matrix”, deemed a critical error, and its red eyes turn yellow, denoting neutrality. It ;earns how to garden, and devotes its existence to growing flowers, gathering “followers” in the form of other yellow-eyed MLs.

The comparisons to WALL-E are obvious from the serene, gorgeous empty vistas ML inhabits to the way the storytelling takes place without dialogue (narration segments aside). But hey, if you’re going to borrow, borrow from the best.

Not far from ML’s growing garden is an embedded group of human resistance fighters led by…Lily. I immediately wondered if, like the stiff redheaded twin maintenance units assigned to the unit, she was an android in disguise. Regardless, she’s bitter about the “Council of Humanity” on the Moon ignoring all requests for badly-needed reinforcements.

Every encounter with the red-eyed MLs means at least one of her unit will be injured or killed, with no one to replace them. They’re ambushed when trying to gather resources to keep fighting, and have to abandon those resources when the MLs send in kamikaze units.

Little does Lily know that up in orbit, she’s about to get a helping hand, in the form of 2B and 9S. When 2B wakes up she tells 9S she finds the sound of his voice comforting, only to cooly head to the control room without him.

They may have just come back from a brutal battle that claimed 9S’s memories, but Commander White sends them back down to perform recon on the resistance unit. They had an android embedded with the unit, but there’s been a breakdown in communication.

2B and 9S can’t come soon enough, as a huge mass of red-eyed MLs trample and destroy the yellow-eyed peaceful bots and their garden on their march to kill the humans. Lily demonstrates that she’s a capable leader despite her youth, quick and decisive and maximizing the limited resources she has.

When they mine a bridge and lure the red-eyed bots across, the detonators fail to work. It’s here where Lily’s underlings spot the yellow-eyed ML we know and have grown fond of. He stands in front of the hundreds of red-eyes, seemingly to try to talk them out of further fighting.

But before he can turn any red eyes to yellow, the entire bridge is lit up by missiles from 2B and 9S’ flying mechas. 2B makes a characteristically stylish entrance, and Lily not only knows her as “Number Two” but is very shocked to see her, or indeed any Council reinforcements. That said, Lily’s bloody shoulder seems to confirm she’s a flesh-and-blood human, not a “tin man”.

As for our yellow-eyed friend, he didn’t die in vain, nor is he alone. Hundreds if not thousands of his kind are soaking up knowledge from the library of the civilization they toppled, and seem to be combining their amassed knowledge and brains into a single mega-brain.

While I’m not sure what this is quite about, from a visual standpoint I can at least guess that yellow eyes and books are, at least now, less of a threat than red eyes, kamikaze bots, and slaughter. The narrator also describes the yellow-eyed bot anomalies as “treasures”. Were they meant to evolve in this way, or was it just random happenstance?

Whatever the answers are, and even if they’re never revealed, I remain thoroughly intrigued, and the setting lends the show a welcome splash of color and life from last week’s largely monotone, industrial battles. The post-ED omake featuring a cloth puppet 2B and 9S answering fan mail provides humor and whimsy.

Chainsaw Man – 12 (Fin) – Not a Bad Life

Last week introduced a bunch of new fiends who will surely play a role in any future seasons, but this week stripped everything back to Aki and Himeno and Denji and his wretched childhood—with a bit if Power and Kobeni being themselves for garnish.

First up, the Ghost Devil actually disobeys Sawatari and does not choke Aki to death. Instead it releases him, and in the moments he’s out, he recalls the day Himeno offered him a cigarette for the first time. Since he was under age, she promised to save it for him.

The Ghost Devil reaches out one of its countless arms to produce that very cigarette, with “Easy Revenge!” written on it. How exactly the Ghost was tamed after Himeno died isn’t important; what is is that Aki is able to destroy the Ghost, and he and Kobeni take Sawatari into custody.

Denji and Power really are the brother and sister to Aki’s big brother in their little found family, and even on the elevator ride to meet with Katana Man they can’t help but bicker over something petty. Power then gets off on the wrong floor because it’s full of zombies, and Power fucking loves killing zombies.

Denji carries on to the floor where Katana Man is. Unlike Sawatari, he’s given an opportunity to voice his grievances to Denji. Whatever the circumstances were, he blames Denji for the death of his gramps and others he cared about, and wants satisfaction.

As has been established, Denji himself is a little unnerved by how easily he was able to get over Himeno’s death, as well as all the other terrible things that have happened of late. But in this case? He couldn’t care less. This guy’s gramps tortured and enslaved him as a child just because he could. He can burn in hell. Katana Man don’t like that, Denji’s game for a rematch.

The two blast out of the building, onto rooftops, and finally onto a moving train, making for a particularly fun and cinematic setting for the final big battle of the season. Unlike the dark warehouse there’s plenty of light and dynamic backgrounds to soak in along with all the sparks and blood.

Katana Man also at least tries to understand what Denji is after, and isn’t impressed when Denji tells him it’s simply to preserve his new comfortable (by his standards) life and be praised by his boss. There isn’t enough nuance in their talk for Denji’s opponent to sympathize with his plight and why that life is such a precious thing to him; no doubt Katana Man lived a damned comfortable life as the grandson of a yakuza.

Their fight spills into one of the train cars and the innocent bystanders scatter (since this isn’t guest directed by Paul Verhoeven, they all escape unharmed). Denji has improved, but he’s still supposed to be fighting with Power beside him, and Katana Man still has his samurai move where he wooshes past Denji and lops off both his arms.

When he tells Denji to yield if he wants a quick death, Denji says he still has a chainsaw on his head, and charged him. Katana Man aims for Denji’s head as he rushes him one last time, but that’s exactly what Denji wanted. Borrowing a lesson he learned from Kishibe, he tells a suddenly cleanly sliced in half Katana Man never to trust someone he’s hunting.

Katana Man eventually reverts back to human form, and Denji chains him to the stopped train to await backup. Aki is the first to arrive, and Denji, who is not quite satisfied with having simply captured their target, proposes a contest…of nutshots. Whoever can make the guy scream more wins.

Aki initially seems reluctant to play along—it’s against their mandate and he’s not sure Himeno would want it—then he takes out the cigarette that saved his life, puts it back away, and declares that he’s game after all.

In the beautiful, sublime, cathartic scene that follows, we cut from the aftermath of the successful operation to a positively giddy Denji and Aki kicking the shit out of Katana Man’s nuts. Aki asks if Himeno can hear the nutshot requiem they’re playing for her up in heaven.

After that, Makima delivers her report to the bigwigs: Sawatari was captured, but apparently automatically killed as part of her contract with the Gun Devil before any intel could be extracted. RIP Sawatari; we really barely knew thee, and I still maintain that’s a shame. On the plus side, the 4th Division now has enough Gun Devil flesh that it’s moving towards the main body. So now they generally know where to look.

As the low-key credits are displayed, we watch Denji, Power and Aki simply hanging out together like the three best roomies, chasing cats, swinging on the swings, and going to the grocery store to buy stuff for dinner. There’s no audio to these scenes, only music, which makes them feel more intimate and resonant. It’s also quite heartwarming to see that after all they’ve been through, they can still live life and have fun like three ordinary young people.

After the trio make dinner, eat it, and enjoy some down time around the table, Denji and Power fall asleep, and we get one last zen balcony moment with Aki as he lights up his “Easy Revenge!” cigarette and smokes it, providing a measure of closure and relief from his deep loss.

Denji, meanwhile, dreams a dream he says he always dreams and then forgets: walking through a dingy alley to a door, hearing Pochita on the other side of that door, then going for the doorknob, only for Pochita to say, with finality, he can’t open that door. The final scene is the most cryptic of all, with a heretofore unseen/unheard young woman with dark hair asking Denji what’s better: a city mouse or a country mouse.

Who this mystery woman is, how she’ll fit in to the ongoing search for the Gun Devil, and a host of other matters will provide fertile ground for a second season of Chainsaw Man. While none has been officially announced, I can’t see one not happening. But this was a pitch-perfect stopping point.

Chainsaw Man – 11 – Asking Nicely

“The Future Rules”, says the Future Devil, who resembles the Forest Spirit from Princess Mononoke, but is a lot more happy-go-lucky. The terms of his new contract with Aki are simple: he’ll reside in Aki’s right eye and lend him his power. In exchange, he’ll have a front row seat to Aki’s death, which he promises will also “rule.”

Kishibe’s tough love training of Denji and Power continues to a point where he’s satisfied they won’t embarrass themselves in the next battle, which will be against The snake woman (Sawatari) and the Katana Man (who is called “Samurai Sword” in the episode.

In his meeting with Makima, Kishibe posits that she knew the assault that claimed so many public safety officers (including his student Himeno) was coming and did nothing to stop it. He doesn’t really mind, as long as Makima shares his overarching directive to save as many people as possible in the long run.

I’m not entirely sure why Makima allowed such a devastating assault to take place, but intentionally allowed or not it led to her consolidating her power in Public Safety, amplifying the importance of her surviving underlings like Denji and Power, and revealing the identities of their enemies—among them Sawatari, who unfortunately has no character beyond “slightly bored baddie”. I kinda wish we knew more about her.

After contracting with the Future Devil, Aki gets a ride back to HQ from Kurose and Tendou. Kurose tries to press Aki’s buttons by telling him his shounen manga-style goal to take the Gun Devil down pisses him off, but Aki isn’t phased. If he can defeat the Gun Devil, he’ll be happy. If he dies, Kurose can laugh all he likes. But while Aki pisses him off, Kurose can’t help but root for the guy.

As for Makima, the less we know about her, the more mysterious and awesome she is. I could watch an entire episode of her politely chatting with a yakuza head. She isn’t the slightest bit intimidated by the soldiers surrounding her as she asks their leader to give up the names of the members of other yakuza families who contracted with the Gun Devil.

The yakuza head declines to snitch on his rival families as it would start a war that would destabilize the Japanese mob and invite foreign mobs to invade. That’s when Makima presents a little brown paper bag that she calmly describes contains the eyes of a loved one of everyone in that room. When one of them raises a hand to her, he’s stopped in his tracks, his nose bleeds, and he keels over dead.

After their brutal training, Denji and Power are excited to finally put what they’ve learned into action. Kobeni is not so enthused, but now that we can see what she’s capable of it’s a plain matter of motivation, not ability. Kishibe sends the three and Aki into the building where Sawatari and Katana Man are holed up.

As Kishibe explained to Denji and Power, this is an all-or-nothing, make-or-break operation. Either Division 4 will succeed in defeating Sawatari and Katana Man, or they’ll fail and be destroyed. They’re backed up by four new fiends: Shark, Violence, Spider, and Angel, all of whom feature cool designs and fighting (or in the case of Angel, non-fighting) styles.

While those four mop up the zombie army in the basement, Aki heads upstairs and meets non-zombie resistance in the form of yakuza soldiers. When he ends up in a four-on-one situation, his our opponents all get bloody noses and fall over dead. We cut to Makina striding confidently out of the yakuza head’s house, having gotten what she wanted. That gives Aki a clear path to Sawatari.

If Sawatari has any particular reason for siding with the Gun Devil and wanting to destroy Division 4, she doesn’t share them with Aki. She’s all business, summoning Himeno’s Ghost Devil to fight him, keeping her Snake Devil in reserve. It’s a pragmatic move that’s also definitely meant to rile Aki up, but he doesn’t take the bait.

Instead, he puts his new buddy the Future Devil to use by anticipating the movements of the Ghost’s arms so he can dodge and slice at will. Unfortunately, the Ghost’s arms regenerated and multiply, and Aki loses his time advantage when he starts to slow due to fatigue.

The Ghost eventually covers Aki in arms and grabs him, and Sawatari orders it to choke him to death. But something tells me this isn’t the awesome death the Future Devil foresaw. Will he find his second wind on his own, or will Denji, Power, and/or Kobeni bail him out?

Spy x Family – 23 – The Flames of War

The Campbell siblings have no shortage of dirty tricks to try to stop the Phonys, from a net that moves up and down, a wind machine that affects trajectories, to a hidden sniper firing court-colored rubber bullets. But even they couldn’t have known they’d be up against a couple of elite spies.

Throw adversity at a couple of lunatics like Twilight and Nightfall, and they’re going to keep finding a way around it. Once they’re both in rhythm making impossibly acrobatic yet precise moves, it’s game, set, and match. The Campbells poked a couple of bears, and simply got mauled.

Whether it was Cloverworks or Wit Studio that animated this episode (or both), the “tennis” action was never not fantastic looking, adding a sense of legitimacy to a thoroughly farcical game. When it comes time to claim the painting, Cavi suddenly says it’s the one piece he can’t part with.

But Loid and Fiona prepared for the possibility the secret police would get to Campbell before they got to the painting, so Loid simply disguises himself as Campbell’s valet and pulls the ol’ painting switcheroo, Thomas Crown Affair-style. The mission is a complete success, and the two spies high-five.

Fiona drops Loid off to find Yor in the park with Anya, and decides she needs to challenge and defeat Twilight’s Strix wife right then and there … in a game of tennis. Thanks to Anya, we can witness Fiona’s ridiculous thought about how it’ll go down, as well as Yor’s worry about Fiona replacing her.

Yor also plays the bumbling novice perfectly when she whiffs on what starts off as a badass assassin’s serve. But the thing is, she didn’t whiff; she simply hit the ball so hard it went through the strings of the racket like Play-Doh through an extruder (or human beings in Cube). The concassé’d ball is a little masterpiece of comic timing and trick animation.

Even when Yor holds back on her serve, she hits the ball so hard it goes faster than sound, creates a shock wave that digs into the ground, and lights up like a comet. Fiona tries her best to absorb the serve and volley it back, but her racket simply isn’t up to it, smashing to bits.

Fiona, defeated utterly, runs to her Trabant and races off, not letting Loid or Yor see her mask crack to reveal the seething, churning tempest of emotion within. Yor, who is simply relieved she fought Fiona off this time, very empatically tells Loid that she Won, leaving out the “for Us.”

The punchline of this two-parter is that while the code hidden in the painting indeed leads to finding Zacharis’ Dossier, but it turns out to be a diary filled with photos of pretty young actresses. These are the “dark secrets” that could “re-ignite a war”, not between East and West, but between Zacharis and his wife. I also loved the uncommented-upon sight of the gaudy rings Fiona took from Campbell on Handler’s hand.

But after the punchline comes a moment of realization for Loid when he sees that Zacharis managed to maintain a happy marriage and family after burying away his creepy dossier. Keeping a marriage and family happy isn’t easy, as evidenced by a clearly frustrated-looking Yor at the end.

I imagine she was underwhelmed by Loid’s reaction to her win over Fiona, and still worried about Fiona continuing to try to usurp her. Sure enough, the episode wraps up with Fiona in the mountains strengthening her serve with a racket made from a boulder as the wildlife watches in morbid curiosity.

Spy x Family – 22 – Love Means Nothing

A painting in the possession of the wealthy tycoon Cavi Campbell is believed to contain a code that, if unlocked, could reveal dark secrets about the East or West that could reignite a war. It’s up to Twilight and Nightfall to retrieve the painting. But Fiona doesn’t intend to steal it, she intends to win it.

Cavi runs an underground no-rules, anything-goes tennis tournament called Campbelldon. Fiona dons ojou ringlets and Loid a sporty headband as they pose as an amateur husband and wife team, the Phonys. Secretly, Fiona hopes to show Loid that she’s the only one worthy to be his fake wife.

The crowd bets heavily against them as their first opponents are former pros who went into the mountains to train and are here to seek tougher foes. They get their wish, as both Loid and Fiona mop the floor with them. Despite only “dabbling” in tennis, every one of Loid’s serves is a devastating ace.

Fiona goes above and beyond in trying to look as cool and amazing as possible, her resting stoic face belying the colorful imagery of Loid being so impressed he sweeps her off her feet and proposes they enter the “doubles game of life.”

Loid had previously practiced a bit with Yor and Anya, and I kinda wish we could have seen more of that, especially considering Yor rarely knows how to hold back when it comes to physical exertion. Still, Yor is anxious about the possibility Loid is with Fiona. Anya offers her mom words of comfort … that don’t give away the fact she can read her mind.

Loid and Fiona’s next opponents are a pair of brothers who injected themselves with a new experimental doping cocktail (again, anything goes in Campbelldom). But they are undone by their insistence on trash-talking, which quickly gets under Fiona’s skin and leads her to literally beat them into submission with a flurry of smashes.

Before the final, the spies are taken to a waiting room, where they discuss strategy against their opponents: the son and daughter of Cavi Campbell himself. They’re sure to have more than a few tricks up their sleeve. As Fiona resolves to go even harder for the sake of impressing Loid, he takes her hand.

She initially mistakes him for making a move, unable to restrain himself from her magnificence. But he’s really looking at the cuts, sores, and blisters on Fiona’s hand, and tells her to stop pushing herself so hard, as spies who lose their cool don’t live long.

Fiona pulls her hand away and appears to stare daggers at Loid, but in reality, she’s elated beyond reason that Loid, who once treated other spies as disposable, is so concerned with her well-being. Swooning and slightly risqué sounds ensue.

But then both Fiona and Loid notice that a colorless, odorless gas is filling the locker room. They hold their breath, but some damage has already been done, just when they need all their strength, speed, and stamina.

In addition to not being 100%, Carrol and Kim Campbell have totally legal modified racquets: Carrol’s is jet-assisted, while Kim’s has an extending head that greatly extends her return radius. The Campbell kids ambitions may not extend further than wanting daddy to buy them another yacht, but they win the first set 6-3.

Loid and Fiona regroup and come up with a workable counter to their opponents superior equipment, but then another curveball is lobbed their way when bits of the very court beneath their feet start to shift, causing their shots to veer off-target.

This surely isn’t the last of the dirty tricks they’ll face, but Loid is determined to win that painting for the sake of world peace, and Fiona is just as determined to crush the Campbell kids by his side, and convince him to dump Yor and marry her, both for Strix and for real. To be continued…

Spy x Family – 21 – Not My Mama

WISE agent Fiona Frost, AKA Nightfall (voiced by Sakura Ayane in her lower meter) could just as easily be named Snowfall, seeing as she’s outwardly as chilly as Yor is warm. When Handler tells her she’ll be working on a joint mission with Twilight, Fiona jumps at the chance.

She considers it an opportunity to speed up and improve Operation Strix by getting rid of his fake wife, a position she would have occupied had she not been busy on another mission when Strix began. Fiona is met at the door by guileless Yor, who apparently doesn’t feel any killing intent in Loid’s co-worker from the hospital, even as Fiona’s resting face is a piecing dagger stare

When she realizes that Yor considers being Anya’s mom to be fun, she changes her tack, ready to exploit Yor’s feelings of being a subpar wife, but Loid and Anya return home from walking Bond. No matter how good Fiona’s poker face is, Anya can read her mind, and she’s petrified to learn the extent of Fiona’s infatuation with her Papa. It’s way worse than Becky!

The contrast between the lovey-dovey Inner and frigid Outer Fionas makes for good laughs, as does the secret conversation-via-mouth-movements that she and Loid make while sounding like they’re exchanging mindless small talk. As Loid, Yor, and Anya interact, Fiona is constantly demanding that she and Yor switch in her head, and Anya can hear her.

Turns out Yor was paying attention to Fiona talking about Loid complaining at work, and even though Fiona didn’t get to actually specify anything, the mere mention of him complaining has Yor acrobatically leaping to the conclusion that Fiona is a potential replacement wife, no mind-reading necessary.

It’s when Anya semi-accidentally spills cocoa, and she hears Inner Fiona talking about how ruthlessly she’d whip Anya into an efficiently Stella-winning machine, that Anya runs tearfully to Yor’s side, asserting that she is the one, only, and best Mama she could have. This in turn spurs Yor to promising to Loid that she’ll do better, even though from his perspective she’s already been doing fine.

When she sees Loid’s fake smile, Fiona is heartened, as it means that at the end of the day this is all an act. And yet, at the same time, she can see some of the truth leaking through that fake smile, and the genuine peace and happiness Loid is experiencing with Yor and Anya is just too much, and Fiona takes her leave.

Loid chases her down with an umbrella, which she declines, while thanking the heavy rain for hiding her face full of heartbreak and anguish. Inside, she maintains that she’s the only wife worthy of her beloved senpai, while outside she negs Loid, telling him the new “softer” Twilight better not impede their joint mission.

Fiona is a stylish and welcome addition to the cast; someone who is actively trying to steal Loid while having no idea how to do so, someone with contrasting inner-outer personalities off which Anya can bounce, and a hint of genuine pathos for someone whose fated role by Loid’s side was usurped due to bad timing.

The final fifth of the episode is a little vignette in which Bond is suddenly jealous of her stuffed Mr. Penguin, and assaults it in the night. Loid eventually mends the doll (after Yor utterly failed) and notes that his “scars” are badges of honor for a veteran penguin spy.

A contrite bond offers peace peanuts to Anya, who forgives him, apologizes for saying she hated him, and enacts a peace treaty between him and Mr. Penguin. It’s slight and sweet—almost to the point of cloying—but does make for a nice parallel for the East-West conflict (would that it could be solved so easily) and reminds us that even precognitive flooffers can get jealous.

Spy x Family – 20 – TYDTWD

Anya’s next school assignment will be to go to a parent’s workplace to learn about their job and why they chose it. She asks Yor first, who imagines Anya shadowing her while she’s doing her real job assassinatin’, which is great both for some laughs and another excuse to watch Yor do her thing. Thankfully the blood in her imagining is pink, but both she and Anya deem it best for her to go to Loid’s workplace.

When I was sick but too young to stay home alone, my folks would alternate who took me to work. In both cases, their co-workers were delighted for a cute little kid to be there (their words not mine), and that’s no different for Anya at the hospital. The issue is that she takes careful notes of everything Loid is thinking rather than saying, and also learns about a secret passage she can’t resist exploring.

We finally meet the lady with the short white hair in the OP and ED; we don’t yet get her name but she’s a Westalis agent like Twilight. Anya ends up getting stuck in the ductwork directly over a meeting where doctors are talking about ghosts—and she makes a lot of ghost like sounds freeing herself. Finally, her hasty dumping of all the figures into the “sandbox”  reveals the limitations of the psychiatric tool, as Loid assumes she’s deeply troubled child.

The remaining quarter of the episode consists of Anya taking the idea of coded messages from her spy TV show and running with it. Since her own chicken scratch is illegible to everyone but her (her report—including many of Loid’s thoughts—was quite thorough!) she has Yor write them up, and she then distributes them to Becky, Second Son, everyone.

Even Frankie gets one, and wrongly assumes it’s a love letter handed to Anya by a beauty. When he cracks the code and waits on the bridge at the allotted time in his Sunday best with several dozen roses, Anya’s alarm goes off, but Bond shuts it off, letting Anya sleep right through the meeting time. That’s probably for the best, considering only Frankie showed up and had the wrong idea.

Spy x Family – 19 – The Mysterious Spider Woman

Spy x Family reveals who was trying to crater the Damian brothers’ test scores: George Glooman, son of the CEO of Glooman Pharmaceuticals, who are on the cusp of being gobbled up by the Desmond Group. While Damian managed to escape his father’s frightening looks, George is the spitting image of his dad, with a turnip head and gloomy eyes.

When George learns Daybreak failed, he takes desperate measures, like trying to get a teacher to believe Damian was smoking and shoved him to stop him from reporting it. The teacher doesn’t believe Damian’s lackeys, but when Anya comes forward with the truth, Damian is shocked—and it confirms to Becky who Anya likes best.

With this last desperate attempt to get Damian expelled foiled, George instead plays for sympathy from the class, laying out his story in detail and noting that this is his last day at Eden College, so he only wants to experience some final small joys.

If nothing else, George is extremely good at emotionally manipulating people into pitying him, so he gets juice, a pricey caviar bowl, a class-wide singalong just for him, and armloads of gifts from his classmates urging him not to forget them and the bonds they shared at Class 3.

Naturally, it’s not really George’s last day. His fears about family bankruptcy and being sold into slavery in Westalis were grossly exaggerated. His dad assures him that everything’s fine; Damian’s dad’s company saved Glooman, it didn’t destroy it. George’s walk of shame the next morning is a wonderful bit of comeuppance for someone who squeezed the class for every drop of sympathy … all for a lie.

In the next segment we see just how peaceful and cozy Anya’s room is (especially with Bond curled up in the middle of it) and how hard it must be to get up and start her day. Yor has some free time before work, but when she notices Anya forgot her gym clothes, she panics. Loid did say she’ll be punished by the school if she keeps being late to school and breaking rules. Yor imagines an expelled Anya turning into a Bad Girl and resolves to get the clothes to Anya without detection.

Yor hesitates over whether taking the bus or trolley will get her there faster, but then an old lady accidentally drops a potted plant off her seventh-floor window, and a switch goes off in Yor: neither. After using her superhuman speed and agility to catch the plant and kick it back up to it’s owner, she goes on a parkour tear through the alleys and rooftops.

It’s truly inspiring whenever we see Yor do cool shit, especially when it doesn’t involve murdering people! This is Yor at her best, as when she went into Mama Bear Mode to protect Anya in the terrorist arc. She uses her considerable skill to get to Eden her way—and other than confirming a school legend of a “spider woman”, she largely stays out of sight.

Yet like George when he exchanged heartfelt goodbyes with his classmates, Yor has the wrong idea. Anya didn’t forget her gym clothes, she didn’t take them because she doesn’t have gym class today. Yor breaks out the “SHOCK!” face Anya usually makes (like found daughter, like found mother), and leaves the school in a gloomy mood, feeling like a failure of a mother again.

Loid, who was spying around the school all along and wondering why Yor was there, “coincidentally” bumps into her as she heads home, and learns her reason for being there was perfectly innocent, and she hasn’t discovered any of his secrets. But Loid also sees that Yor is feeling depressed. When he invites her to a choice spot for lunch together, the shot of her face brightening back up is alone worth a Stella.