Ai Tenchi Muyo! – 31

After that lovely communal barbecue/bonding exercise, the science club is back to confering with a giant black monolith with a glowing red crab insignia, telling them to “find the treasure.” Again with this nebulous treasure? What could it be? I’m assuming it’s not Momo here.

Seeing the science club in the spot they’re in, unofficial member Beni does what she can to help them by getting on her non animal print boot-adorned knees and begging Tenchi, Ayeka, Sasami and Ryouko to help her search for the treasure, knowing they’re different from ordinary people.

Surprised by her seriousness and deference, they agree. When Tenchi doesn’t show up in the faculty lounge later, Kurihara-sensei assumes he’s been kidnapped.

Beni leads them to the caverns deep under the school, a setting we haven’t been to since episode 5. There, the gang is surprised to find Kuramitsu Mihoshi of the galaxy police, someone we haven’t seen since she and Ryouko dueled in the past back in episode 13.

She doesn’t seem to be making much progress with her pickaxe — unless she’s the one who carved out the whole of these tunnels — but nor does she seemed to concerned about it. So…Treasure Hunt on!

Black Bullet – 13

It looked like Satomi-leader had a steep hill to climb in order to defeat Aldebaran and end the Gastrea threat, but we were surprised to find that the final Gastrea battle only occupied the first half of the episode; the rest was for character stuff of a very specific and also surprising nature. That said, the first half battle didn’t feel rushed at all; it felt focused and efficient, yet epic and cinematic. The lanterns were a nice touch, too.

The battle could have been even quicker still, but for a little hiccup with the Miori-supplied bomb that fails to detonate, a nice little “uh-oh” moment that even had us questioning whether Miori meant for it to not go off. Rentaro decides to knock out Enju and detonate the bomb at point-blank range, which he knows will kill him but he goes anyway, because giving his life to protect others is the very thing he’s lived for.

Destiny wasn’t ready to let Rentaro bow out of the mortal coil just yet though, as Aldebaran hits him Varanium-corroding fog that destroys his leg. The necessary sacrifice falls to his mentor Shouma, whom he’d just reunited with, but who also wants to bury the dark powers he’s learned along with Aldebaran. As he sees it, his life is a small price to pay to eliminate both evils. So, who will be Asaka’s promoter now? Yeah…the show forgot about her.

That’s okay though, because for much of the balance of the episode casts a laser focus on Tendo Kisara, Rentaro’s boss would-be girlfriend. Specifically, she wastes no time taking her brother Kazumitsu to task for building Monolith 32 with substandard materials and pocketing the savings. By “taking to task” we mean “challenging him to a duel he has no business accepting. She takes one of his legs, and he gives her information about whom to target next.

Everyone thinks Kisara is sparing his life, but her second strike was on a delay, and he literally explodes in a gory, horrific mess. Kisara giddily embraces Rentaro afterwards, pleased with what she’s done. When he recoils at the crazy, she admits he’ll never be able to truly “touch evil”, and that his justice was never any match for the evil he’s up against. No, to her, only a greater evil can defeat evil, and if that means she has to cast away her soul and happiness—and that Rentaro becomes her enemy—so be it.

I’ll be honest; Kisara’s fall is quite extreme and a lot to take in, especially so close to the end of the show, but I liked the shocking suddenness of it, especially since we’ve seen how much suffering and death was caused by the people who Kisara wants to kill. This darkness was always growing in her, and she finally let it out. Still, since there’s no time to explore it further, it’s more like a preface to an arc that never was, ending in an ellipsis.

The final scene of the show has Rentaro and Enju alone on a train, headed to a ceremony where they’ll be patted on the back for their service. With the city safe from Gastrea—once more, thanks to Enju’s kind—things seem to be looking up, but Kisara’s new path is certainly unsettling. And even though Enju pledges they’ll be together forever, both Rentaro and we know she’s already on borrowed time. Neither entirely happy or sad, this ending was…cautiously optimistic.

Final Cumulative Score: 7.85
MAL Score: 7.77

Stray Observations:

• Kagetane’s role in this episode is limited to a couple one-liners. Shame.
• Yasuwaki does not reappear. GOOD. Fuck that guy.
• Building 300m (984 feet) of monolith in two days? Yeah, I’m no engineer, but even with slave labor, that’s just not happening.
• Kisara walking barefoot through her brother’s blood…yikes!
• Well, if there’s ever a Black Bullet 2, you can expect Kisara to be an enemy and for Enju to either turn into a Gastrea, die, or be saved but lose her powers, which is probably the most preferable choice for her well-being.
• This is the final RABUJOI review of Spring 2014. Thanks for watching and reading, everybody.

 

 

Black Bullet – 11

The first part of this episode is a perfect example of the adage “this is going to get worse before it gets better.” The conventional military predictably folds like a house of cards before a far larger and very organized Gastrea army led not only by their “king” Aldebaran, but their equally-dangerous “queen”, Pleiades, which possesses “The Spear of Light”, a mercury-based beam weapon that makes quick work of the humans.

Rentaro’s adjuvant is able to do some damage, but at the end of the first night, half of Tokyo’s forces are gone, converted to Gastrea and added to the enemy’s ranks. I’m a little fuzzy on why the Gastrea didn’t press on and finish the job—they certainly were winning—but they withdraw, and Rentaro & Co. have at least one more night to live. But then He’s summoned by Commander Gado, who cites him for dereliction of duty.

That’s right: even though the actions of Rentaro’s adjuvant keep the Gastrea from flanking the rest of their forces, and play a role in at least a temporary withdrawal, the fact remains he disobeyed orders to hold his position. I actually found it refreshing that, for once, the hero doesn’t just get a slap on the wrist for acting independently, though it’s clear Gado has ulterior motives for doing so. Instead, he’s sent on a suicide mission to destroy Pleiades.

Kisara suggests they run away. They’re strong, after all. But there’s nowhere to run where they won’t be under constant attack but Tokyo. They’ll run out of varanium bullets; his bionic parts will be trashed and need repair; Kisara needs dialysis, for crying out loud. Still, even if the lives they led were short and violent, at least they’d be lived protecting each other, not a city full of racist ingrates.

Truth be told, the battle that ultimately led to Rentaro’s “court martial” was a bit…meh, perhaps a factor of things escalating a bit too quickly and the tactics of the adjuvant seeming a bit disjointed, as if the producers had a really big battle in mind but didn’t really plan it out when it was time to present it. It felt a bit rushed and half-assed, and when it suddenly ended and returned to a place of safety, it was jarring.

What actually redeemed the episode, besides the fact Rentaro actually got punished for disobeying orders, was that his one-man anti-Pleiades expedition leads to him running into Hiruko Kagetane and his huge-eyed daughter Kohina. And here I thought he was dead and she was in custody! Their appearance, and not as straight-up foes, gives Rentaro more of a chance against Plei-chan, but it’s oddly nice to see them again, as they’re as kooky as they are lethal.

Black Bullet – 10

Since the beginning of their careers as a civil officer/promoter and initiator, Rentaro and Enju have struggled to reconcile their duties with the feelings of bitterness and futility that come from protecting a population that not only outwardly hates and oppresses the cursed children. After the horrifying events of this week’s episode, they’ve never been in a stronger position to dust their palms and walk the fuck away; letting rabble to be damned.

This week, the Gastrea remain entirely, forebodingly off-camera, despite the fact they’re only days from breaching Tokyo’s defensive perimeter, but Rentaro and Kisara continue their classes with the cursed orphans. They’ve little else to do, and the kids could use the human contact. Notably, they’re portrayed just as the innocent, normal little girls they are; including developing puppy love for the strapping young teacher.

When they’re told to write about their dreams for the future, none of them write “I don’t have one,” but it was one of several bad signs that whether the Gastrea are fought off or not, and no matter how much spare time Rentaro and Kisara put into it, nothing good was going to become of the poor wretched girls. I just didn’t expect their fate to arrive so soon, or so brutally.

Two nights before that awful event, Rentaro joins Kisara on a walk on a beautiful starlit night, and they even lie beside each other staring up at it. Kisara professes her happiness with the lives they’re living and the family they’ve built, and she’s terrified of losing it. Rentaro assures her he’ll protect her and everyone else. It’s a truly lovely moment when their awkward hand-hold transitions to tightly but tenderly linking fingers. Neither recoils in embarrassment; they simply enjoy that moment.

Things get uglier and uglier from then on. The next day, Rentaro is just in time to save the blind urchin from a lynching. The day after that, Rentaro and Enju arrive at the site of school, only to find a smoldering crater. His students, all eighteen of them, were killed by a varanium-laced bomb. To recall all those smiling girls full of life and hope for the future, and then to see their shrouded corpses neatly arranged on the floor of the morgue…it’s just a rough moment.

It’s more than enough to open a bottomless well of despair for Rentaro and most definitely in Enju, who once again has has seen far too much hatred and death in her short life. And like I said, they’d be well within their rights to refuse to lift one finger to help the people who did this, or did nothing to stop it. It takes a call from Kisara, Rentaro’s rock, to try to explain to him why they need to do their duty as civil officers.

She says that if they’re successful in saving the city from the Gastrea, some of the people they saved may actually be grateful, and let go of their hatred of the cursed children who saved them. Kisara isn’t naive enough to say all of them will be, or even a large number. But she realizes that exacting revenge or letting the city burn won’t be any more just than what happened to their ill-fated students. Even if they only enact a little change, that could make a significant difference in the lives of the cursed.

Or, if Rentaro and Enju can’t fight for the people who hate her and hurt her sight unseen, then they should just fight for themselves; for each other; for the people they hold dear. There’s little time to grieve, as Monolith 32 collapses a day ahead of schedule, possibly aided by the haunting lament sung by the blind girl…the one who makes Enju and Tina look very, very lucky. With the life she’s led, I really can’t fault her for wanting to speed the city’s demise (again, if that’s what she did), along with her own.

Stray Observations:

• Some may say this episode verged on the gratuitous, exploitative, manipulative, or even maudlin. I’d have to disagree. No matter what awful situation is going down in which part of the world, the children are always the first to suffer, and the ones to suffer the most. This episode portrayed that perfectly, and its emotional weight felt earned.
• Kisara finds out her father had something to do with Monolith 32’s construction. The fact none of the other monoliths are deteriorating suggests shortcuts may have been taken in erecting 32. It may even have been meant to fail.
• No Shiba Miori flirting this week. Yeah, I didn’t really miss her; her comedic antics would’ve been a bit inapproprate this week.

Black Bullet – 09

As knowledge of the deteriorating monolith becomes public (and the brunt of that public’s apprehension falls upon the slender shoulders of Seitenshi), Rentaro continues to build his “adjuvant.” Turns out that’s a real word, though we never came across it during SATs. It’s a medical term for a substance that enhances the body’s immune response to an antigen.

That’s an apt term for a team of civil officers charged with preventing Tokyo from being infected by the Gastrea. But at the outset, Rentaro’s team sits at just two pairs; one shy of qualifying for their own JASDF tent. The identity of the third pair he scores is foreshadowed while he and Tina are visiting Muroto: it turns out to be Nagisawa Shouma, his estranged senior practitioner in the Tendo Style of martial arts—a connection I’m shortening to “mentor.”

Shouma and his shy and adorable initiator Fuse Midori (a gin-u-wine nekomimi) are more than happy to join Rentaro’s merry band, having heard of and been impressed by his protege’s exploits. The fourth pair is made up of Tina, whose initiator rank had been revoked, and Kisara, who went to Seitenshi to have her reinstated. Rentaro isn’t happy about Kisara running into the jaws of danger, but she makes sure he knows she feels the same way about him.

Rentaro even moves to confess to her after a briefing from the civil officers’ commander (who gives a nice speech that doesn’t change the fact they’re the rear guard), but he’s unfortunately interrupted by the rest of the now-whole adjuvant. After introductions, Enju leads a cheer, and the air around that campfire is suffused with hope, optimism, and love. But this could be the last time they’re all together and happy like this. The night will grow darker from this point on.

Black Bullet – 08

What with the intensity of last week’s battle between Rintaro and Tina, I had a pretty good feeling we were in store for a cooldown episode, and so it came to pass. But Bullet made the most of it, allowing two former enemies to do some bonding, but never letting us forget that the peace won’t last long.

Dual threats appear this week: not only have the Gastrea returned to the picture, but they’re up to some unprecedented shit, attacking one of the monoliths that protect Tokyo. The government will have a new one built in nine days (how, I have no idea…those things are HUGE), but the old one will only last six. The three day gap is all the Gastrea need to convert or kill Tokyo’s entire population, if they aren’t opposed.

That means it’s time for an Entmoot Adjuvant, where Civil officers join forces with the military to fight the bugs off, thereby saving the city. But the other threat appears from within, and again brings up the question of whether the city even deserves to be saved. When a leader of the movement to expel the cursed children is murdered and a cursed child named as a possible suspect, anti-cursed sentiment balloons.

Frankly, it would make more sense to me to expel the anti-cursed mob: if they don’t want to afford gratitude, rights, or even the slightest decency to girls who save their skins day in day out, they can piss off out of Tokyo and fend for themselves. Fortunately for them, cooler heads like Rentaro seem committed to saving the city despite all the ingratitude. When some punks toss a soda tab at a blind cursed-child beggar who mistakes it as a coin, we mused about how good they’d look in the bottom of a Gastrea’s stomach.

The girls Rentaro and Kisara teach in the beginning don’t even get a classroom with a roof. And the Katagiri siblings are proof that not all civil agencies are as prosperous as Tendo. Still, nice to see how well Tina is taking to normal life as a regular girl, even with war on the horizon that could cut it short. There’s a kind of gloom in the fact that even if she and many other girls fight and give their lives for the city in the coming days, they’d still be hated and ostracized.