Don’t Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro 2nd Attack – 07 – Ski ga Kirei

Naoto has decided he wants to try ditching his frames for contacts, but after failing to get them in the previous night, he gives up. When Hayase spots the box, she immediately volunteers to put them in for him. A few “is it in yet?” double entendres later, and Naoto is seeing the world—and Hayase—clearly without frames for the first time. When Hayase puts on his frames and flusters him, we learn he’ll do his glasses-straightening tic regardless of whether he’s wearing them.

Ditching the frames means he’s able to do more energetic activities, like skiing. As luck would have it, he and his guy friends are at the same ski slope as Hayase and her friends. The difference is, Hayase and her friends are much better at skiing and snowboarding. That hardly matters to Hayase, who invites her senpai to join him, aweing his friends by being so friendly with one of the “popular girls”.

But again, Naoto is bad, even on the beginner slope Hayase normally wouldn’t bother with. That said, she relishes the opportunity to teach him, and when he steers himself into the sides, creating a sequence of Snow Naotos, she doesn’t laugh but shows genuine concern for his progress, which is slow and, at least to him, not very noticable despite her pointers.

That night, when Naoto and his friends expect to be done with skiing, they spot the popular girls (and guys) going out for night skiing. Again Hayase invites him to join her, but he passes, citing sore legs. Hayase is clearly disappointed but respects his choice and leaves. Gamou and Yoshi then gang up on him, asking him if he’s sure, and he explains he doesn’t want to slow Hayase down from having fun. The other girls assure him that Hayase going at her own pace is not the point.

Naoto suits up and heads out, surprised he’s suddenly gotten into something like skiing, which he wouldn’t expect of himself had he not met Hayase. As he’s practicing, a younger skiier loses control and careens towards a tree. Naoto forgets all his hang-ups and skis beautifully in order to catch the guy before he injures himself.

Hayase saw him do this, and I’m sure she thought it was pretty cool. She’s also surprised to hear him ask her upfront if she’ll keep teaching him, which is, of course, what she wants to do on that slope more than anything. When she notices he’s always looking down at his feet, she skis a bit ahead of him and tells him to keep his eyes on her.

A backlit Hayase, with her black hair shimmering and snow-dappled trees behind her, makes for an undoubtedly arresting sight. Unfortunately, Naoto is overconfident the next morning, and when Hayase tells her friends to watch how far he’s progressed, he faceplants into the side once more.

Back at school, Sana tells Naoto that she got into art school, which was totally expected but something for which Naoto congratulates her nonetheless. Sana then asks her kohai what he plans to do, and he says with a level of confidence that surprises her that he’s going to try for art school too. She chalks up this confidence to “the cat-eared girl’s” influence.

Naoto denies this, but in his head, he looks back at the year he’s known and hung out with Hayase, and concludes that she really has influenced him. But even after all this time, there’s still so much he doesn’t know about her, and wants to know, like what plans she might have for the future.

Maybe he can apply his newfound assertiveness to keep cutting through her teasing smokescreen and ask her about serious things like that. I think if he does, he’ll find she’ll be quite happy to tell him.

Toaru Kagaku no Railgun T – 17 – Miyama-ty Report

This episode considerably scales back the complexity of last week’s outing and focuses on the precognitive abilities of Miyama Shaei, and their role in transforming Kuroko into even more capable and efficient Judgment Officer.

He starts by predicting a girl falling into the water—Chisa, whom I believe injected an ampule of fertilizer into a tree last week. Where before Kuroko would not have learned of her predicament until after it happened and it was reported, thanks to Miyama’s prediction she can rescue Chisa seconds after she falls in.

One after the other, Miyama predicts mishaps and Kuroko is able to teleport in the nick of time to save the would-be victims. Be it a girlfriend with a knife, a falling sign, or bullies, Kuroko is on the scene and Getting Shit Done.

Like the previous arc where she lost her memories, it’s never not great to see Kuroko operating in fully bad-ass non-comic relief mode. Mikoto and Saten don’t even appear this week, but I didn’t miss them because Kuroko can carry an episode any time she wants.

With the combined help of Miyama’s ability and Uiharu’s handy hacker skillz, a pattern of incidents are predicted in a public park, and the imagery points to a raging fire, so the girls recruit their superior Konori Mii and other members of Judgment to lock the park down and prepare for anything.

Since Kuroko has been at the center of so many incidents with happy endings, the other Judgment members don’t bristle at the odd request. However, Miyama eventually reaches his physical limit and has to be hospitalized with blood cell damage from ability overuse.

While there, he dreams of how he was ostracized at school by popular girls lke Okawachi Megumi for having such a “creepy” ability. She changes her tune when he predicts she’ll fall victim to a mishap, and promises her he’ll try to prevent it. Of course, since this was well before he met Kuroko—the only person who can change the fates he sees—Okawachi is badly injured and curses the day she met him.

When he predicts the first and earliest of the incidents to occur in the park, it involves a stray dog with whom he is close, and starts to wonder if Okawachi is right—if bad things happen to people who know him like her and Perro—as a result of his ability, a chicken-and-egg dilemma that would be stressful for an adult, let alone a grade-schooler.

Night comes, and with them predicted raging fires, an extremely clever and complex sequence of events involving both the park’s vending machine (which may have a frayed power cable due to Mikoto having always zapped it) throwing a short that ignites dry leaves and grass and eventually causes Chisa’s ampules to violently detonate.

Of course, Kuroko, Uiharu, and Judgment don’t panic; they planned for this, and Kuroko is outfitted with both a HUD monocle and breathing tube for a sequence of quick teleports into and out of the fire, rescuing imperiled parkgoers each time. Again, I cannot underscore how much enjoyment I get out of Kuroko simply hunkering down and doing her job extremely well.

A panicked Miyama races to the park to try to rescue Perro on his own, but in his childishness (he is still just a kid after all) he wrongly assumed Judgment wouldn’t bother saving a random stray dog. Kuroko heads back into the inferno with Konori and her X-ray vision and eventually find the dog, a bit limpy but none the worse for wear. Miyama can’t help but blush and tear up, and Kuroko tells him its okay.

Later, we learn that Miyama has arranged for Okawachi to adopt Perro, and that she’s ready to apologize for how she treated him. In a chat with Kuroko, he worries his predictions will only involve those close to him, but she doubts that will be the case, since he’s like her: devoted to peace and justice for all.

She also believes that in time his power will grow to the point he can use it more often without risking his health. And when he does, she’ll be ready and willing to receive more intel so she can do some more rescuing. I love how Kuroko faces away from him to hide her blushing, no doubt a bit embarrassed she shares the same values as a little kid, while also casually mentioning a certain “champion of justice” she looks up to.

The big question last week was if and how the shared dream fad and Miyama’s mishap prediction plot would connect, and the answer comes in a very small detail at the very end: those ridiculously hazardous nutrient ampules that Chisa used? They were meant to allow the cherry blossoms to bloom year-round.

Chisa and her friends got idea to use the ampules…in a shared dream. With the additional brief mention of a “mass unconsciousness outbreak” this week, is it possible Chisa was unknowingly directed to plant explosives, or was it an innocent accident? Considering the potential for abuse of the shared dream system and the large number of troublemakers populating Academy City, I’m not ruling anything out.

Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu – 03

Subaru is surprised to find “Satella” at the loot house before dark, but not for long, as he realizes her nature never changes no matter which timeline he’s in. She always helps the lost girl, then ends up tracking Felt down. However, just when Subaru is making progress mediating between the parties (by being nice to both), Elsa comes out of the shadows.

Again, Subie uses his knowledge of Satella to summon Puck to shield the blade, knowing he’s still corporeal this time of day. But Elsa still manages to severely wound Old Man Rom. Puck and Satella launch a pretty-yet-terrifying counterattack with their green ice-like crystalline magic, but to no avail—like a cockroach, Elsa just won’t go down.

During Elsa’s fight with Rom, Felt, Satella, and Subaru, she’s full of quips, and so is everyone else. As the blades and crystal saggers fly, so to does the juicy dialogue, which is just as sharp and satisfying as the action.

Subaru makes mention of how cool he is when he realizes he needn’t fear death (since he can always start over at the fruit vendor) but at the same time, really doesn’t want to die and have to start over, especially now that he’s made progress with both Felt and Satella.

Satella goes down for a moment, but gets back up and helps Subie from long range when she can. Felt is able to escape outside to call for help, which they’re going to need because Elsa is as relentless about disemboweling everyone as she is hard to kill.

That help comes in the form of Reinhard, who is a resplendent model of ultra-cool fantasy hero timing, appearances, and dialogue. He doesn’t even draw his own sword, instead choosing one that’s lying around, so confident is he that he doesn’t need to go all out against the likes of Elsa the “Bowel Hunter.” It’s also cool how Elsa knows him too, and is excited to see what he can do before she kills him.

In a great bit of world-building even within this one loot house interior, Satella admits Reinhard can’t go all out while she’s healing Rom. But when Rom is out of danger, she gives the go-ahead, and Reiny goes ALL OUT, launching a terrifyingly powerful attack that rends half of the bottle episode’s bottle clean away. Outstanding presentation of an “overdrive” attack.

Everyone celebrates the victory, until Elsa pops out of the wreckage, STILL not dead but only wounded. Fortunately, she chooses the better part of valor by retreating, but the fact she’s still out there with her chilling desire to disembowel everyone else is certainly disquieting, as is the fact even that huge attack didn’t kill her.

Her kiss-off attack is foiled by Subaru, who uses Rom’s giant bat to parry the blow, saving Satella’s life in the process. When the coast is clear once again, Subie goes into Self-Aware Fantasy Hero Mode, asking for something from his rescuee in return for his heroics: her name. She replies Emilia, with just about the sweetest gosh-darn smile of the Spring. A great little transaction.

Even with all the twists and turns we’d experienced so far, Re:Zero still isn’t quite done yet. When Felt finally produces the insignia she stole from Emilia to return it to her, Reinhard suddenly hardens his previously lenient stance (he’s off duty, so he’ll overlook theft) and formally arrests Felt, hitting her with a sleep spell when she resists.

Once again, the strong reaction from another world insider creates great gravity and significance for one innocuous-looking little piece of jewelry, like the name “Satella.” But this time, Subie didn’t call her by that name, got on her good side, and when the wounds Elsa made finally open, she heals him and prevents another reset.

I was really glad about that, because my heart nearly plummeted all the way down into the Central Dogma when it seemed like he was going to die. That said, I do hope Felt is okay—she seems to be a pawn in all this—and Subie and Emilia can secure her freedom without making Reinhard mad or getting the law on their backs.

Overall though, this week was simply a tremendous piece of entertainment. Succulent kick-ass combat, quick-witted, tasty dialogue that never felt forced or in the way, and countless twists and turns that only added to the richness of the whole. This was the complete package.

It was also a brilliantly compact package at that, with 99% taking place in the confines of the loot house, the setting never feeling stale. Eschewing the OP and ED were also a gutsy choice for what is just the third episode. Re:Zero is a must-watch Spring experience, and this was its best episode to date. Hopefully it keeps this up.