Re: Zero – 49 – Every Moment Matters

Episode 48 turned the action up to 11 and supplemented it with a fair amount of effective comedy to keep things grounded and hopeful despite everything being on the line. This week the action is turned down considerably and the comedy excised entirely in favor of a number of dramatic set pieces that complete the table-setting for the season two finale.

We begin with Emilia emerging from the Graveyard and encountering the snowstorm. Fortunately the villagers are safe thanks to a shield of ice Puck created around them, though he told them they had Lia to thank for it. She asks everyone to seek shelter in the Graveyard and stay safe and patient.

Emilia runs to the tree of ice from where much mana seems to be emanating, and it shatters and transforms into Puck’s familiar green spirit form, which leads her into the giant crystal room. There she finds a whole mess of Ryuzus, with Shima preparing to “fulfill her role”.

With a flash of white, the crystal containing the Ryuzus’ progenitor and that forms the core of the barrier vanishes. Emilia asks Birma where Roswaal and Ram are, and finds them freezing to death in a field. With his tome of wisdom destroyed, Roswaal is lost and feels that “nothing matters.” Even so, he is healing Ram, who lets out a breath, proving to Emilia she’s still alive.

The first wave of demon bunnies approach, but Emilia freezes them solid with her magic. She then creates a clear and solid ice road above the deepening snows so the Ryuzus can take both Roswaal and Ram to safety. To Emilia, nothing doesn’t matter, so she’ll stand strong and keep fighting until she can’t anymore.

From the freezing sanctuary to the burning mansion, Beatrice laments her present situation and looks back on her past, when Echidna left her in charge of the Forbidden Library full of her knowledge, and asked her to wait for someone “suitable to inherit” that knowledge, which she simply called “that person.” Echidna used those particular words simply for the sake of getting the pertinent information to Beatrice.

However, she’s treated them like a rigid gospel, and they gradually turned into a curse. For 400 years, various Mathers descendants would visit the library but rarely speak to her, instead looking through the library’s books. By the time Emilia the “half-devil girl” showed up, she killed her emotions and stopped talking. Then Natsuki Subaru arrived, and for a time felt like he was “that person” for whom Echidna had entrusted her to wait.

But last week, as we saw, Subaru said flat out “there’s no way I could ever be whoever ‘that person’ is…”, and she threw him out with her telekinesis. Even if Subaru didn’t even understand what she meant by “that person” anymore than she did, because the two words Echidna used were so imprecise. Four centuries of time may have given them more weight and importance they didn’t deserve.

When Subaru first makes it back in the library, Beako is ready to toss him out without any further discussion, but he holds on to the door and manages to stay in the library. He tells her even if he isn’t that person, he wants to stay with her, to end her days of loneliness. His argument isn’t strong enough, and Beako de-reses the library, banishing him seemingly for good with a “farewell.”

Of course, that’s not enough for Subie to give up either; not as long as there’s still a door in the mansion left to open. He finds it in the secret underground passage, and even though smoke billows and flame lick at its seams and the knob burns his hand, he puts his faith in Beatrice that she won’t let him die when he opens it.

Since this is probably his last chance (there are no more doors), rather than say he’s come to take her away or save her, Subaru tries a different tack: he needs her to save him, by agreeing to stay with him. Otherwise, he’d be too sad to go on living. Beako’s refrain is that he’ll ultimately leave her by dint of his far shorter lifespan.

But even if Subaru’s life is only a moment in Beako’s, if she gives him a chance he promises to engrave that moment into her soul. Rather than fear their inevitable goodbye, he asks her to embrace a guaranteed Subaru’s lifetime’s worth of tomorrows, in which she’ll be too busy taking care of him to be bored or lonely. Unlike the other memories we saw, the moments with him will never fade to sepia.

Subaru’s speech finally does the trick, and just as the library is about to collapse into the flames, Beatrice takes Subaru—whom he calls by his name for the first time—and flies out of the burning ruins of the Mathers mansion in a gleaming purple-pink streak of light. That color, as brilliant as her sepia memories were dull, happens to be a combination of the blue of the freezing sanctuary and the red of the burning mansion.

The destination of that streak of light is the entrance to the Graveyard, where Emilia is fighting the good fight against the bunnies but starting to run out of steam. Subaru, with Beako’s hand in his, tells Emilia he needs to “make a revision” to his first battle, while Beako tells Subie not to blame her for “whatever may happen next.”

I don’t know what will happen next, but hopefully it involves the defeat of the Great Rabbit the ending of the snowstorm, and the final lifting of the barrier, resulting in a victory for Emilia and Subaru without the need for Return by Death. Then again, I’ll remain firmly on guard for the possibility of Re:Zero throwing a final wrench or two into the works—even unto the final moments of the second season finale. After all, every moment matters!

Mahoutsukai no Yome – 07

This week the sorcerer Renfred and his apprentice are cast in a slightly more sympathetic light, as they are operating under the command of the same ageless sorcerer who led Matthew to murder cats in an attempt to save Mina. Renfred puts keeping Alice safe over resisting the guy, and that seems like a good idea…provided keeping Alice safe is possible.

Meanwhile in the countryside, Chise continues to learn magic from Elias, and even helps out with potions and remedies…though her nightmare ward is brewed with too much magic, making it a sleeping agent. Elias provides Chise with a ring that will absorb some of her deep stores of magic, easing the strain on her body as long as she can remain calm.

Of course, Chise almost constantly finds herself in situations in which it is very difficult to stay calm: news of a “grim” or black dog on church grounds; a corpse that looks decidedly like it was mauled by said dog, and in the cemetery, a creepy multi-legged monster with a face like a fresh-shaven Guy Fawkes mask. She is saved by the black dog, who assumes a human form.

When the man transforms back into a dog and passes out, Chise heals and stays with him. When Alice shows up and demands Chise surrender the dog, Chise uses her failed nightmare ward to knock her out then tie her up.

When Alice comes to, she tells Chise she needs the black dog as “material” for making a chimera, citing these as the “weird brat” sorcerer’s orders. Elias emerges from Chise’s shadow, having gotten the gist of Renfred’s dilemma (along with the reason he lost an arm).

But just then, out of the blue, the weird brat shows up, and attempts to kill Alice. Chise shoves her out of the way and gets impaled by what looks like a spiked vine or giant mantis leg. In either case, it looks like the kind of wound that would be mortal if the person being impaled wasn’t the title of the show.

So yeah, Chise isn’t going to die anytime soon, but she’s certainly in bad shape, and the sight of her getting wounded sends Elias into a rage unlike any we’ve ever seen from him, perhaps revealing a form more indicative of who—or rather what—he truly is, which most certainly isn’t human.

Mahoutsukai no Yome – 06

After Chise succeeds in cleansing the corruption, Renfred withdraws. Chise asks Elias how long she has; Elias states three years if nothing changes, but he doesn’t expect nothing to change, and didn’t tell her because her dying so soon isn’t “part of his plans.”

Having so thoroughly exerted herself magically again, Chise passes out, and doesn’t wake up even two weeks later. Elias stashes her in the middle of a forest where her magic can regenerate faster, and Titania, Queen of the Faeries, Titania, emerges from the woods.

Titania is best described as having weird boobs that are drawn one way in one shot and another way in another; they seem to be contained by her bodice one moment, but are spilling out another. It’s a bit distracting, frankly. She also has a very irritating husband in the Faerie King Oberon.

Annoying though he may be, Oberon, along with his wife, seem to approve of Elias’ new human hatchling/mate, and Oberon restores all of Chise’s magic, allowing her to finally awaken.

Having restored Chise and heard that she’s fine with Elias, Oberon and Titania take their leave, inviting Elias and Chise to visit them for a banquet in their realm; an offer their Spriggan guard warns them not to redeem, nor does Elias intend to. He already had to stop faeries from luring Chise into their realm, after all.

After saying goodbye to Simon (who was banished from the encounter by the faeries and made to roam the forest until their business was concluded), Chise tells Elias how she wishes he bought her ten years ago, when Simon first started observing him.

Elias assures her they’ll be together more than ten years, and that his “experiment” to lengthen her lifespan will not fail; together, they’ll make it work. What role Christmas pudding plays in that venture, I don’t know. All I know is, while it had a few interesting moments, this episode felt a bit thin!

Mahoutsukai no Yome – 05

The sorcerer Renfred and his apprentice Alice turn out not to be of much concern, as their attempts to turn Chise against Elias fall on deaf ears. Not knowing from whence she came, they totally misunderstand how she feels: far from wanting to be freed, she wants to belong to Elias, the first person to ever call her family. Out of her shadow, Elias appears, and a whole mess of thorns push the sorshies back.

With that over with, Chise, Ariel, and the King of Cats proceed with the plan to cleanse the corruption, which is truly growing out of control. Chise makes contact with the miasma and enters the memory of the corruption, able to watch what unfolded, yet unseen by everyone there, as what she’s watching has already come to pass.

And as horrible and heartrending a story as it is, it hardly came as a surprise. Even before we see a desperate Matthew meet with a super-sketchy sorcerer, things unfolded super predictably: the sorcerer tells Matt the only way to save his beloved Mina is to slaughter cats and make a medicine from their blood and guts.

When Mina catches Matt slaughtering cats, it breaks her heart, but he and the sorcerer force the potion down her throat…and naturally, it doesn’t work. What I didn’t predict was that she’d explode, suddenly and awfully, right in his arms. Jeez.

The sorcerer shrugs it off, thanks Matt for helping him with some practical research, and is on his merry way. But Matt has a breakdown. Before he can slaughter more cats, believing he can still bring Mina back, the cats come for him, led by Mina’s pet, Tim.

Due to the combined horrendous circumstances of the deaths of Mina, Matthew, and the cats, all of them forgot how to return to the cycle of life and death; they are lost in between, and Mina tells Chise the only thing to be done is erase all their existences, lest they become consigned to an even deeper, darker void (harming the living world in the process).

Chise’s like nah-ah, Minal; I’m not erasing you. Instead, with the help of both Ariel and the King of Cats (on her ninth and final life), she guides Mina to where she belongs, with Matthew, allowing the two to happily pass on together and rejoin the natural cycle.

In the gorgeous meadow of blue flowers after they have passed on, Chise stands there, musing about how she was born without a place or purpose in life, but now she has a “perch”, thanks to Elias. As such, she’s less inclined to die soon…but being a Sleigh Beggy, how long does she truly have?

Mahoutsukai no Yome – 04

Before waking up with her head in Elias’ lap on a train “not meant for humans”, Chise has a dream about a sickly woman in bed, telling her cat how she wishes she could have one of its nine lives. From there, a messenger appears in the form of a cat. No wait; it’s just a regular cat…who can talk.

To be precise, Chise learns cats can converse with mages and other magically-inclined people, including her. Like people, they have countries, and their king, a female named Molly, has a task for Elias and Chise in Ulthar – a land where cats are loved and cared for by the humans living there.

There is a growing mass of “corruption” on an islet in the heart of the lake, which will soon wreak havoc on cat and human alike.

As soon as Molly tells the tale of a man who once tortured and killed scores of cats—who was ultimately killed by a whole mess of cats organized by the first Cat King—I began to suspect the source of the corruption had something to do with that cat-hater.

A suspicious hooded woman snatches Chise, carries her into the air, and drops her in the lake.

At the bottom of the lake Chise meets Mina, the sickly woman from her dream earlier. Mina’s husband Matthew turned into the corruption, with her at its core; she begs Chise to kill them both so they can be free.

Oh, and Matthew? He hates cats, and they hate him. HMMMMMM. He’s clearly hiding his dark inclination from Mina, who rarely leaves her bed and probably hardly ever leaves the house.

Chise wakes up in Elias’ arms (again), and he has another task for her: to don robes and perform a cleansing ritual with the help of Ariel; something he with his incompatible shadow concentration cannot do himself.

Chise starts to walk out to the corruption, with Mina’s plea ringing clearin her head, and worried about Elias losing faith in her if she fails. Then she’s suddenly captured again by the red-hooded woman. She’s joined by her master, the sorcerer Renfred, who doesn’t want the corruption cleansed.

Renfred also ridicules Elias (whom he refers to as Pilum Murialis) for “putting a collar” on Chise and using her as his “latest experiment”, without telling her the fate that awaits all Sleigh Beggys—early death.

Not that I blame Elias for taking it slow with Chise, but it now looks like a rift could form based not upon lies, but omission. Unless…as he grooms Chise he’s also looking for a way to prevent her from sharing the fate of her kind.

Mahoutsukai no Yome – 03

Turns out that while she was just plucked up by a dragon at last episode’s end, Chise is actually not in danger. She’s simply being brought to a dragon’s nest by its caretaker, Lindel. There, she learns more about dragons, meets both an ancient Uin and three playful hatchlings,  and ultimately experiences something few mages ever do: a dragon’s end-of-life return to the earth and transformation into a tree.

Lindel’s dragon unceremoniously spits Chise into a very cold deep lake, but she manages to get out on her own, and once Elias catches up with her (appearing out of her shadow, as badass mages do), he has a very nifty insta-dry spell that prevents hypothermia.

When she’s tasked with babysitting the lil’ dragons (who are extremely cute and childlike) curiosity draws her nearer to Nevin, the oldest extant dragon, who is old even for a dragon, and is very near death. While in contact with his brittle, flaking hide, he reads her memories; specifically her emotional downfall following the suicide of her parent.

Nevin uses this as an opportunity to enlighten Chise with dragons’ sense of death: they do not fear it, but live their lives to the fullest and pass on with gratitude and contentment, with no regrets. “It’s just nature”, Nevin says to Chise, who lost someone to unnatural means, long before their time. Chise is far from done processing that grief.

Instead, Nevin allows Chise to share in his “last dream”, a vision of freedom, flight in a gorgeous vista that stretches on forever. When the vision ends, Chise returns to the normal world, and a tree quickly sprouts from the now passed-on Nevin. It’s a gorgeous, moving sequence, epic in scope, in which Chise takes a big step towards understanding her role in the world (and that she has a role).

I imagine Lindel (and probably Elias as well) are glad Chise was able to experience this, as she may well be of the final generation of mages, just as the little hatchlings may be the last generation of dragons. They tell Chise not to grieve Nevin’s loss, at it’s all part of the circle of life and all, but still, a kind, wise stranger was there a minute ago is now gone forever.

Her solace is that, as Nevin recommended, when she has need of a wand, she take the wood from the branches of the tree he became. That way, in a way, he’ll always be with her. But it will never be the same as when he was alive.

Sagrada Reset – 04

Occasionally, I like a show that keeps me engaged; that challenges me; that even leaves me in the dust if I’m not sufficiently aware. Sagrada Reset is all of those things so far, and there’s a genuine thrill in not knowing just what the hell is going to transpire from one episode to the next, in addition to being emotionally invested in the characters—something that didn’t seem feasible in episode one.

Sagrada is also dense, and if you blink you might miss a reset or a vital piece of information. For all its seeming randomness, it builds, so far, off every little event and detail it’s presented thus far. It doesn’t insult the audience’s intelligence, it demands it, and it won’t hold your hand. That can make it hard to follow, even frustrating at times, but despite getting a little lost at times I felt it still holds together.

This week is a particularly bloody and violent episode, as Asai promptly learns that Minami Mirai was killed by Hisuchi-kun, hence her becoming a ghost that haunts him to start the episode.

Of course, she wasn’t just shot or strangled, she was killed when Hisuchi, who gains nourishment not from food (he’s an intense germaphobe) but from information he sucks out of others like an intel vampire. Minami had too much, and he went to far. He didn’t mean to kill her; it just happened.

But just when Asai and Haruki are wrapping their heads around the murder, they are confronted by Murase Youka, whose sudden violent, homicidal outburst would be out of character if we knew her character. I didn’t realize it at the time, but we later learn there’s a very good reason for her very odd, violent behavior, and it all comes down to Haruki’s Reset ability.

Asai orders Haruki to reset before Murase kills him. Back at school, Haruki is glad when Asai tells her they haven’t gone to the festival yet (girl wants her DATE). They visit Tsushima for answers, and he tells them more about the “MacGuffin”, which enables anyone who possesses it to control all the special abilities in Sakurada…only to then tell them exactly what and where it is, obviously trusting his students won’t take it.

Someone does take it…or rather, ends up with it by chance. That person is Minami, who isn’t killed by Hisuchi-kun this time because Asai and Haruki visit him. They’re joined by Murase, whose knowledge indicates to Asai that she’s able to remember two resets back, but not one. He also learns about her M.O.—her desire to destroy and remake the bureau into something more effective after it failed to save her brother.

Indeed, it’s Murase who helps them find Hisuchi’s house, using her ability in a way I didn’t expect (while explaining the hand-shaped hole in the wall last week). Hisuchi tells them about Minami ending up with the stone, and he helped her because he was guilty for killing her.

I’d say that that never happened, but it actually did, and Haruki’s ability didn’t negate that fact, it merely rewound and, well, reset things to her last save. Murase ends up stealing the MacGuffin from Minami, lightly wounding her in the process, but Asai assures Haruki they don’t have to go after her. All will be taken care of in due time.

In the meantime, Tsushima gives Asai a new job: to convince a truant, Murase, to come back to school. To do that, Tsushima believes Murase needs to be utterly defeated, to show her that she still has more to learn before starting a revolution against the Bureau.

Asai visits Nono Seika with some takoyaki, to muse over the Murase situation in a calm place. And he thinks of Souma Sumire, who told him its better to say something than nothing, even if it’s bad, and to not be afraid.

After that, it’s his big little date with Haruki, who is resplendent in her yukata, and doesn’t just smile but blushes upon receiving the gift of a hairpin. It didn’t look like Asai was paying attention to her when she spotted it, but clearly he did. I loved that little detail.

He asks Haruki for a favor, and the next day we see she’s joined him beside the river to confront Murase. She thinks they’re ready to join her cause, but Asai wants to test her abilities first. Haruki saves, then she obliges, and Asai offers almost no resistance as she puts her finger through his hand. During the fight he suspects she attacked them the first time because she wanted a reset for herself, to forget Minami Mirai’s death.

An increasingly agitated Murase is certain she has Asai in checkmate, even noting that if Haruki resets, he’s only two steps away from her, and she could easily defeat him before he had time to do anything. But it’s Murase who’s in check, as Asai moves his head into her hand, which goes through it, killing him horribly. He does this before ordering Haruki to reset…so she doesn’t.

Then something I didn’t expect happened: Nanako Tomoki beams his voice into Haruki’s head, then Asai’s voice comes through—in that moment, a ghost, just like Minami was—giving Haruki the reset order. She resets, and Minami remains where she is: exactly in a location where when Asai said “Bang”, it looks like he struck her down.

Stunned by this course of events, Murase promptly concedes defeat, which means she’ll honor the terms of their agreement, return to school, one day join the bureau, and make it better that way. Asai also tells her the cat is fine, chilling with Nonoo. He holds out his hand to shake hers in order to celebrate their new friendship.

He’s quite sure that her ability has worn off, making it safe to touch her, but the episode still ends just before they touch, so good it is at messing with us. Still, it’s mission accomplished—and what a baller mission it turned out to be.

Sagrada Reset – 03

Two years have passed, as has Souma Sumire, and Asai Kei is a lot more careful about changing the future after losing her. But when client Murase Youka comes to them requesting they revive her cat (recently killed by one of the anime world’s infamous murderous drivers), he dives into the mission with what passes for him as enthusiasm. It would, after all, prevent the client from shedding tears (though she doesn’t strike me as the emotional type) and that’s the reason Asai got into this business with Haruki.

As Asai and Haruki investigate (which leads them to a cat-loving and cat mind-inhabiting informant) there’s an ongoing flirtation being carried out, mostly by Haruki. Sure, Haruki is kind of muddling through, and Asai isn’t the most receptive (he’s seemingly put off when she talks like a cat or asks if she should wear a new yukata or miniskirt), and it might be the stealthiest romance of the season…but it’s a romance in play nonetheless.

That, and Hanazawa Kana’s measured but increasingly warm delivery, keeps me from going all Seika Nono and falling asleep over this show. I’m not going to make excuses, it is slow, and deliberate, and sometimes boring. But last week showed that if one is patient with Sagrada Reset, one has a tendency to be rewarded accordingly.

So it is that Asai’s classmate Minami Mirai (a fan of the occult) ends up suspended above his bed on a (second) saturday morning. Somehow saving the cat resulted in a present very different than the one Asai wakes up to at the start of the episode. And it all has something to do with what Murase was doing while Asai and Haruki were saving her cat. We know she can fly, so that’s a start. But so far, this show solves mysteries in episode pairs, so we’ll have to wait until next week to see where this is going (or where it’s gone).

Sagrada Reset – 02

Just when Asai determines Mari is the result of her mother’s ability to create a clone of her never-born daughter, an agent of the “Bureau” (or “Kanrikyoku”), Tsushima, arrives to take her away.

The father left town, and now the mother will do the same, leaving the virtual Mari a virtual orphan. That doesn’t sit right with Asai, so he has Haruki reset, and the formulation of a plan commences.

It’s actually pretty impressive how quickly and efficiently Asai directs the service he and Haruki are likely going to be providing throughout the run of the show: “erasing tears” by resetting and fixing the cause of those tears.

Their classmates assist with their own abilities, but when the one who allows Asai to share his memories with Haruki bristles at the prospect of defying the Bureau, Asai cuts himself with a broken ramune bottle until Tsushima gives permission.

Everything works out perfectly: Asai, with the help of the rest of the group, is able to show Mari’s mother the error of her ways; to stay and continue raising the girl who may not technically be her real daughter, but loves her nonetheless.

With Haruki and his classmates’ combined powers, Asai has gained the power to “erase sadness.” In the process, he’s also managed to awaken some feelings in Haruki, though the road is long.

He discusses this in great detail with Souma Sumire, who is a tough nut to crack: you get the feeling she’s glad Asai may have found his calling, but a part of her also regrets bringing him and Haruki closer together.

Mind you, the relationship between Asai and Haruki doesn’t become a romance overnight. After all, Haruki has only gained back a small portion of the full spectrum of emotions most humans carry and experience. She cuts her hair at his suggestion, but also confuses trust with love. Asai proves it when they kiss and there’s no spark.

Then he undoes the premature kiss by asking her to reset. After seeing what they managed to accomplish with Mari and her mother, Haruki believes following Asai’s lead is her “zeroth rule”, so she complies.

But in the period between Haruki’s Save Point and her Reset, Souma Sumire falls from the bridge, into the river, and dies, as we witnessed at the end of last week’s episode. Seeing her wearing the dress and holding the red umbrella rendered her a dead girl walking, and gave her last conversation with Asai far more significance than he could comprehend at the time.

When Haruki finds Asai quietly mourning on the rooftop, she demands he instruct her to reset…unaware she just did, and it’s too late. When she sees Asai crying, she can’t help but do the same. She’s following his lead, but also realizing that this is what the two of them have to stop from happening to others at all costs.

There’s a huge jump of two years to when Asai and Haruki, now high schoolers, are recruited by Tsushima into a Bureau-sanctioned “Service Club”, where they can erase sadness in an official (and supervised) capacity.

It’s a pretty jarring time leap, to be honest, but it means the first two episodes were always meant to be a prologue in which the pairing of Asai and Haruki was made and their shared calling revealed. Now the real work begins: both the sadness-erasure work, and the emotional-awakening-of-Haruki work.

Sagrada Reset – 01 (First Impressions)

Asai Kei is introduced by class rep Souma Sumire to Haruki Misora, a stoic and seemingly emotionless girl who has no friends. Because Haruki has the ability to “reset” the world up to 3 days into the past, and Kei has a supernatural five-sense memory, Souma believes they’re perfectly suited to joining forces for good.

Sagrada (or Sakurada) Reset is a bit of an odd duck, like its two leads. On the one hand, it subtly, delicately paints the picture of a small town that is totally normal except for the fact that half of its residents possess supernatural powers. It also delves, if not too deeply, into some interesting philosophical ideas about what constitutes “goodness”—Sumire’s story of Zen and Gizen to Asai being one of the episode’s high points.

But there are a few issues. First of all, this episode felt like it took forever to run, and although it accomplished a lot, it just didn’t feel that eventful. That may be okay in a 24-episode show, but the earlier a show can impress me and draw me in, the more likely I am to commit to such a show.

I also don’t mind a matter-of-fact, stoic duo, but that comes with the caveat that sometimes scenes are going to feel slow and listless. It didn’t help that this was a very talky episode, and neither Hanazawa Hana nor Ishikawa Kaito ever raise and barely modulate their voices throughout all this talking. Yuuki Aoi breathes some energy into Souma, but I wager she’d be the quiet character on any other show.

The episode also seemed reluctant to demonstrate the characters’ special abilities (and didn’t even name one for Souma, who may well not have one); indeed, if one were to blink when Haruki whispers “Reset” in the wind, you’d miss her ability altogether. Yet on another level, it’s intriguing that such powerful abilities are presented so plainly and elegantly, rather than, for example, a CGI light and effects show, or even worse, floating TV screens.

Two things at which Reset excels is its ambient sound design, and it’s awareness of its leisurely pace, which it uses to drop a sudden twist at the end: that the little girl Haruki has been sitting with recently has actually been dead for seven years. I definitely want to learn what’s up with that and how such a predicament will be resolved (presumably by our duo), and so there’s a hook for continuing to watch.

The “cold close” apparently showing Souma (same hair and eyes) falling off a bridge to her death compounds that desire to see what happens next. Like Akashic Records, there’s potential, but I’m banking on the fact that neither show’s strongest episode was its first. Unlike Akashic Records, there’s a stiltedness to the cast that exposes the fine line between ‘subtle, deliberate’ and just plain dull and tedious. So we’ll see.

Yuri Kuma Arashi – 04

Framed as a day in which Yuri Court is not in session and narrated by Shaba-da-doo chief Judge Life Sexy (bear) himself, Yurikuma Arashi 04 is a past-tense heavy, backstory building, infodump.

In spite of that, it’s a wonderful episode full of tight storytelling and some fall on the floor giggling moments that I urge everyone who likes feeling happy to check out.

Summing it up: Lulu was once a princess, who got all the attention from her bear kingdom. One day, on the day of shooting stars, an adorable little brother was born and her world came apart. No longer the heir, no longer doted on by her maids, Lulu became deeply jealous.

Unfortunately, her little brother loved her very much and, for the promise of a kiss, would go on ‘adventures’ to find her a falling star. I air-quote adventures here because Lulu convinces him to get into a box marked ‘love’ and kicks him off a cliff at the beginning of each.

The little prince always returns, beaten up a bit, but holding a wonderful pot of honey in exchange for a Lulu kiss — and every time Lulu freaks out and throws his pot of honey out the window and kicks him off the cliff again.

Until one day, the prince dies and Lulu gets what she wants. Years later, surrounded by wonderful things and chased by endless suitors, she is empty inside and, only after meeting Ginko (who’s retrieved one of the lost honey pots) does Lulu find purpose again. Her kisses are gone, her happiness too, but she will be a criminal bear and help Ginko find happiness and cross the wall into Human lands.

The episode closes with Lulu and Ginko under their mushroom-hat tree. Lulu holds her dead brother’s honey pot and Ginko a golden star on a ribbon… which matches the one worn by Kureha’s late mother!

What earned it a 9: the card-style storybook flashbacks were charming, the backgrounds beautiful, and the added context for the male court-bears in Lulu’s past and the reasons for Lulu being devoted to Ginko were all deftly handled and well integrated.

And Judge Life Sexy’s “Shaba-do-doo’ing along with the background music almost earned it a ten on it’s own.

Why it didn’t a 10: it’s an infodump episode. Pure and simple. All the elements were integrated very well but the info dumping wasn’t integrated with the current events in any way.

Most importantly, this means nothing really happened in ‘current events’ part of the narrative.

I’m on the fence over the castle, the bear-infused decorations and architectural elements being a good break from the hard edge, pattern heavy ‘current events’ style or if its general lack of action and ‘otherness’ was distracting.

The art style was beautiful regardless and I especially liked the bonnet-wearing bear maids in waiting.

Yuri Kuma Arashi – 03

Verdict: Action, drama, sharp brightly colored art with a strong sense of personal style, and a rocking trancey-pop sound track catapulted Yurikuma to the top of its game, and all anime’s game this week and I don’t see any sign of it slowing down any time soon.

If you haven’t started watching it, stop what you are doing and go watch it. Then watch it again because, I promise you, the lovely details are layered on thick here and something new will hop out of you each chance you give it!

What didn’t work: is entirely dependent on your sense of taste. If the absurd, pure love of yuri-love message this show presents doesn’t mesh with your personal view, I can see why you may want to run for the hills.

Otherwise, this is a technical masterpiece and an emotionally touching piece of psycho-storytelling.

What pushed it up to a 10: was the superior integration of visuals and sound track. Also, the pattern making, which has been strong in weeks past, finally hit its groove. The Escher bird-to-mountain design appears everywhere, fading in when the emotional need to achieve conformity is brought up by the story, and fading away when the personal view is the center.

I don’t even know what all the symbolism stands for, but it is very strong and it feels legitimate, regardless of what I can bring to the table.

Summing up the story: Yurizono really did eat Sumika, and she quickly positions Kureha to follow. Using easily manipulated girls of the classes, she makes Kureha the next target of the invisible and sends the storm, which appears to be some sort of cyber-bullying over the phone, or text or something.

However, Ginko has decided she wants to save Kureha (or just wants her to eat herself) and, with Lulu’s loving help, gets the yuri-court to approve her love, her love for Kureha, and thus bolstered, Kureha is able to shoot Yurizono in their final show down.

Then Ginko and Lulu eat another girl, this time the one who organized Kureha’s invisible… storming.

Lesbearian Storm bashed my skull in this week and it was awesome. I can hardly make sense of what it all meant but, between the crazy, trippy visuals and the throbbing, Emiliani Torini style sound track, man was I hooked.

Yuri Kuma Arashi – 02 (Second Impressions)

Lesbearian Storm continues its march towards pure crazy with two giggle inducing bear-reveals, another I-can’t-even-describe-it court session, and a double homicide for its second outing.

It’s packed with content, wild twists, and over the top yuri action. I will do my best to avoid spoilers but, if you haven’t seen it yet, turn away now and come back later!

To sum up: it turns out Yurizono really did witness the bears eating Sumika, and not some random girl as I expected. So Sumika is dead and Kureha is in emotional shambles.

Yurizono is also devastated, though possibly because she’s infatuated with Kureha or possibly because she knows Ginko and Lulu are bears. Regardless of which, Yurizono admits to her jealous lover that Kureha is most likely the next to be eaten…

Then Lulu and Ginko invade Kureha’s house under the pretext of needing a bath. Then Lulu takes a bath and Ginko licks Kureha’s face and then Yurizono shows up with a rifle and saves the day…

Later, the bears face another trial before Judge Sexy and are Yuri-approved, which is followed by Kureha’s emotional showdown with a bear, Yurizono killing a bear, and a bear eating another, apparently less tasty student.

The good: killing off Sumika, the girl who stands at the center of Yuri Kuma’s promotional art, was a fantastically bold move. That said, this show is so many layers of crazy and populated by unreliable narrators that I don’t even know if she really is dead, or may re-materialize later in some form.

I’m not even sure if that would be a bad thing? This show is so wacky, and pokes so much fun at it’s own twists, that I may just accept such a return.

This week also managed to stuff in plot developments, important reveals, secret identities, action and maintain a strong connection with Kureha, who is essentially the most human and emotional center to the show.

Quality of the animation aside, this was Yuri Kuma’s greatest victory: I felt bad for Kureha and empathized with her confusion at the nonsense whirlwind of crazy unfolding around her.

However: if extreme sexualization of young characters creeps you out, this week we got grinding, licking, wet kisses, (bear) butt holes, ass-sniffing and a whole lot of skin. If tasteful can be used in that context, I think Yuri Kuma did a decent job integrating it (to the point that nothing needed a censor-shape over it) but the raw lust can not be overstated.

Also, on a production note, it was strange to see some of the animation recycled from last week. Sure, that honey-lapping scene with the three girls is dripping with wet appeal but…I hope it isn’t a sign that we’re in for serious budgetary issues later on?

Second Impression: my biggest issue with Yuri Kuma is not how silly it is or how casually provocative its yuri yuri yuri all the time wants to be… it’s that I have a really hard time telling Kureha and Yurizono apart!

No seriously! The hair color and shape and the fact they both carry rifles makes it hard to tell who is on screen at each scene swap! Goodness, it’s almost as if one of them is doomed to join poor dead Sumika soon!

Growl! Growl! Yum! Yum!