Yuru Camp△ 2 – 02 – Four Sunrises

Rin arrives at Iwata, and it’s everything a gal from a landlocked prefecture could hope for: crystal-clear skies and endless ocean. Riding her moped beside the sea feels great, until the cold and wind get to be too much. Fortunately her mom recommended a tea place, and who should be minding the store but the mountain climbing lady she met at the Yashajin Pass.

Yuru Camp seems to be running with the idea that Japan is just a big small town, where you’re always bumping into people you know by chance. I don’t mind, it’s fun! Rin goes to the upstairs café for a matcha tiramisu set, and suddenly wants to set up her tent right there.

Rin also visits the Mitsuki-Tenjin Shrine, but learns that Shippeitarou III passed away years ago, making Rin suddenly think about how short dogs’ lives are, even going so far as to text Ena her worries about Chikuma. Ena says she’ll be devastated when it happens, but it’s inevitable. All she can do is make sure her pup has as many good times as possible.

Rin switches gears from pondering mortality to getting a fire and dinner going. With no pine cones or twigs on the campground, Rin uses her knife to make a feather stick to start her fire, showing how there are plenty of tricks she still learning. After whipping up a duck soup nameko mushroom soba, she sends all of her pics to the gang, and Nadeshiko reports that it’s snowing back home.

After getting a few hours of sleep, Rin gets up to watch the first sunrise of the new year from Furude Beach, where many others are already gathered and a torii gate is set up for the event. Toba-sensei elects to drive Chiaki, Aoi, and Aoi’s little sister Akari to Mt. Minobu.

They take the ropeway, pray at the shrine, buy some dango, drink some amazuke, and find a good spot to watch the sun rise. In both locations, there’s a palpable electricity in the air, a sense of anticipation in the literal darkness before the dawn.

Then the sun rises in all her majesty, filling that darkness with blinding light and vivid colors. Rin aligns herself so the rising sun appears directly within the torii gate, as if a great spirit were emerging. Yuru Camp has previously displayed a gift for depicting sunrises and sunsets, but it really outdoes itself this time, showing us the same sunrise from multiple locations.

As the day goes on, Rin is looking forward to trying out Iwata’s local specialty pig’s foot curry, but is tempted by a food truck selling pizza and pot-au-feu, and decides to indulge. Chiaki gets Toba and the others to hurry off Mt. Minobu so they can try to catch a second sunrise in Fujikawa City fifty minutes after the first—and one that looks like a diamond rising over Fujiyama’s summit.

While Toba-sensei drifts her Suzuki Hustler up and around the mountain road with the skill of a rally driver, they arrive to find the sun already high above Fuji-san—Chiaki was off by a whole half-hour. The last to see a “sunrise” is Ena, once it’s already pretty high in the sky. Still, I’m sure she enjoyed the extra sleep!

While Rin is starting to think about preparing to check out, she gets a call from her mom: Yamanashi has frozen over in the night, making the roads home too dangerous to attempt, particularly on a moped. The new plan is for her grandpa to drive out in his van to get her and her bike. She just has to sit tight for two days. Considering she’s a short walk from the beach, there are far worse places to be “stuck!”

Yuru Camp△ 2 – 01 – The Power of Curry Cup Ramen

In its first season Shima Rin mentioned she first started camping in her first year of middle school. The second season opens by saying “You don’t have to take her word for it; we’ll show you!”

Rin’s passion for camping began when her grandfather mailed her a package containing camping gear. Then, as now, she was a voracious reader, but used to simply read in the front room of her family’s super-awesome house. She takes a long look outdoors and decides to figure out how the tent gramps gave her goes together.

Before long, the day has come for Rin’s very first camping trip, a day trip to—where else—Lake Motosu. Her dad, whom we see for the first time, drives her there and walks with her to the lakeside where she’ll set up camp on her own. He’ll be chilling in the lodge while she’s camping, in case she needs help. The striking view of Fuji-san fills Rin with awe.

That awe soon turns to frustration as Rin proves absolutely terrible at camping, but in her defense, it’s her first time, she’s only 11 or 12, and most everyone is crap at doing something the first time!

She bends one of the tent spikes when hitting it too hard with a rock. She doesn’t have a chair so her butt hurts. She tries to start a fire with no kindling and enormous branches. She ruins the pot in which she tried—and failed—to cook rice.

It’s cold, and she’s hungry, and she’s been so busy trying and failing things that she hasn’t able to read a single page of her OOPArts book! Then her mom gives her a call, and tells her she slipped some “emergency food” in her backpack: a cup of curry ramen. Aw, mom! Rin boils some water on the fire the camp admin helped her build, and she digs in.

She can’t recall curry cup ramen ever tasting so good, but when you’re enjoying nature’s majesty, once-ordinary foods just taste better. In a lovely little closing touch, Rin is admiring Fuji-san close up, and we cut to a sixth-grade Nadeshiko in her hometown, gazing happily at a much smaller Fuji-san.

Fast-forward to the present: with New Year’s fast approaching, Nadeshiko is working hard at a job perfectly suited to her energy levels: bicycle mail delivery. She finishes her route and has lunch with Ena, whom she shows the retro lantern she wants to buy. Then they get into a text exchange with Aoi, Chiaki, and Rin regarding their New Years plans.

Chiaki doesn’t get any time off, but everyone vows to bring back something for her, so she’s fine “holding the fort”. Rin will be soloing for New Year’s, preferably by the ocean, somewhere like Izu. Both her parents prefer that she chose a campsite that doesn’t involve heavy traffic, as she’s still a relatively new rider.

Rin settles on Iwata in Shizuoka, not least because it has another dog shrine like the one she visited on her impromptu solo trip—and this shrine features a living descendent of Shippeitaoru AKA Hayatarou. I wouldn’t pass up meeting a holy dog either! She loads her trusty moped up with her gear and sets off before the sun comes up, her mom sending her off.

While at a stop light, Rin hears someone calling her name from a konbini…It’s Nadeshiko, who is buying snacks before starting her early workday! Nadeshiko runs up to chat with Rin and gives her something to eat and stay warm once she’s at her campsite: a cup of curry ramen.

Not only is it the same kind Rin shared with Nadeshiko when they first met, but it’s the same kind Rin’s  mom packed for her on her first ever trip, and thus always had deep sentimental value. Emphasizing the two girls’ warm, sweet, enduring friendship no matter how apart they are…Yuru Camp 2 is off to a great start!

Otherside Picnic – 03 – It Takes a Village

It’s just Sorao and Toriko this week, as Otherside Picnic sticks to a simple formula: the two meet up, go to the Otherside, encounter something dangerous, then make it back safe and sound. Rinse, repeat. Throughout each of the three visits we’ve watched, Sorao wonders if she really should keep hanging out with Toriko, but hasn’t been able to keep herself from doing so—in large part because Toriko is fun and pretty.

This week while searching for the supply point where Toriko first found her gun, the two go into the nitty-gritty of how to search for glitches along their path. Wide shots of the two give a sense of scale of their surroundings, but because they’re rendered in clunky CG it pulls me out of those scenes every time.

The “Big-Heads” who inhabit the village are initially creepy, but as soon as there are dozens of them rendered in CGI, they look more goofy than anything else. And while they end up chasing the girls, one could argue they had a right to be mad about their friends getting shot by intruders.

During the ensuing chase, the girls stop numerous times while Big-Heads don’t, yet they’re never caught.  Also, both Sorao and Toriko stumble, but neither of them help the other up. They end up escaping back to their world through a miniature shrine, showing that there are many different ways in and out of the Otherside.

It’s somewhat deflating that even after Toriko expresses genuine affection for her, Sorao ends up in the precise same headspace as the beginning of the episode: wondering whether she should rethink continuing these excursions with Toriko. The kids chasing each other in masks that were the same colors as the Big-Heads was a neat little detail. Otherwise, three episodes in I must admit I’m getting a little bored with this.

Uzaki-chan wa Asobitai! – 10 – The Tasty Truth About Tottori

Last week’s lurking shadow villains turn out to be Ami and Sakaki, as expected. They’ve followed Uzaki and Sakurai and rented a car so the couple can experience everything Tottori has to offer—all while they observe from a mostly respectful distance and eat it all up. But this episode isn’t just a means of Uzaki and Sakurai becoming a little closer, it’s a full-on love letter to Tottori!

Never far from Uzaki & Co. is a uniformed tour guide describing in detail a certain lovingly-rendered Tottori point of interest, starting with the famous sand dunes to a circular school converted to museum honoring all the famous mangakas from the area.

Also always near by is a more lovey-dovey version of Uzaki and Sakurai, always providing a mirror of how the two of them look to others, especially when they do very couple-y stuff like playing together on the dunes or taking bites of the same rabbit cake.

By the time they pray at a shrine and receive a very favorable fortune regarding their coupling, Ami and Sakaki admit that Tottori is a historical Couples’ Mecca—much to this particular couple’s chagrin. They were enjoying themselves totally until their friends made the implicit explicit, but they try to fight back the blushing, relax, and enjoy hanging out nevertheless.

They couldn’t be in a better place to relax, thanks to Tottori’s famous hot springs and steam baths. When a sweaty Uzaki slips and falls chest-first on top of Sakurai and some deceptively suggestive dialogue ensues, causing an attendant to rush in assuming they’re up to things best done in the privacy of their room.

But while Ami and Sakaki came to watch a relationship blossom, they also undermine it; Uzaki ends up sharing a room with Ami and Sakura with Sakaki, eliminating what would have been the most romantic part of the trip—a night alone in a hotel room.

Ami and Sakaki get a “feast” out of watching the couple, but if their goal was to somehow jump-start their relationship into a higher gear than it was before, they come up a bit short. That’s not a bad thing; it just means that no amount of meddling will either help or hurt a slow but steadily simmering romance emerging organically from their interactions together and increased comfort with one another and their quirks.

Uzaki still teases Sakurai about being a loner, but we already seen last week that he prefers that to an artificially meek Uzaki. No doubt Uzaki likes Sakurai the way he is, and any change she causes in him will be minor and incidental.

In short, these two came together because of the kind of people they are, they like each other that way, and they’re going to be fine. Sakaki seems right on one count: Sakurai may insist he an Uzaki “aren’t like that”, but it’s all but inevitable that they soon will be, if they aren’t already!

Chuubyou Gekihatsu Boy – 03 – Having It Rough

Of the Hero Club members, the aloof and apathetic Tsukumo Rei remains the most mysterious and enigmatic. This week’s episode draws the curtain back on Rei and shows that while he may talk and act like serious or ominous things are going on or about to happen, the reality of the situation is a lot more…ordinary. In that regard, he’s not that different from the others—especially when he runs into a flock of pigeons and laughs!

After a cryptic phone call, Rei rushes off somewhere, and Mizuki and the others follow him, curious what might be up. Noda, Nakamura and Takashima all buy in to the fact that Rei can control walk signals and make merchants sell him things on sale, but Mizuki can tell the signals were a coincidence and Rei just…knows when to shop.

Then they encounter Rei with his three little siblings, who have lost their beloved pet cat in the forest, and accompany him onto the grounds of a shrine to track him down. Takashima jumps at the sight of anything from a fluttering banner to a rusty sign, but he’s so emphatic in his fear that Mizuki starts getting the creeps; it is dark after all.

After “Touga” ends up “sacrificing” himself to save the others from the “monster”, Takashima slips and falls down a hill into a ditch, leaving just Noda, Rei and Mizuki when the “monster” approaches. Turns out it’s just a very burly monk, carrying Takashima and Nakamura…and the cat. The mission is accomplished, but with a lot of completely unnecessary rigmarole along the way.

When Rei returns the cat to his little siblings, the club learns he has three older siblings—the proverbial Cerberus—who demand he make dinner immediately or else. It’s clear Rei’s too-cool demeanor at school and in club is merely a means of compensating for how trod-upon he is at home, having to shop for and feed six siblings despite three of them being older than him.

The others can’t hide their pity for Rei’s situation which is precisely the last thing Rei wants from there. Embarrassed, he’d much prefer to remain slightly threatening and inscrutable as before, but now that they know more about him and how he operates, it require “memory erasure” for that to be possible.

And there you have it: the chuuni kid who believes he’s above all the other chuuni kids, leading them on as a small escape from his put-upon position in his family.

Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san 2 – 11 – A Big Catch

In a desperate attempt for a win, any win, Nishikata manages to find out from Takagi’s friend that she’ll be walking down a certain road at a certain time, and arranges for a game to guess the steps to a certain spot.

Thinking more than one step ahead for once, he correctly predicts she’ll call for a further target, but he’s such an open book she changes it again, demonstrating that thinking just two steps ahead won’t cut it if you want to beat Takagi!

Still Takagi had fun, and is flattered that Nishikata would go so far to win a game, and asks what he wants her to get him as a souvenir on her family vacation. Later, Takagi’s friend can tell from her face “something nice happened.”

When Takagi is back, she presents Nishikata with another great gift: a 100% Unrequited Love-themed curry kit. He also went on vacation, and surprises her with a gift of cookies. Little does she know they’re sour cookies. When she suggests they go to the shrine to enjoy their gifts together, it’s the perfect chance to see her distressed, puckered face…

…But on the way there, Takagi expresses her happiness so genuinely, Nishikata has no choice but to warn her ahead of time. Turns out the cookies are actually pretty good. Takagi also uses their shrine visit to tell him she had her family vacation shortened so she could go to the upcoming summer festival.

Nishikata isn’t planning to go with anyone, and neither is Takagi, so she tells him in no uncertain terms that if someone asked her to go, she would—someone she teases all the time, for instance. Knowing him all to well, Takagi provides him with everything he needs…all he has to do is, well, ask her out.

The subtle animation really shines in this scene, conveying Takagi’s nervousness as she adjusts her legs and stretches her trembling hands, matching Takahashi Rie’s superb voice work.

Asking Takagi out is one of the hardest things Nishikata has ever had to do, because it pretty much throws out the window the fiction that, as he’s so fond of saying, “it isn’t like that” between them. When the two run into each other on the street and he offers to carry her groceries in his bike basket, the atmosphere gets more and more awkward as he utterly fails to speak up and say the words that need to be said.

I really can’t overstate how much tension is built up as they walk up to her house and say goodbye and he starts to walk away, without asking her out. Her usual cheerful smile vanishes, replaced by a look of resignation…she tried her best. But then she hears his bike returning, and the shy sonofabitch finally, finally asks her if she wants to go to the summer festival with him.

The answer, of course, is yes, and in her elation she tosses more canned drinks into his arms before he heads off to fish with his mates. Nishikata doesn’t get to see her adorable quivering look of relief and joy as he pedals off. Now this is how you build anticipation for the twelfth and final episode!

While fishing, even when he gets a bite on his line he doesn’t notice, as he’s in a kind of trance state. Not surprising, as he’d already snagged the biggest catch of his life.

How Heavy are the Dumbbells You Lift? – 11 – Bridge Over Troubled Ratings

After a string of ten straight solid “8” episodes, the eleventh came off as somewhat sparse. As the teachers celebrate New Years Eve by drinking at home, the girls head to the Shrine of the Muscle God, which has a truly epic staircase for training purposes and is also maintained by none other than Machio.

After watching the sun come up and descending from the shrine, the girls still have enough energy to train. Gina suggests they use the equipment at a local park, but to her horror (and my surprise) most of the equipment on which to train has been removed from most parks in Japan, so they do a number of isometric exercises that require nothing but their own bodies. Handy if you’re training (as I plan to do upon completion of this show) but lacking in excitement.

Gina tries to spice things up by registering the group for a live TV talent show (directed by Deire Kutarou, from the idol competition) but the sum total of their performance is some poses and a perfectly-executed “Wrestler’s Bridge” from a masked Satomi. Deire is surprised to find the girls boosted his show to second-best in the time slot, and the producer and president want to see more of them.

Jason shows up and takes Deire aside to propose a “Nikunoshima Tour,” whatever that is, which will be covered in the twelfth and final episode. But I couldn’t help but feel like this was the weakest of the Dumbbell outings so far; unlike the others it felt more meandering, even listless, like it was running out of gas. Hopefully the finale can restore the lost momentum and bring things to a satisfying close.

Zoku Owarimonogatari – 02 – Relax and Enjoy

Koyomi knows the story of Kanbaru Suruga’s bath sometimes reflecting the image of the person you’ll end up with someday. He’s not sure that means he’ll be able to use it to return to his world or contact Shinobu, but he thought he’d give it a try—and meet a Suruga who might not be lewd, masochistic, or immodest.

Turns out she’s none of those things. Instead, she’s the Rainy Devil: pure rage, hatred, and pain. He can’t get anywhere near the bath, and is only rescued from the devil’s wrath by Mirror Tsubasa, who is simply Black Hanekawa. She warns him not to go back to the bath without a specialist, but that makes two consecutive friends of his who are the oddity versions of themselves in this world.

If Suruga’s Mirror self is a nightmare, Mirror Oikura Sodachi is a good dream, or rather a “good ending” version of the character, who moved in with the Araragi family when she was in grade school and is now something of a third sister to Koyomi, and thus extremely affectionate towards him. Still, as happy and blessed as she feels, a part of her can’t help but wonder…is it all a lie?

If you were to ask Mirror Nadeko, AKA Kuchinawa-san, the answer is no—and Koyomi gets to ask her, thanks to Big Sis Mayoi inviting her predecessor to the shrine to help him work through his predicament. Mayoi also tells Koyomi to loosen up and enjoy himself, and she starts imbibing bottle after bottle of sake.

Kuchinawa knows about mirrors; the root of the Japanese word for mirror is “serpent’s eye”, and mirrors were first used as a holy instrument, not to reflect an image, but to reflect its truth. Put simply, each and every person Koyomi has met so far is no less the real person as the ones he knows in his own world.

The mirror he finds himself in doesn’t just flip them left-to-right, but shows the other side of those people. That explains why Tsukihi is the same; she has no other sides. If this world is, as he previously considered, the product of an oddity that exists for a reason, perhaps the key to dealing with that oddity (if that’s what it is) is to be exposed to and accept these other sides as equally valid…

Zoku Owarimonogatari – 01 – Through the Loo(Koyomi)ng Glass

The long-awaited “epilogue” to Shinbou Akiyuki’s venerable Monogatari Series premiered in theaters last Fall. The movie can be cleanly split into six episodes. Here’s the RABUJOI review of the first, with more to come, on the 10-year anniversary of Bakemonogatari’s first episode. You can view a Big Board of the complete Monogatari anime saga in the order of when events occur here.—R.S.

It’s March 16, 2007 – just two days after the events of Owarimonogatari, and Araragi Koyomi has graduated from high school and has not yet been admitted to his college of choice. It’s a kind of purgatory he’s never experienced. From grade to middle to high school, he’d always known for sure what came next, whether he was a vampire or not. Now it’s all up in the air.

It’s not surprising for someone with such a murky view of the future to turn his gaze inward, thus undertaking a new adventure (or oddity): a mirror universe. Going into this movie (which I’ll be reviewing in six parts) I had no idea what to expect from these “bonus levels” or “lost levels,” but as a self-avowed Trekkie, exploring alternate realities is always a ton of fun and I’m glad to see Monogatari employ the device.

Aside from the familiar setting of his house being literally reversed, Koyomi starts to notice everyone’s a bit…alternate: Karen is short instead of tall; Tsukihi’s yukata is reversed; Yotsugi is extremely expressive. They’re all fun reflections the significance of which rely not only on the audience having pored over the previous ninety-seven episodes of Monogatari, but also having thoroughly enjoyed said poring, as I am on record as having done.

The most entertaining of alternate characters to date has to be Hachikuji Mayoi, the recently-installed town god whom Araragi visits to get some answers when Shinobu won’t respond to his summons. At first Mayoi doesn’t show when he presents an offering of aluminum 1-yen coins, two claps, and a prayer. But that’s because she’s stalking him.

Unlike the 10-year-old Mayoi who has been the victim of numerous Perverted Araragi Attacks™, Mirror Mayoi is 21; Koyomi’s senpai and onee-chan, and the hunter, not the hunted. Turnabout is certainly fair play, as Koyomi is the unconsenting recipient of wholly inappropriate verbal and physical manhandling. After her ambush, she helps him determine that the mirror world is a moment from his world that branched off, with some elements that have reversed and others that haven’t.

Drawing from the utilization of the temple’s torii as a time-portal back to 1995, Mayoi suggests that Koyomi attempt to return to his world by the same means. That means employing the unique talents of one former Kiss-shot Acerola-orion Heart-under-blade to open the gate for him, even though her being a vampire means she has no counterpart in the mirror universe.

He just needs a way to convey that idea to Shinobu, who may be back in her prime if they’re truly separated. He suddenly recalls the cypress bath in Kanbaru’s house as a potential means to contact her. As the start to a new mystery box out of which Koyomi must think and network his way, Zoku is a welcome new addition to the mythos. Voice actors, art, design, and particularly Haneoka Kei’s pulsing soundtrack are all in top form. I can’t wait to see where this bonus stage goes.

YU-NO – 01 (First Impressions) – Time is Reversible but Cliches are Innumerable

Howdy, and welcome to the Spring 2019! Our first entry is YU-NO, a bright, brisk show about an easygoing orphaned high school dude named Arima Takuya who is suddenly tangled up in all this curious business of time travel, parallel universes, and various other things he did not expect, including the discovery that his folks aren’t dead after all.

Takuya is a bit of a cad, acting as both quasi-casanova and class clown. He has a jovial sidekick who calls him “boss.” He draws both the ire and likely fancy of the class idol, Shimazu Mio (an always welcome Kugimiya Rie). His hot teacher wears an outfit perhaps better suited for…not school.

His guardian, whom I’m guessing is his older sister, cousin, or aunt judging by the same last name, is in charge of some kind of construction project. His dad, a researcher believed to have died in a cave, is survived by his colleague Ryuzoji, whom I immediately suspected was a bad guy due to his suite and beard. Oh, and Ryuzoji’s secretary used to teach at Takuya’s school, and they may have slept together in the past. Neat!

The episode starts with Takuya interacting with one attractive woman after another, establishing the various players I saw on the promo art. Perhaps that was a mistake, but the fact his interactions feel so regimented lends each of the female characters a kind of mysterious significance anyway.

When Takuya gets home, the tangling begins, with a mysterious package arriving in the mail containing a weird relic of the type Ryuzoji was looking for, followed by a call on the phone with no one on the other end. If that isn’t enough weirdness for one evening, Takuya switches on the news and a strange lightning strikes very near his guardian when she’s giving an interview.

Takuya rushes to her, and she’s fine, but also encounters his sidekick and Shimazu, who have just finished investigating the shrine near the construction site. They all encounter a blue-haired girl in their school uniform—no doubt the transfer student his sexy teacher mentioned—and this student, Hatano Kanna, warns Takuya both there and the next day after her intro to the class to convince his guardian to cancel all construction at the site, warning that it’s “dangerous.”

That’s a pretty vague warning to someone who is not directly responsible for the construction site, but that night, Takuya gets another mystery package that contains a weird book labeled “Parallel World Constitutive Theorem” and “Reflector Device Construction” containing a drawing of this weird relic thing, and a letter form his dad telling him to go to the shrine at a certain time with the device.

Takuya does as the letter instructs, and there he finds a naked blonde young woman with fairy-like ears who only says one thing to him—”Yu-no”—before kissing him and then de-materializing into glow-dust. Takuya is rightly a bit freaked out by this series of events!

They only get stranger, as both his guardian and Ryuzoji appear at the site, only for Ryuzoji to pull a gun on Takuya and demand he hand over the device, as it enables its bearer the ability to “cross Neumann space.” His dad intended it for him, but I guess Ryuzoji has other plans? In any case he has a beard so he’s bad news.

Fortunately, more weird gold lightning strikes, and one of the bolts hits Takuya while he’s holding the device. Instead of getting fried, he’s shot through some kind of tunnel in spacetime, travels through various twisted  hyper-dimensional pathways, and spat out right where he began. Only, as he learns when he returns to school to find both his guardian safe and sound and a cheerful, gun-less Ryuzoji, he appears to have traveled a day into the past. Dun-dun-dunnnnn!

If this introductory episode left me with a bunch of questions, it’s because it wanted it to be that way. That’s fine, as we’re closely following the MC, who’s as much in the dark as we are, especially when Ryuzoji starts blurting out weird lingo. That said, there were an awful lot of familiar cliches that didn’t really bring much to the table. It’s all very by-the-numbers and didn’t once ‘wow’ me. I’ll at least give this another week to see where this goes, but color me unimpressed so far…

Bunny Girl Senpai – 06 – Quantum Entanglement-by-Butt-Kickin’

On the eve of finals, Mai decides she’s used enough of the stick and whips out a carrot in the form of her bunny girl suit, which she wears while tutoring Sakuta. Why the change of pace? She witnessed him stand up for Tomoe at the station, and thinks better of him for working so hard even for a fake girlfriend. I can’t tell you how refreshing it is that Mai isn’t the slightest bit threatened by Tomoe.

The finals come and go, as does the last day of school and the start of summer break: July 18. Sakuta and Tomoe have been dating three weeks now, but Tomoe assures him she has an ironclad plan for the breakup. After a fun final date at the beach, she shakes his hand and thanks him for his help. She’ll simply tell her friends she dumped him when she realized he only had feelings for Mai—something that happens to be true.

But I knew, after that “final” date, there was no way July 19 would come. Instead, July 18 resets, as I predicted. What I didn’t expect was that Tomoe isn’t aware of the reset…or at least says she isn’t. They go on their beach date a second, then a third time.

Sakuta starts to suspect Tomoe may be lying about not knowing about the looping. It’s confirmed when she turns around and smiles at him during the principal’s address; something she hadn’t done in previous iterations. Not only does Sakuta know for sure that she’s lying, but he knows why.

On the fourth July 18 Sakuta throws Tomoe for a loop (for a change), taking her to Enoshima, the place they were originally going to go on their first date, but he’s making it their last. They climb the prodigious stairs to the shrine, and he fills out a votive tablet for good relationships. Tomoe thinks it sinful, since their relationship isn’t real, but he tells her that when they both agreed to do this, they agreed to to it all the way, even to hell.

Moreover, it isn’t sinful for Tomoe, since she’s actually in love with Sakuta. She plays dumb, but once they’re alone on the observation deck, he finally gets her to admit that she’s aware of what she’s doing, and why. Sakuta tells her flat out that whether she repeats time a hundred or a hundred million times, his feelings for Mai won’t change.

Tomoe counters that her feelings have changed. At first, she only meant for the fake relationship to help her save face. But every time she loops, her feelings for Sakuta only keep building up. A stirring monologue ensues, with Touyama Nao effortlessly bringing the feels. Finally, Tomoe does what needs to be done to move on: to stop lying to herself confess her love, clearly and loudly.

The next time Sakuta wakes up, it’s not July 18, or July 19; it’s June 27 (again). Tomoe sent them all the way back to the day she was asked out by the guy her friend likes. This time, she turns him down properly, resolved to face the social consequences…which don’t turn out to be that bad; her friends don’t end up ostracize her. Better still, she can still be good friends with Sakuta, which was always part of her plan.

As for Sakuta, he gets to redo asking Mai out, and she responds just as he’d hoped, as she steals a kiss to express how she feels about him. The next three weeks proceed as they did the last time, with the two differences being Sakuta knows what’s going to happen (even the exam questions) and he and Tomoe aren’t fake dating. They don’t have to.

It was, after all, nought but a simulation of the future, and yet still just as real as the future to come. In her traditional casual science-y explanation, Futaba surmises that Sakuta was drawn into the looping with Tomoe due to “quantum entanglement”, which happens when two particles collide. In this case, Tomoe and Sakuta kicking each other’s butts. Will this show’s delicious cleverness never cease? I for one hope not.

It certainly wastes no time getting the next arc started, as the episode closes with Sakuta meeting a middle school girl who just happens to share the name of his first crush: Makinohara Shouko.

Koyomimonogatari – 01

Koyomi Stone is the first in a 12-episode miniseries of short stories involving Araragi Koyomi and all the other various characters in his orbit. First up is Hanekawa Tsubasa, whose dealings with Koyomi pre-date his girlfriend Senjougahara’s. Tsubasa presents him with a mystery of a stone in a shrine and asks him to report it to Oshino to see if it’s an oddity.

Oshino’s reply is for Koyomi and Tsubasa to study the high school’s curriculum. Tsubasa picks up on the clue and deduces the stone was once on its own until someone was about to toss their failed woodworking project into the nearby garbage, but placed the stone in it instead.

As a result, both objects changed: the stone became something that resembled an object of worship, and the failed house became a successful shrine. With the case closed, Koyomi remembers it was he who built the crappy house and put the stone in it; he later tosses the house and discovers the stone is really just a hunk of concrete.

The usual Monogatari style is all there to be seen and heard, adding weight to an otherwise slight and superfluous mystery, while the shorter runtime makes for easy watching.

Chio-chan no Tsuugakuro – 09 – A Need for You Somewhere

Chio was up all night gaming and not studying for the exams, so she resorts to praying at a shrine for divine assistance. Instead, they meet the creepy high school girl-obsessed “Master” whom their Kabbadi nemesis “trained” with in the park. While an unapologetic creeper, you have to respect the man’s commitment to his craft. He remembers his time as a high-rolling salaryman that women were only hired for their looks, not their academic bonafides.

Thus he and Manana try to give Chio a makeover, first with a blonde wig that ends up way too Showa Era, then a more classic old-fashioned wig that, while suiting her “plain face”, looks very odd when combined with her school uniform. Manana and Master’s running commentary is a constant source of laughs, as are Chio’s funny little background sounds.

Manana and Master perhaps praise Chio’s ‘do too much, for she starts to believe she’s “made it”, attractiveness-wise now, and decides to show them her sexy side by, ahem, pole dancing on the shrine grounds. Their reaction says it all. And the fact Chio picked up how to pole dance from a video game (and can pull it off due to her surprising athleticism) made it all the more wonderfully weird.

Speaking of weird, Chio appreciates things few other girls her age appreciate, like a pipe hanging over a waterway that’s made as hard to cross as possible…but for a valve that serves as a “safe zone.” Chio compares it to a strong, strict man who nevertheless has a kind side.

Speaking of such men, Chio and Manana encounter Andou numerous times during their walk to school, and it occurs to Manana that he seems to be trying extremely hard to impress Chio, and it’s working. She suspects (correctly) that he likes Chio and this is his way of courting her: using special moves to get papers in slots, smoking a cigar…you name it.

Then Manana imagines a future in which she’s still too poor to buy a small car, but Chio is living it up in her Porsche 718 Boxster with a very successful Andou by her side (and hilariously, sporting the same Showa hair/overdone makeup from the makeover segment)—with a haughty accent to boot.

Manana cannot allow such a future to occur, but Chio figures out for herself that Andou might like her (revealing to Manana that they have each other’s contact info). But Chio is immediately “proven wrong” when she and Manana spot Andou pressing another guy against a wall with his foot high up in the air.

Andou, wrongly assuming Chio was a hardcore fujoshi, decided to lift a special pickup move from a BL video…but Chio is still just occasionally glancing at the one mag she bought at the konbini. Instead, she assumes Andou is into guys and she and Manana give the men some privacy.

Later, Chio curses herself for ever believing anyone would fall for her, but Manana quietly insists she’s wrong. And she is! Who wouldn’t fall for Chio?!