Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – 18 – Speaking the True Name

At his fancy new subdimensional HQ, Kurotsuchi calls Head Captain Kyouraku and tells him to do his job. Only around 30% of Soul Society’s military force remains, so Kyouraku orders all soul reapers to regroup at the nearest barracks that’s still standing, regardless of their squad and rank.

Captain Muguruma wastes no time whipping out his bankai, which creates armor around his arms and fists, making him seem like a good match for the pugilistic luchador. But while Muguruma pounds him into submission, he fails to account for James, his opponent’s #1 Fan.

Jame’s cheer powers up the wrestler, who turns the tables and beats Muguruma to a pulp before revealing his name and rank: “S”, “The Superstar,” Mask de Masculine. Which is wonderfully ridiculous in the true spirit of Bleach baddies.

Rose thought he wouldn’t be needed, but once he learns he is, he also unleashes his rather unique bankai, which takes the form of a
“musical troupe of death” and makes Mask believe he’s wielding both fire and water at the same time.

Unfortunately, Rose is a little too eager to explain his bankai, which uses sound to create deceptions. Mask counters his third and final “movement” by piercing his own eardrums, then sending a massive star-shaped beam right through Rose’s chest.

This somehow doesn’t kill Rose, but Mask moves in for a finisher when his star beam is blocked…by Abarai Renji’s Zabimaru. He’s back, along with Kuchiki Rukia, and both are sporting what I’ll call “Soul Society skiwear.”

Renji tells Rukia to fall back and get the two captains treated, and while it’s clear she doesn’t really want to leave Renji’s side, she obeys, and gets them to Kotetsu Isane, now the acting-captain of the 4th Squad by dint of Unohana’s death. Mask calls Renji a dirty, cowardly villain, a mantle he has no problem picking up and running with…starting with beheading that twerp James.

When Renji’s attack tears Mask’s mask, a multitude of James emerge from Jame’s corpse, and Mask breaks out his Vollstandig, growing wings and bashing Renji around like a pinball in midair. But despite the cataclysmic star-shaped explosion Mask brings down on him, it doesn’t make a scratch.

That’s because while he was hanging with Hyousube Ichibei, who came up with the whole idea of zanpakutos, shikais, and bankais, Renji learned that all this time he’d been getting his bankai’s name wrong. It isn’t Hihio Zabimaru…it’s So-Oh Zabimaru.

Mask has no hope against the full force of Zabimaru, and Renji turns him into literal dust. That’s now two Stern Ritters down in as many episodes, and with Ichigo still nowhere near the battlefield. Just twenty-four to go. Yes, Yhwach appears to “absorb” Mask, or at least his reishi, but doing so also causes Yhwach to “fall asleep”.

A confused Ishida watches this unfold, as Yhwach descends back into the shadows, and Haschwalth emerges in his place. Haschwalth isn’t sure even Ishida’s grandfather knows quite what Yhwach is, but as Ishida is Yhwach’s handpicked successor, Haschwalth is open to telling him.

Insomniacs After School – 01 (First Impressions) – Our Time

Nakami Ganta can’t sleep. We’ve all been there, but this guy is an Edward Norton in Fight Club insomniac. There is no relief in the darkness, and there is no manual boring enough to help him doze off. He simply lies there in his bed, waiting for the sun to rise and the next day of despair to begin. At school, he gets flak from classmates for being a lazy grouch.

But while off on an errand to procure more boxes for what looks like his class’ cultural festival exhibition, he decides to explore the school’s observatory, once headquarters for the astronomy club but now used as a warehouse. But once he’s there, Ganta finds it the perfect place to nap and refresh. Only problem is, someone beat him to the punch: Magari Isaki.

At first, the two are repelled from one another due to a lack of familiarity. But once they realize that they’re each dealing with someone with the exact same problem as they have and searching for a good place to rest, they lower their armor, and end up falling asleep while huddled close together like an old married couple.

There’s a magic to watching two kindred spirits finally find each other after so much aimless wandering and suffering. When Ganta’s trustworthy friend lets them out (when Ganta closed the door he locked himself and Isaki in) Isaki promptly gives Ganta the code to the lock on the door. After they clean up the place a bit, she opens the observatory’s roof and declares the establishment of the Nightly Fun Society, with a membership of two.

One night, Ganta and Isaki sneak out for their first official society meet-up, and they have the entire sleepy town to themselves as the explore together. While this isn’t presented as stylishly or stylistically as Call of the Night, and neither of them are vampires, I still got that nice goosebump-like feeling you get in the dark that makes it more fun and exciting.

When Ganta spots a cop on patrol, he and Isaki hide inside an enclosure, and Isaki gets so close to Ganta she can hear his heartbeat. It’s soothing enough that for a moment she drifts right off, as if Ganta is the key to solving her insomnia and vice-versa. When she comes back to, the coast is clear, Ganta mentions how his heart is racing, and Isaki knows, because not only did she hear it, but hers is racing too.

In case they encountered a policeman, Ganta brought a camera so he could say they’re with the photography club. Even if he says it’s an excuse, the beautiful nighttime sky beckons, and he snaps some shots of the moonlit clouds, as well as Isaki goofing off, showing that even though she was frail and hospitalized as a kid, she’s all better now…aside from the whole not sleeping thing!

The two watch the sun rise at the waterside, then Ganta walks Isaki home and they exchange contact info. As they do, Ganta wonders what kind of relationship they’ve started. Just days ago, they ‘d never even spoken to each other, and Isaki assumed he was a scary jerk. But now they’re exploring the town at night, have each other’s numbers, and have started a club of just the two of them.

I’m going to not go out on a limb and call this the sweetest premiere of the Spring. Ganta and Isaki aren’t just adorable, they feel like real people with a real, relatable, and basic problem: sleeping. By meeting, they have stumbled onto a way to not only possibly improve their sleep patterns, but make the time they are awake much more enjoyable.

I couldn’t help but wear a big goofy smile throughout the episode, and by no would I dismiss anyone for whom this isn’t their cup of tea a cynical grouch who needs more sleep ;) This just feels to me like Laid-Back Camp: warm, fuzzy, charming and inviting. So I’ll be sticking around.

Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song – 10 – Looking for a Hint

When Diva’s code degraded into oblivion and Vivy re-awakened and took her place on the stage, Diva’s final song was already over. Ever since then, Vivy has been unable to sing, still unable to find the answer of what it means to “sing from the heart”.

So she retired to much fanfare and took up residence as an exhibit at the AI Museum. Decades passed, and humans and their children gradually forgot about her and her contributions. But not all: Osamu, a young lad on a field trip, knows full well who Diva was, and is.

Osamu wants to hear Diva sing live, but she tells him that’s not possible. When Matsumoto shows up after a good number of years, Vivy is eager for their next mission together, as it’s not “all she has.” But Matsumoto tells her the Singularity Project is over; the double suicide of Ophelia and Antonio didn’t lead to any copycat incidents; a positive revision to the timeline.

Yet despite the fact they’ve seemingly achieved victory it preventing the AI uprising, something Kakitani said still haunts Matsumoto: “through a revelation from the heavens.” That led him to meet Vivy now, sixty-five years from when they first met. He proposes a “race”: whoever finds their answer first wins.

Vivy goes into the archive and dredges up her first memory, when her creator (a female researcher) gave her her mission to sing from the heart, hoping it would “offer a hint” as to what a heart is, at least as it applies to humans.

Osamu visits Diva again, saying it’s “messed up” his classmates don’t know her. Inspired by Matsumoto, she proposes a race, with him bringing friends to meet her while she searches for the answer her creator knew full well she might struggle with her entire life.

As one year, then five, then ten, then twenty pass by, Vivy writes a song in the Archive, which if completed would be the first instance of a song written by an AI of their own pure free will (all previous songs were written by humans). Her progress is glacial; unable to come up with more than a couple of phrases and constantly erasing notes she’s put down.

Meanwhile, Osamu has quite a bit more progress in those years, making friends, making a career for himself in research, and eventually meeting and marrying his wife Nana. While Osamu and Nana are able to conceive, she dies of an illness shortly after giving birth, leaving Osamu both a father and a widower.

He visits Diva with his daughter Luna in his arms, and asks if she would like to hold her. Diva asks why Nana was able to smile despite knowing she wouldn’t live to see her daughter grow up. Osamu tells her that all humans die, but they always remain inside someone or many people without fail. Such is the case for him with Nana and, as Vivy realizes, it’s true of her and Diva as well. As little Luna grasps her hand, Vivy is hit by a sudden spark of inspiration.

She dives into the construct and belts out a completed song, written about her and Matsumoto’s journey in the Singularity Project, and of all the people she’s met. When an impressed Matsumoto shows up and asks who she wrote it for, Vivy says it’s for Diva, who remains inside her even though she’s gone.

After twenty years, she was finally able to finish her task…yet she still cannot even contemplate singing it, so her struggle continues. Before that, though, Vivy goes into hibernation mode, resting her circuits after accomplishing her singular feat.

Her friend Osamu, who along with his wife and daughter inspired Vivy to do what no other AI has, can see that his friend Diva is in deep sleep crunching music data. He leaves her to her creative slumber, assured that when she wakes up he’ll finally be able to hear her voice. Then someone off-camera calls Osamu by his last name…Matsumoto.

Unfortunately, the joy that comes with the revelation Vivy’s cubic partner was a friend and admirer from her future all along is soon overshadowed when Vivy wakes up to find the museum in burning ruins. She runs outside, where the AI apocalypse is in full swing, with one key, horrifying, heartbreaking new wrinkle: as they murder every human in sight, all of the AIs are singing in sinister, dissonant unison. They’re singing Vivy’s song.

Re: Zero – 39 – Two Clowns at the Mercy of Fate

As with Neverland, Re:Zero’s second season picks up right where it left off when we last tuned in: with Otto administering some tough love on Subaru, who ultimately aceepts the merchant’s offer of help. His confidence and that wry glint in his eye restored, Subaru marches into Roswaal’s room and makes a bet: he’ll save everyone in the sanctuary and mansion without sacrificing anyone, all without resorting to Return by Death.

Roswaal notably doesn’t smile throughout this entire exchange until Subaru makes his resolve plain (and acknowledges the greed inherent in his plan), and Roswaal accepts the bet. Otto wonders if it’s simply because Rosy has never lost a bet. But like, er, an angry mob storming the U.S. Capitol to hijack democracy, there’s a first time for everything, and if all goes according to plan, Roswaal may find himself on the losing end of a bet for the first time.

Subaru isn’t going to rely only on himself to save everyone, but instead rely on and put his trust in his friends and allies. Otto got things started, but he alone won’t be enough. Ram seems intent on remaining on Roswaal’s side, though out of deference to their unspoken friendship she does give Subaru a key clue: that Emilia hasn’t figured out why she’s struggling in the trial, and won’t be able to pass until she does.

Subaru also visits Ryuzu for help, and learns that the Ryuzu he’s speaking to is one of three “supervisors” of the crystal, among the first four copies. Shima was once the fourth, but was relieved of her duties for her role in rescuing Garfiel from the graveyard when he attempted the trials. Thus Subie learns that a big part of why Gar is against the barrier falling is due to the fact his mother abandoned him and Frederica and “chose the outside.”

Emilia is exhausted when Subie visits her and asks her directly to tell him about the trial so far. He doesn’t promise she’ll feel better for telling him, but wants to share the burden of worry with her. She mentions how she was once frozen in ice (as we saw in the Frozen Bonds OVA), suddenly remembers her mother, then recalls a deal she made with Roswaal: if she won the Royal Selection, he would thaw the forest where her folks remained frozen.

Emilia feels she should be ashamed to seek the throne for such “personal reasons”, but our boy Subie can relate, to say the least, and assures her that wanting to help people is noble no matter how small the number. With Subie offering his unconditional trust and support, and helping her take the first step to resolving her trial stalemate, Emilia is able to finally fall sleep.

Unfortunately Emilia doesn’t awaken as peacefully as she falls asleep, as she sees a fuzzy memory of when she was a small child being separated from her mother before waking up in tears. Subaru took the step of pretending to try to harm Emilia so Puck would finally emerge in corporeal form, and he’s there when Emilia awakens.

Her elation is short-lived, as Puck is tiny—able to fit in the palm of her hand—and also has some sad news: he’s decided to break their contract, first forged when she was in dire need of protection from the arbiter Melakeura back in Frozen Bonds.

There are two primary reasons for this: first, the contract is blocking memories essential for Emilia to continue with the trial (and, incidently, life). Second, Puck is confident he can entrust his daughter to the one whose love for her is second only to his own: Natsuki Subaru.

That night, Emilia takes Subaru’s hand and asks him to stay with her throughout the night. With the seal on her memories broken, it will be a long and painful one. In one new memory, Emilia is being embraced by someone she calls Mother Fortuna, telling her that “all the people who told you ‘that kind lie’ wanted to protect her.”

Emilia wakes up, calls Fortuna a liar, calls Puck a liar, and when she sees Subaru isn’t there, calls him a liar. But I imagine Subaru had to leave her bedside to begin implementing all the various conspiracies he’s arranged with Otto. That morning, Emilia is missing, and Ram and Garfiel lead the search, but Subie already knows where she is: in the Graveyard. He sits beside her with an open ear and open heart, ready to help her get through this.

Re:Zero Season 2 Part 2 isn’t messing around. The witch’s tea party is over, as is Subaru’s crisis of confidence and competence, and oh yeah, Puck’s gone, just like that! It’s far more development than I expected, and with Emilia’s memory block finally lifted, her trial can proceed with the aim of raising the barrier on the Sanctuary. Takahashi Rie does some of her most beautiful and vulnerable voice work, and I expect we’ll get more of it.

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle – 12 (Fin) – Back to the Way Things Were

The Sleepy Princess show, a surprise smash comedy hit of the Fall, closes out just how the title above says: with things back to where they were at the beginning. But at the episode’s start, when the demons find a letter to santa in Sya’s stocking asking to “go home”, they wonder if the princess has finally become homesick.

…She’s not, of course; she just wants to stop by Goodreste Palace to grab her special Christmas woolen undies. Rather than try to stop her (which would probably result in her going it alone), Twilight and the Cleric decide to transport straight into her palace bedroom. Predictably, Sya loses focus and has a quick nap in her lavish king-size bed.

When her mother the queen hears all the noise in her room she goes in to investigate, and lifts the covers to find…Cubey?! Yes, Cleric stowed Cubey away in case a body double was needed, and what do you know, the queen is convinced it’s her daughter! I was waiting for her to comment on how she changed her style while away.

The queen takes Cubey away, but Sya and the demons know they can’t just leave her, so the princess dresses up in one of her coolest dresses and strides down the halls without a care in the world. The three end up hiding in a giant suit of armor to avoid Paladins, but one of them, Evening Star, regales the comrade he thinks he’s talking to with super-embarrassing stories of Sya when she was little. Naturally, Twilight and Cleric can barely contain their delight.

Evening Star chases them until dawn, when he falls asleep instantly (he’s apparently a night owl). The gang regroups in Sya’s room, where she decides she’ll take responsibility as a princess and ensure things go back to the way they were.

Just as “Princess” Cubey is about to speak to the entire Kingdom of Goodreste (with TV feeds reaching to the Demon Castle), Sya cuts in with her own speech thanking her subjects for their love, which has helped her remember she is a princess, not a hostage.

Sya also speaks to how her experiences with the demons have not only helped her learn a lot about herself, but about the ways humans and demons can have better relations down the road. Then she somewhat undermines those words by accosting Cubey while wearing a hastily-scrawled Twilight mask and his cape, declaring he’s taking Sya back to his castle after all.

In short, Sya was only back for a quick Christmas drop-in and hello. In order for things to “go back to the way they were”, she needed to ensure she went back to her second home with Twilight, Cleric, and Cubey. Her mother, who recognized her voice during the speech, seems to understand her daughter’s intentions, and wishes her well on the adventures to follow. What a cool mom!

Sya & Co. return to the Demon Castle where she’s warmly welcomed, and the castle proceeds to throw one hell of a Christmas party. Twilight and Cleric than curse themselves for forgetting the main reason for going to Goodreste with Sya—to retrieve her woolen undies—but Sya seems unconcerned.

For one thing, she may have grabbed them after all before leaving, and is wearing them as they speak (though she’s thankfully grown beyond the skirt-lifting necessary to prove it). Whether she’s got them or not, she seems quite happy distributing other sets to her Teddy Demon friends as thanks for their loyal service. With that, she lets out a big ol’ yawn and drifts off to sleep with her signature “Syaaaaaa”, her final quest complete.

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle – 11 – Princess Popular

After waiting in line with the autograph-seeking Teddy Demons, Harpy invites Sya to a pajama party, somewhat disingenuously promising it will result in more cheerful sleep. Sya can’t pass that up, but she needs more information on what a pajama party is…so she hops into the Demon King’s bed to “practice” such a party.

Jumping in bed to practice is an extremely misinterpret-able scenario for, say, Cleric, who also overhears Sya talking about demons and humans falling in love. As a result, his devotion to protecting Sya’s chastity overrides his loyalty to his lord, and he attacks Twilight with lightning. The battle eventually gets too loud for Sya to sleep, but upon returning to her room she gets the cheerful sleep she sought…precluding the need to attend the real party.

Poor Harpy…she just wants to be friends with the princess! The succubus Cubey, on the other hand, has an ulterior motive: she wants to become more popular (popularity literally being the life blood of Succubi). When she learns she and Sya closely resemble one another, she seeks Sya’s tutelage on how to be more popular.

Unfortunately for Cubey and like most things regarding Sya, she isn’t popular on purpose, it just happens. Also, Sya misunderstands Cubey’s intentions from the start, believing her to be a potential body double in need of elite training. This results in Sya tying Cubey up and dragging her around the castle causing havoc, from murdering ghost shrouds to plucking Quillodillo quills to…well, actually, brushing Teddy Demons is delightful!

By the time Sya has Cubey on a cliff overlooking the lava lake impressing upon her the importance of staring death in the eye, Cubey’s struggling and yelling causes the cliff to collapse, and Sya falls into the lava and dies…again. Cubey fails to become more popular or learn anything useful from Sya, but Sya’s quest to get better “rest” succeeds.

Finally, Twilight and the Big 10 are having another important meeting when Sya again busts in like she owns the place, parks herself at the table, and tents her fingers like a petite, adorable Gendou Ikari. Whatever they’re discussing in this meeting is irrelevant: she has a task for them: to determine why the quality of her sleep has been lacking of late.

Twilight brings in Hypnos, noted sleep expert, to determine the cause. He arranges so the group can watch Sya’s dreams in real time, and the culprit to her crap sleep is revealed: “D-Whatsit”, AKA Dawner, AKA Akatsuki, the hero. Out of a desire to hang out, he is relentlessly pursuing Sya in her dreams.

While Cleric has known for a while now that Sya’s fiancée D-Whatsit and Dawner are the same person, both Sya and the rest of the Demons only come to this realization while her dreams unfold. Regardless of who he is, Sya doesn’t want anything to do with him, and shifts between attacking him and running from him. But like a chipper T-1000, he Just. Keeps. Coming.

Eventually Hypnos determines that Dawner is in Sya’s dream thanks to a letter bearing Sya’s signature…which Twilight learns he himself let fall out of his cape and into Dawner’s belt when he was redirecting the Hero’s party away from the still-under construction area of the Demon Castle grounds.

Once Twilight retrieves that slip of paper (not depicted on camera), Sya’s sleeping demeanor instantly improves dramatically to her usual tranquil “Syaaaaaa”-ing. And so, due to her acute aversion to the Hero, Sya further delayed her own rescue. But as we’ve seen, she’s not in any particular hurry to ever be rescued. She’s got the place on lock!

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle – 10 – Demons in Humanland

Princess Sya has her most far-flung adventure yet, though it begins with a false start as she attempts to travel to the Human Realm on her own to purchase a state-of-the-art massage pillow. She puts her hear up and dons a gym uniform to enter ALL OUT MODE, then demonstrates her speed and agility as she outruns the Demons and eludes their attempts to stop her. Twilight, Siberian and Cleric are transfixed by her surprising athleticism, noting she’s like a football player out there.

When she starts getting perilously close to the poison swamp on the extreme edge of Demon Castle grounds, Twilight sets a trap with a bed in a cage. Nobody thinks it has a chance of working…until it works perfectly! They return Sya (cage and all) to the castle, where she tells them she won’t try to go alone if they accompany her, remarking that she knows they’re kind deep down.

The flattery works, and the next day Twilight, Siberian and Cleric accompany Syalis to the Human city of Endopolis. Sya is resplendent in her tidy traveler’s garb, but the demons’ disguises are so abysmal she resorts to pinning large notes on their backs reading “Practicing for Halloween.” Once in town, she spots a new Deluxe version of the pillow she covets on sale. All they have to do is wait in line…for three hours. Sya falls asleep on Siberian’s shoulders, but eventually the pillow is purchased.

By then it’s nighttime, and the anti-demon festival fireworks begin. When getting in the wrong line earlier, Twilight secured a VIP lottery ticket, and ends up winning a primo private viewing spot complete with snacks and cocktails (I’m really not sure about banana milk tea flavored popcorn though!) Just when the Demons start to think Sya is simply stalling because she doesn’t want to leave her own realm, she draws them a “grinning demon” symbol and suggests they head home—home, of course being the Demon Castle.

Once there, what becomes of the expensive massage pillow they went all that way and went through all that guff to get her? She pawns it off on the Teddy Demons. Hey, at least someone will enjoy it! Every episode of Sleepy Princess is an absolute hoot, but this was even more fun and hilarious than usual, all while deepening the bond of friendship between a human hostage and her gold-hearted captors—which is starting to bode well for future peace between their realms.

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle – 09 – My Uninhibited Hostage Life!

When Syalis smashes the equivalent of a phone when the “Human Shopping Channel” won’t ship a waterbed to the Demon Castle, she starts a quest to build her own. At the same time, Twilight and the Big Ten have a quest of their own: Ignore the princess so she’ll start feeling and acting like a hostage.

Naturally, this backfires. Not only does Syalis successfully collect all of the materials and tools she needs, but those items are sourced directly from the Big Ten. While they are all silent towards her, when she ties leashes to them and drags them around, they dare not resist lest they accidentally harm her.

This results in the unprecedented scene of her pulling the King, Cleric, and Siberian like she’s walking her pets. When Alraune tries to restore order, Syalis yawns and they misinterpret her tears to mean their ignoring her has harmed her emotionally, so they give up and help her build her waterbed.

The next Big Ten Demon Quest comes from a suggestion from Hades to put the princess to work. Syalis herself takes on the quest to complete all the work she is given in a single day, as she was raised to understand that she can’t sleep until her work is done!

Oddly enough, her work takes the form of summer vacation homework, with math problems, a diary in which she writes entries for every minute (instead of day), and arts and crafts. She performs all of this work in her “work clothes”, a fetching shoulderless black dress.

Once she’s done an entire month’s work in a day, the Top Ten concludes that continuing to give her that amount of work is unrealistic, and could in fact cause more harm than good. Meanwhile, Syalis plops on her bed without changing and falls asleep using her usual pink robes as a blanket, her quest complete.

0-for-2 so far, the Demons make it a trifecta with a third quest: Teach the princess how to be a proper hostage by showing her other hostages in the form of recently-captured human bandits. Syalis takes one look at the conditions of these prisoners and assumes the demons are planning to eat them.

When she’s told to react to the demons as the other hostages do—with intense fear and loathing—she does just that, with Minase Inori completely changing the usual way Syalis speaks to sound more like the classic damsel-in-distress. The demons hate this, and all of the verbal barbs she tosses their way hit their marks and leave them a defeated pile in the dungeon.

The other humans, having witnessed what the princess did to the demons, are now more afraid of her than the demons. Syalis takes the demons’ reactions to mean she should go back to acting the way she has all along, with no regard whatsoever to her hostage status. That said, she still puts on the hostage act…but only when it’s convenient to her.

Finally, while lying in bed before falling asleep, she wonders to a teddy demon that if everyone in the castle has been so kind to her thus far, why can’t humans and demons get along? Could her stay there be the impetus for her taking steps towards a peace treaty once released? Will her first order to the Hero be to stand down?

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle – 08 – The Nightmare Continues!

Hero Akatsuki’s comrade Kisho is able to open a mini-wormhole using the gem in the princess’ tiara, but it’s only big enough for Akatsuki to pass his hand through and tap Syalis’ head. This apparently causes her to have “nightmares”, so she crashes a Big Ten meeting to tell everyone about it so she’ll feel better. At no point is anyone able to stop her from doing this, once again demonstrating the true Master of the Demon Castle.

I put “nightmare” in quotes, because what she really has is a dream about Akatsuki when they were kids. Of course, he’s so forgettable she refers to him as “A-whatsisname”. Though he’s just presenting her with a bouquet, when he trips on a rock it ends up in her face, complete with thorns and a bee. She also details a “race” they had that ended in his apparent death, only for her to forget him when he returned alive.

The kicker is that she describes this forgettable person as her fiancee, which leads the Demon Cleric (and no one else) to assume she’s talking about Akatsuki. Due to talking about her “nightmare” Syalis is able to go back to sleep, while the Fire Venom Dragon must head into battle with the heroes without a sendoff party, the poor guy!

In the next segment, Syalis writes a death letter to her mother, even though she’s merely suffering from a bad cavity. We quickly learn that she’s overdramatic when it comes to any malady that befalls her, as well as perhaps the worst patient a doctor (or in this case dentist) could have.

Her big hang-up is an absolute refusal to show anyone (aside from her loyal Teddy Demons)  the inside of her mouth, for a reason she keeps secret until the very end: her tongue is apparently a little shorter than average. Due to her histrionics the entire Demon Castle gathers in the operating theater, and we get a cameo from Cubey, another member of the female demons.

In the final segment (there are notably no sleeping quests this week, even though she’s asleep at the end of each segment), Fire Venom Dragon returns to the castle, utterly defeated after a three-day, three-night battle against Akatsuki. When he tells them his bag of items meant to help him in his battle had been replaced by…other things, they all assume it’s more Princess mischief.

However, as he further details the items he found in the bag, one by one his allies remember having placed those items there for various reasons and forgot to replace them with the proper weapons. Of course, each person, including Twilight, is so embarrassed, they take the easy out and falsely accuse the Princess of doing what they did.

This whips the dragon into a rage, but they all hold him back, knowing full well Syalis doesn’t deserve to be chewed out, at least this time. As for Syalis, she’s reading a difficult grimoire, eating avocado, and drinking a potion like a sports drink. Looks like a pretty good night!

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle – 07 – Starting Over from Zzzzero

While there was no danger of Syalis’ antics growing stale at the Demon Castle, there’s nothing like a change of venue to freshen things up. That change occurs when Twilight’s rival Hades kidnaps Syalis in her sleep and deposits her in the far more rundown (but quieter!) Former Demon Castle.

The overarching joke this week is that Hades acts precisely like Twilight and his underlings when they first captured Syalis. Now they know better and harbor a healthy fear and respect for the pint-sized princess, while almost pitying Hades for not knowing what’s coming down the pike.

Predictably, Syalis doesn’t panic or cower before Hades or his adorable henchmen triplets Ker, Ber, and Os. Her first instinct is to simply sleep, in lieu of anything better to do. Then she puts her head on the appallingly cheap pillow and gets a nasty case of deja vu from her first night in Twilight’s castle.

Armed with a new quest to improve her pillow as the first step in a process, Syalis immediately returns to her usual relentlessly resourceful and determined self. When Ker, Ber, and Os try to intimidate them, she casually tosses an explosive pompom at the cell gate and sends them fleeing in terror.

Syalis’ search for fluffy bedding materials takes her into direct contact with Hades, but since he’s busy on the videophone gloating to Twilight (and laughing an exaggerated laugh like Rintarou Okabe) he doesn’t notice her literally ripping his clothes off for repurposing.

She gets an assist from her “friends” at the Demon Castle when they make such a ruckus on the phone, Hades is distracted. They even get him to look and levitate upwards so she can snag his fur boa, and when she does they cheer like Houston celebrating a successful rocket launch!

The pillow, however, is merely the first step. Syalis’ second quest involves improvement of her bedding in general. She soon finds that this Former Demon Castle has a lot more traps, but thankfully none of the needles, flying axes or fireballs end up killing her, and she meets a kindred spirit in Hypnos, the “personification of drowsiness”.

Syalis is immediately impressed by Hypnos’ dedication to sleep and begins calling him “Master” and asking him to teach her. When he shows her that the undersides of the tiles of an electrified walkway are fluffy fur, she jumps several steps ahead, killing the power source and gathering all of the furry tiles.

This sets off a number of traps, but Syalis must have been trained in martial arts and self-defense, because she’s able to dodge all of them, impressing Hypnos enormously. Her final bed contraption consists of a large mobile fur mattress that moves along a track, avoiding fireballs as she sleeps.

But as she’s starting a third quest for another comfortable night’s sleep, Twilight and some members of his Big Ten Council prepare a rescue mission to retrieve their captive. Lower-ranking people in the castle note how quiet and boring it is without the princess. They all want her back!

Hades remains in blissful ignorance, believing it laughable that the princess could leave her cell, let alone do all of the stuff she’s done. Yet she’s in his personal fur stash gathering materials, and just as he’s discussing all of the status-boosting weapons Ker/Ber/Os can use to repel Twilight and his compatriots, Syalis is destroying those very weapons in order to make a comfy neck pillow.

When Twilight & Co. finally confront Hades, the two Demon Lords seem poised for an epic one-on-one battle, which is interrupted by the sight of Syalis flying off in a flying contraption also meant for Ker/Ber/Os. Twilight & Co. peace out, taking a rain check on that duel, and chase after Syalis, who reunites with a Demon Teddy and sleeps soundly on the bag of stolen furs as the contraption flies her back to the Demon Castle—a place she’s come to think of as home.

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle – 06 – OK Bloomers

Hero Dawner and his party take three trap-ridden paths that end up leading them all the way back to Goodreste, which undermines the whole point of capturing Princess Syalis. The Demon King wants to fight the Hero, be he also wants the Hero to have a sporting chance.

As the Big Ten Demons discuss all the means by which they’ll lure the Hero to them and level him up (if he ever makes it there), Sya ends up using those to wash a blue stain out of her comforter. She sullies the Fountain of Purity, uses a mini tornado bomb to agitate the washwater, uses the Magnespear as a drying rack, and uses Professor Gearbolt’s new mecha as a spin dryer.

When the seasons start to change and a chilly wind enters her chamber, Syalis realizes she left her prized woolen underwear at home, and so must make new ones. Again, given adequate motivation, she’ll stop at nothing and spare no demon’s welfare to achieve her quests goals.

That said, she remembers her mother telling her as a kid not to lift up her skirt to reveal her undies, nor mention them to anyone, in order to preserve her dignity and that of the crown. As a result, she uses various non-verbal forms of code to try to express to the demons what she’s making. They misinterpret her code and go on high alert, believing she’s creating some kind of weapon to destroy the castle. But nope…she just wants a warm stomach at night!

All this chaos, and Hero’s inability to arrive and get this confrontation over with, has the Demon King in a constant state of anxiety and insomnia, collapsing in front of Syalis’ cell door. While she momentarily considers “finishing him off” with her giant scissors, she instead tries several methods to put him to sleep, none of which remotely work.

That is, until he asks her what she does to fall asleep, and again she remembers what her mom did for her. She pats the Demon King gently on the head until he nods off, then falls asleep beside him until her plush bears carry her off to her bead.

And so without any meaningful action from the Hero, Syalis has successfully neutralized the Demon King and his court. There’s really no coming back from his present drop in credibility as a villain. For cryin’ out loud, he was head-patted to sleep by his supposed hostage!

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle – 05 – The Comfort(er) of a Friend

This week made it suddenly occur to me that there are no women among the Demon Castle court and staff (at least not in humanoid form), but that changes when the “female unit” of the Demon King’s army returns to the castle for the first time since the capture of the princess.

The first girl we meet is Harpy, who is a harpy, but an extremely friendly one. Specifically, she wants to make her first human friend and engage in girl talk during a pajama party. She quickly learns that Syalis is primarily concerned with none of those things, and finds her mostly annoying and—worse—detrimental to her sleep!

Indeed, Syalis rejects all of Harpy’s attempts to befriend her until the harpy spreads her wings and the princess gets a good long look and feel at those silky feathers. Without the slightest regard for Harpy’s welfare, she deems the wings too “impractical” to remove (i.e. tear off) and simply uses the soft wings as her new comforter. Harpy is forced to sleep in an awkward position beside her.

The dimensional limits of Syalis’ modest bed soon rear their head when Syalis’ sleep posture results in them sliding off the bed, so the princess begins a quest for a bigger bed. Despite her shabby treatment thus far Harpy is so intent on being friends with the princess she lets slip a castle secret: those gigantic horns that top the tallest tower are really as light and fluffy as a cloud!

With no regard for Harpy’s quads, Syalis attaches a cloth harness to her legs and has her fly her up to the horns. At first it seems Syalis is content to nap on them, but before Harpy knows it she’s carving her new bigger bed directly out of the horns, like memory foam! Due to a big chunk being taken out, one of the two horns flops over impotently—it’s truly a matter of the princess “making her mark” on the castle!

Harpy’s quads are tortured further by the additional mass of the bed, but the result is a much more comfortable sleeping situation for both of them. I’ve heard of royalty using people as welcome mats, but not a combination flying apparatus and comforter! We can only quietly lament poor Harpy’s entirely unbalanced “friendship” with the princess.

The return of the women means the return of the only female member of the Big 10 Council: the beautiful Neo Alraune. When Red Siberian shouts at Syalis to get out when she constantly interrupts their meeting with her vuvuzela (where the heck’d she get that?!), Alraune feels bad for the captive princess, who after all must be terribly lonely.

The Demon King, Siberian, and other council members scoff heartily, then switch on the reconnaissance drone presently following Syalis, to demonstrate what a goddamn terror she’s been. Sure enough, in her quest to build a log bed she is furiously hacking away at Alraune’s big brother (who happens to be a greaser tree—a term I never thought I’d type!).

In the midst of witnessing the systematic destruction and hollowing-out of her kin, Alraune seems ever torn between continuing to sympathize with the princess and acknowledging that her fellow council members might have a point. Even when she makes the excuse that her brother feels no pain, and that the princess is being eco-friendly by using all of the wood, right on cue Syalis discards most of the wood she cut as too rough.

The ordeal compels Alraune to visit Syalis in her cell, to ask if she really is human. After all, who among the human race could cause so much chaos in the domain of demons? Why, Her Royal Highness Aurora Suya Rhys Kaymin, that’s who!

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle – 04 – Do You Want to Build a Bathtub?

Despite being a hostage and captive, Princess Syalis is still entitled to the occasional bath, same as all the other inhabitants of the Demon Castle. However, the Red Siberian ordered far too small a tub based on inaccurate information about her size, so it isn’t long until her frustrated fists have pummeled the tiny tub into rubble.

So she sets off in search of water and materials for a new tub. She uses the communication piping to pipe hot water directly from the public demon baths into her cell, then happens upon Rocket Turtle, which features a fuse for a tail. Upon blowing the turtle up, its shell is left behind, making for the perfect basin in which to luxuriantly bathe and eventually sleep.

There are no consequences of Syalis setting off the largest explosion to date in the next segment, in which the Summer heat has afflicted everyone in the castle. Searching for releif, Syalis hears about the “cold area” of the castle, and “borrows” the outer body of the Tire Genie in order to brave the area without freezing.

The ice demon subjects of the area, who have long harbored resentment for the perceived better treatment of fire demons, mistake the princess for their leader, Ice Golem, and she uses that mistaken identity to issue them orders to equip her cell with an igloo, three seals, and some shaved ice, even claiming that Syalis will be the next Demon King!

With Syalis having acquired both leisurely sleep in a hot bath and a wonderfully cooling setup in the summer heat, the third segment offers something completely different: While on another excursion to steal supplies, she shakes an hourglass and ends up shrinking herself to half her normal, already-petite size.

Her clothes don’t shrink, so it’s hard to move, and she can neither lift her stolen goods nor climb out of her present location without help. When she uses the Procupine and Minotaur as a ladder, Quilly won’t let her go, as there is apparently something uniquely pleasant about holding a small human child—especially knowing what a menace she is when full-sized!

As a result, other demons flock to the suddenly-tiny princess, leading to the fiasco she had hoped to avoid (and her strategy of repelling the others by shooting Quilly’s quills only goes so far). But, to her surprise, she doesn’t have to return to her cell to get a good night’s sleep; simply being in Quilly’s warm embrace eventually bestows upon her a child’s sleep that comes after a full day of play. All’s well that ends well!