Solo Leveling – 10 – Kind of a Big Deal

After one more harrowing raid that goes sideways, Joohee tells Jinwoo she’s retiring from hunting and moving back in with her parents. Her reasons are sound, understandable, and releatable, and while the puny past Jinwoo might’ve argued more for her to stick it out, this stronger, less emotional Jinwoo wishes her well, promising to meet up with her if he’s ever in her neck of the woods.

Jinho’s new armor made me literally LMFAO – So gaudy

Despite thinking very soberly these days, Jinwoo isn’t so heartless he’d invite Joohee to join his quota “Strike Team”, which as assembled buy Jinho is a thrown together mix of people who can’t go on raids or are hard up for cash, including Han Song-yi, a high schooler and his sister’s classmate. They all get three million per gate to sit around outside the gate as Jinwoo and Jinho go into the dungeon on their own.

The random hunters assembled to sit around don’t know quite what to make of this, but they’re also not about to turn down that cash. And just a half-hour into what should be at least a two-hour raid, Jinho and Jinwoo come out unscathed, and the gate collapses, which can only mean the boss was defeated. Before they can pick up their dropped jaws, it’s on to gate two of three they’re tackling for the day.

Jinho and Jinwoo’s strike team make the equivalent of $60,000 that first day, so it’s a given that they all come back for day two, day three, and so on. All the while, Jinho is able to harvest mana crystals while Jinwoo continues leveling up and gaining skills. The Stealth mode he gained from defeating Kang is particularly useful, if a bit unsporting. This gate-speedrun sequence has a lively pace and fun swagger to it.

All the C-Rank Gates being bought up attracts the attention of Ahn Sangmin, a mid-level recruiter for the White Tiger Guild. At first he almost seems like a cop abot to expose Jinwoo, but he’s actually eager to make him a valuable member of the guild, as he’s reasonably certain this “E-Rank” hunter reawakened. One night, Ahn and his subordinate give Jinwoo a slight start as they introduce themselves.

Over coffee in a public place, Ahn lays down the brass tacks: he thinks he’s perfect for White Tiger and wants him to join, and is willing to pay him double what Yoojin Construction is offering. Jinwoo states that even at a discount, that would mean paying him over 50 billion yen. He then engages his stealth, demonstrates his power, and gets the truth from Ahn about how he found out about him: he was looking into who was buying up so many C-Rank gates.

Rather than walk away from their meeting with nothing, Jinwoo gets Ahn to agree to pay 600 million yen for three of the C-Rank gates Yoojin controls. The next morning, after they paid Jinwoo, Ahn learns that Yoojin only ever had three gates, and there are plenty more that are going for as low as 50 million.

Ahn gets a text from Jinwoo saying they’re now even after Ahn spied on him. Ahn concedes that Jinwoo played his hand well, and now has his contact info for future opportunities. As for Jinwoo, he’s taken a day off for a “Job-Change Quest” for which he’s now a high enough level to pursue. With Hwang’s S-Ranked brother possibly targeting him, he’s gotta get even stronger than he already is.

The Eminence in Shadow – 08 – A Terribly Flawed Scenario

This week starts off by replaying the start of the invasion of the academy by Fake Shadow Garden (Shamdow Garden?) this time from Cid’s perspective, and man is he excited to be involved in a terrorist attack! The moment he realizes Rose is in serious trouble, he launches himself into the path of the baddie’s blade, as that’s the role of the background character. In doing so, he (posthumously) wins the heart of Rose, who remembers how hard he fought against her in the tournament and now sees his selfless sacrifice as proof that he loved her.

Rose and all the other students are rounded up in the auditorium, but Cid is left behind, as he’s just a corpse. Or IS he? After punching himself several times in the chest, Cid starts his heart back up, having successfully pulled off the risky “Ten-Minute Death—Heartbreak.” Considering what Cid did to himself to reach this other world, it’s no surprise he’d put his life on the line to best inhabit the role of Eminence in Shadow. Meanwhile, Sherry is researching away when one of the bad guys’ top lieutenants drops in.

She’s saved by one of the school’s elite swordsman who is still able to fight despite the lack of magic, but he falls to the bad guy’s blade soon enough. He only manages to buy a bit of time for Sherry to shuffle away in her flip-flops. After sniping several dozen of the enemy and plummeting dramatically off the school roof, Cid senses Sherry is being pursued and not doing a great job of being stealthy, so he serves as her protective shadow, killing anyone who gets close to her.

Sherry’s refrain of “it’s just my imagination” is one of many comedic highlights, and when she finally trips and nearly falls down the stairs, Cid is there to catch both her and the artifact and recommend she stop thinking out loud, stop trying to decipher the artifact while moving, and ditches slippers. He escorts her to her father’s office, where she finds unpublished research of the artifact she’s been charged with, which is the control unit for the Eye of Avarice that’s created the anti-magic field.

But the Eye isn’t just neutralizing magic, it’s absorbing it. Given enough magic, it will eventually reach its full capacity and release in one huge explosion that will level the school. So it’s a magical bomb threat. Sherry is game to fine-tune her artifact so they can shut the Eye down, but to do that Cid has to head back to where Sherry was to fetch the tuning instruments. After righteously toying and fucking with the lieutenant guy, he encounters Nu, who finds her ex-betrothed dying in the room where Sherry was working.

Nu reports that the real Shadow Garden have arrived on the scene and are ready to go on Cid’s orders. The only downside to that is that Gamma, the clumsiest of the Seven Shadows, is in command. Cid then fills Nu in on what he and Sherry plan to do, and he describes the plan so nonchalantly it basically reinforces her belief that Cid is a mastermind of unsurpassed brilliance, when he’s actually just been wining it all along and doesn’t even believe any of this is real.

But of course, it is, and the lives of  the whole school are in his, Sherry’s, and Shadow Garden’s hands. Watching him cut through the bad guys and have tons of fun doing it was immensely entertaining; watching him and his allies save the day should prove the same or moreso.

Rakudai Kishi no Cavalry – 04

Stella’s first battle is over before it begins, when her lower-ranked opponent forfeits out of a desire not to be hurt too badly. When she checks in on Ikki, he’s studying tape on his opponent, Kirihara Shizuya, and his “Area Invisible” technique that’s such a mismatch against Ikki’s swords skills. He seems focused and committed, and promises her he won’t lose. And Stella, having come off an easy victory, having lost to him herself, and used to Ikki acting tough and cool, believes him, without suspecting anything amiss.

Alice is different. Her woman’s intuition, if you will, senses something is off with Ikki on this particular momentous, high-pressure occasion. She learns about how years ago there was a conspiracy to get Ikki expelled for some petty infraction, and how Shizuya attacked him brutally, but Ikki wouldn’t fight back no matter what, worried (rightly so) that he’d be kicked out for it.

Alice comes to the conclusion Ikki is so used to being downtrodden, both physically and mentally, by those who see themselves as better than him, that he’s developed a hard skin that prevents him from hearing the “screaming in his heart”—that release valve everyone has.

Now that he has to either win the Seven Star Battle or be expelled, that pent-up anguish has a profound effect on Ikki, such that he does not strike the moment that gives him the best chance at victory: before Shizuya activates Area Invisible. He can’t, says Alice: he’s too damned nervous down there.

And so, Shizuya, who is perfectly confident in his ability to hide and attack from the shadows like a hunter or assassin, has his way with Ikki, riddling him full of arrows. Ikki collapses in a pool of his own bloood, Shizuya mocks him, the crowd starts laughing and mocking and chanting “Worst One” and it’s almost a nightmare come true for Ikki, until a fed-up Stella stands up and tells the crowd to shut the hell up, and tells Ikki to stop looking pathetic and get up.

So he gets up. He puts his cool face back on. He can, because Stella’s loud public words of encouragement wash away the nerves. He calms down, then uses his trump card and steals the “logic” of Shizuya’s ability, so he can see right through it every time. Shizuya is able to switch from tactic to tactic, but ultimately they’re all part-and-parcel of his ability, leaving nothing with which he can hold Ikki back other than cowering and crying “uncle.” Ikki spares his life (by one millimeter!) and wins. Then he passes out.

When he comes to, he’s in the hospital, a dozing, drooling Stella by his bedside, his sister crying into Alice’s shoulder outside because it’s not to be for her. And since he has her alone, Ikki, who won his battle thanks to Stella, confesses to her, and expresses how important she is to him.

Her lovely dere response includes a closed-eyes first kiss and a small nod indicating she feels the same way about him. Then Ikki draws her into a big warm hug (bawww) and promises he’ll one she’ll face in the Seven Star final. You don’t get that a lot in anime these days: a couple working towards facing off against each other in the final battle. I like it!