Heavenly Delusion – 04 – Touching Me, Touching You

The fish monster that attacks the boat Kiruko and Maru are on proves to be a slippery customer. When Kiruko fires the Kiru-Beam, it either misses or fails to fire, causing a large cloud of smoke and nothing else. But Kiruko notes the aqueous membrane around the Hiruko, and determines that the best place to fight it is not outside where it has access to all the water in the world, but in the maze-like, dry interior of the boat.

Meanwhile, in “Heaven”, Kuku leads Tokio to a ventilation hatch that leads to the “babies” Kuku says she saw. Tokio doesn’t have Kuku’s astonishing physical gifts, so she uses one of the cleaner robots to give her a boost up to the hatch, which is located some twenty feet up the wall. Curiously, despite there being surveillance cameras pointed everywhere, including at this very hatch, neither Tokio nor Kuku appear on the screen.

After briefly arguing with the crew of the boat, Kiruko executes their plan, which relies on the fish following them and Maru using his “Maru-Touch” to kill it when he’s able to touch it. That time comes when the fish is lured into a cargo bay full of boxes and dried marijuana, which sucks all the water away from the fish and dries it out. Maru is then able to finish the monster off just by touching its skin with his hand.

Kuku takes Tokio to a kind of weird laboratory nursery where even weirder “babies” are being raised with targets for faces, vaguely resembling infant versions of the Angels from Evangelion. Tokio puts her hand on the glass and one of the babes takes notice and even reaches out to her. An intruder alarm sounds and Kuku and Tokio book it out of there, after which the baby says “To-ki-o”.

What’s odd is that the intruder alarm doesn’t take the adults to the nursery where Tokio and Kuku were—once again, they don’t appear on the surveillance monitors—but instead to another part of the facility entirely. This place also has some serious Evangelion vibes, but in place of Ikari Gendou, there’s an elderly woman in a wheelchair conversing with a robot. As Alice once said: Curiouser and curiouser…

Once they reach land, the gangster boat crew offers Kiruko and Maru cash for taking care of their Hiruko problem. Kiruko refuses payment, since they and Haru had to either act or be killed, but does ask if the crew recognizes the bird logo on the Kiru-Beam. They say it’s the logo of a home goods store in the ruined town, but that turns out to be a completely different logo. Kiruko and Maru laugh about it while tucking into soup made from youkan.

Back in heaven, Tokio watches Shiro take Mimihime by the hand and run off; she follows them and overhears Shiro asking about the nude photo Mimihime sent him, which she knows nothing about and has disappeared from his phone. He then tries to explain the “urges” he feels when he sees her, but comes of to her sounding like he want to eat her.

When Tokio visits the critically ill Tarao, he tries to kiss her, but she recoils and runs off in a tizzy. Kona sees her running, follows her, and stays with her until she calms down. When she tells him how she’s scared how everyone is acting so weird, he tells her there’s no reason to be confused about people falling in love with one another.

Tokio then says if there’s someone among them she wants to touch and be touched by, it would be Kona. Kona, in turn, says he’d like it to be her. This absolutely makes her day, and she goes to bed positively giddy, only to be interrupted by a summons to Tarao’s hospital room, where he’s asking for her.

Once she arrives, he asks the adults to leave, apologizes for having tried to kiss her, and then tells her he’s not going to get better, and she needs to run away, because this place is “dangerous”. Is it Tokio’s special ability to manipulate surveillance footage, or is that the old woman’s robot’s doing? And even if she wanted to leave her life behind and run away, how would Tokio go about doing that? I guess we’re going to find out.

Love of Kill – 07 – Overboard

Aside from an all-too-brief chase between Song and the kid on the deck of the Artemisia, this episode moves at a glacial pace, which almost had be hoping for an iceberg. Coming as a surprise to no one ever, the kid, not Song, is the one who stabbed Euri in the neck. That he’s not dead but taken back to land by medevac seems like backpedalling afer making a bold move…but at least it means there’s a minimum of Jim talking, since he accompanies the Ritzlands.

Song alerts Chateau to the fact something’s up when he speaks to her through Euri’s earpiece. Euri tells her Song isn’t the one who stabbed him, and she soon meets the kid who did: Won Jinon. Won is armed with nothing but a sound recorder of Chateau’s mom answering the door back home. Won offers Chateau a deal: she sells him Song, and her mom lives. This scene and the one where Chateau meets Song back in the stateroom are needlessly chopped up mixed together.

The overzealous editing doesn’t do much to change the fact that very few things actually happen this week—most of which are boring—and can’t mask just how streeeeetched for time everything feels. Before Chateau enters the room, Song is repairing his gun, and the camera takes a leisurely pan across the plain room for no particular reason.

Chateau, who is as much of a wreck as we’ve ever seen her, can barely hold her gun steady, and once the wheels have turned in her head, she decides maybe the best thing to avoid people getting threatened because of her is to off herself. This angers Song to the point he not only disarms her, but chokes her out. Honestly, I could have done without this excruciating choking scene, which seemed to go on forever.

Then bang, we’re back in another Song flashback. We learn that he was trained by one “Mr. Donny”, the same guy who sent Won Jinon, who has a brother named Mifa back at Donny’s mansion. Nothing like dipping into a flashback of someone you just watched choke a woman until she passed out, as if I cared anymore about him. Honestly…I think I’m done with this.

Love of Kill – 06 – Death On Denial

Chateau isn’t aboard the Artemisia long before she encounters Song, and immediately takes him aside to ask what he’s up to. He’s his usual coy self; his target may well be her client—who also happens to be her boss Euripides’ wife, the billionaire tycoon Hawk Ritzland…(these names). But he does offer Chateau this: he won’t do anything on this cruise as long as she keeps her eyes on him.

This results in the two being practically inseparable for the remainder of the voyage. After clearing it with Euripides and setting up surveillance cameras, she agrees to share a stateroom with Song. While she initially insists on sleeping on the couch, her inability to fall asleep results in him carrying her to the bed, where he promises he won’t try anything.

The next day Song takes Chateau to one of the many shops aboard the ship where she’s fitted for a proper evening gown, the better to blend in with the other passengers. She remarks how she feels weird having her shoulders exposed and would prefer something “more modest”, but Song assures her that it’s about as modest as evening gowns get.

I’m still not buying the “love” half of Love of Kill, owing to the complete and utter dearth of romantic chemistry between the two leads. While she’s learned to trust Song more, Chateau still merely tolerates his presence as a necessary condition of her mission.

Euripides reaches out to Song through Chateau’s phone, ostensibly to meet and talk about Chateau’s past as Chateau Noble. However, before they can meet Euri gets a butterfly knife to the throat. Song, who we last saw putting a gun in his tux, is clearly not the sneaker-wearing culprit, who is the boy assassin we met last week and didn’t see at all this week.

I can’t say I’ll really miss Euripides, who didn’t make much of an impression the last five weeks other than “long-suffering boss with a goofy name”. But even though his marriage to a billionaire* came out of nowhere, his death surely heightens the stakes aboard the Artemesia.

*It’s entirely possible Hawk Ritzland is worth ten billion yen, or $86 million US, though if the whole damn boat is hers, she might well be worth ten billion dollars. In any case, she’s down a husband.

To Aru Majutsu no Index III – 06 – Well, That Accelerated Quickly

To defeat Kakine and SCHOOL, an increasingly unhinged Mugino is willing to sacrifice all of her ITEM subordinates, from Frenda to Takitsubo, who eats an Ability Crystal in order to hold off Kakine long enough for Hamazura to escape. She believes that despite having zero esper power, he has to survive. Hamazura tries to have it both ways, leaving the injured Takitsubo to a still mostly out-of-the-loop Yomikawa.

That leaves Hamazura to face Mugino, who really wants to kill him. The thing is, she never quite drops all the theatrics and does something she says she could do without batting an eyelid. Hamazura exploits her posturing by stabbing her in the eye with the ability crystal box, riddling her with bullets, and knocking her out cold before she can kill him. It’s a stunning upset for the Level 0, who can stand proud knowing he protected his colleagues from their psycho boss.

That leaves Accelerator, who gets a phone call warning him that Last Order is in danger, followed by Kakine assaulting Uiharu when she doesn’t tell him where the little one is. Uiharu is saved by Accelerator, and an epic duel between the two Level 5s ensues.

Kakine claims his abilities “don’t actually exist” and thus are ruled by laws that also don’t exist, making it tricky at first for Accelerator to deflect his attacks. However, Accelerator’s sheer advantage in power wins the day…at least until Yomikawa shows up to stop him.

She’s stabbed in the back by Kakine, and Accelerator goes berserk. That’s when Last Order arrives, the only person who can stop him. And she does, without any problems, dispersing his cyclones and calming him down with a hug.

The MacGuffin Tweezers are recovered by GROUP, and revealed as a tool to read data from the “Underline”, a nanodevice dispersed throughout the air by Aleister that gives info on all of the various underground organizations in Academy City.

Tsuchikimado notes the name of one group we haven’t yet heard (at least not in the anime): DRAGON. Oh, and Etzali managed to save Xochitl. Good for them! All’s mostly well that ends mostly well, though I have to say, it was wrapped up a bit too neatly. Such, I suppose, is the curse of an anime adaptation that apparently has a lot of ground to cover.

To Aru Majutsu no Index III – 05 – Dark Side of the Academy

In a so-far unrelated story, Last Order escapes the taxi, only to be retrieved by Uiharu. GROUP’s Accelerator and SCHOOL’s Kakine Teitoku are both attacked by members of, er, MEMBER, but both of them win easily as their opponents grossly underestimate their power. Meanwhile, BLOCK prepare to execute the next phase of their plan, unaware that one of their members is really GROUP’s Etzali.

Their plan involves breaching the city wall to allow five thousand of their armed mercenaries to storm in, but Etzali throws an Aztec wrench into their plans, and then a fleet of helicopter drones make quick work of most of their army. Tsuchimikado and Musujime get more intel about BLOCK’s plans, which lead them to the Reformary.

There, Etzali meets an old comrade in Xochitl, who only joined MEMBER in order to gain the opportunity to fight and kill him for betraying their organzation (the South American one, not MEMBER).

Xochitl comes with a full head of steam, but her choice of weapon – an aztec sword that isn’t metal, can’t cut through bone, enabling Etzali to use his arm to block without totally losing that arm, and knocking her down. Tsuchimikado and Musujime get beaten up by BLOCK’s right-hand woman Teshio Megumi, but Musujime regroups and despite accidentally teleporting her feet and ankles into the floor, manages to get the upper hand on Teshio.

Outside, Xochitl begins to unravel as if her body were an unfurling bandage, as she used a grimoire to transform her body into a living weapon, and it’s now at its limit. Etzali intends to keep her from dying, but we don’t see the result of that as he meets up with the other members of GROUP inside.

Finally, Kakine Teitoku, having easily defeated the MEMBER member who attacked him, beats the location of ITEM’s hideout out of Frenda, and heads over there, likely to do more damage to that group. In short, a lot of groups got tangled up this week, and a lot happened, but Crowley and Academy City are still safe…for the moment.

ReLIFE – 16

Well THAT escalated quickly! Christmas is approaching, and after Kaizaki recommends an almost too-pure-for-the-world Oga to just take Kariu anywhere and they’ll have fun, he suddenly finds Hoshiro not only avoiding him, but bolting away like a scared chipmunk whenever he makes eye contact.

Kariu and Tamarai kinda already know what’s up; both Kariu and Oga previously pegged Kaizaki and Hoshiro as being in love, so they convene in the locker room to get it from the horse’s mouth. Yet all Hoshiro can say about her feelings is “I don’t know.” Kariu, suddenly the mature one to provide the advice, tells her “I don’t know” isn’t going to cut it…not when she’s just “one step away.”

Later, Tamarai simply advises Hoshiro to ask Kaizaki on a date, just as Oga advised Kaizaki to ask Hoshiro. But just when Kaizaki thinks their distance couldn’t be any greater, Hoshiro sneaks up behind him and asks him if he’s free on the 25th and to expect further details by LIME.

That night, Kaizaki is a nervous wreck, but finally gets those details, along with another silly Hoshiro cat sticker. Hoshiro makes it clear it’s a date and she’s looking forward to it. After getting the all-green from Yoake, Kaizaki isn’t about to turn her down, even if he believes it will “ruin her Christmas” when she inevitably forgets all about him.

The date starts out a bit stiff, but both parties seem to be enjoying themselves immensely as they mill around the mall doing date stuff. In an adorable little detail, Hoshino, completely unaware that “Christmas” dates typically happen on Christmas Eve, set the date for Christmas day, but that ends up working out just fine, as it’s a lot less crowded.

The montage of their date is a somewhat creepy montage of photos taken by Yoake and Onoya, who are keeping a respectful distance but still watching and listening to their charges like hawks…while trying to get in some Christmas chilling of their own.

When Onoya acknowledges with a somber look that both of the lovebirds will forget all about their wonderful date, Yoake, always trying to find the silver lining, says that won’t mean it never happened…which, fine, but dude, that’s not the same of having a date and remembering it! The latter is much better, and these two deserve much better!

Yoake, having at least a sliver of heart, sends a quick message to Kaizaki informing him it’s actually Hoshiro’s birthday. When she gets him a present for Christmas, he gets her one for both Christmas and her birthday, bringing a warm and appreciative smile to her face.

When the two go up in a Ferris Wheel, Hoshiro asks Kaizaki what his birthday is. He tells her it already passed in August, and both get very troubled and pained when they say they’ll just have to celebrate it next year, knowing full well (at least at this point) that next year won’t happen for them, and saying they’ll never forget today. It’s hard to watch, I tellsya!

But even if nothing romantic happens on the Ferris Wheel, things turn around on a bridge. Kaizaki impulsively reaches out and takes Hoshiro’s arm as if to hug her, but she draws back. Apologizing, she tells him how much he’s “on her mind”, and the more he’s on her mind, the less she understands what to do.

It’s all the opening Kaizaki needs. He tells her she’s on his mind to, and that he loves her. That in turn allows Hoshiro to take the one final step Kariu was talking about: she tells him her feelings for him are the same.

With that, it suddenly starts raining. Ever prepared, Hoshino breaks out her umbrella and holds it out for Kaizaki. He takes hold just above her hand, but she puts her hand over his before they walk away together into the dark sacred night.

I honestly have no idea where things will go from here, and I can’t rule out the possibility Yoake will have his way and their memory of one another will vanish, which would be an appalling tragedy. That’s why I wouldn’t have minded if this was the final episode.

After sixteen episodes of these two, things are exactly where I want them. Will I regret watching one more episode? Am I a fool for hoping some kind of happy ending is still possible? One, perhaps, in which they meet and hit it off as strangers? Hey, I’ll take a relationship respawn over a system failure any day.

ACCA: 13-ku Kansatsu-ka – 06

If it were one of many other slow-burn shows, I might be itching for something to happen already near the show’s midpoint (assuming this only gets 13 eps – I may be wrong), even to the point of starting to hand out 7’s for lack of forward momentum.

And yet, ACCA continues to avoid such scrutiny with its unassuming, calm, quiet competence, all but unique this Winter as a show all about stopping to smell the roses…or freshly-baked bread.

One of the most eventful things to happen happens right at the start, where Jean not only goes up to Grossular, but tells him he knows he’s being followed, denies any involvement in a coup, and expresses his certainty Gross isn’t involved either. Grossular, after all, was the ACCA officer in Rokkusu who made things right when a horrific train accident claimed, among many others, Jean and Lotta’s parents.

Jean meets Mauve at the bakery, but claims to have “nothing of note” to report to her. If he’s trying to stay in the director-general’s good graces, he could have at least told her about the attempted coup in Suitsu. I’d say that was pretty “of note.” Mauve immediately starts to doubt Jean’s usefulness…and loyalty.

Things largely quiet down from there, as both the show, the nation of Dowa, and most of its inhabitants kick back and enjoy a New Year’s shindig in Jean and Lotta’s apartment building.

We learn about the businessmen Jean seems to help out during his auditing duties, and Lotta receives a cake from Rail, only for Owl to give her another cake minutes later.

People seem drawn to Lotta, but there’s still no indication she’s anyone super-special…yet (the flashbacks also seem to eliminate some possibilities in that arena).

Officers note that the start of ACCA’s hundredth year in operation isn’t all that different from the start of previous years. Mauve has a pretty standard speech at an all-hands, and that’s pretty much it.

Something notable does happen: Grossular joins the other four Top 5 officers in their common room, to ask Lilium why he leaked Crow to Jean. Lilium wanted Jean “to do something,” and while Gross may be right that such an action was reckless, Lilium does seem to win the argument by calling for a meeting of the five to discuss what Gross knows and how they’ll proceed together, no longer unilaterally. He gets that meeting; it should be a good one.

Jean then heads to Hare, the tropical district where the ACCA uniforms are short-sleeved and informal and the district inhabitants live the longest lives in the nation, and live life with gusto accordingly.

After striking out with Mauve last time, Jean redoubles his efforts to get something, anything out of Hare’s chiefs. Yet, when he goes to meet Mauve at the bakery, she’s not there. Is it too late?

After Hare (one of Jean’s shorter audits), Jean heads to Dowa again, this time for an audit. Prince Schwan continues to try to force his grandfather’s hand in subtle ways like hanging his portrait in a place he spends lots of sittin’ time. Perhaps Jean will get more juicy info in Dowa.

ACCA: 13-ku Kansatsu-ka – 05

Two of Lotta’s stalkers bond over sandwich bread

I continue to be both bemused and delighted by the sheer obsession with food, eating, and dining in ACCA and the culinary minutiae therein. The fact that these characters need their three squares a day, plus the occasional snacks, really anchors them in the land of reality. It also mirrors real life in its lack of traditional “action”, but that lack hasn’t dimmed my enthusiasm for the show in the slightest.

One of the most important moments of the episode—and of the show as a whole—surprisingly happens not during a meal, but during a car ride (which is also, in its utilitarian practicality, a tether to reality). In that car, Lilium basically lets slip to Jean that he has a tail, and the reason he can’t detect him is that he’s someone by whom he’s used to being watched.

Jean’s a sharp guy, so it doesn’t take long for him to narrow it down to his friend the photog. And when he arrives in the wintry, hearty Birra district and Crow is already there with his camera, we finally see a look of shock on his face as Jean stops and turns back to look for…him. It’s not clear whether he sees him or not (Crow seems pretty far away, though he’s wearing black in the snow), but that look back is all Crow needs to know he’s been found out.

“Could you two young brats flirt somewhere else? I’m trying to run a bakery here.”

Two elements of the episode that are a little more obscure in their intentions were the plotlines of Eidar very unsubtly showing up to see Jean, only to be crushed when he’s not there, and Maggie pursuing Lotta, only to learn where she lives, that her parents are deceased, and that she loves sandwich bread. I’m hoping we’ll find out soon what Lotta’s significance is, if there turns out to be any, of course.

After a rather stern dinner with Birra’s ACCA supervisor, Jean walks into the tranquil, snow-covered forest to confront his tail, and the resulting confrontation is wonderfully offbeat. Jean doesn’t seem betrayed; on the contrary, he seems like he could care less…though he doesn’t wonder if all those times Niino got him drunk he was pumping him for information.

Back home, Jean and Niino share a meal with Lotta like nothing happened, and Jean even makes him promise to stay with Lotta and take her out to eat every day he’s off on his next audit, this time of the Western-style Rokkusu District. Niino obeys, likely hoping he doesn’t miss anything good.

The final scene during sunset in Rokkusu is full of intrigue, as is the little chat between Lilium and Pastice at the airport. Is Jean simply saying hello to a vaunted superior in his hometown, or is something else going on? Something…coup-y?

For the first time it looked like Jean was doing something counter to the person we’d seen up to that point; that he was finally showing us something he’d been hiding. I may be dead-wrong, but I’m having fun guessing as I enjoy the food-filled ride.

ACCA: 13-ku Kansatsu-ka – 04

ACCA steps back from the larger national coup plot to let Jean continue his inspection duties, this time to Suitsu, which may be the most isolated district in Dowa, seemingly frozen in time due to a noble class that insists on the preservation of “tradition and formality.” Not only are any outside forms of technology forbidden, those like Jean who come from outside are given a tight leash so as to limit cultural contamination.

Not surprisingly, there are many in Suitsu who aren’t too happy about that, and have been organizing for some time. Jean happens to get scooped up by a group of them who believe he overheard their talk of a coup. Turns out their coup isn’t the same coup Jean’s mixed up in. These guys simply want to open Suitsu up, allow it the same freedom as the other districts to grow and develop, not simply fester like some dusty diorama.

But apparently, the coup attempt that occurs when Jean is around isn’t the first of its kind by any means. All such former attempts were squashed and all records of them happening kept secret from the outside districts. Jean, for the record, seems sympathetic to the rebel cause here, even offering potential clients from his home to help Suitsu open up. But he stops short of getting involved, serving more as an observer.

Unfortunately, all the adventures he witnessed will be subject to a gag order as a condition of his being allowed to leave, and anyone arrested in the coup attempt freed. It’s basically a hard reset, with one important difference: we saw how Jean reacted to being in the middle of a mini-revolution.

Did the cigarette he received in his hotel room and Crow/Niino’s intense surveillance of him indicate he’s involved in the larger coup? Or like his Suitsu excursion, is he merely being moved by forces outside his control, like a leaf in the wind?

ACCA: 13-ku Kansatsu-ka – 03

ACCA’s obsession with things getting done over dinner, drinks, and parties continues apace, as Mauve quietly invites Jean to an intimate dinner that, considering Jean’s blushing, almost feels like a date. In reality, it’s a business engagement.

Mauve has been told to stop investigating, but she wants Jean, with his 13-district-wide gaze, to keep his eyes and ears open for intel on the coup rumors. She’s also concerned that if the heir apparent Prince Schwan (a known puffed-up doofus) ascends, it could threaten the peace of the kingdom.

As for the Prince’s grandfather the king, he seems like a pretty laid-back, kindly fellow, more concerned with the selection of sweets and fruits at the royal gala than anything else.

Schwan’s a pretty typical idiot prince, and it’s not that comforting to know how close he is to the throne, at which time he vows to disband ACCA, install a puppet privy council president, and do other not-so-cool things. Even his secretary Magi only seems to respect the dude so much.

As for Jean, he’s one of the many ACCA-affiliated guests who are invited to the event, including Mauve, all five chief officers, and Niino, who brings Lotta along as his assistant (but seemingly really just so she can get a taste of the high life, I’m guessing).

As he floats about the palace, Jean can’t help but feel again like he’s being watched, and it’s because, well, he is. There are rumors all over about an impending coup, and there are enough hotshots in one place to actually make something like that a possibility.

The thing is, Jean, as far as we know, isn’t an intermediary for the rebels planning the coup. At least, that’s not what Chief Officer Lilium thinks. He trusts his instincts, which tell him he can trust Jean. Groshular, on the other hand, is the one he believes is really behind the coup plot. He’s responsible for the rumors, after all – what better way to deflect attention?

Jean is seen as someone who is a big fan of order and preserving peace, concepts both Lilium and Mauve share, which is why they both come to him seeking an alliance with him. No doubt they’ll work and work quickly to stop a coup from happening, if they can. The question that remains is, is Jean really the person they (and we) think he is?

ACCA: 13-ku Kansatsu-ka – 02

Despite the threat of bad things on the horizon, the still-for-now peaceful world of ACCA is a very comfortable place to jump into and spend time, and the show continues a relaxed pace that draws you in rather than makes you nervous or impatient.

While we start with more frankly unnecessary explanation of Dowa and ACCA (though it’s good to now know what an ‘acca’ is), we suddenly find that the “mushroomhead” rookie officer Rail was never going to be able to frame Jean Otus for anything, because the well-informed Jean was on to him all along. It’s a nice demonstration of Jean’s towering competence that it’s important to establish for later on.

The show keeps things grounded in reality and humanity by continuing to show Jean and others hanging around food and drink. This week we see Jean have breakfast, lunch and dinner, having lively discussions in each one.

Jean’s also often grabbing food for the house and his sister, which is how he bumps into Mauve, who has been ordered to cease her solo investigations, which had to deal with rumors of a coup d’etat plot.

We also meet an actual not-work friend of Jean’s in Nino, who is a freelance reporter (and certainly looks the part). He’s on good terms with Jean’s sister Lotta too, so Nino is clearly a guy Jean trusts when he tells him not to worry about the feeling he’s being followed.

I’m loving watching Jean’s far-flung travels between districts, and the way it isolates him from both home and office. He’s out there on his own, autonomous, soaking everything in, doing his job with what seems to be pride.

And yet…is the Jean Otus we’re seeing just an elaborate, near-perfect cover? Chief Officer Groshular believes Otus has something to do with the coup plot, so he has an elite undercover agent following him…who it’s hinted at earlier with a silhouette, then confirmed to be Nino, whom Groshular calls “Crow.” What a tangled web ACCA weaves.

Right now, it seems just as plausible (if not more so) Jean is totally innocent, and his unorthodox behavior, combined with an inaccurate tip, has led Groshular to cast his suspicions upon him. But it’s intriguing to wonder if we’re only trusting Jean based on what we’ve seen and not the person Jean Otus truly is, hiding just beneath the surface.

Once he arrives in Jumoku, Jean almost looks like Alice, dealing with people and things far bigger (or smaller, in the case of “Tintin”) than they should be. It adds to the disorienting feeling of who is following whom.

Nino/Crow is clearly perfectly comfortable observing Jean in plain sight; they go back 15 years to high school (though Nino cryptically says he’s been watching him for 30), after all. So is Jean oblivious to the fact his buddy is his tail, or is he well aware, and on his toes to avoid giving Nino anything to work with? Does Jean only pretend to get really drunk to lull Nino in a false sense of security?

It looks like the makings of a great noirish cat-and-mouse game thus far, presented with stylish art and a gorgeous soundtrack. ACCA exudes confidence without arrogance, telling a good yarn without getting too serious about it. But always present is that subtle background noise of looming dread in a peaceful world.

Shimoneta – 03

After top art student and school’s pride, Saotome Otome, caught a glimpse of Okuma and Ayame’s rooftop antics, she literally snags him on a chain and drags him away to her studio, where she presumes he can assist her with (or rather she can blackmail him into) helping her with a romantic problem that is making her art suffer. The subject of her affections? Anna. So when Okuma must tell her who he loves, he says the first girl’s name that comes to mind: Ayame, so as to avoid conflict.

But Otome’s artists’ block is merely a side effect of a much larger problem that afflicts not only her, but much of the population: a decade of PMs and oppression is leaving large swaths of the population unable to express their love, or even identify what they’re feeling as such. This isn’t surprising; dirty jokes and the sexual knowledge that makes them dirty are crucial to natural human interaction. Without them, there’s a large gap that is filled with whatever else people can come up with.

For a certain unsavory admirer of Anna, that something is stalking and candid photos with threatening messages. Anna is shaken by this, but Ayame assure Okuma she’ll protect her while he tries to get Otome to join SOX, revealing that her friendship to Anna is genuine, even if the two are on opposite ends of the moral spectrum. Anna, after all, is person who made it possible for Ayame to exist in normal society; she’d surely be in jail without her. But with the very survival of the human race is at stake, and so Ayame must act against her best friend.

Anna, for her part, knows Okuma isn’t the stalker, despite Goriki’s suspicions (which are his own way of expressing his own love for Anna), and agrees to a sting in which Ayame will dress as a boy as they go on a date. At the same time, Otome plans her own rescue of Anna by the stalker, shaving Okuma’s legs and putting him in drag (for the second straight episode).

As they wait in the bushes, Otome cannot help but compulsively draw Anna, her first real model, in her own unique way of expressing her love. The resulting sting is a pretty thrilling and complex bit of physicality, as not only does the stalker turn out to be huge, but there are three of them, and not everyone in a position to protect Anna is close enough to stop their attacks.

Fortunately, Ayame knows right where to kick the first stalker, and Okuma is in time to stop the next one with a devastating right. Interestingly, he moved out of instinct, but isn’t sure who he moved for: Ayame, whom he told Otome he loved on a whim? Or Anna? Heck, why not both!

Whoever he was trying to protect, he loses his wig and takes a rock to the back of the head, and ends up not only landing on top of a stunned Anna, but his lips and legs end up locked with hers for a not inconsequential amount of time before he gets up, starts to apologize, and passes out from the rock blow.

As for Anna, that sudden closeness to a boy and the touch of his lips seems to awaken her libido with a vengeance. Again, she has no idea what’s going on, but she knows it feels amazing. Will this be an isolated incident eventually forgotten, or will Anna never look at Okuma the same again?

Shimoneta – 02

To borrow a couple of sophomoric double entendres from Blue Snow, Okuma is in a tight spot; between a rock and a hard place. He admires and idolizes the pure, perfect Anna (who shows no signs of being anything other than that, with no hidden dark side), but is being forced through blackmail and coersion by Ayame to undermine her.

I will say, both Ayame and Okuma are well-positioned in terms of hiding in plain sight, and Okuma’s story of how he was ostracized when his “terrorist” father was put away and met the “guardian angel” Anna in grade school (something she doesn’t remember) that inspired him to live a purer life, is a great cover story.

But Ayame is stripping the primacy of his goal away as she exposes him to more and more misbehavior, as Okuma can’t deny the thrill he gets from finding ultra-rare smutty mags in an abandoned cabin, like buried treasure. When the imagery therein is copied and distributed around school, Anna is so ignorant to its insidiousness she herself frames a picture of a girl performing fellatio in the StuCo office!

That gets to another bigger social issue about the whole anti-dirty-joke law and PM devices: real-world Japan’s brith rate can’t keep up with its aging population; if laws were put into place to block the people’s natural sexual development and keep them in the dark about reproduction (if such a thing were even possible), it would be a de facto form of population control. Maybe the Japan of Shimoneta wants the population to decrease.

In any case, Anna’s powerful, driven politician mother is introducing a new bill that would step up the oppression even further, legalizing the monitoring of every action and conversation in the country. With no stones unturned, Ayame’s terrorism could not continue, her crusade to educate the ignorant masses would end in defeat, and most importantly, the people would have no privacy whatsoever in the new surveillance state. Ayame makes sure to impress upon Okuma that while she has her own selfish reasons for doing what she does, she’s also working in best interests of a free society.

Thus, the fight must not only continue, but be stepped up. Ayame dresses Okuma up like a Blue Snow decoy to give students dirty word eye exams during school physicals while she steals the boys’ urine samples, hoping to start a scandal in the school when tests reveal high levels of masturbation. The operation also results in Anna yelling out the howler above.

Anna isn’t portrayed as an idol fool here, but actually comes quite close to exposing and capturing Okuma-in-drag more than once, and presses her pursuit of him with heretofore unseen (and somewhat frightening) superhuman strength and speed. Game Over for Okuma and Ayame is rarely less than a few seconds or inches (heh-heh) away, but with one last misdirection, Ayame manages to save Okuma and make off with the urine.

The fact that the entire final exchange is witnessed by a painter in a crow’s nest—likely the same painter who painted the pure “Sound of Music”-style painting Okuma lingered on—means the ranks of Ayame’s SOX are likely to swell in the near future, which bodes well for defeating Anna and stopping her mom’s overreaching legislation.