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.

Vinland Saga – 10 – Dawn in the Age of Twilight

Vinland Saga has become an exercise in guarded patience, centered around the question of how long Thorfinn going to pursue revenge, and when he’s going to wake up and live his own damn life. Maybe that’s what he thinks he’s doing, and his father, both in life and in his dreams, is just wrong that there’s a better path than the one he’s on.

Maybe Thorfinn is simply caught in the inertia of the events surrounding him, and would simply rather put effort in what he sees as a sure thing—one day cutting Askeladd’s throat—than the uncertainty of returning to a life of peace with his mother and sister. After all, Thors tried to live that life, and failed when his past caught up to him.

Whether consciously or not, Thorfinn is drawing nearer to ending up just like his old man: strong and distinguished, but in too deep to ever get out. But he’s still young, and as many lives as he’s taken, it probably doesn’t come close to the number his father took. There is still plenty of time to turn his life around into something worthwhile.

His dreams start as an idyllic life that never was with his family in the endless, rolling, fertile hills that look a lot like England (or possibly Vinland). They end with the skies darkening, his village attacked, and his father run through with arrows. Will Thorfinn ever take that dream to mean stop wasting your life chasing revenge and return to his family?

Maybe, maybe not. As Vinland Saga reaches its midpoint, I’ve found Thorfinn’s quest for revenge misguided and increasingly not that interesting. I’d like to know whether it’s going to reach a point where he either finally manages to kill Askeladd and moves on to something else, or walks away from that quest entirely.

But the cloud of uncertainty persists without any regard for my wishes, and in the meantime, the Danish war with England seems to be winding down. Askeladd’s men have been mopping up lesser villages as the main army has headed north to rest. Canute has failed to do anything with his 4,000 men in London, preferring to pray to Jesus in his tent.

Askeladd’s men are so restless, the smallest insults between them become pointless fights to the death. Having awakened from his beautiful, terrible dream before dawn, Thorfinn stays above the encampment, among Roman ruins, where Askeladd finds him.

It’s there where Askeladd attempts small talk but is rebuked by Thorfinn, asserting “they’re not friends” and that he hasn’t given up his goal of slitting his throat. Askeladd likes Thorfinn’s look, but still isn’t scared. He knows time isn’t on his side, and that his would-be killer will continue to grow stronger as he grows older and weaker.

But by that same token, if the Christians are to be believed, Judgment Day and the end of everyone and everything on earth, could be upon them in as few as twenty years (an event Thorfinn likens to Ragnarok). Considering the Romans were a far more advanced society than the Saxons who defeated them (not to mention the Vikings on the cusp of defeating the Saxons), it certainly seems like humans have had their time in the sun, and now live in an age of twilight.

And yet, the sun still rises just as it always has, bathing the land in light and possibility. With the dawn comes a rider from London, who reports that Canutes forces were routed by the English led by Thorkell, who’d grown impatient waiting on the bridge and is marching his men north to meet the main Danish army.

The war is not over as long as Thorkell is with the English, while Askeladd sees the potential for great riches if he and his men rescue Prince Canute. Not wanting to share the glory or spoils of such a victory, he kills the messenger, and will make do with what he has. He fires his men up, and Thorfinn seems poised to continue following him.

If the end is coming for all, Askeladd will be satisfied with “going out with a bang.” But as we know, the world wouldn’t end in twenty years, meaning final blazes of glory are woefully premature, especially for someone like Thorfinn, who still has a mother and sister to protect, and a family and home of his own to build. With so many dawns he has yet to watch rise above the horizon, it would be a shame to descend into night now.

Little Witch Academia – 07

The Gist: In a desperate attempt to turn her grades around and not get expelled, Akko ‘treats’ Professor Pisces to water only the finest of celebrities drink. Of course mineral water is a terrible thing to pour into a tropical fish tank and, all too soon, Akko has ‘flushed’ the professor into the sewer and a grade-saving adventure!

Along the way, Akko learns to speak Fish, save an endangered species from a poacher, improve on her polymorphing skills, and win the grudging recognition of the faculty (and not get expelled, obviously).

This week finally nailed a slice-of-life tone for LWA. The supporting cast members received balanced screen time, spread across Akko’s many classes. Lotte and Sucy were the consistent observers, which is the role they fit best structurally, and the scenes felt full and fit together in a way that made Akko’s world feel lived in.

But, above all else, that world was finally fun again. From slapstick to a silent ‘talking’ character, the humor was perfectly timed and delightfully absurd. I absolutely died when Megumi Han delivered Akko’s sobbing response to flushing her teacher down the drain.

The Verdict: This is LWA doing the right things – being fun, upbeat, unexpected and bizarre. Sure, it could benefit from an overarching plot for the cast to focus on but, as long as it keeps Sucy and Lotte by Akko’s side (but not crowding her spotlight) and keeps the weird fun rolling, I don’t mind.

Little Witch Academia – 06

The Gist: Akko continues to struggle with magic and is forbidden to attend the school’s banquet for heads of state. So, Akko attempts to visit a forbidden magic location on campus instead.

Along the way, she meets Andrew, a handsome boy who considers magic outdated and is totally her love interest. Together, they are chased by a polar bear, saved by that professor who is totally not secretly Chariot, and gain an the understanding that magic takes hard work and dedication.

Roll credits…

While this week continued LWA’s streak of filler episodes, it did contain a few gems. I loved that Akko’s transformation spell, which requires the caster to ‘imagine what the result will look like,’ literally turns Andrew into an Ass. The story also benefited by Andrew having no interest in Diana, thankfully removing any love triangle distractions from future episodes. It was also nice for Akko to finally get a reality check, which may allow future episodes to be framed with greater purpose.

On the down side, the episodes narrative points were heavy handed. Seeing Professor Ursula’s hair change from red to blue makes it obvious that she is Shiny Chariot. It was also unnecessary, because her interaction with Akko immediately after Akko witnesses Chariot’s school-days-montage already implies that to the viewer. I’d argue the entire chase scene with the polar bear was superfluous too, because it only results in the viewers seeing the Ursula/Chariot reveal, and gives no real development for Akko/Andrew.

And that’s saying nothing of Frank, Andrew’s friend who’s existence in the plot serves no purpose at all. Between Frank and Andrew’s father, and the uneventful moments of the banquet, not much happens. Rather, those non-scenes isolate Akko and Andrew’s argument about magic scene and the polar bear chase scene in a way that makes them feel ‘not enough’ to float the over all episode on their own.

Are the twin dark-complexioned girls an homage to Harry Potter’s Pavarti twins?

The Verdict: The image above captures my frustrations pretty well. There are a lot of characters, few of which we know or care about, standing around doing nothing. The world is full of details, but we are told nothing about them (presuming the different color details on each witch’s costume means anything).

Akko and Chariot are the only central characters who get screen time this week, and Chariot was and still is a compete enigma. Why is she hiding? Why does she care about Akko? (beyond having a similar backstory) Why should we care as viewers when Akko’s narrative purpose is barely more than ‘she will learn magic?’

This would matter less if the show was just a slice-of-life piece, but that would require stronger relationships between the characters, and a greater emphasis on day-to-day living in the world, which LWA does not really do (Lotte’s episode was the closest we’ve seen of that…and half the reviewers didn’t like it).

In closing, I’m pretty disappointed with LWA. It’s well-animated, has a potentially interesting setting, and characters that could be charming. However, its focus on Akko is structured too much like a destiny piece to let that world grow, but isn’t focused enough to feel like an epic journey and the characters come and go from each week’s story in too disposable a fashion. You just can’t care for a character if they aren’t there.

Little Witch Academia – 05

The Gist: Akko and Amanda are at each other’s throats this week, which quickly lands them in detention. Fortunately, or not, this positions them perfectly to witness a flock of dragons fly off with the Sorcerer’s Stone, which leads the adversaries to pool their collective trios for a witches verses dragons chase.

Along the way they meet Lord Fafnir, an ancient but financially forward thinking dragon, get into a robot dragon fight complete with shotguns and rocket-propelled grenades, free the school from its debts (via Diana) and land back in detention. Akko and Amanda even become friends…at least, for a short period of time.

Akko-centric ‘outbursts’ aside, this week was all about story at the edges…

Unfortunately, this week is far less than the sum total of its parts. Despite Akko’s wonderfully elastic facial expressions, her squabbling with Amanda just isn’t interesting. Similarly, when Akko flips Amanda backwards out of her chair and spends detention scowling and belligerent with everyone, our ability to empathize with her plucky underdog status is greatly reduced. Combine that with Akko’s lack of impact on the plot, her story doesn’t feel like it had any purpose (She is the reason for the six students to witness the plot’s resolution, nothing more.)

The addition of Amanda, Constanze and Jasminka to the plot presents its own issue. What value does a third trio of student witches add to the narrative? Sure, Constanze’s inventions are cute, and her mechanical broom is a plot device to get the girls to the dragon’s hideout, but she and Jasminka aren’t actually characters. Beyond their physical characteristics and plot-devices, they don’t speak and do not physically interact with the rest of the cast. This lack of presence prevents them from even serving as counterpoints of Akko’s Sucy and Lotte or Diana’s lackeys.

This is a very strange choice for characters that get as much screen time as Amanda this week. It’s too much exposure (and design work) to serve the background role they otherwise appear to have been asigned.

Lord Fafnir, in front of his stock exchange monitors…

The Verdict: If this week’s purpose was to not have a purpose, then it succeeded. More precisely, several of the episode’s elements are best described as ‘not being important in the first place.’

Diana revealing the school’s debt is a lie? Despite being mentioned in every previous episode, its rapid resolution with no zip or humor saps any fun from the payoff. Not that the dragon was built up in any previous episode, nor has the core cast suffered due to the financial conflict. So the debt, itself, was not a consequential conflict in the first place.

Akko x Amanda’s relationship reset? Amanda has barely been in the show so far, and her only contributions have been Akko x broom rides related. So who cares?

Ultimately, competent visual design and quality rendered action give it just enough to be watchable. It’s the power of ‘stuff happened coherently and it looked good’ but not much more. Compared to last week, which I enjoyed more than Preston enough to take over reviewing it, color me not pleased…

Little Witch Academia – 04

We’ve got ourselves a Lotte-centric episode, with Akko and Sucy simply along for the ride. After Akko steals a tart (not a pie; she wants that made clear) from the kitchens, all three roommates are punished, and Lotte’s weekend plans to attend a new book release are dashed.

Akko comes up with a very simple plan to sneak the three of them out of school and into town, and Lotte’s fully on board because this is a can’t-miss event: the release of volume 365 of night fall, which is a pretty blatant (and only intermittently humorous) parody of Twilight and the crazed fandom that surrounds it, a world which Akko and Sucy are decidedly not a part of.

While some of the ridiculous snippets from the bowels of night fall’s vast milieu elicit a chuckle or two, and Akko learns there are people who don’t simply try to become those they idolize, but are content to support them…but it’s a pretty thin premise, and the episode lacked the visual panache and, more importantly, the heaping helpings of Akko-moxie that characterized the first three.

Dantalian no Shoka 10

Huey and Dalian encounter a woman in the park who can play the violin like a champ. She turns out to be Christabel Sistene, a famous violinist. It turns out she is a doll/android. Her companion Dallaglio built her to be able to play the dual unplayable “phantom scores” of Guillermo Baldini. Baldini’s music can have the same effect as narcotics, which the wealthy patron Kendrick exploits to begin an “artistic revolution.” However, when the concert begins, Christabel plays not the hypnotic Utopia score, but the destructive Twilight score, which destroys the hall and the phantom scores, and kills Kendrick and his ilk.

When Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” was first performed, the sounds were so new and strange, the audience rioted. It was neat to see that same principle employed here: the music has all sorts of effects on people, from addition to bliss to despair. I can forgive the anachronistic android in this time period; the creators aren’t going for historical accuracy.  It stands to reason when humans can’t do something easily or at all, they built something to do it for them, as Dallaglio did here with Christabel. His intention was to clear his’ father’s good name, but his creation would be perverted into a weapon by Kendrick.

Kendrick is an interesting villain, for as little as we get to see him. His obvious fatal flaw is believing Christabel has no free will or connection to her creator – she does. But his dream of a bloodless, “artistic revolution” with which to seize power. It’s a great scheme in theory: use the addictive music to bend others to his will, and use the destructive music as a threat against those who would oppose him. He could have simply used Christabel to make himself lots of money: if your customers are addicted, you’ll never want for cash – but obviously he had grander designs. Ironic too that being in the soundproof room prevented him from hearing Christabel’s “warning” music that led to everyone else’s evacuation.

Rating: 3.5