Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventure 7

It is time to discuss anime I watched again! Week 7 of bringing back Saturday morning cartoons was a bit different, I allowed myself a break to make some delicious Omelette Au Fromage, with cubed bacon and spinach filling. It was a really nice way to celebrate two new shows adding to the line up. Welcome “That Time I reincarnated as a Slime” and “Tower of God” to my lineup! I was happy with both my rule-break as well as my new additions because..those were the best part of my Saturday morning

An albatross flies over japanese skies and is threatened to be shot down for not having the right documentation.. he claims he can’t help it because of instincts.. but because of being awarded human rights  he needs passports and proper regulations. He goes to land in Anima city..but he crashes due to a storm coming up.. and what do you know.. he crashes straight onto Michiru’s bed. It’s been a dream of Michiru to fly so seeing her first flying type beast man fascinates her. Quickly bonding as he invites her for a flight… at that time we see the Mayor asking Shirou to look into some flying beast man terrorists… jeez.. I am so surprised! BNA is SO lazily written at times. The colliding plot lines thing happens in EVERY single episode. It invalidates so much of Michuru’s life for me.. I don’t believe that this would happen EVERY single time we see the tanuki discover something about herself. This really annoyed me! 

The lesson in this episode also doesn’t land for me at all. Basically it says beastman are annoyed that they now that they are seen as equals in human society have to follow their rules while it sometimes goes against their instincts. They are other life forms that should be held to other rules. I strongly disagree. I mean yes I get that birds should be allowed to be migratory..but if you have the power to look human, this is nothing but mere safety precautions. If I go to a muslim country I can’t expect them to allow atheist to break some of their religious  laws simply because I do not believe in Allah! If I go to India I do not go and eat a cow.. simply because I have a doctors note that says I should eat more red meat. No a country determines the rules. Those rules can be crooked and may require change.. but  this really pales to issues real people are having here! The Albatross can even freely fly across the country.. he just has to go to the ground and fill in some paperwork to do so.. to get a tourist visa.  So his reason to become a terrorist and threaten the Major of Anima City to bury his people who got shot while ignoring a 3 minute paperwork job really did not land.
It really made the world building seem flimsy and poorly thought off. I get someone has needs.. but because of the entire plot of the episode they proof this rule is valid!

Of course the whole encounter is deeply tied in with the church as well.. who most likely hired a terrorist to kill the human financer of the city.. The blond bad guy who owns the chemical comany.. just so they can save him.. in order to be granted asylum. We get the obvious fake out, like really obvious, and Michiru learns how to make wings and fly.  Nazuna can turn into a better more shiny bird though and the Priestess Death Rube.. as Nazuna is also known as is now the hero of the city. Like always.. the life and development of Michiru is given some love and attention.. this feels like her and sprouting wings seems fitting and in line with her nature. It’s as if someone created a really amazing character and loved it very much..but then threw a very cheap world around her.  The episode was watchable, the new character design was pretty sleak.. but it also feels super obvious. I’d say this is about as enjoyable as riding one of those really cheap fair. .haunted house rides. It looks really cool from the outside but inside it’s filled with plastic spiders and easy to predict moments that completly kill any immersion you could have had. BAD Episode.

Score:

This one is a bit of a mixed bag for me. In general a second episode of anime I always find rather underwhelming. Episode 1 usually is an amuse bouche of what is to come and in episode 2 you often have to do so much ground work in a setting that it oftenly is not very action packed.  This episode felt like that at least for the first two thirds. The third act was very strong. The first act mostly depicts how Masayoshi struggles  being a hero and while I had a lot of fun with seeing it , not a lot happens. He scares a guy by sneaking up on him and scolding him for littering and he prevents a woman from putting her trash outside forty minutes early.  Which she did because she wanted to sleep in.  While it is fun.. we do not see a payoff to this directly, it comes back in the third act. Which in hindsight makes this a lot better.. but while viewing it I couldn’t help but frown. At this time we suddenly feel very distant from Masayoshi. Goto hears some complaints and just sighs and we see them bonding as bro’s for a bit until we move to the second act. It isn’t a bad act..but due to the way the obnoxious hook is let go.. it felt kinda unrewarding (about 8 minutes in)

While hanging out Masayoshi’s agent shows up. Ishihara has a new gig for Masayoshi being an extra for some idol girl group.. which based on the opening credits and what happens next will gain some importance later on.  We see the his tale that he feels uncomfortable being a model being validated here when he has a hard time to contain his nerves. Which is a nice way to establish his character.The episode really does do a great job in setting up Masayoshi as a character… it just doesn’t do a whole lot of anything else. We are introduced to the idol girl Maya who admittedly is quite cute and I can see here becoming very important to Masayoshi! To calm his nerves we see him sing/mumble a sentai song which she does seem to recognise. Singing about an axe, I am not  sure if it’s an actual sentai show .. but the axe comes back in all three the acts. Unfortunately  Maya’s fascination with our protagonist is kinda brushed off and glossed over. I am sure it will come back but now about 15 minutes in I have yet to see anything happen yet. 

The third act makes up for this with a very cute resolution of the first act. Goto invites his new friend for sushi to talk about the complaints concerning Samurai Flamenco asking him to shelve the idea for a bit. Which obviously Masayoshi doesn’t want to do. Goto asks him about why he wants to stop these petty crimes and again I see a call back to Tarantino like dialogue when they begin to talk about Umbrella theft.. which is very common in Japan. You just take an umbrella for the rain. Masayoshi never uses one.. because he once stole an Umbrella of a young boy who got the flu from walking through the cold. This made him vilianise himself so hard he can not let go of any petty crime. Rules exist for a reason and he wants to keep them all. There is a beautiful pureness to this. Goto got drunk from their outing and on their way out.. he notices his umbrella is gone.

However there is a cute strap of his girlfriend on that Umbrella which makes it worth more to him. We see our boy play the noble hero getting Goto his umbrella back. It brings the two closer together. It’s beautiful and funny to see how the hero will not even run a single red light and his justice is done within the complete confines of the rules. ..except for vigilantism I guess..but he doesn’t really move on the turf of law enforcers either.. he just gives offenders a stern talking too.  It was a beautiful way to wrap up this episode and gave it the kick of action that it needed. I kinda wish the first act and the second act were swapped as I think that would have been even more beautiful and a bit less fragmented. All in all a quite enjoyable episode.. that suffers from having to much to set up. 

Score:

Foovay recommended this one to me and I must say , this was my favorite watch of the day. It was also the weirdest. There were so many tones and voices in this episode. We begin with the death of the main character. I mean .. that is not a spoiler .. you need to die to be reincarnated. This actually happens rather vicious and bloody.  Thirty Seven Year old virgin Satoru is having an outing with a coworker and his new girlfriend when a random assailant charges at them with a knife. Satoru jumps in front of his colleague and saves his life.. at the cost of his own. As he lays there dying he wishes he would not feel pain.. complains about heat and cold and worries about the safety off his hard drive and electronic devices. This all registers with a voice in his head who grants him these wishes for the next time he is reborn.
He shall have a body that feels no pain, heat or cold and one that will be a predator! This all leads him into being born as a slime! I really felt for the guy that stab looked so painful and not comedic at all! I was really surprised. 

Through a lot of surreal visuals we see him move into another world and discover some of his skills , talking more to the voice in his head which sounds an awful lot like a computer  voice.  I love these types of visuals, it really made me question what was going on.. and that is a sentiment that I really like to feel. The revelation that he is a slime is always not very dragged out.  Which is nice, the title spoils that to us already so it’s kinda good that it doesn’t linger. This moves into some Bofuri-like cute moments of the slime dissolving a flower just because it’s the only fun there is to be had and slowly discovering it’s abilities. This would be my favorite moment of the episode. There is just something about characters experimenting with their new bodies or powers that really charm me. The slime also emotes wonderfully well a lot better than i expected though it is nowhere nearly as cute as the Dragon Quest slimes. Based on the opening  which we find at the ending of the episode this time, he will later transform into a boyish girl person thing akin to Kirito in Gun gale. I might be wrong though. I am pretty sure a slime would be genderfluid.

The final part of the episode we have the little blob learn how to see using magical perception.. having eating some magical rocks he can learn that ability I would assume. The Dragon Veldora gives him this skill if he promises not to be scared of him… which is a very nice moment and my second favorite moment. The dragon has been so lonely and is very happy to have someone for company for a bit. It seems that the slime will be on the “bad guy” side.. but  it doesn’t (yet at least) depict the dragon as evil. He might lie.. but he could just have been put here for being a monster. He destroyed a town sure.. but he had been sealed away with a lot of force.  I see a lot of promise in this format. I do like the visuals and the designs so far as well. Our main character being of a somewhat older age makes him credible to some life experiences and gives him much more proper motivation to try a different lifestyle than say.. a 14 year old who got hit by a truck. The way skills are used might be very fun.. it looks to be and I can not wait to see more! This could be a very interesting show to me with the right amount of cute, intrigue and magic and trippy visuals! Next week I will find out more.

Score:

I thought this would be a Isekai.. but it seems it is closer to a magical fantasy action show.  Bam and his dear friend Rachel are from ..the other side of some gate.. but the semantics aren’t fully clear to me yet. They do seem to live in a world without a sky. Rachel who dreams to see the stars one day therefor wishes to climb the legendary tower of god.. on top there is basically god  but also  whatever you seek.  However to climb this tower you must face some tough challenges in many life or death situations. Bam gets a magic sword that is into him.. or something and so he must explore and prove his worth! His friend went ahead and now he works hard to catch up.

This at least seems to me to be the plot of the show and it feels very different from what I have seen so far. Both designwise as storywise the story seems to follow a few different beats as your run of the mill anime! Probably due to it’s Korean influences.  We see a skeletal bunny be some sort of trial master. In honesty he could be a character from Hollow Knight.. he looks exactly like that.. just larger or with more human dimensions. Ban is given a trial that people even on the 20th level have issues against so it seems he is being treated unfair. This draws the attention of some princess.  This whole scene fascinated me.. I think her name was Jahad but that might be a title .. I am not sure yet. She objects to him doing the trial but to Ban, Rachel is his entire world.. so she decides to give him a royal blade. Without thinking a moment longer he walks into the trial! He will see Rachel again. So far I like Ban, he is more silent than your usual main character nowadays.. we really get a great sense of his determination in this first episode.

My favorite moment is when Ban is trying to break some orb in the area a giant steel eel lives.. or at leats thats what it’s called. We do not see his strikes persé.. we see why he strikes. We see the reason of his strength, which I found a lovely poetic scene. We also see his cries call out the eel thing again.. signifying we see a man with a deep passion here a deep care for the woman he is after and he will not easily be stopped! Yet his cause will also put him into danger. Jahad and her navigator.. see things going awry so in a burst of desperation to ask the sword for help.. he does so and she answers. Hugging him unleashing her powers.

For now it seems like she accepted him simply for being pretty! I do hope this remains true! I would love for an all powerful sword to be so petty! With the sword unlocked he clears the trial and is immediatly booted in the next trial! A surival game where half of the trialist have to be eliminated. This begins to introduce us to some characters I saw in other peoples screenshots and the opening credits so I bet episode 2 will be important! I am at least hungry for more even though I am not the biggest fan of the character designs yet. Except for the sword lady!

Score:

This episode was never going to be as great as episode 6, that episode was so amazing so this one was bound to let me down a bit but boy…. this was a rough one to finish. While it does a great job a setting up Hikaru’s desire to stand on his own two feet and not be depended on Sai as much I feel like that was already established in the previous episode. So this episode just really focuses on validating that. In a way where nothing happens. They start to found a Go club in their own school and somehow Akiri is in it but the club is not official yet and they need new members so they make a poster.. which people remove which angers Hikaru. While it seems in line with his character to get into these tantrums.. he himself did not care about Go before at all  so I’d imagine he could at least relate to others a bit more. Hikaru was the worst thing in this episode if I am honest.

We see him lash out at Akiri for no reasons as all and it comes at the cost of his drive to learn the game. He is improving but he overshouts that emotion  all the time. When Akiri asks to be thought to play the game he goes ape-shit at her when she makes an illegal move.  I felt so bad for the girl, his unwillingness to teach her seems to clash with what this episode is about .. making new people enthused about Go. I know this is a bit the way their established relation goes but if that is true why would Tsutsui teach Akiri instead. See her get into this.We cut away to a while later and you’d expect her to be upset.  Instead she just takes Hikaru’s verbal rage  and makes a nice colourful poster which is cute and I am happy to see more Akiri but it all felt so inconsequential. 

Akira meanwhile notices that Hikaru doesn’t come to the Go “café”  anymore  so he decides to join his school club in order to face Hikaru in tournaments. Reason is that Hikaru blows him off for a duel as he wants to meet him on his own strength. Which is the best thing this episode does.. but doesn’t Sai have a problem with this?  He wants to perfect the divine move and the strongest opponent he can currently face says he has gotten a lot stronger. Last episode we see Sai beg to play and now without him mentioning a single thing we see him stick by Hikaru’s  call to do everything himself . I really would have liked a more 50/50 divide here.

Hikaru was told to learn from how Sai plays to better and that synergy made the last episode so beautiful he could begin to see the flow of the stones..so why is that suddenly turned to 0 so hard. The whole Akira’s Go club not accepting him because he is to good and taking their spot makes sense and I think the whole difference between those who play with passion and those who play for credit can offer interesting plotlines in the future.. but that thing relegated to be a voice over while he walks through a hall and we see trophies. It just didn’t land.. nothing really did in this episode for me. I am glad Hikaru is coming into his own but for me he took a step back from where he was last week. This week some of Hikaru definitely lost some Moku. At least I think that is the term!  Not awful just very meh!

Score:

A bit of a disappointing week. Now before people go all defensive, the episode of Hikaru and Samurai Flamenco can still end up being amazing in the bigger picture, they just did not offer me much as stand alone episodes. I still really like their respective series and their potential.
BNA.. however is really showing it’s cracks. I just can’t get over the same trope being used each week. It’s weird how these last two episodes took such a nose dive for me. Michiru is still an amazing character and I would love to see more about her life, I just don’t think this world is clever enough let alone the main story thread. Maybe next week I will be proven wrong though.