Tag: BNA

Brand New Animal or just Fluffy X-Men? BNA Review

Hello Island Guests! My four day mini break is over! And I decided to shake my schedule up a bit…mostly because I had this prepped as my next post and are not that far ahead but I TOTALLY did it intentionally to have some fun as well… TOTALLY! For Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventure I watched through and fairly recently finished BNA! As I only did episode reviews in Saturday Anime Adventure I feel like I have to end this one up with a series review! A series can be stronger or weaker than the sum of its parts after all! So how do I feel about BNA two weeks after finishing the last episode?! Let’s find out.

Info

Brand New Animal is a 12 episode Anime by studio Trigger that was licensed by Netflix. The series was written (as anime) by Kazuki Nakashima and features the vocal talents of Sumire Morohoshi. Yoshimasa Hosoya and Takehito Koyasu, It follows the tales of Michiru the Tanuki Beast-Man or so we think! She takes on the role of a young girl that falls into a group of Beast-man who are almost like a mutation of humanity. She falls in with a grizzled grumpy old man who can uses his claws to defeat his opponents, though rarely does. He becomes her protector of sorts. They are led by this wise older bald person who can’t walk that well and needs a cane. She is a mayor and wants to build a city where beast-man can learn and utelise their abilities and proving to the world that these mutants like creatures are nothing to be feared. Also when the young girl uses her powers she sparkles a lot.

I’m with Storm here! I really need to think where I saw this story before!

This review will mostly be spoiler free! For detailed reviews of each episode you can Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventures Episode 1 trough 12.

Hopping Like A Bunny

BNA sketches a world divided by the rise of an alternate species called beastmen. These are humans more in touch with their inner animal and as a result can access and prefer their beast forms. Their true selves. However humans fear beastman and their improved ability and hunt them regularly. Thus with permission of the Japanese government a  city for beastman has been build called Anima city. Here beastman live together in harmony! Or at least that is what Michiru our protagonist thinks when she goes there. She claims to be a human that got turned into a beastmen for some reason. This should not be possible because you are a beastman from birth..so she moves to Anima city to find answers. Only to find a whole lot more trouble than she bargained for.

As the series moves on we see her team up with a mysterious man named Shirou who fights hard for beastmen rights and thinks very low of humans. As terrorists begin to strike at Anima City and in particular the pharmaceutical Sylvastra corp, a larger scheme is revealed that puts humans and beastmen against each other and much much more. Anima city and beastman ‘s future is threatened by a whole lot of lies and intrigue. It almost feels as a plot from a Cyberpunk movie taking some clear inspirations from Blade Runner where beastmen and Replicants are in a sort of similar position.This little dash of cyberpunk story telling mixed with some politics manages to create an intriguing enough story that builds an amazing world in the first four episodes, yet then starts to falter a bit but climbs back up and falters again.. and so repeats this until the show is ended at episode 12. Besides Blade Runner there is another analogy on the tip of my tongue! There is this point where robots hunt down beastmen send down by people who hate them.. oh well! I can’t remember! I guess I will refer to that other show as X for now.

Let me get this point out of the way because everyone has spoken up about it.. 12 episodes is to short for this show! Yet I do not find the ending atrociously bad.. and it certainly reaches the finish..it kind of feels like a Mario Kart pro-speed run Rainbow Road on N64. Sure it was enjoyable and colorful and a sight to behold.. but we didn’t see all that much of the track* . So as well is the biggest pitfall for Brand New Animal. It asks you to see injustice in a world.. but we don’t see the world all that much. Again the first four episodes do a great job in fleshing out a world but after that, there is a lot of one location episodes and to make up for it they need to pick up slack with a LOT of exposure episodes. When three episodes of the twelve solely exist for exposition that is a lot! As a result this is one of the most awkward paced anime I have seen. It still tells an enjoyable tale but it’s as if it 1 to 12 instead of a count is more like one of those hopskotch drawings. Instead of flowing we hop!

*For those who don’t know that is a 7 minute track you need to do three laps on..unless you skip the track right at the beginning by jumping to that last corner

Strong Like an Ox

Despite this Brand New Animal is still quite an enjoyable show that does a lot of things right. Studio Trigger once again manages to create a visually appealing show whose colour use and artwork really appeal to me. There are lots of colours, the design of characters is unique and now has the added layer of having two designs (or more) per character. As each beastmen has a human and beast form and the forms mirror each other a bit. It works nicely and all characters are immediately recognisable in both forms. The buildings in the series also have this slight futuristic look, but not quite, which really sells the “newly built” city vibe and  it allows us to suspend our disbelief well enough for all the weird tech introduced later on in the series.Aided by a good music score including some synthwave tracks, it really sells itself as a near future show. A setting that is always tricky to flesh out but BNA does this very well.  It really helps the worldbuilding. Soundtrack wise I also like how they use the ending song as an in world song.. it gives it meaning.. it is overused but it is a fun little gimmick and saves out on some money! So clever as well.

As for the worldbuilding itself, I think this show does an excellent job at building it’s own words with not one but two asterixis behind it which will come up in the next session. I personally really think in terms of worldbuilding they have thought a lot of elements trough. For example beastmen are much more hot tempered than humans much more in line with their instincts. Anima city is a much more dog eat dog environment than any human cities. Much more in touch with their instinct Anima city relies much more on the survival of the fittest concept.  This bleeds into their sports as well! Even something as simple as baseball often has deadly results.

People do not seem to mind all that much because this is the normal way things would go in such an environment I really like that concept. I loved the idea that to commit a crime in Anima city you have to consider your scent as a factor as well because there are beastmen with a great sense of smell. Awesome! Yes they totally would need to do that!  was even more impressed when they established that Bird-beastmen would have to get a permit for flying trough nation controlled airspace. The government would like to know who is flying in their terrain, since they can go anywhere they want they have to keep some way to track of them. Clever that they think on how the world would change like that..when we add in the writing of the actual characters though things go a bit wonky but more on that in a bit.

Finally I would like to shout out how the action is done quite nicely. There are a fair few fights and encounters and each has a bit of a different solution. Sure Shirou who is the main muscle will usually beat up the bad guy in a particular way.. but that means his fighting has a way he works.. he has a strategy.. this is consistent throughout every episode I really have a feeling he has a fighting style. A lot of anime characters finish their enemies of with whatever is coolest or switch techniques on the fly. Take Naruto for example who while using some stable techniques goes from throwing ninja stars, to kicking and from wielding a Kunai to  digging underground. Up to a point where he even is a sage and a summoner. Now of course Naruto spans over many more episodes  but still Shirou fights like he has fought before! He knows what he does and his fighting style is consistent right until the moment it’s not.. but even then there is a good reason. Michiru’s fighting style is more flexible but her entire character is build around this. She has certain abilities that allow her to shine as the versatile combatant making her actually useful throughout instead of your usual liability.. even if she fills that trope as well.

A Lamb to the Slaughter

With a solid story, nice visuals, great world building and nice action you’d think that this is a pretty good show right?! You are correct! Unfortunately though .. pretty good is where it stops for me. The biggest reason that it can not ascent from there is because it is way to ambitious. This show bites of way more than it can chew.  The show tries to force in a message that in my eyes should have been left out completely. Or the worldbuilding should have been adapted to fit it. (Which is one of these world building asterixis)  Brand New Animals wants to tell us that we humans are racists and small minded bigots and that these people deserve to live in the lifestyle of their choice. On top of that they also weigh it down even more by putting a lot of religion talk but rather than adding a new religion to the mix, they add in a cult that follows the same religion as every beastman out there, which makes it all a bit convoluted.

 The example they make this the clearest with is an Albatross. He entered Japanese airspace and is chased by two fighter jet who kindly but urgently ask him to lend visit a post or police office so the birdman can get a permit to fly in Japanese airspace.. so they know he is there.  He feels his rights are being limited because he is an Albatross they roam. Apparently all Albatross people have been refusing these types of request and have been shot down for invading airspace… which then is portrayed as a horrible crime. Meanwhile I look at this as … “That rule makes a lot of sense”. The series already established terrorism is a heavy and ongoing topic, this makes spying super easy and you can literally go anywhere. He also just has to fill in a form saying he is there!  Two minutes later an actually flying terrorist shows up using the airspace to get to the city undetected proving that that rule is needed. That is not a good idea of humans being bigots. Instead of giving the good bird albatross the W, and justifying his heart we see the church meddle in. Thus the albatross stays a guy who wanted to rob the mayor..and justifying once more the human reaction. Weird

Humans are reluctant to accept beasts among their ranks, which I can understand can be and should be viewed as racist as long as both are sentient and follow the same morale standards. Except.. this show shows they do not. If anything humans and beastman share criminal tendensies , gambling, mobs, scamming etc. However when it comes to we belief what is right and wrong..or what is normal we are off by a fair bit.  Beastmen kill each other during baseball. they can toss their feathers as weapons and possess superhuman abilities. Since they are prone to follow the principle of survival of the fittest and all beastmen are basically humans with a mode that upgrades some of their strengths I can see why humans would not really like that mentality among their ranks. If a bear man can just rip of your head because you cut in line..and te bear is stronger.. yeah that would pretty much suck. Beastmen are more likely to think it’s okay, so I would feel a genuine treat to my citizens if I allowed them to give into this beastmen nature. So I can see humans be wary of that idea very easily. That isn’t racist that is common sense. 

Of course we do not follow the beastman who rip each others heads off..but they are out there. We follow a kind hearted girl that wants everyone to be happy and a private investigator/merc who works for the good of beastman kind. The fact that we follow two who don’t do those shenanigans doesn’t change the fact that it happens and the mayor is like “Sure you can Kill each other during baseball but you can’t gamble on it’ Racism is bad is a great message but you need to have sides that are actually equal and share more or less the same moral compass. There isn’t equality here. Compare it to X-men.. they aren’t equal either but if mutants were like but they share values.  They do not fight to use their power even when it endangers people! At least not the good guys ..so we can relate to them. In Brand New Animal that same vibe is sorely missing. Now at times for me it felt more like the message was “racism can sometimes be justified if the threat is high enough’ and I do believe that is a message would need to steer far away from just among humans.

The second asterix from that world building comes .. part from the poor pacing and part from the way the story is told. The story does really work and there is some logic  in their science. There is a lot of space for exposition and as such it is easy to tune out to information that isn’t brought in such bombastic manner. For example in a fairly generic conversation it is told that when a chicken-woman loves a whale man very much and they whoohoo a bit their child either will either be a chicken or a whale but never a whicken or a chale. As a beastman can only have one beast to transform into.. if it would have more they would be unable to transform. Nor can you crossbreed species. This comes back later in the show.. but if you missed it.. this feels like something completely out of the blue and forced. It wasn’t but unlike most some things near the endgame are very poorly telegraphed. It is still there but this is a show you definitely want to binge AND keep your attention to it. The thing is that is is really in your face about “hey this important hey! Hey Listen” then on some things it really isn’t. 

The show also  does this in reverse. It sets up characters to be really important later on but than they simply becomes means to an end. Like ..”Look this guy is super important”.. Later he offers Shirou a Ride and gives him some supplies…it didn’t even have to be that guys.They do this on numerous occasions as well such as a gag with a water purifier.. I was like.. “that’s going to be a thing at some point” .. but no it was just a crack at the poor. You will need to remember just about everything and that will both reward and disappoint you.
On the one hand I love them for including very subtle references ..but you can’t make your show seem this handholdy and then go like… but if you noticed THAT you would have realised.It’s kind of like playing Clue but when you solve the puzzle someone tells you! Bonus points if you can tell me the motive!?  I wasn’t looking for that! Murder Murder Weapon and Location right?! Then everyone says sure but you missed something really important!

My final gripe is wit the shows ending. While it isn’t exactly terrible, the plot twist feels more like a retcon to fix the message. As if the makers realised ‘our message about racism didn’t really land! We now need a way to make everything cool and make people learn a lesson still!  how about we make people realise they are closer and add in an extra party?’ It came out of nowhere and wasn’t needed at all. Sure it allows for a bigger and more impressive battle but there were tools to make that battle different. Michiru rode in a giant robot depiction of god.. that was just made as a cosplay thing. You could have just made a big robot weapon as a final enemy. There were even ways to tie in Michiru’s “disease”  in this but no…. out of the blue we get something super powerful that needs to be taken down… then it gets taken down within five minutes of it’s introduction. Breaking the lore that was introduced for it..within those five minutes as well. It served no point other than to make up  for it’s own writing failures and wrap the series in a pretty ribbon. That said I do like how it wraps up after that.  Michiru’s personal journey has been very strong throughout the show and they ended like that as well. Her road made sense for each episode… it’s just that blasted analogy that is in the way of her world feeling the same.

Goldfish

Brand New Animal is a fine show to watch that unfortunately suffers a lot squandered potential syndrome. Where a decent show is experienced as worse as it is because it simply could have been more.  If you added 12 more episode to this series it could have been one of the greater once but because of its short run it is forced to live into mediocrity.  “I would have loved to see more about that Mob Boss”  ‘I wish I saw more of Mary the Mink’.  ‘I really wish they explored Shirou’s past more’ ‘I wish I could have seen more about Michiru’s mysterious accident and what happend after’. These are ponderings I had after the show. I liked it enough to want to see more because they really do create an interesting world

. However it is not a world we can dive into.. it is shallow! Kinda like a bowl for your goldfish!
The water is still refreshing (to splash in your face not to drink)  the goldish in the bowl is quite amusing to go around and round and nestle in it’s little castle.. but you can not help to wish there was more out there. Had it not squandered time with it’s really forced “lesson”  I might have wholeheartedly called it good. Do note that I do not mean you should not speak against racism but that what the show wants us to see as racism isn’t racism it’s self preservation and while I do think those can intersect trough ignorance.. that is not a tale you can tell with a series like this. It’s not a goldmine of life lessons.. it really is just a goldfish in a bowl.

I like goldfish but I would not say it’s a great pet! It’s still something that can bring you lots of joy! Yet sometimes you just want to pet something or put something on your lap and then you realise.. I have a fish!  As much as you love it.. it will never be all that great.. it’s fine!
It’s just fine…

Did you see BNA?! What are your feelings about it?! I really liked the intro by the way! I am not sure if I said that! It’s catchy! Speaking of liking! If you like this blog why not consider supporting my blog on KoFi! You can become a coconut and get nominated for all my blog tags and will have a cute flavour text written about you! Or if you don’t have money to burn why not subscribe to the blog, leave a like or write something to get in touch!

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Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventure 12

Today I completed my second show in this format and had another crazy strong line up on episodes! I did SO not expect things to go the way they did this week. Amazing! I even finished BNA on a fairly positive note! So I was pleasantly surprised! Yet both Flip Flappers and Samurai ended with a big cliffhanger! And Next week is my SKIP week! Due to my special week! What Bad Luck!

Our farewell to a show with troubled pacing and slightly pedantic world-building is one that is a perfect summary of this show..it was a good watch but it’s more akin to your kid going to the potty by himself for the 26th time good..than it is finding a way to colonise mars kinda good. 

We pick the show up right after Michiru’s apparent demise.. which as it turns out was barely a flesh wound. Her blood holds some antibodies for the Nylvarsyl Syndrome because she is like special and adaptable and what not. This results into Shirou’s beast factor becoming stable again and everyone being fine! Meanwhile Allan puts his plan into motion to use his  Eggman like drones to end these Beastman and turn them all into humans!  Shirou and Michiru tell him about the other cure and he doesn’t care..because he isn’t on humanities side as it turns out. Allan is a godly beastman.. like a pure one with an immortal body! As he shoots big energy beams trough Shirou.. Michiru has to leave him there to defeat the thrones. Aided by the Major, Flip, the Police and some others the fight against Allan’s purification army is on. Nazuna is there too and runs away from her former Retainer Boris saying she doesn’t want to date him. Eventually Nazuna and Michiru find out that Ginrou’s howl passifies the beastmen makes them howl with him and they move back to the Live event to play his cry to the city where Ginrou and Allan’s Cerberus form have their final face off! Ginrou/Shirou learns from Michiru and shows compassion to Allan and in the end everything is right as rain. Michiru and Nazuna decide to stay the way they are to form a bridge between humans and beastman.. the End

The show does a fairly decent job on wrapping up the story at least if we do not take it’s earlier flaws into account ..as this is an episode review! The series review I will do after next week. We get an ending that is both definitive and open at the same time and it actually has some nice imagery. Like when Shirou Spared Allan.. he trusted on his heart rather than his instinct..show humans and beastman might be a bit closer than we think, but done from the beastman perspective. They allow themselves to be shunned by simply giving into all their impulses or primary acting..perhaps that is not the way. I am glad they addressed this because I do understand that some people are different and we should try to make the world a welcoming place for everyone.. but that doesn’t mean we should excuse every whim. In the world of Beastman this issue was waaaaay larger because some of their behaviour was just never acceptable, like killing each other in recreational sports, rule of the strongest. It was a big weak point in the story to me and this somewhat countered it! My favourite scene was the water purifier kid whose name I still do not know.. saving Death Rube/Nazuna still worshiping her has a god. When  she tells him she’s not a god he says “You fed me fresh bread with a super delicious crust.. if you provide food to the poor you are like god to them’ (More or less) She helped them.. and they worship her for it! I really liked that sign of gratitude. Having Michiru also feels great and making her a bridge between races is a great way to end the show… were it not for a few hiccups.

The biggest issue I have is how inconsistent the plot can be! Allan’s drones only attack rampaging beastman.. but how is he going to succeed then?! There will be a few beastman left.  The Machine only attacks rampaging beastman.. yet still attacks the non feral police. Flip who is firing rocket launchers I can understand might be deemed rampaging.. but still the way it is set up it feels a bit plothole like. Allan being a beastman with no beastman scent also felt rather forced. It’s because he is a pure beastman and he wants to end hybrid beastmen.. so he rather changes them to human?!  That feels a bit iffy to me. It wasn’t needed. You could have just written that the morphing thing what he gave to Michiru was perfected and he found a way to amplify humans without having them turn into beasts.  I guess Shirou learned to forgive saying he already is a hybrid but that feels a bit pedantic again. “We are closer to humans than I thought .. let’s begin to accept them’   The final battle could also have been against technology or whatever.. but a beam firing cerberus fox/wolf with Ginrou turning into a jet wolf firing a Kamehameha.. felt poorly set up.. though it looked amazing! I just feel that power-hike was unearned and not needed.  I was engaged throughout the episode but if you think about things they do fall apart a bit. Clearly style was favoured over substance for this episode and to an extend the show needed that to let go of some broken promises it also is a reminder of what the show could have been.

I enjoyed myself, with this episode but also this series as a whole. This episode had a few pacing issues, logic problems and kinda took that finger pointy no no racism analogy stance ..but then doesn’t flavour it very well. It had the exact same issues as I had with the entire show so far..but it also left me with the same overall experience as the show did. Positive and quite amused. This isn’t a high-flyer of an episode but it was 20 minutes spend quite well still.

What ..just happened?! Was that Real? Surely it must be some sort of fever dream right? If not.. omg that is amazing.. if it is OMG this amazing!  What the actual heck!

This episode shows Samurai Flamenco and the Flamenco Girls having an effect on the city. Crime is at an all time low and their patrols are becoming boring.  This causes  both Masayoshi and Mari to have their own mental breakdown. In a search for answers Masayoshi visits his grandfather’s grave and later discovers his parents were murdered.. the greatest hero background he could wish for.. but he doesn’t seem to care.. the case went cold.. he never knew any better so now he begins to wonder if he is actually a hero and Goto convinces him .. he is a freak fighting for justice.. he likes freaks more than heroes. In a PR stunt Samurai Flamenco gets  asked to help raid a drug lab, which Goto only accepts after seeing Masayoshi at earlier low. While there he serves a ceremonial position.. when suddenly one guy transforms into a creature called Guillotine Gorilla, which decapitates three policeman and tosses them out of the window!  Samurai Flamenco and Goto team up using the drugs to blind the Gorilla and then toss him out f the window! Is this real?! That came out of nowhere?! Oh and right an evil overlord speaks through them from the sky.

I assume this is Masayoshi getting really drunk from tequila at the beginning of the episode or maybe he breathed in some drugs, but wow.. having actual sentai monsters that explode could be awesome.. having Masayoshi go completely delusional so that he imagines these to to some mental breakdown could be just as amazing. After all I really loved Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger. Since this show was recommended to me based on my review of season 1 I suspect that is the case here. Also since Goto in their fight with Guillotine Gorilla called him Flamenco! I am not sure a real Goto would say that.. but then again who knows. My favourite scene was the monster exploding after it was defeated.. It just fell out of a cop car.. got up and exploded! Just like in the real deal!  I am really  confused right now but I really do love that I am so confused. This came so out of the blue and is such a tonal shift. Since the opening is also vague and shows him as an actual Sentai I have really zero clue! Other than those hunches I just mentioned.  Then again I also have clues for this not being true such as his Samurai’s secret weapons not working at all.  I also really start to enjoy the Morita Moe as a character being in love with Mari, she just reminds me of me somehow.. just more into kisses and such. The build up with this coming out of left field was something truly amazing as well. I can’t even begin to describe how much I loved this episode.

My least favourite moment is Mari eating flowers because she is so bored and disillusioned by her real life wanting to go on tour. It feels weird that  that someone who owns a Hummer and can drive anywhere she wants can not find a single way to fight crime.  Her petty behaviour is becoming increasingly annoying to me. In order ot do what she did I feel you must have a strong character that truly believes in their ideals like Masayoshi even if that value she chases is more superficial.. but with every minor setback she just gets so dejected.  I don’t think it fits. Another weird moment is Goto coming over to Masayoshi where he shares drinks with that Stationary Guy that give Masayoshi his gadgets.. apparently he had been sitting there for a while and Goto only now asks who he is. I get why you not introduce yourself to anyone but at a party of 4 with a single new guy..while discussing your friends super hero activities I’d think you would introduce yourself.  It’s not that bad but it is a a writing flaw I think. For the rest I am to scared to say if there are flaws I can only tell after the next episode.

I loved this experience, while it might not consistently be the best episode as it starts out really slow that acceleration in the end truly made this into something so amazing. Regardless if this turns out to be real or not, this episode will probably go into the books as one of my favourite episodes… unless they really mess up this landing.. but for that I have to wait two weeks.

I love how this show handles time! They really take advantage of the fact that Rimuru is a slime and use it to propel the world making this series feel so alive. They did a lot of clever things again with this episodes and a lot of things I did not see coming.

We see Rimuru a few days after his quest to find artisans ended. The Goblins have adopted other Goblin clans and after exerting all it’s magic Rimuru goes to sleep for days on end once more. Once he comes too he finds Rigurd to have advanced even higher as he is now a Goblin King and the town now starting to look like an actual village.  Four human adventurers stumble onto his demain , including the three adventures he saw once Rimuru’s journey started and Shizu.. another Isekaid girl.. but where Rimuru was reborn she was summoned, lacking the ability to defy those who summoned her. We see a lot of background on the three adventurers and their somewhat cruel guild master. Rimuru is a good egg and he feeds them and he bonds with Shizu a bit who turns out has been here since World War II or something. We also find out she is possessed by an Efreet!  Plus there is some amazing subtext here I think… or a mistake. 

The best part of this episode was that subtext line. Shizu laughed when Rimuru referenced a line,  from Dragon’s Quest… but Shizu said she is from World War II, in fact we have seen that this is true. So Shizu CAN NOT know about Dragon Quest.. but a friend told her! That means there is another Isekaid character there! Which also explains why she was so aware of Rimuru’s situation.  The organisation that summoned her seems quite evil, so perhaps they have summoned another character.. but she also seems familiar with being reborn so perhaps not! There is is so much there to discover! I am so curious to find out. Like I said in the intro I also really like how the time flows in this show.. there are bigger time gaps so there is bigger advancements made. Since Rimuru’s followers build their own little village I really like  this pacing. By putting RImuru out of commision it also does not feel forced and keeping his questions legit! I also really like the snarky tone he can have.. like when he is proud that Gobta learned and summon spell and says..  “Gobta rising quite a few points in the esteem of Rimuru”  and then as he watches the lesson that is mostly Gobta saying you have to go “nghnghngh”  he adds.. his teaching skills made him a few point lower in the esteem of Rimuru”  I love that type of humor!  It also had a few nice action moments.

On the negative side I don’t have a lot to say this week. I personally do still not care for all the girls holding the slime against their breast and him going all crazy over it but I can see why it’s in there! I still think not having those hormones should make that less appealing..but hey creative differences! What I am unsure about is the human trio. I think her name is Ellen.., or Eren not fully sure my sub is a bit off, Gibdo or Gido and Kabaru. They feel a bit  odd to me. I am not sure on what to think on them. I don’t think their appeal is to great and when Shizu kicked some group of giant’ ants their butts. I feel at least they could have supported her a bit, they are incapable sure .. but before they did not seem cowardly. Now they are just sorta there.. like Gobta was in the previous two episodes. I am not sure why the show feels the need to have these sort of characters around but it uses this a lot. The story so far could have been completely told without them , but like how Gobta gained an ability I am sure this will be good for something at least! Just right now.. they were a bit of dead air and I would have rather learned more about Shizu or see live in the Goblin village a bit more.

This is a set up episode done right more things are to come and this needed to be told!  There are some amazing implications that can be drawn from the dialogue that went on and I think the show is clever enough for this not to be a mistake a lot happend but it feels like a few thing did not matter that much.. so this episode is just good! Had a great time but on its own not THAT special but this doesn’t show always needs to be! For what this is, this is consistently a delightful watch.

Could it be possible that I will not love this as much as I think I would? I found myself asking this in the first act of this episode. Then I was quickly shushed and had to spend the next 5 minutes trying to get my heart shaped sparkly eyes to go back to normal again.

Cocona tries to pick up her school live again after her first adventure into Pure Illusion. Papika however thinks she found her partner and keeps trying to coax Cocona into a new adventure to find more of the wishing shards. Magical items they can bring back from Pure Illusion. When Corona’s pet Uexkull.. a green somewhat shiftable bunny comes with her to to school and flees from Papika Cocona’s trouble grow exponentially larger and she tells Papika to get lost she doesn’t belong in this school. So Papika enrolls and keeps stalking her. When Uexkull gets sucked up by a giant Vacuum hidden underneath a statue in the park Cocona and Papika get sucked into Deep Fantasy once more and they split up. Papika goes to get the wishing shard while  Cocona pursues the search of her bunny. When Papika accidentally activates a death trap that nearly burns Cocona and Uexkull  by dropping them in lava she unlocks magical powers much like her not so willing partner did in the previous episode.  After saving everyone both of them return to the real world and Cocona decides to join the organisation called Flip Flap and help Papika with these fun adventures. Dr Salt  a mysterious man with a fancy hairdo and a bit villainous shades tells them to see a certain person..and after getting locked up in what almost seems like one of those diver depressuring chambers..they seem to move into Deep Fantasy again ending the episode.

I LOVED the visuals of this deep fantasy setting! The colours were amazing! The Alice in Wonderland similarities were plenty yet it was still fresh at the same time.  I loved how Uexkull was almost a Jojo character in deep fantasy and protector. I love how this world building has no rhyme or reason, yet due to visual clues it has some machinations. There  world is incredibly zany but it does work.  That on-switch that Papika hits that puts Cocona out of trouble was there all along.. it makes no sense that it is there.. but it’s there long before it becomes a problem . The fact that the group ends up in a tunnel with a giant crushing metal object chasing them and a meat grinder in front.. comes out of nowhere but there is a logic to how the thing operates characters can use. Thus solutions and events are foreshadowed in a bizarre world as a result we get this fever dream sensation..but it is a few dream we can to an extend make sense of .we can still comprehend it. Both Cocona and Papika learn a lesson in this episode that brings them closer together. Papika learns to take responsibility for her actions and releases actions might have consequences while Cocona lets go of the idea of being always in control or having to be. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow!  Of course the visuals…I can’t say enough in praise of.. this thing is my jam!

I disliked how cold Cocona was in the first part of the story, again I get where she is coming from  but the whole will they/won’t they team up thing is a bit done to death and if you look at any cover art for this series.. which I am pretty sure you can’t escape from doing.. you will know exactly what the answer to that question is. I get her personality is uptight and I do get why she is annoyed at Papika it makes sense I just do not feel very invested in that part of the story because there is no tension.. of course they will go on more adventures.. their adventures is what the show will be about! Another thing I did not like.. well more in the sense that it confused me is the whole Bitey Bitey thing. Papika feels the need to bite in everything because she is a bunny now I guess and Cocona resists but I don’t really see where the bitey bitey comes from.. I mean why would she mind so much her bunny instinct tells her to bite something hard?  Why would it? I don’t see any other bunny instinct triggering either so is it a thing or is it actually something deeper.  Also why does the school have that vacuum cleaner?  As much as I love the surreal world building in the Deep Fantasy I would like the real world to be at least a bit of a counterpart to it. If Japanese schools have subterranean trash cleaning vacuums please let me know!

I saw some minor flaws with this episode but nothing I could not overcome. The highs it send me trough blow the lows out ot the water completely. I love this show so far. I really do! I like it enough that it might get a very high ranking amongst the anime I have seen.  So with that it gets it’s second highest score possible.. and is 2/2 for that!


Hikaru no Go has had a few rough set-up episodes before. It isn’t always as strong  when it’s not centered around Go and while the matches are all hits.. set up , really swings a miss quite often for me! This set up episode however is great. It accomplishes so much.

We begin the episode with Haze high School, the one Hikaru goes to. TsuTsui, Mitani, Hikari and to lesser extent Akiri prepare to go to the Go Tournament. Well Akiri makes lunch and cookies and takes some more verbal abuse from Hikaru  but hey she is there! We see a tension front between Tsutsui and Mitani because the former things that cheating in the games final phase is very low. Akiri will also only give him cookies if he stops cheating. Their story is mostly about convincing Mitani to participated and  showing these tensions. The perspective then switches to Touya who finds out Hikaru is the third board.. oftenly the weakest player in Igo of a team. This means Touya wants to become third board as well.. a strategic thing he needs to face Hikaru or as Hikaru notices at the end of the episode.. it’s not him who is Touya here to play ..it is Sai. Posing an interesting Dilemma for Hikaru in the battles to come. Some dramatic stuff happens in between but it is all of no consequences. Touya defeats a fellow student, gets assigned first board… cries .. gets third board. Sees Hikaru at the tournament.

This episode once again is insanely strong at character building, Hikaru has his reasons to play but also reasons not to play, Tsutsui has his reasons to grow and we see Mitani develop a new negative trade. He can not handle being provoked or looked down upon. After hearing he was not good enough to face I think it’s Kaizo high school ? not sure.. those names don’t stick to me very well, he flips right around and wants to play in a tournament while earlier he would not.  I foresee this giving trouble and I think they need this trouble. I see this end in two ways.. Hikaru’s highschool gets eliminated early or maybe even Touya’s by a surprise force or Hikaru loses to Touya using his own strength and the latter is upset that Hikaru did not play his normal game. I do not think Hikaru can beat Touya here .. nor do I think Touya can accept a win here. It would ever those ties or even a character.  So I think what happens here sets up plenty of options. Maybe the school gets disqualified because Mitani cheats.. maybe Tsutsui gets distracted because he is watching Mitani to much , the show gives itself a lot of options and this is very clever. I also like how Kaizo/Akira’s School is depicted in much more grey shades than Hikaru’s .. it seems to depict their different mindset. Where Hikaru wants to experience things.. grow and come into bloom Touya is much more narrow minded.. focussed on a single goal his world is a lot gloomier Something that does seem directly reflected by their environment. The use of the main theme throughout this show when Akira talks to his father was very strong as wel showing his zeal is close to that of Sai’s. Strong stuff.

What I liked less in Touya’s duel with the now first board. It happens somewhere in the middle of the episode but it has zero consequence other than establish these two are miles apart and that  Akira does indeed deserve first board. I would have loved this duel if it actually meant Akira had to play first board and that he did not get to play Hikaru but a good cry invalidated this math. There was little at stake here too. What do we establish here that hasn’t already been established. I am also not sure if I as a teacher would allow a student to join a club just to play a single opponent then quit the club.. a person who causes that student so much stress he completely breaks down at  every single thought of said person. I think as a teacher I would rather protect my student from himself. He also has to protect the schools reputation or so he says so why would you pit your unbeatable player against possibly the one foe that can defeat him?  What if he loses! So I do get why he made him first board.. I do not get why he relented. Aikra just joined this school so they haven’t bonded that much yet sure time passed but this favouring the boy is exactly what causes him to be “bullied” I think for a teacher  that should weigh heavier than an obsession.. So again this show makes me question the gravity that is given to Go and honour. In a way I sometimes feel this story is written by a huge Go fan who gate-keeps that fandom by tying some super heay Go related emotions and honour to it. It just feels off.

Regardless of what that we got a pretty good episode on our hands here! I was engaged most of the time and I wasn’t sure if Akira would get his third board so the reveal felt quite shocking still. I honestly expected Akira to quit the team. I dont think we are ready for their next face won yet.. it’s top early. If Touya loses here I am not sure where they would do.. so I think they need an out.. lucky this show has written characters so well they have plenty! This episode really helped. 

So that concludes another week! The upcoming week will be something special where we celebrate the Blog’s .. and Pinkie the Character’s Anniversary! With something nice on Thursday, the actual Birthday and on Sunday when we conclude the week! Other than that we shall mostly be exploring what this blog means to me and what this community means to me!
On a personal description on this week for me! It started out with a low as toxic person in my life has been revealed to even more toxic as I thought they were. Devaluating me behind my back to make our mutual friends appreciate her more or talking bad about me just to have a conversation topic. It resulted in a major somatic stress induced stomach sickness that kept me very weak until Friday. Missed my tabletop-roleplays ..luckily since Friday more good things happend to me! I got closer to another friend, got invited to a party, and went out for drinks yesterday with a few friends. After the toxic beginning of the week I really needed this!
Now that party is about to start so I gotta work on my head a bit! See you in my Birthday week! Make sure to at least check out Thursday and Sunday’s posts.. but also all the other cool content!

Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventure 11

Hello again Island Guests it is time to watch some anime again! Last week we dropped Tower of God that really felt like a nothing show to me and replaced it with Flip Flappers this week! Karma must have been with me on that call because I think I had the best Saturday yet!

I loved this episode of BNA , I really did I am actually beginning to feel some sense the story may be a bit salvaged for me yet! While I previously thought it would  end up going nowhere with a super rushed ending I feel like everything falls into place a bit more naturally than I had first anticipated.

The episode begins with Michiru going to see Nazuna, who is throwing a big Live event where she can be the idol she really wanted. She and Michiru even decide she will sing “their song” .. that is the one that is on ending of each episode.  Apparently Allan has told Nazuna to confess she is human so that Beastman can see they are not that different after all, and that their symbol of hope can transcend species. This should relief them off the stress between human and beastman relations and should prevent the virus. Meanwhile Shirou tries to prevent Nazuna from doing exactly this.. aided by Flip that mafia whale we saw in the first few episodes.  Shirou beliefs that seeing their idol is a false one will actually trigger Nilvarsyl-Syndrome and allow Allan to force the beast man cure onto people. So he and Michiru face off as things become increasingly clear and agenda’s all fall into place. We even see characters from episodes that I deemed throwaway make a return to at least make these episodes a bit more digestible in hindsight as well. For example the major is rescued by Pinga. Nina flip is at the concert so that might deliver some tension still as well.  When Michiru stops Nazuna from confessing after a tense episode the weird priest dude unmasks her and triggers the mutations in beastmen causing them all to go feral. We see this plunge Shirou into a deep despair and he too succumbs to the syndrome as he becomes a giant wolf mutation. When Michiru tries to knock some sense in him she seemingly gets killed and that’s where we end the second to last episode of this show.

This episode did a great job of putting everyone into the mix for the final fight, nothing felt to forced or convenient unlike earlier episodes. It finally feels like the show is paying off and that results in a very satisfying and tense build up to a conclusion. I think this episode featured every single named character at least for a bit. Most plot points have been revisited and the sequences felt properly tense. The twist on the main character slapping sense in the deuteragonist was great! My favorite ..but most feared scene as well! I really did not think he would “kill” Michiru.  Of course her state is most likely not dead but I am genuinely worried about her! All tools at the disposal of the series seem to be used in this episode and I felt almost completely satisfied by this episode. I still think this series could have been a lot better if it had more time to tell this tale but with the allotted time left.. I was pleasantly surprised how dense yet manageable this episode felt. It didn’t use as much cheap gimmicks as some earlier episodes but instead banked on plot treats without forcing in a ton more exposition unlike the past two episodes. I loved the some of the fight moments now that there was more at stake. Shirou’s immortal body made some of the earlier fights a tad dull. 


The episode did not really have a lot of negatives, Pinga being there to rescue the major felt a bit forced, and water purifier boy was a bit obnoxiously present in the first part but all in all this was an episode I really enjoyed a lot. I do hope that Michiru isn’t actually dead or it will really sour the last episode for me , because I don’t really care about most people’s fate but Michiru I really want to live. I also noticed how a few beastman look a bit weird like Flip’s Killer Whale form. Finally I am not sure how I feel about how the ending is used in so many episodes as a relevant song. On the one hand I really like that the anime score matters to the series itself, on the other hand I find it a tad lazy since most of the times when Night Running plays characters just sit down.. or in this case just fly over a crowd it feels a bit like “dead air” with a mellowness that doesn’t really fit what Nazuna wants. As an Idol I expect her to sing something a bit more peppy. I get a vibe the singer really wanted the song to be made into a plot point for some reason.

This episode gave me faith back in this series and I hope for a conclusion that I can at least great as fine-apple. This series will probably not make any list of favourites for me any time soon but overall I had a great run so far. This episode makes me look at the final episode with hope instead of despair and I did not think it would be able to do that. If I had to change anything I might not have let Shirou change .. I am unsure if his Immortal Body blessed onto him should actually be prone to this. I liked it for now it build tension but whether I love this episode or think it is fine shall be only revealed to me next week.

This show continues to surprise me! I loved this episode a lot! I’d say this is my second to favorite viewing of the day due to the incredible progression the story makes, the development of all characters and the overall world building. This show is great.

In this episode we see how Samurai Flamenco and Flamenco girls move on after their separation in the last episode.  Mari has recruited her fellow idols into two new Flamenco Girls, Ruby and Sapphire and is teaching them the art of dickstomping. She is also trying to make moves on Goto who blows her off. Meanwhile the promotional guy whose name I can never remember puts out a bounty for 10 million yen for the reveal of Samurai Flamenco so everyone is after him. Luckily some Office Supply store decides to sponsor him and makes some office supply secret weapons for him.. like a Pencil case that can launch eraser that work like riot bullets or stapler Nunchucks which which he can staple enemies together or to the floor. Him getting silly sentai weapons is once more, advancement towards his journey to become an actual sentai. Mari recruiting two more magical girls makes it so that she is well on her way as well.. and when Goto saves Samurai Flamenco now even he seems very deeply involved.

The best moment in the episode to me .. is basically.. the entire episode where Samurai Flamenco is being chased by fans and social media people trying to unmask him. One Salaryman in particular seems to be riding his ass quite heavily and despite the danger to his own identity and safety Masayoshi says he has to take these risks because there is a small chance people actually need his help and that is his entire purpose! He is such a great hero at least when it comes to mindset.. he is aware of his flaws and embraces these  and we really see that model just trying to do right by the world! I love it so much! The way how the characters design slowly evolves is reflected by how Masayoshi evolves but that goodness in his heart is the one constant that keeps him the same character nonetheless. He grows but he doesn’t change. He simply adapts which makes him into a much more respectable character than some Shounen heroes who learn a new technique and suddenly act all heroic and noble out of nowhere at all.  Masayoshi has his zeal and it seems unwavering. The one constant element in a show where a lot can happen and it just feels really really strong in this episode! I got so much respect for the man! His new gadgets are hilarious as well! Bless him and bless this show!

The element I liked a bit less was Mari, she threw herself at Goto and failed because text-girlfriend showed up again. While she seems head strong and has her own sense of justice she got so bummed out from a simple rejection that I thought it messed her character up a bit for my taste. She manipulates her fellow idols with kisses, can flirt and manipulate everyone.. but she isn’t that much of a spoiled princess. She had more important things to do.. this made her a bit more shallow… now  don’t get me wrong she always had shallow traits but still this whininess she has to it seems contradictory to how Samurai Flamenco left her and how head strong and determined she is.Text-girlfriend annoyed me a lot less her text were kinda cute this weak but darn that woman can type fast. Also I am unsure how the Flamenco Girls dye their hair in a lighter shade, do they use spray on hair paint?  I am not sure but that  would really limit story options when a character is held up a bit.. it might result in a bit iffy moments later on.. though I think this show is clever enough to make it work but in a show this sensical that stood a bit out to me. And yes I know this show is weird.. but everything that happens makes sense within the confines of the world at least.

I really loved this episode , it introduced so many new elements to the story and nothing felt rushed. It is funny how each episode also follows the structure of famous sentai tropes but takes it in a very low key real world way. The episode with Red Axe for example was the fake Ranger while this episode reflected  the hypnotised innocents.  It’s a cute way to see that not only Masayoshi is a big sentai fan but the creators too. It feels satisfying on all levels and I was happy I saw this! This is better than just very good! So this episode gets my highest seal of approval!

This was another good episode of Slime! It was a lot of talking which was new for the show, but I was surprised how well those talks paid off! I was quite invested in them. 

The story picks up where we left it of in the last episode with Rimuru still being in the host club!  He’s being quite cute with the ladies when suddenly Vesta/Bester the minister steps in. He is surprised Kaijin  finished his order revealing he set him up to fail on purpose. When Rimuru gets a prediction from a Roma like woman who shows an image  of a woman he is allegedly meant to be with , Vesta interupts by trying to ban the slime from the club and pouring his beer on it. Which makes Kajin punch the guy and a trial starts.. which of course has been bought. The hero king Gazel Dwargo who watches the trial however intervenes and instead of a life working as slaves the dwarf artisans get exiled and adopted into Rimuru’s community instead. Vesta gets fired for his antis.. because he also faked injuries and the king orders a mysterious hooded figure to follow our beloved slime!  It’s very powerful. 

I liked this story better than the last episode! This one had some weight to it, yet still showed a lot of charm. This story reflects Rimuru’s life on the other side, where his life as a salary man had him suck up to his boss, be the one to entertain and not be one that is entertained. He was a guy that was afraid to step up for what is right.. while Kaijn does it without a second’s hesitation. It polarises these worlds and once again it reminds me of D&D. As a Dungeon Master myself I see a lot of these people who are oppressed by the shackles of daily life, who break free in the world of fantasy and just are unleashed. Kaijin represents that a bit for me while Rimuru of course kind of depicts the real life aspect of it. I really like world building like that! We flavour our fantasy worlds like that.. so stuff like this would happen in fantasy worlds! My favourite scene would be the speech of the king, he cares for his retainer and helps the dwarven blacksmith make up his mind.. using the trial to make him stick to the oath he made to Rimuru. The talk with Vesta afterwards telling him he severed bonds with a potential powerful ally using the potion as an example was very satisfying and him  fearing the slimes power asking it to be shadowed made me excited for the next episode.  The teasing with the mystery lady was also kinda clever.. how will a slime be with a girl?  I was intrigued!

This episode was great, though the talks could go on for a bit long. While we establish a trial is unfair it just kinda drags on, the talk about recreating the swords was given in the last episode so I find it unlikely that they would discuss it again. I see why you want to bring that element back and remind people but it felt a bit expositiony. The episode feels a bit like a setup episode and those usually aren’t the strongest in a shows lineup though this one had a strong twist at the end. My least favourite scene is when Rimuru gags Gobta in jail and tells him to call out for his tempest wolf partner to free him. As he did not want to get him involved in this trial.. which makes Gobta completely useless in this story.. he came for no reason at all other than a few gags on how much he sleeps. Now not everything has to be destined so I do not mind him doing less than Rimuru but taking him for nothing felt a bit silly. He could at least have woken up and had a bit of story or character added to him. Now he’s just there!

I liked this episode better than the last one , but I can see people easily being a bit bored by this one as well, so I would not be surprised if people would put this up as their least favourite episode so far. For me it reminded me of the D&D trope of the trial for misbehaving in a town .. that  I oftenly see happen. I liked that it was more narrative and less slapstick than the previous episode. While the episodes get the same grade this one is very close to being a grade higher while the last one was very close to being a grade lower..so within the grade they are about as far apart as they be .. an amazing episode regardless.

Eeeeeeeeek! Oh my Arceus!  This show has pink trains/street cars!  Also that art-style that surrealism … I think I might be in love! Forgive me if I use some terminology wrong I am afraid to google the correct one because I would not want to spoil myself but my! I loved this first episode.

We are introduced to our main characters Cocona and Papika. Papika seems to be some sort of witch/magical girl that flies around on a surfboard followed by her robot with a brain in it called Bu-chan. She apparently is looking for a partner and tries to find one manually while an Organisation tries to stop her from being silly but she escapes and quickly finds Cocona. A run of the mill schoolgirl who has to make a big decision  for a follow up school or something.. I could not quite  get what was going on.. but something like that! Stuck in her choice on where to go, she is bothered by her one friend who is a lot looser than she is.. picking a handful of schools including a boys school . She decides to seek out some peace and tranquility and finds a concrete sewer pipe thing in the wooded area near the school.  Papika had been sleeping in there waiting for Cocona to show up.. suddenly the organisation activates Bu-Chan and he takes them into a blackness.. using the concrete pipe to dive into Deep Fantasy.. I think that was what it was called.  Transported to a snow world the two discover this new magical world with sweet snow. Having snowball fights and making snowmen! At night when they try to camp in an igloo they are attacked by some big creatures that cause Cocona to lose her glasses. Chasing the creatures Papika ends up in a deadly situation when suddenly a power awakens in Cocona that allows her to save Papika.. the two then are returned to the real world where Papika returns the glasses of her presumed partner who refuses to go on more adventures with her.

That plot seems to make no sense but that is basically what happens! Darn I loved this! The way how Papika flirts with Cocona was cute but forcefully making it funny as well. I dislike the lewding stuff,  but this felt innocent even if it might not be! I liked how managed to display so many of the tones it might have in a single episode. We saw the cute slice of life stuff from Cocona, the weird CGDCT stuff from Papika with the snowball fight with her and her robot, the Yuri stuff between the two girls and of course surrealism that reminded me of Kyousougiga blended with Madoka. Kyousougiga as in it felt very much like a world that was “designed” to be weird like how the world behind the painting was created.  The Madoka elements came from the monsters, the way the powers are used and also the implied darkness when Papika is being whipped and seriously injured by these attacks.  Visually I got some Liz and the Blue Bird vibes, that picture book, casually coloured in aesthetic.  I really like that they do with the eyes, they felt super unique and particularly crazy and surreal contributing to the whole atmosphere. The harder colours and brighter colours on the characters really makes them stand out and like it  feels genre wise I also feel design wish it is a bit of a mishmash of styles.. which I really could appreciate. My favourite scene is the one where Papika tries to seek some closeness with Cocona in a build igloo. She knows  why Cocona is there even if Cocona doesn’t know herself yet and she just runs with it!  Having had that one meaningful gaze. The school-girl however is much more uptight and shoves her off. It was cute and unlike some other shows it did not feel  to forced Tsundere or something. Just cute and funny!

Negatives are up next, but I already told you I have fallen in love with this first episode so there isn’t a whole lot for me to tell here. I guess my least favourite scene was the cliffhanger of Cocona telling Papika she won’t be going on more adventures. Which isn’t really bad but  that was a bit of a generic ending.. it makes total sense for the character to say it but we all know she will have a change of heart or be dragged in anyway. So  I always feel this rejection bit is somewhat pointless. There would not be a whole lot of show if she never saw Papika again or went on an adventure with her nor would they reveal her powers if she isn’t going to use them! So while I totally get it  and in character it makes sense I don’t think they will fool anyone into saying ‘OMG did she just reject her.. will they not go on adventures?’  So I might have appreciated it if they just went…”well obviously these two are going to do stuff together let them just accept it so we can focus more on the stuff you want to watch this show for’.. but that really is a nitpick here!

I LOVED this! I almost had anime girl eyes sparkling while watching this! There was something there that just caught me and from the first scene I already knew.. okay this is one of those shows you are going to love! Love at first sight! Everything so far tells me I am going to love this show, the animation, the world building , the themes, the tones. It all sang to me. Having read Mari’s review of the show and having seen GalvanicTeam’s  YouTube video I knew I was going to like it a lot.. but this first episode made me sad… sad that I put it in my Saturday morning lineup and that I am going to have to wait 13 weeks to be able to finish it! But it will be weeks that I will cherish because I love this! Highest Grade obviously!

Oh my I did not expect THAT to happen. Hikaru no Go manages to give me one of my favorite episodes so far, after perhaps “the beautiful battle”. This episode was intense, heartbreaking and really made me warm up to Hikaru again whom I had begun to cool of a bit too over the past few episodes. Man this shows creators are good at dragging me back in when I am about to fall out!

In this episode we see Hikaru and Sai rush to the Go-Lounge to stop Mitani from cheating any longer, but when they come in they find Mitani already dueling a drunkard for 10.000 yen. Believing he is an easy target, Mitani forgoes any handicaps and plays the man, seemingly to easily win over him fair and square. Yet then the man suddenly reveals he is not that drunk and it was a ruse to win the bet! He switches hands and suddenly starts playing seriously, cheating himself to claim a swift and harsh victory over Mitani!  Revealing he has been hired by the lounge owner to teach the boy a lesson , crushing the boys spirit in the proces. So now Hikaru and Sai turn on this man.. trying to win Mitani’s money back for him.. losing his money briefly and being betrayed by the few people he trusted should be a lesson enough! It turns out plenty of people were aware of Mitani cheating, but when they made small bets, the’d happily sponsor him  knowing how poor he actually was. Like a grandparent would sponsor their grandchild in need, simply because e played with them. However when bets grew bigger the lounge owner could not stand for it anymore and hired this guy..who brutally took all his money.  Sai and Hikaru face off against the man hoping that giving him the money back would let them join their club.

Jeesz what talk about a lucky stroke on episodes! This episode was incredible as well. The whole Sai/Hikaru Dynamic is enforced here! This really felt like a match for Sai in the end, while in the last episode I’d say both would have a stake in defeating Mitani. This subverts the problem of either underusing Sai or not letting Hikari fight any relevant battles on his own the duel with Mitani would have caused.. either way would have left something to be desired but this way.. I was 100% on board. Such a great call!  It also made Mitani a lot more human  simply by facing himself a sort of “adult version” of himself.. a “if you keep going on this track you become this guy”  vibe so much narrative room has been given for the character to develop. It also shows how the main character does not drive the plot.. it happens on it’s own like an actual living world. Without Hikaru , Mitani would still have learned his lesson.. just quite possibly harsher. In Yu-gi-oh or Beyblade or name your sports/game anime bad characters usually are only redeemed by losing to the main character, they stand still when the protagonist isn’t involved in their live. Both Akira and Mitani so far have not been bound by this. While Akira wants to face Hikaru and get strong enough to face him it is not as if he can’t grow without Hikaru. The  world lives without the main character and this episode highlighted that with the duel between Mitani and the cheatbusting guy!

Sai’s duel against this guy was a bit of a let down as most of it is skipped. Now this comes with the sport so it is perfectly understandable but I would have liked to see the main gain some despair during the duel not only after, I would have loved to see the forfeit happening rather than the pan the camera to reveal a shocked face but like with most episodes today that is just a preference rather than an actual gripe. The only true negative I had was the shopkeeper using an exposition thing to ruin a beautiful scene.  When Mitani loses he comes up 20 yen short of having the full amount of 10.000 yen and Hikaru wants to lend it to him ..but Mitani wants nothing to do with him lending it from the shopkeeper.  When he finds out it was the shopkeep that set him up however he puts back those 20 yen and asks it from Hikaru.. making him the lesser evil of the two. Also stating that Mitani now plans to never return to this place after finding out.  A bit later when Mitani left the old man more or less explains this and it took the shine of that amazing imager that really represented Mitani’s character.

That could not ruin this episode for me though! It was beautiful!  The clever twist solved narrative problems and also made me embrace Mitani in case he does end up joining the team. While I still feel this shows pacing is a bit off, resulting in a bit of an up-down-up-down-up episode structure.. in terms of enjoyment this episode was definitely an up. In fact it was one of the biggests ups I have had with this series to date. I was really engaged with the matches and the stake being something more than “honour” this time really made me relate to it a lot more. It wasn’t just about the love for the game or the honor of a match, Mitani plays to be able to enjoy his life a little, to not be so dirt poor! Hikaru played to redeem a guy.. and to win him over, while Sai had his code his memories involved.
Highest praise! Highest grade! 

And with that another is done! I had a great week! Thursday I had lunch with Fatima Minusima (Fake name from an earlier blog) which was great to see her again! We had a good talk and it was nice to catch up in this social distancing time! Friday I went to the zoo and head diner for a friends birthday! One of my best friends I shall name Hub-Hub Pilana. I saw plenty of weird types of ducks at the zoo and I had delicious tapas and a pink cocktail! So it was a good day! Yesterday I saw the movie Unicorn shop with my lady friends.. we had a girls night with some wine, snacks and this delightfully odd chick flick. At the moment of writing though I had a big fight with a friend! I will probably have to cut her out my life! She gossips about my health situation, both mental and physical behind my back and tries to force me to adhere to a standard I am unfit for. She literally gives me nightmares when she is like this and last night after I found out she has done this.. it was the same. So I offered her a chance to apologise because she really hurt me but those calls have gone unanswered.. so next week I think I will start with a friend less, but a brighter cleaner future ahead! May your next week be clean and bright as well!

Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventure 10

Hello Island Guests, the week is all over again! So I watched some anime again!
This week I had a few issues that prevented me from watching Saki in the evening so I did not make any progress with that! Yet for Saturday I finally have gotten myself some Unicorn Fruit Loops and I poured myself a cold bowl of milk and I watched five anime!

I actually really liked this episode of BNA , the past two were so so with an increasing fear of things going south at the end.  While this episode made me worry even more about the future I actually had some fun with this.

As we slowly so the plot begin to unravel  we see that Allan Silvasta is trying to create a cure to turn beast man into humans, which upsets Shirou because he does not feel he is something that needs to be cured. Alan however tells him that part of the Beast Man Genetic code has a defunct that turns them wild and feral when they live amongst other species of  beastman. This is called Nirvasyl Syndrome named after the city where Shirou once lived. Where the event actually happend. The humans attacking the beast man city where also lead by a Sylvasta causing the god wolf to go feral and attack Alan and his cure development production line. Michiru stops him and he goes renegade. The mayor also finds herself in a lot of trouble after the minister of Japan betrays here.. who also has contact with Alan. Shirou seems to team up with flip, Michiru with Nazuna and  who knows what happens to the Mayor.. in the end we know little as we move towards the finale of this series.

This episode to me succeeded quite well in building up tension, it also put the last two episodes a bit in place. We needed those elements  because they all play a critical role in whatever deception Alan is up too. Even now I am not fully sure what he is up to.. or if he is even that evil. It fits that cyberpunk dystopian undertone that had been in this show without the actual cyberpunk element. This was enforced by the synthwave music during the explanation, the apparel of all the medical droids and tech devices that stopped Shirou. My favorite scene was in fact that synth wave supported exposition scene. I am not sure he is that evil because he did not mistreat Michiru in any way either, would she be something in the way he could have easily dealt with her there… so this is a strength that can later turn into a massive weakness if it turns out her is like , evil-evil.  I do think I can understand his motivations though and I do think that is what a show like this needs. It is on that political side of the spectrum.. that should deal with grey areas and not make it very black and white. I do fear this a fake out but for now.. I do like this set up.

What I liked less about this episode is the fact that it once more is almost entirely a single set episode. The last episode was the room where Nazuna was being scanned the episode before it was only the terrace where Michiru had a talk with mamma Melissa and episode 6 mostly took place on the square.  BNA can feel very static at times. Almost theater like which is a problem if you are trying to show how people in the city are slowly going crazy. We see this in episode 1 until 4 that is true but after that we have mostly been having very tiny self contained stories where these elements drift to the background a bit. Alan’s talk is so convincing his betrayal of the major seemed odd. It seems as if the show could be resolved without action but trough smarts and that it might be a battle of health versus basic rights which could be very interesting to see people struggle with that.. but it also feels like they are going to backpedal out of that idea. Like watching a circus actor do a really interesting stunt but there is a safety line and a net and they drew a target on the net for them to drop in as well.  It takes away the tension.. so the way the Major was framed or seems to be framed had to be my least favorite moment of the show it felt confusing to me.  Could you just not stall her out bureaucracy is a thing and she knows it so you could have played that string.

All in all I had a sweet time with BNA Episode 10. It wasn’t amazing and the episode themselves really begin to creak with the building pressure of the approaching end. It doesn’t do much wrong other than suffer under a to strict countdown. I do still quite like this show but I think it will be a solid 7 out of 10 and maybe a 6 or even a 5 if they really fumble ending for in the long run. This show is like a taco,  but in some bites there is to much lettuce, in some bites we only taste shell… but this bite was pretty well mixed.. however those last two bites are bound to be overstuffed. I am happy I had a good bite .. but I am at the point where I can enjoy it less, because it is such a sloppy overall experience.

Episode Score

I really enjoy this series and this episode was no different. Samurai Flamenco and Slime is what get me out of bed on Saturday! Super excited to watch another episode! They consistently make my day!

We see a very natural continuation of the Samurai Flamenco and Flamenco Girl dynamic as it slowly reaches it rupturing point. Maya wants to be in the spotlight so much that she pushes Masayoshi away using her cruel and harsh techniques. She is a hero for fame while he is a hero for justice. It makes the two non compatible and doesn’t  adhere to Masayoshi’s code.  When he is cast as an extra on a Sentai Show and he can finally make it big in that industry he also begins to see the darkside and the hypocrisy of that world.. he begins to see what he does is fake. Meanwhile Goto is given a “fake” job as well forming some project that deals with the Flamenco fighters in a PR stunt like thing.  Even as a blogger I have dealt with that.. why am I doing this struggle, I think most of who ever pursued anything ungraspable can relate to this struggle. A postumes gift from his grandpa on his 20th birthday offers us some origins of the Samurai Flamenco concept and on Masayoshi’s values as we see him return to his ways with new found confidence and making sure he follows HIS path! Kudos!

I think I had one of my favorite moments in the series when Masayoshi got that gift from his grandpa. It shows so much goodness. It basically validates that Samurai Flamenco should exist.. because Masayoshi believes.. he is a symbol for justice because that is the value Masayoshi pursues.  While he loves Sentai shows.. he always to an extend knew they are fake and he has to find his own way in the real world that is real.. while he can be inspired by them he isn’t a 1 on 1 copy of them. Most of all he won’t have his treasured values be corrupted by someone who looks at it from a different angle. The separation of Girl and Samurai was also very strong in my opinion! Both value their dream to much to give it up for the other, even though one seems more noble than the other I am very happy they did not make Maya flip like that.. No one should ever have to comprise on their dream! Placing Goto in a similar situation as Masayoshi made this episode even more relatable, the two seem to reflect of each other. Both are unhappy and struggle with their job, both have partner issues and question if what they do now is the real thing.. it gives the episode a strong sense of theming throughout.. they mirror each other with some different choices. 

My biggest gripe was this episode was the exact same as I had with the previous episode. Goto’s girlfriend who only exists in text messages. I can’t read Kanji and the subtitles are a bit slow to follow it all because they only appear after a whole message is being typed and since we have never seen her it lacks any form of impact. Sure he stares at her umbrella with that cute octopus a lot which shows he cares for her but it is still pretty hard to care for a character you have never seen.  Maya crushing on Goto gave me a good chuckle when she rolled around with her Dakimakura of a uniformed man saying she needed more but again her relationship with Goto is from afar with him being unaware of it.  So as far as the “romantic” subplots go  I do still feel rather un-engaged.  I am not sure if I should be engaged by it but these moments are fairly frequently present so perhaps I am.. I am not sure! I would prefer this to be a bit more minor or at least be told through dialogue with Goto telling Masayoshi his girlfriend blew him off again or something. It would impact me just that bit more, I could “hear” in his voice that he is hurt… in text not so much.

While not as strong as the last two episodes this one still was very good from throughout it’s entire runtime.  It deals with a lot of stuff that needed to be resolved in a very human way. The writer seems to really understand what drives these people and Goto Maya and Masayoshi all seem quite real to me. Representing something like the Realist, The Dreamer and the Idealist yet all pursuing the same keyword “justice”.  It really dig how this episode highlighted that to us and how  we can be different while being the same and it doesn’t mean blindly having to support others if it endangers your own desires!  Being able to understand the mindset of characters is super important in a show that is THIS character driven. This episode nails that brief yet again and provides some good entertainment to boot.

Episode Score

My least favorite episode of Slime so far that still was a very enjoyable experience to me. If this is going to be my “low point” Slime might even become a personal favorite of mine.

In this episode Rimuru, Rigur, Gobta Ranga and some other goblins and tempest wolves have reached the dwarven city in order to trade for knowledge in craftsmanship. However when some Ruffians at the door give Rimuru a hard time an act of self defence and trying to scare them off results in a small disaster with people massively losing their minds and soiling themselves in fear leading to the slime and Gobta being imprisoned. After helping the security forces of the dwarves with potions and saving their lives in combat with some underground monster, whose name I forgot on the account that it is fought of screen. Rimuru stays behind in jail but is released after the potions helped them in the battle and he is to meet a great blacksmith, using his devour and copy skills he makes him a few magic weapons and earns his gratitude and a trip to an elf host club where he is hugged and held as pet under some blobs these woman carry themselves.. as a mysterious figure approaches the club. 

This episode was a bit “simpler” in nature than the other three episodes, less is set up and it’s mostly enjoyable on a comedy level that just feels satisfying and cute.  My favorite scene is where Rimuru goes out and makes swords for the master blacksmith, from the way he talks to the showmanship on display it just felt great. You can really see this former salaryman starting to love his new life as a slime and finally getting some respect. The fact that Rimuru’s power comes from something other than sheer combat force and more so on a reliance in strength pays off once more!  It really endears me to this character a bit more. As a 33 year old myself I find traits in him of a person who has seen and experienced the other side a bit..that insignificance that a teen doesn’t quite get.. so yes I really loved that.  I also really enjoyed the innocent of Rimuru in jail, not breaking out as well as getting in trouble for performing to well in a certain situation. It reminded me off classical D&D adventures.. this stuff happens a lot there! So I really liked the jail bit as well, especially since there was no way to hold Rimuru properly since jails and slimes don’t combine. But yes that just felt so right to me.

Kicking in an open door, the scene I did like the least was the scenes where Rimuru was lewding the elves. I get it to a certain extend.. he is a predator after all and he likes the concept of boobs and all that since he never experienced any so to a point I could get behind this. Still I have some questions.. for example it does seem that Rimuru is really prone to share slime biology so I would imagine that it doesn’t have that high of a libido in the physical sense. A lot of girls think the slime is cute and hug it like a pet underneath their breasts but I sure as heck would not cover myself or my breasts in slime..let alone sentient slime. I guess they were paid but even then.. why would the dwarves think a slime is interested in elfen women? It doesn’t really seem like the first thing you think of when you see a slime. Most of the goblins and all the wolves stayed behind so Gobta and Rimuru could visit the village, why did they come in the first place then? Clearly Rimuru is strong enough  to hold his own ? Maybe because they want to follow him? I do not know but I lacked the sharpness  from before, like how comedy is more set up for comedy’s sake again.. which isn’t bad.. just not as awesome as some stuff it did before! 

I had another blast with Slime so while I can point out a few flaws ..it’s all more in the “less awesome than” category than the actual flaw category. I just like the world building of this show a lot , while the humans seem like total jack-asses this show puts a light on the other races still. I just liked the goblins a bit more than the dwarves and well .. the elves felt a bit to Twi’lek like for my generally Gray-Sexual like tastes.  It’s was still perfectly enjoyable and I laughed and got excited. I felt good and cheered up while watching and want to watch more of it. So that’s always a good sign.. a very good sign!

Episode Score

I did not like Tower of God Episode 3 a lot, I felt the plot droned on, had poor pacing and little interesting character development. It felt very colour by numbers to me, not surprising me and just feeling like a bootleg Hunter X Hunter. 

I planned to give this a chance untill episode 6 but after today’s episode I think I am going to call it quits right here. While this episode definitely was better than the last one.. I felt overwhelmed by not giving caring about anything and I still think the writing is extremely lazily! Given that the big cliffhanger on episode 3 basically is the same cliffhanger as the one we got in episode 4 as it had no pay off before. When I started Saturday Morning Adventures I decided to follow very strict rules to make it feel like a Saturday Morning show line up .. I had to put a bit of effort in my shows and give each show at least 6 episodes to win me over. However I found myself so painfully uninterested in this show that I am pretty sure 0% of those watching Pinkie’s Saturday Morning Channel is having a good time with this show..because I am the only one I am doing this for! So why waste more time writing about it after todays episode? It’s just not for me!

While I take you to this episode I will explain my feelings as to why I will drop it. We continue to crown trial in this episode and Anaak has to defend her crown from a few assailants. Including that sleeping guy whose name I forgot.  We see the two bladed samurai guy take out a lot of people while the little lizard girl uses her special weapon to defeat the sleeping guy who turns out to be  powerful mage . While it’s nicely brought visually it lacked any impact for me, we already knew she had a blade similar to Bang’s because the same logo has been shown several times.. so that was not much of a reveal. The sleeping guy being a mage did nothing for me either..mostly because the only trait the guy had so far was that he sleeps a lot. Obviously he must be powerful… but the fact that he is a mage.. well that is nice but it didn’t do anything for me, he had no build up yet so he could do anything and I would believe it, it doesn’t tie neatly in the sleep theme either so it doesn’t feel rewarding.. for example say if he woke up super grumpy and turned into a barbarian like rage.. THAT I would have found rewarding.. here it felt like just a power to give him a thing. I know liking a character theme to their powers can feel a bit forced, but at least I would have felt something. It felt like he was really meant to be impressive.. but he did not actually hit anything nor was it show how powerful his magic could be..its just there. Anaak’s whip is nice but it felt like something that would be in Bleach.. and now this show had two shows  I saw heavy influences off and both are better than this show (for the most part).

Bam’s sword begins to react to Anaak’s sword and she wants to kill him because those blades belong to the princesses of Jahad, of which there are 13 named after the months.. +1 I guess. His blade representing March and hers April. Okay.. that’s neat I guess?! A bit boring flavoring to be fair. Leaving the throne to eye up Bam gets Anaak disqualified though so her group can leave the arena without being killed, just as the group with the sleeping guy  retreated seeing Anaaks weapon. Conveniently this happens to all the important characters. Once more contributing to me how forced this plot feels. Everyone has to make it out alive Due to the animation style you can sort of tell which characters are important as well, though I cant tell extactly what.. but side characters seem to get al lot less love and attention. After big Deus Ex Machina 1 and 2, Bam’s group participates in the game. When Khun uses his magical bag to beat all 6 opponents with a knife and wind skills.. making him feel even more like Killua to me.. both are air elementals as well. Unlike HunterXHunter his powers aren’t really explained.. he just absorbs a huge spell attack with his bag, can clone items in that bag and he can conjure up Tornado’s from Arceus knows where. When a guy EXACTLY  dressed like Zorro from One Piece showed up..next to a shadowy guy who proclaims his powers were that of a rubber body I completely tuned out. Thats 3 shows it mimics now that are better than this.

Every fight so far felt completely inconsequential to me and stakes extremely low.  Obviously Anaak is important so she can not get hurt so BOOM , disqualified, obviously sleeping guy was build up so he could not stay and fight to the death even if he wanted to, and obviously Rachel isn’t going to kill anyone who matters in this next trial so that set up of her character will not pay off at all. To me this show is the equivalent to someone setting up a line of domino’s and then live streaming topping them over, some creations are creative and look nice but we can still tell what is going to happen with very standard type characters that just seem to be  taken from random shonen shows and put together again.  While this show isn’t particularly bad I just find it very VERY uninteresting.  Like a german car! It goes vroom, it is fuel efficient and it does what it needs to do.. but it will never surprise you. It can go fast enough to keep you somewhat entertained but to me it lacks any form of own personality..it just took what works well from others and makes something that is okay.

I feel if this show had focused on one battle at a time and let us learn more about a characters abilities as we go on I might be more into it.. now it’s basically Deus Ex Machina solving problem one, into the fortunate event solving the second. It’s a show where the characters are powered up by the plot to drive the story fourth because the story needs to be move forward. I feel  like the characters are completely interchangeable with each other Anaak could be on Bam’s team instead of Rak and nothing would really change! Khun could be replaced with the sleeping guy.. and instead of the magic bag he would just dream up chocobars for Rak..it doesn’t matter. I can’t help but feel like I am watching an okay fan fiction turned into an actual anime when I watch this. The visual style feels to layered to me with characters being on a different layer than the world making me feel even more disengaged.
No need for an episode score for this one because Tower of God’s status is:

Today i saw Aa nice set-up episode with some minor flaws that most likely will be among the lesser memorable episodes in the series for me. Yet also an episode that tells me that the guys responsible for this really know their cinematography and storytelling. 

We return to Hikaru after two episodes of Akira just to be introduced to another addition to the cast.  Mitani is a guy from Hikaru’s school who solved their Go puzzle poster which was seen by Akiri .. who apparently was not a part of the Go club despite constantly being their. Surprising even the captain. After eating some Ramen when Akiri runs away angry again Hikaru finds out there is another Go Lounge nearby where he conveniently meets this Mitani guy, quite a promising Go player who plays matches for money! Yet what makes him different is that he cheats! After beating Tsutsui in a match by once again cheating he runs off again not interested in the Go club! Hikaru chases after him to challenge him to a match and change his mind and his ways.

I love the introduction of the new character Mitani , while arguably seeing him in the Go Café felt a bit to convenient I love what he brings to the table and how his motivations to play are so different from the rest. Mitani is a poor guy who plays Go for money because he wants to buy stuff he can not afford otherwise.  Since he is poor and can not afford to lose money  he also resorts to cheating, something Hikaru did not have to deal with before.  Something that makes him truly unique. Go isn’t a passion for him, neither in the good way nor the bad, it is just a thing he happens to be good at and can make a buck with. He is also a pace disruptor and manipulator, in his duel with Tsutsui he eggs the guy on to make moves faster and faster.. in order to force him to to think of his move in Mitani’s turn instead of his own, by calling him slow. This results him to not pay as much attention the cheaters move who then tricks Tsutsui into making another move, disqualifying himself. I also like how Sai finally speaks up about not having been able to play for a while that was what started this whole thing in the first place so I am glad it was at least acknowledged.. the show really answered the questions I had as a viewer..why isn’t that a thing? I also feel that facing a cheater could be both interesting to Sai and Hikaru as an opponent due to the unpredictability of it all.

Akiri gets completely duped again though. Hikari makes her angry again and she leaves upset and no one chases after her, despite how much time and effort she has put into helping this Go Club and how much she provides. By now I would even expect Tsutsui to follower her and given how important this club is to Hikaru I would have loved so see at least some decency towards his lady friend who supports him so loyally. I really feel for the poor girl  and as a result I do think less of the two boys so that is a bit  that  could be improved upon.  The pacing of the go matches this week also felt a bit off, they did not feel exicting or tense they just happend.  That cinematography though.. how the camera angels in to see Tsu locked in though.. in order to also distract the viewers attention of the board as if we are watching trough his eyes.  The way the camera does a frog perspective shot from the Go board in the go parlor to show what part of the field Mitani’s opponent is counting.. showing what is in his sight form a reverse angle to emphasise that this is all he sees. I really loved that. 

I was impressed by this episode of Hikaru no Go but from a much more clinical perspective. What impressed me is more on a technical level than the actual episode itself.  The writing the cinematography, the way stuff is set up smartly. For the actual events in this episode I feel less excitement it, I wasn’t bored exactly but like I said I doubt I will remember this episode for to long, it just feels a bit irrelevant.. considering what’s about to happen next. The whole Sai committed suicide over being tricked into “cheating” and all raises the tension for next week’s episode for me! Meaning I will probably only remember that part of the encounter in the end. It’s too good to be just mediocre though so this week we are happy with the new review system and will use one of the new rankings to the maximum effect! 

Episode Score

Another Week’s worth of anime done! Real life me had a bit of difficulty coping with humanity as it is right now, spread across all factions ideologies and belief I see so much mean spirited behaviour as each other. I considered getting of Twitter but I opted out of that for now. I had a family event Thursday and my father really shunned me a bit which..always was the case but after not having him seen him for almost six months this time it hurt a bit extra. Which resulted in a bit of Somatic Stress Disorder Nausea that still lingers a bit. While I love the summer, the heat in this case did not help. So if I was more silent to you this week or missed a post.. I have in a bit of hide away mode this past week.

In more positive news! My blog Aniversary is coming up and I am looking for ways to celebrate! If you have a good idea please leave it in the comment or poke me on twitter…while the profile lasts of course! I hope you had a great week though and I wish you all an amazing next one as well!

Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventure 9

It’s the end of the week again so I am telling you about my Saturday-Morning Anime Instead of Cartoons adventure! The one where I schedule in commercial breaks and hard timelines..just like it used to be back in the days of the living room with cereal. I had a stuff stomach ache while watching my shows today so let’s see if that left me a bit more crabby and harsh to shows or that it made me appreciate it all more.

Oh BNA… if only you were longer, with only 3 more episodes to go it becomes harder and harder to ignore that this will not end well for the show as todays episode offered us basically just a exposition dump.

It’s the big “this is how the pieces all seem to fit together” one but it is also one that clearly is not the full truth , more should be going on or the last three episodes will fizzle out hard, with Michiru being asked by Alan Sylvasta to leave Nazuna alone while they do research on her. You see it is revealed that Sylvasta pharmaceuticals was responsible for Michuru and Nazuna’s transformation. A mix up happened that caused them to be administered contaminated blood after their accident. Michiru also finds out the cult has more or less been working with the human chemist/bioengineer to make the people less “resistant” to the idea of a cure..like making them belief god is here so they can pass the cure as a godsend.. or at least have her promote it as such. It does feel like an important episode and judged completely on is own .. this episode has a lot of stuff happening.. but with what I have seen I find this episode extremely pointless.

Let’s start with the positive things though, if you haven’t been paying attention to the series or if you have been left completely oblivious to the inner machinations this episode does an okay job on tying all those clues it left behind in the previous episodes together. What is being truth in this episode is obviously a half-truth still feels like a kinda welcome pad on the back for people figuring it out! So I WAS right that they got infected due to their accident! So the cult WAS involved with the pharmaceutical company. It all fits the narrative the story has been building up to and it can feel kinda rewarding to see these little hints pay off now. It also does manage to shift the tone. My favorite moment came from Michiru trying to save Nazuna from some weird scanning device that has her encapsulated as well as her  tracking her to said machine. The whole rescue sequence does show how Michiru has grown and how she has become familiar with her powers and can even make use of them in combat. It shows that she is ready for the final part of the show. Michiru meeting her friend with the water purifier was cute too!

What I did not like about the episode doesn’t really have to do with the episode itself.. well it does.. but it’s bigger. My problem is..from my perspective.. we already knew ALL of this that was in the exposition dump, those big reveals have been set up by the show so well before that nothing comes as a surprise here. They really make a big thing of the whole working together with the cult thing, the hospital infection thing and take clips from earlier episodes to show how well everything ties together… yet everything ties so well together… that I remember! They did a great job on pointing out what was important before that this reminder is rather pointless. I mean sure narrativly Michiru needs to find out..but why waste half an episode on telling us what we already know?

You could just have shown him talking to her briefly telling the basic connections and then cut away to actually further the story ..but no we are treading walked ground for the third time in a 12 episode series. It kinda feels like this episode was made for people who watched this show while playing with their phones.  While I’d say the episode is fairly solidly written I do feel a bit insulted as how dumb this episode thinks we are that we need this callback. The show is running out of time and now wasted an episode. While again.. not persé a weak episode..it does feel pointless.. since I do like this show in general.. that to me is a bigger sin right now.

Episode Score:

This was with distance the best thing I have seen today, I was having anime girl eye sparkles while watching this episode because it was that amazing. The best episode of Flamenco so far, best episode of today and probably one of my favorite episodes (top 3)  in all the 45 anime episodes I have watched for this series so far.

I loved what they did with Maya!  In this Episode we see that Masayoshi has been training with Red Axe and has become more combat capable! As a result he is now actually able to stop criminals and this results into a new influx of popularity. This hinders Masayoshi from doing his job so he flees, into a crime in progress. However when these criminals knock him out and threaten to reveal his identity for the million yen bounty a pink Hummer crashes into their hideout..revealing a new heroine! Flamenco Girl! Maya’s alter-ego  who wants to partner up with Masayoshi! However her ways are much more brutal and quickly become a problem for our wanna be hero! When Goto gets hurts because of their antics he is going to have to re-evaluate his values.

This episode is truly amazing throughout! So many great choices are made here. First the fact that Samurai Flamenco is powering up from having a mentor is great. It feels very sentai like.. but also polarises Gotou because now it’s easier to go to far! Sugoi! Introducing Maya as a new Sentai element is amazing as well, it helps push Masayoshi delusions and enforce them , being a nice counterpart to the break on the series that is Gotou (in a good way though). Her being obsessed with magical girls instead of sentai makes it interesting.. like as if their Sentai Powers come from their fanbases.

Could Gotou become the blue Kamen Rider Sentai in the show? Of course he has to be blue because he is a cop!  Maya being quite violent and using actual weapons also a great way for Samurai Flamenco to find his way. When she hurts Gotou to flee you can see him feel conflicted.. this new way does not work for him. We see him make her apologise to the cop the next day showing he has taken back control. I think not showing their conversation yet is great, as it would hurt their characters, now they just worked it out somehow character intact.

I loved almost everything in this episodes, we see so many important things..like how being a hero is more important to Samurai Flamenco then his friendship to Gotou, it pains him but he acknowledges it and tries to find his balance.  Maya being a girly counterpart to  Masayoshi makes her such an interesting addition now! I love her! What I did not like AS much was Gotou himself though.. there was this really weird thing with him and text messages with his girlfriend where he went home and had the next day calling off a date in texts..but he he cancels a date with his invisible girlfriend but everything happens through text chat. Why could he not call?! Half of the time he was just outside..it feels like we are supposed to care about their relationship but it doesn’t feel real enough to be engaged with that. Still that is a nitpick that did not make me enjoy the episode less.. I just would have fangirled even harder if they made it more impactful! Still my highest grade can be awarded to this episode without a doubt in my mind.

Episode Score:

I can’t help but love this show! Everything it does has this wholesome touch to it , even if they don’t shy away from the roughness that would be a fantasy world either. As a result it’s not sickeningly sweet…but still adorable! A perfect breakfast!

We see Rimuru prepare to stop the direwolves attacking the goblins, he does this by organising the green little guys behind a fence and having them fire arrows while using his own spider skills to set up webs and metal traps. Once the Direwolf leader has met quite a visceral and bloody  depicted ending Rimuru eats it to acquire a new form and some abilities, allowing the Dire-Wolf’s son to swear loyalty to him. Having united the wolves and the Goblins , Rimuru decides to name everyone not knowing that if a monster gets a name it can evolve but also that it costs magic to do so! As a result he overuses it and slips into a coma only to find out everyone has evolved..except for the one he named Gobuto. To help the now Hobgoblins Tempest Wolves and Goblina.. Rimuru has to travel to the land of the dwarfs to make new allies. 

While this episode is my least favorite so far, I still enjoyed the heck out of it! It was funny , cute and it has really original ideas.  Rimuru becoming some sort of slime god to these people and him caring for these creatures is amazing. The way he is trying to build up their village reminded me of those old Black and White games by Lionhead, just with monsters instead of humans. My favorite moment definitely being, when our slime is passing out from exhaustion and we see this village put the slime on a pedestal and cuddling it showing their gratitude. Usually in anime we see a hero save a village and under some fanfare music they are played off while everyone tosses flowers their way or just yells “Good Luck, We Will Miss you” kind of lines. These people even if they are not “people” and are just monsters show they also have love in their hearts! They are good mannered and just are guided by their ways an mannerisms.. no matter how someone might look they can still be sweet!  The wolves treat him in the same manner, grateful for the sacrifice Rimuru made.

What made me think this episode was a bit less than the other episodes is that this one had quite a bit of throw-away/slapstick comedy. While the other episodes have humor as well and it makes this show a delight a few jokes in this episode really felt like.. a joke for jokes sake.  I like how a storm wolf can whip up a storm by wagging its tail.. since he gave them a storm based name they evolve that way.. that is funny, however Rimuru being blown away by that force is funny once.. but the second time it felt a bit meh. The slime then keeping to roll of a hill,chased by the dog trying to fetch it, but isn’t fast enough felt a bit to Looney Tunes to me. Maybe it’s because I’d imagine since he can change shape the situation feels perfectly preventable but that scene felt like it dragged on a bit. It has a few of these illogical moments that don’t quite flow narratively. For example why would the village elder not explain naming a monster costs magic, Rimuru clearly does not know. Why would Rimuru not ask more specific questions to Elder making some odd requests. It sets up for a great evolution joke but the way we get there could feel a bit sloppy here and there!

Still my second favorite view of today and a very good episode. The flaws I did find with it are very common anime and series errors that I am just becoming increasingly aware of as I search the net for new skills myself! I’d say it’s about as bad a a kid drawing a sun with a smiley face. It’s still super charming, cute and fun and to be honest a perfect morning cartoon! This episode proved that to me so it still gets an amazing grade! It more or less fixed my nitpick with the last episode with some interesting lore and I have no doubt this series will continue to do so for me in the future! I had a blast, just one I acknowledge was a bit lazier than it needed to be in terms of comedy and conflict.

Episode Score:

I am not sure what I think about this episode, I am not even fully sure yet what I think about this series. Once again I could not escape feeling how similar this to me is to Hunter x Hunter. Which obviously is not a bad thing, yet it’s a high bar to hold it up against.

Khun the weird layed backed assassin like kid with a knife,  apparently was exiled by his family. This left him to believe that he can trust no one and he just so happens to be reflective of that lesson as they gain a test to check their trust. A weird pink headed almost balloon like humanoid tells them something happens five minutes into this trial, this is indeed reflect by by a clock outside the test area showing a 5:00 mark after previous contestants went in. However due to not being able to trust anyone Khun completely zones out into his own world, leading him to fail the trial were it not for Rak and Bam solving the trial by themselves. Sort off… After that we see a mysterious tower traveling group kick ass in another test area which worries the organisation..so a bonus trial is held a king of the hill game and they who wear the crown during the fifth round will earn the right to challenge the tower of the god. This new team however seems to hold a face Bam is very familiar with.

That twist in the end was my favorite moment of the episode Bam thinking he saw Rachel as the opposite team renewed my intrigue for the next episode, which I would not had without it. It’s also implied that Rachel is very strong and very bloodthirsty, so she will most likely develop into an antagonist. You can’t kill that many people in half an hour with doubt in your heart! This episode did some interesting world building things. It builds mystery around Rachel and also to the Lizard girl with the whip.. Anak I think.  It also shows the test commissioners and the organisation something quite interesting. I noticed how all thest directors have yellow eyes like Bam and Rachel. and The group dynamic between Bam Khun and Rak is becoming more interesting as  episode pass. I do love Rak.. he feels so one dimensional to be a main character and that is what makes me warm up to him so much

The pacing is very much off in this episode, my least favorite moment is how they explain the rules of the king of the hill game 2 minutes before the episode ends.It’s a substantial explanation and we see the first round take place but knowing anime that means the trial has to be explained again next episode. It would be like me writing a post about Pokémon Snap and then beginning to explain how Pokémon Stadium works for my next post.. yet because I can’t assume everyone saw or remembered that I’d have to explain those rules again. It felt super sloppy to me. I am already annoyed that I am going to see the explanation again next week, so hence my least favorite moment.  Khun’s build up also felt sloppy to me.  We just see him worry about his issues out of no where! If we had gotten events in a different order it would have felt much stronger.

We begin the episode with a semi flashback and him talking to his mother about trusting no one.. this is followed by a guy tapping their shoulder and go like “psssst I have info about this next test…trust me”… jeesz… I wonder what will the theme of this episode be?! Had they swapped the Balloon talk and his worries, said worries would have felt a lot more natural, the trial would have still felt forced but the first part would have flowed a lot better. What also annoyed me is how inconsistent they are with their characters so far. Groups are being called in one by one while everyone analyses what is going on and no one noticed the pink yellow balloon cloth person talking to all themes going Pssst?! Khun even attacked him with a knife.. and no other group noticed? This basically goes against everything already shown! Super sloppy! The “What is off screen doesn’t matter mentality” This episode put this series “at Risk” for me.. If I still feel this way after episode six, this show will be dropped by me.  But the ending still left me wanting for more.. so let’s hope episode 4 can change my opinion. Not horrible, just poorly written and generic this week for me! The intro theme I do find horrible though!

Episode Score:

A good episode that I could have done without would be the perfect summary of this one for me. I really love the Akira angle we still see in this episode. As long as we see this as an episode for Touya alone it’s one of the best so far. But…

The three guys who wanted to break his arms and challenge him to a match so they can brag if they beat him at an advantage have finally formed a plan…they will make him lose a match by forcing him not to look at a Go Board. He manages to win his first match still so now they force him to blind play TWO go Boards. In Other words they ask him to require to visualise a 20×20 tile field and remember separate on 2 boards if a square is blank, white or black and use this knowledge to play Go actively. Basically it’s just three guys bullying Touya trough playing Go and him going along with it to earn respect and improve as a player so he can face Hikaru! It is the most exciting and tense game(s)  I have seen so far and Touya is growing into a better character each episode.. but I couldn’t help it feels a bit weird as well.

I’d say we get two versions of this episode here, one is amazing one is kinda bad. From the perspective of Akira Touya this episode is sweet! We see him develop , we see his determination, motivation and his skill, we also see the path that is still left open for him.  We see this episode reveal his flaws to him.. the thinks to much in the standard patterns, his mind is very much engaged with the Meta and he can not let that go easily. He realises this is why he has trouble with Hikaru whose ancient ways of playing are not in line with the current guide books! It is also the reason why he begins losing to the rookie player in these blind matches. Him being acceptant of this bullying also illustrates the mindset he is in very well. Had this episode opened from the perspective of Akira I would have probably given this my highest rating possible!  The brief dip into  Hikaru and friends back at school was sweet as well and once again shows that they know where the interesting events in the story lie and focus on that. Kudos!

At the same time I found this episode incredibly stupid from the perspective of Touya’s challengers. I still do not get why him losing to the third best player in a school (counting him)  known for being good at Go Tournaments, would shame him all that much. That would like  saying I should be ashamed for losing a Pokémon match against a person who  at least knows how stats and typings work.. while I could only use 6 Pikachu and they can build a team. Not that I am that good at Pokémon but still, I doubt anyone would take you seriously for winning against a chess grandmaster while they are having a heart attack (non lethal)  and you force them to play. I just do not get it.  Luckily a girl shows up whom does show Akira how stupid this is and he should get his head out of his bum and play them like a real Go player would. Again showing how human Touya can be despire his talent! He does feel a bit dumb for such a genius though!

The third best player however resigns after losing to Touya..which again is so dumb.. challenger is a prodigee, to your knowledge the best youthful go player around? How does losing him put you to so much shame that you have to quit?  I mean sure he beat you blind but that says something about Touya not you! You’re still the third best in school nothing changed about that. The biggest mistake the episode makes is starting with the bullies, you follow their perspective, that angle doesn’t work, your not supposed look from that angle either. You need to feel they are bullying Akira but is unfair Go reallying bullying? Great episode but you really need to look from the perspective of Akira because the bullies are just dumb! It gets a good score with an asterix.

Episode Score: *

*If you are unable to see this as Touya’s story and take everything face value as it is presented to you this episode scores 1 to 2 grades lower depending on your ability to read between the lines

Another week done! This week I have had some stomach ailment which kept bothering me luckily doing a fair bit better now! A few restless nights made my energy a bit lower than it could be but meeting a friend I had not seen in a long time turned out to be a lot more pleasant than I had anticipated. She can be a bit of an energy drain due to being prone to melancholy over the silliest things. There was a stabbing in my flat today though so I am even more prompted than before to find another place! I am also really excited for the blog restyling happening on Wednesday! This week I finished my project called Camp Coconut and the final assets that I needed. That is my personal update complete as well! Thanks for reading and let’s have an amazing next week!

Last time this asset will be used! Thank you for serving me well!

Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventure 8

Hello my sweet lovely island guests!  Today I am back for you with more anime episode reviews.. mostly of stuff that isn’t relevant any longer but I have fun doing this so I will keep going on! Where last week we had a rather disappointing experience this week blew my socks off! In the good sense. The weird thing wasn’t I wasn’t even wearing any socks!

Would you look at that, BNA did an amazing episode again. While the last episode was definitely a stinker for me this episode brought what I had so longed for  in this series. Another format to bring about a change of events. A connection to the actual plot and some background into characters that are not Michiru or Nazuna. This week is focussed all around Shirou and his amazing secret. I will be discussing this secret in the next paragraph so spoiler warning for that.  It was the change of pace I needed what made it more believable.. rather than having path cross on accident , both Shirou and Michiru have reasons to be involved in the incident that is centralised in this episode.  It leads in a natural progression for Michiru, a logical development between her and Nazuna and a whole lot of character development for Shirou. The stuff unfolding has been set up for quite a while now and finally we begin to say some pay off.  No deus ex machina needed but story I could get deeply invested into! The fight scene was pretty amazing as well! It’s nice to see my main girl step up as well!

Now.. this fight leads to a BIG reveal.. one that is about as surprising as water coming out of my faucet after turning it open.  Last chance to avoid spoilers! You know this already though!
Anyway so it turns out Shirou is Ginrou the beast god!?! OMG I never would have suspected it! .. We get some back story about a miracle that made him into the wolf god thing he is .. and that looked amazing. I loved those visuals!  Shirou’s story was my favorite part of this episode. It even was a pretty generic and not even that rivettingly told story ..so that says how good it was for me!  I loved it despite the generic plot!  I am a sucker for odd visuals though!  The whole story book like visuals were great!  It also explains Shirou’s character quite well.  Throughout this story we also see a few parts beginning to move! I got reaffirmation that Boris is connected to the human Alan! I am not sure how yet.. but he seems to be working for them ..testing a new drug thing! There really were a lot of great moments here! I could pick quite a few. 

The moment I liked least was when Barbara began to tell she was trapped in a concentration camp in Germany during the second world war. It makes sense in the narrative of that world but it kind of felt like a drag by the hair analogy! We already know beast man are being oppressed and discriminated against.. you do not have to tell us it happened in the past because you just did!  Also the crow was also in that concentration camp, it has been genetically altered to live longer, which I feel was a bit of a throwaway reveal.  While I do love the episode.. the plot moved too slowly in the sense for the  series. We are introduced to yet another plot thing.. being a drug that turns you into a wild growing Kaiju and while gears begin to connect there is to much left to be resolved in four episodes.. unless they are going to completely throw the series feeling for pacing overboard. We moved forward but the emphasis was on backstory so not a whole lot happened. While I loved that about the episode I now am certain it will hurt the series in the end for me. Still as an episode it was excellent.

Episode Score:

While I disliked  episode 2 for being uneventful , this episode is completely different. Perhaps even less happened… but I loved it! I loved this episode so much! It and Slime are about tied for the best watch of the week! In the second episode of the show we saw Samurai Flamenco being picked up by social media and this week Masayoshi has to deal with the fallout of that. People suspect he might be  Samurai Flamenco based on a poll.. and as a result he is invited to some sort of talk show. When the REAL Samurai Flamenco reveals himself there.. and it’s Masayoshi’s  favorite Sentai actor, he is faced with a deep dilemma!  Not only does he have to keep his identity secret, now he might just have to take his alter ego’s identity away from the man who inspired him to be like this in the first place! It’s such a tiny plot but it is filled full of character building moments.

My favorite moment is during the talk show Masayoshi is one. When the fake Samurai is revealed. We first get a misdirect that they have found out it’s actually our protagonist that is the real life sentai, but if you payed attention to the episode title you already know a faker shows up! The fake ranger is actually a common trope in the actual sentai genre so it is funny to see it done this early with such a fledgling hero! It also makes perfect sense. The way the scene itself unfolds is perfect as well. So much becomes clear in this one scene. We can see the character of Jouji Kaname being established in this very cool seen, we see Maya watching from afar, noticing it’s another character, we see Masayoshi’s agent make a connection between her client this man and the axe toy she found in papers she picked up at his place.. and more than likely making the connection to his hidden identity! Within a few seconds so many plotlines open  up and that will even lead into more interesting plotlines such as Gotou realing digging dressing up as the Samurai character.  I am looking forward to it all. 

The actual showdown between Samurai Flamenco and the Fake feels a bit off to me though.  While I do get what trope the series is going for.. with the heartfelt speech awakening the  “evil ranger” to the path of good again the way Joiji acts kind of  ruined the punchline of that trope for me. He “acts” as if he was just giving the boy a trial.. while he should actually be emotionally touched this is never really shown .. we do not know what parts are an act and what not. As a result I found the reveal to be more annoying than epical!  The seen thereafter made things up.. with Red Axe saying Samurai Flamenco is his apprentice.. if this becomes an actual plot line that could be very interesting.. if this is a throwaway line I might like it less.

Time will tell, I have high hopes but the showdown was less than stellar. Our model boy is just a tad to helpless and when someone acts over the heartfelt message it kinda ruins the message. Still fun to see and the final shot where Gotou is dressed up as the Samurai is amazing as well. To confuse the agent Masayoshi lets him play a body double so he can walk into her office, throwing off her suspicion for now. Yet that isn’t the biggest HECK YES! When Gotou stands there on the rooftops as a superhero he feels awesome! HECK YES! Again a single line that opens so much options for this show in the future! I like it!

Episode Score:

I loved this! The episode was weird, cute, had trippy visuals, unlikely events and proper setup for the future! While normally I think second episodes tend to be the weakest of the early five , this episode completely trumped the first episode for me, and I already really liked that one! The slime gets a name of Rimuru by the storm dragon Veldora, who in return gets a family name it shares with the slime! Oh my Arceus that is so cute! With his new name the slime devours the prison that keeps Veldora in.. and Veldora as well as they begin an adventure to set the dragon free. A search that leads the slime to obtaining very powerful water based skills and encountering a cute goblin village.. as well as some adventurers.
The goblins are in trouble because since their god, assumingly Veldora , disappeared from the world dire wolves have been running amuck and killing their villagers including their local hero.  Since Rimuru has such a powerful aura they offer him their loyalty in return for his aid against the wolves. A two tier episode that really shined for me!  I got what I wanted and just a bit more!

My favorite scene is definitely the bromance seen between a slime and  the dragon resulting in the dragon being absorbed, prison and all by the slime!  I really like their interaction together and  can’t help myself but to be thoroughly amused by the odd pairing.  The pairing feels so right! Like Tom and Jerry being a cat and a mouse.. for some weird reason a slime eating a dragon feels just as right. I’d almost ship them if I would not just want them to be wholesome buddies! Such a cute moment! I squeeed with joy! The scene in the goblin village was pretty good as well. I love how suddenly the show shifted from comical and light to actual hardship and suffering for them with a legit emotional moment! FOR GOBLINS!.. If you are a DnD player you know that is an extreme rarity! That brief moment when the Goblins told about their strife it reminded me of the writing style of Eiichiro Oda , the creator of One Piece and I do not think I need to give it a bigger compliment than that. The new spells Rimuru learns seem great and thematical enough and it has that same .. experiment vibe I loved so much with Maple in Bofuri as well. Earning something by playing around is just something that makes me really excited!

I don’t really have a big negative moment in this episode, but since I try to use a format of, episode summary, positives, negatives now,  I guess I will use this bit to pick for two tiny nitpicks.  The first is the weird cutaway we had when our jolly slime ate the dragon. We cut to two humans talking.  I assume these will be the bad guys based on the intro ..which is lovely by the way but shows a lot of enemies and allies,  but I could not read a vibe from them at all. I am also not sure what to think about their design. A bit generic humans whose voice was a bit lost to me. I could have done without the scene and just found out it was a thing later. This mostly just raised questions to me.  The second nitpick I have is that the monsters are maybe depicted just a tinsey tiny bit to cutesie! Based on the intro Rimuru will hang out with monsters for the most part, like oni and goblins, as a result though the goblins look a bit to “sweet” to still be called goblins, I do like the visual style but if this is going in the direction I suspect I could have liked it if allies are ugly for once.   Still that is such a minor thing I can happily live without it.. I just would have liked it even more if the goblins were fugly beyond anything. Amazing Episode!

Episode Score:

My least favorite view of the lot! That doesn’t mean it’s bad , in fact this epsiode was still quite good! It just was the least impressive.. but impressive still. In this episode Bam still has to survive until 200 regulars are murdered but he gets help from a blue haired kid with a bag filled with power ars and a knife named Khun. He is being hunted by a giant crocodile named Rak for having such a powerful weapon. Due to a turn of events they suddenly find themselves being forced to team up  and they have to trick him into doing that!  After which they are transported to a break room! A game host like fellow shows up and thinks to many succeeded the test and summons a barrier they have to break through! If a team member  doesn’t make it through the entire team is eliminated. Bam is not affected by the barrier and gets a chance to ask some questions about this strange game. Once more this really reminded me of Hunter x Hunter even more so this episode Bam is due to his amnesia quite a lot like Gon, he has abilities he is very much aware of. Khun is a lot like Killua.. a white haired boy with assassin skills and who allegedly is a bit evil! That game guy who showed up even reminded me a bit of Hisoka! Not sure who Rak would be in that analogy though!

My favorite moment would definitely be the way Bam enforces Rak to team up with him. Using his code of honor against him not to attack an unarmed opponent he creates a stalemate that pushes the three towards a time limit and making Rak an ally. Khun convincing him to fight Bam when he is stronger helped with that and I am happy we see a show where brain does seem to  outclass brawn for now.  Which seems to be a theme in the episode. During the barrier trial everyone who tried to force their way in had trouble.. only the strongest could press trough  while those becoming calm and collect  did it with relative ease! Yet it also doesn’t completely work like that as we see a character confidently walking into the barrier and starting to bleed. We get introduced to a mysterious green skinned girl with a tail and a two katana samurai who faced her before.. as some of the most promising candidates to climb the tower. They don’t say a lot and fight each other for a bit using tricks and wits. Not just skill!  If this direction is kept I am happy.

While the barrier trial was done fairly well, the fact that Bam was unaffected by it kinda irked me off as well. He already has a legendary blade, an ability to see things others can’t he is from another world and everyone seems to sense talent in him.  Is it really needed to give him this as well?! I guess it is is because the matter that made up the barrier seems an important element in the tower but still  it was a bit of a Gary Stue moment enforced by how serious the other characters all seem to take it. No jaw drops, no NANI!!  The game guy knows more and only whispers.. “so a monster has appeared” while I really do like that line I could not help but feel like any sense of tension was taken away from me as the other two cleary state they can walk through it without problems.

I do not care that much about the rest yet that it adds stuff for me. I am also still unsure about the visuals! I do like the green girl and Rak but Bam’s design I find kind of bland, Khum has something visually that makes me go meh as well. I notice it’s different and I do not love it but I am not sure yet I hate it either. It keeps me from losing myself in the episode enough to be a negative though. Still  A very decent episode that just had to compete with four better ones. I forgot to mention! I found the opening very boring and unappealing!

Episode Score:

Last week’s episode was rather terrible I had little good to say about that and this week’s episode really made that up for me again. It seems the even episodes are quite good while the odd episodes impress me way less. We take a break from Hikaru which is something I needed to be honest after how he treated Akiri! It is even brought up he acted like a piece of posterior droppings.  In the few moments we see Hikaru we still seem him not care about Akiri and saying Go is not for girls and not for her.. but Sai schools him! Thankfully someone steps up! That’s all I wanted! The rest of the episode is focused on Akira Touya and how he is integrating in the Go Club! His amazing brain and skill make him a treat to the tournament third Seed and made hm rather unpopular amongst the club. This leads to the third seat challenging Touya for a match but him being beaten as he realises he might have to give up on his dream!  It’s a sad scene but it also depicts Akira as a strong character, he knows what he does is a bit shitty but in order to grow as  player to achieve what he wants he must join that club and defeat Hikaru. As he makes his way in.. resent against him grows.

My favorite moment episode is Akira’s duel against the third Seed.. the match was so silent and just some music as stones click on the board. These two both have reasons why they can not lose and why they have to win and that is seen on their faces.. when Touya inevitable wins we also see his opponent break something that surely also would have happened the other way around. These people really care much about Go!.Sai stepping up for Akiri was great as well, telling about how everyone  played Go in his age.  We also see Hikaru set up some growth behind the screens by buying some Go study materials.  I think it  the perspective change is a really clever way to keep the focus where the most interesting things are unfolding rather than just showing us nothing .. like what happened in the episode before. The episode also does a great job to depict that Ivory Tower feeling Touya must be experiencing. He can’t be beaten by these people he never could the only challenge he had was Hikaru. Well at least in his mind. This episode really made me warm up to him a bit instead of depicting him as a crybaby.

The finale of this episode however was a fairly big weak point! I had a major gripe with it that pushed the episode from amazing to just very good for me.  The school team Touya works for wants to embarrass him! Teach him humility! Previously it was established how important winning was and that now is withdrawn in favor of old teammates.. that feels a bit off to me but sure I can buy it.. what I can’t buy however is that some of them seem to be willing to break his arms and let his assistant play for him and then beating him in his weakened and pained state just so they can claim they won. That in their eyes would embarrass him so much he would have to leave them alone. If he loses with a 40 degrees fever because they trick him .. it would make him less of a player?!

  I honestly do not get why breaking his arm and challenging him to a match would discredit him.. also why would you hate the guy so much you want to to that?! While I get it sucks for one guy to lose a spot on the team it would mean your team  has much bigger chances of losing..  and you also care about winning.. so  yeah the way his antagonists are set up is not something I completely buy yet! Just a tad to evil! Still a great episode with just the last two minutes putting a shark in the water. They did not jump it yet.. but they sure as well are building a ramp to do so! I still try to imagine this here.. the checker club breaking a exchange students arms to beat him in checkers seems a bit excessive.

Episode Score:

And with that we close the book on yet another Saturday Morning! I skipped breakfast this time I haven’t been feeling that hungry lately, this afternoon about when this post goes up I will be making Pita Bread Hamburgers though! I am working hard on a blog restyle which should drop 20 days before my blogs anniversary! That way I can prepare something special! Working on that too!
My muscles are giving me some trouble lately sometimes I walk like Gregory House with that my update is done! From now on I will put some of my events here! I hope your next week will be awesome!

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! 

Good! This series used to be like that too my guy!

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!

Shirou by now also just exist to punch guys Michiru hangs out with

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.

I suspected they might be the same person..clearly I was wrong

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)

You should not have such faboulous hair in the rain either!

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. 

An accurate depiction of how wild this epssode is so far!

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.

Awww shucks I bet this would make great Yaoi

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. 

I got nothing.. can you think of a funny for this one?!
Too invested in the last part to screen cap!

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. 

You are on Pinkie’s Paradise! Rejoice..also do my dishes!

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.

I know right.. that last joke was funny!

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.

That’s a dragon who breathes air! Beware!

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.

For lots and lots of love! Or money..whatever I find first..

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.

I am pretty sure that is NOT an Eel

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.

Where is that shadow coming from, she is litteraly bathing in light!

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!

Well at least it will be easier to walk on then!

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.

Okay , the poster wasn’t very good either!

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. 

I have known these rules for a week! You are Trash Akiri! Ignorant Trash! A WEEK!

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.

That outfit doesn’t look very becoming on Akrii

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!

His best weapon is his Blue Eyes…wait wrong anime?! Huh!?

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.

Such a nice Screenshot from Slime to cap things off with!


Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventure 6

Saturday has come and past again so it is time for another review of my morning of cartoons. This week Yu-Gi-Oh Sevens had no new episode so that one is officially dropped from the saturday line up! I also finished up Bofuri today! So next week I will replace that slot with two seperate Isekai!  Hikaru no go stays at one episode a week because I just want to enjoy as many series as I possibly can! I haven’t seen all that much yet anyway!


This was a rather tame episode of BNA , mostly world building but unfortunately I found it REALLY predictable. That kind of means it was well set up as well .. but it also means I feel like I kinda had this episode before I even had played it before my very eyes. Michiru talks about her human friend and what do you know she finally decides to show up! As part of some religious cult that Shirou is asked to investigate. Like Michiru this girl can change her shape but this one can go full animal as well and she uses it to mimic the deity of the beast men. Whom.. I am pretty sure is just Shirou..this one is slightly pink though so I prefer Nazuna’s version of it.  Michiru of course is rejoiced to have her friend back but things are not what they might seem. A solid enough set up and again it contributes to the grand feeling of the world and it’s mysticism by adding religion to the mix but by now things begin to feel a bit step by step.

There is a positive about this step by step thing because everything feels in exactly the right place. Satisfying that someone thinks like me in terms of writing or I think like them.. I’d compare it to those videos where people cut those foam things or playdough blobs in perfect slices. How stuff perfectly works.. you know one of those videos that is usually titled “the most satisfying video you have ever seen”. Those videos are rather uneventful and meaningless in the end but you just feel content. This episode to me was like that exactly. No surprises but everything worked like it should. The tanuki girl has her cute moments with her best friend, as expected but they also notice how they diverged. Where Michiru embraces her human life, Nazuna has much more embraced her animal side. Two sides of the same coin. Where Michiru follows her heart , Nazuna is much more ruled by faith. In a way the tanuki is street level.. and sees the world through the eyes of the normal folk while the white fox more sees it throughout a political view or from above.

This episode really felt as a halfway point, it is given a lot of gravity, things feel different from what we have seen before and it is the right time to do so. However, I do feel like to much balls are in the air to resolve in the six episodes we have left. We have Michiru’s strange powers and the search for a cure, we have Flip’s crime cartel, we have the legend of the god wolf and also have the brooding human vs beastman unrest. This all can’t be concluded in a single season.. and I recently found out.. this is meant to be just a 12 episode adventure. By introducing yet another faction and element they just  make everything to complex for a single season. That being said they do kind of try to connect some things together maybe even more. The cult leader Boris was like super blond! Kind of like that creepy scientist. I am pretty sure they are going to have some connection. An okay episode, that I think sets us up for trouble in the end.. but one I still enjoyed watching. No favorite or least favorite moment though neutral throughout.. I am kinda weirded out by how easily and readily Michiru wants to sleep in the same bed as her best friend though.

Episode Score:


Naja recommended me this series in my post about the Hikonin Sentai AkibaRanger. A show about a guy who thinks he is a sentai hero?! That seems like fun to me! Foovay also gave me some recommendations and one of those I will be starting next week but this seemed like a great replacement for the Yu-gi-oh slot. That way I can fill the slot Bofuri slots with new Isekai shows. See.. aren’t I a smart cookie?! Well I bet some of you would disagree by now but oh well.  Let’s talk about the show! I have given the premises already and this first episode mostly just establishes this as it’s main story.  Goto a cop encounters a naked man who claims to be a hero in the first opening minutes as we cut to a title of lots of sentai fighting. There comedic timing was quite good on that I must say! A good sign since this is supposed to be a comedy. My favorite moment of the episode straight out of the gates

We cut to more Goto action as he wonders how Kamen Rider mechanics and what he could do within the confines of this world and the law. When would he be a guy with a motor cycle and when would he be a vigilante. After a long day at work and texting his girlfriend he goes out to the store to buy some stuff when a drunk guy cuts in line and buys some Cigarettes which Goto finds on the floor a bit later. This leads to him discovering the naked man and soon we learn he is our protagonist name is Hazama Masayoshi.A wanna be vigilante who tried to beat up the drunk man for being disorderly and jay walking as a fight for justice. 
By accident  Goto burns down his sentai suit, which he took off because it got ripped when he lost the fight.. which is funny on it’s own! A superhero losing to a drunk businessman type that was really small and insignificant, this could become a very fun show for me . Throughout the entire episode there is this level of low key and yet clever dialogue which reminded me a bit of Tarantino like writing.  Which I could very much appreciate.

We see Goto take Masayoshi to his place where it is revealed he is a rather successful model, that just Sentai’s as a passion and they begin to befriend each other a bit. Masayoshi even just gets a slap on the wrist for his vigilante antics and public Nudity. Yet by accident Goto the good type cop inspires Masayoshi to try his hardest.. while they bond over some classic movies and the next night he is in even bigger trouble. The model/hero stands not chance against a group of school kids and the cop has to bail him out of trouble. Proudly Masayoshi announces he will not stop trying! Ending the episode.  All in all a weird first impression but a good one! It was way more dialogue heavy then I would have imagined with a lot of depth and clever timing and analogies.  There was something about the shows colour pallet that seemed a bit unappealing to me for now.. it all felt a bit brownish greyish. Other than that I had very little complaints. I am looking forward to see more.

Episode Score:


I am going to miss Bofuri, but I do feel that I have seen enough of it for now at the same time.  This is a nice place to take a break and with season 2 being announced at the end of the final episode I could barely be any happier.  I am happy that I combined these two because had I’ve seen episode 11 only I would have barely been able to contain myself to wait a week. A very weird place to cap it off, given the trend of the series so far nearly made episode 11 a bit less amazing than it actually was.  We first we Maple take on Mii and the elites of the Flame Emperors guild. I thought this would be a harder fight for Maple and while it wasn’t easy Maple did manage to overwhelm the Fire Sorcerers.

I am not sure why I like seeing Mii cry this much but I really really do. She is so cute when her pride is broken!My favorite moment is her crying.  After the number two guild had been defeated I suspected the group would get some breathing time before facing of against Holy Sword in the next episode. Yet I was wrong! The encounter is almost entirely fought in the 11th episode as well. We see Kanade and Iz die and mostly Iz’s death really upset me for some reason! I am feeling very cryish today anyway..  At the moment of writing when you read this hopefully I will be fine! Update: A chocolate treatment and a long sleep made me less extreme!

The fight kept me rather engaged and I really wished for Maple to win against this superior force.. which is kinda weird..for once I did not want to change the Status Quo.. Maple thinking about her friends even in such a serious fight, over gameplay made me cry a bit more! She is such a pure hearted goofball! I will miss watching her adventures. Payne fights Maple and he seems to be winning. As her health falls fast we end the episode and I have never been happier for a double feature. Quickly after we see the fight resolve in the twelfth and final episode. Using her Demon Form  Maple manages to kill Payne.. after a clever use of Counter earlier. She also kills all the other elites of the guild, which is a shame. I would have loved if Sally would have at least gotten the kill on Frederica.. whose voice I find really cute as well by the way. However Maple Tree realises they can not rank in the top 10 like this. So they decided to murder all the guilds that threaten the top ten. Being severely weakened the Flame Emperors and the Holy Sword decide to follow their strategy.

My favorite moment is of the episode is Maple rescuing Mii from some attackers who just want to push them out of the top ten while the guild is at their weakest. Demon maple’s voice still makes me roll on the floor laughing, perhaps I got a hormone imbalance or something because this was a bit of a roller coaster for me, perhaps it was just really really good!
Maple would be such an amazing MMO buddy! I want a Maple! .. The event goes on pro forma but Maple Tree murdered so many guilds along with Holy Sword that it was practically over by the end of the third day of the event.

 Funny, but man do these developers suck at balancing their game at every single step. Not that weird considering they are space bunnies though! Still not sure what’s up with that. They do deliver us some plot exposition though.. Maple now has become the face of the game and the MMO is gaining new subs for people wanting to fight the invisible Maple. That is a clever idea for a second season and her becoming a mascotte seems perfect for her. She throws a party and in true Maple spirit invites Holy Sword and Flame Emperors to join her. After becoming friends of course!We end with a clip show of the last two episodes..which is a bit of a weird thing to summerise instead of looking back at the series..but I guess in universe it made sense. I loved this show! I could fault these episodes but why would I? I cried.. I laughed and nearly choked on my breakfast! Saturday Morning Glory.

Episode Score:

Despite how much I loved Bofuri , I loved this episode of Hikaru more. There was so much resolution and character in this episode. It was titled the beautiful game and that title was SUPER fitting. Not only do we get the most Go we have seen so far, we also get amazing character moments for Hikaru, Akira and that book boy whose name I forgot! The Go club guy! Tetsuo suprises me once again with how badass the Shogi club is , saying that if they will not win.. the Shogi club will get revenge on the club president for stealing mister Kaga away for this event. Translated… in our world.. The Chess club will beat up the guys who play checkers in school.. for asking a chess guy to join a tournament and then losing.. They really should carry some leather jackets or something.

We see Hikaru be forced to use Sai to win a game.. after in the semi finals it becomes 1-1 and the group depends on his result to advance. He cries knowing that he is not good enough but Sai, finally steps up and in this episode became so much greater than I ever thought he could be. The way he talked Hikaru out of his sadness was amazing to me. He understood his pain so well and when it comes down to the finals, he finds a way how Hikaru can grow from seeing him play. This is such a beautiful moment and this match was truly amazing. We see Akira possibly joining the school and observing the tournament and of course he cries again, as well as almost everyone who loses at this game. I am not sure on how to play Go yet but I apparently need to have extreme emotions to my losses. Perhaps I should try it today! I probably could cry over a taken stone feeling very bad for it.. or trip out and laugh because a stone made a funny clack!

Akira comes to observe Hikaru’s match and due to it’s sheer beauty he realises he’s been handeling things the wrong way. He should not fear playing he should hone his skill playing. Now  I am not sure how stones on a board are truly beautiful but I am sure that had I known how to play this game, I would be weeping like a willow. Hikaru finally finds unbridled determination to be good at Go as well  which makes him that much more of a pleasant character, he lost some cool points though because I still feel this is a bit of a dorky hobby! Not that I mind that.. but I am kind of baffled still about how much weight this sport is given.

Is it a sport? It seems like it?! Maybe this is just a game?! No matter! There is this passion for the game both on in the anime itself as well as on the direction table AND on the writing table. The way shots a framed, sounds are used. The silence during some matches with just the ticking of the clock and the clicking of the stones. This all seems framed as if you watch actual matches at times.. with anime flair! If Eurosport 6 or Espn 12.3 would air an animated show this would be it! Amazing episode! Amazing Direction! Amazing character building!
Praise Praise Praise! 

Episode Score:

Now that is it for this week! Next week two more new series will be added to the line up!
That Time I Reincarnated as A Slime and Tower of Gods! So stay tuned for that! I might actually get to see a decent amount of anime if I keep this up! I love Saturday Mornings!


Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventure (Week 5)

It’s time to for cereal and series again.. that would have been such a good name for this section.  Five Shows five reviews ONE post! Last week we had a bit of a dip in quality how will this week fair?! Like saturday morning cartoons no pausing is allowed.. I get a five minute break at the 11 minute mark of each anime.. playing some commercials to do everything else that needed to be done! Lets enjoy our saturday morning.

BNA
Episode 5

I have but one gripe with this episode but it is one with rather big implications. In this episode Michiru wants to play Basketball but since that is not being played there she is forced to turn to baseball instead. Something that has turned into a bit of a blood sport with killing being allowed for the sake of massive bets.  Okay.. these people are animals.. a bit of a forced metaphor but sure.. then Shirou is tasked to investigate the sudden increase in baseball gambling by the major?! Seriously guys! Again! That is SUCH lazy writing to connect to stories YET AGAIN. Let Michiru do her own thing for once, heck let Shirou go see her matches and discover the gambling?!  He cares for her so obviously he’d go see her matches at least once. This worries me for the quality for the show going on in the future. These analogies of people being animals is being taken a bit far as well. This society is just a bit TOO dystopian and stupid at times.

That said this episode was incredibly cute! So heartwarming to see Michiru play for a team called the bears. It sucks that one is called Winnie the Pooh , but at the same time it is amazing. Their catcher looks like something that can live in the world of Animal Crossing which is a great boon! He is adorable.. I have no idea on what he is called but I want to collect him.  Honestly there isn’t anything all that special about episode if you ever saw a sports anime or a sports movie you have seen this episode.  

Team sucks and is down on their luck , but a new ringer appears and suddenly luck turns around.. but due to some corruption in the sport their chances of victory seem to dwindle. When things are at their darkest the ringer unites the team through sheer passion and they lose the final match but can do so proudly! It’s nothing special.. yet it worked very well.. it made Michiru a stronger character, even though she should not use her powers she does because she cares about something. She has her passions and that makes her feel like real person. A tomboy sure.. but it all seemed right. Just a fun heartfelt episode with nice fun action and a bit of that same enigma I saw in other episodes.

It’s a really great episode to me but for the wrong reasons. I notice how much I like Michiru doing mundane things like going to a party and playing sports. I also noticed how I barely could care less about Shirou’s stuff. The way the show is building up to things means I will have a point where I will start to dislike it as all the elements being set up come into play.
I love this mundane beastman stuff with a bit of action to spruce it up.  I like Michiru adapting to her new life and making new friends.  I know her human friend who turned into a beastman will come into play.. well I assume so .. she is so heavily teased she can’t NOT be into this.. but at the pace Michiru is making friends I now think she will be granted an antagonistic role. Our tanuki is starting to have a life here.. friends here.. she isn’t dependent on her friend that much more..so by all rules of writing the only way her old friend will add is in a villainous role… I am not sure if I am ready for the show to turn into that. So all in all a weirdly got episode.. that makes me realise I will probably not like the entire series?!

Let’s judge it as a single episode though!

Yu-Gi-Oh Sevens
Episode 5

Another mixed bag episode for me! Yet kinda in the other way around. While I really did not particularly care for this episode I really like the style and grander choices they make here. Giving me faith that this series COULD go into more. We return to the story arc of Rush Duels disappearing from social media and even anime google. This means they have to find publicity through other ways. I do like the whole idea of rising to fame and promoting a ruleset as a storytelling crutch. It offers so much new scenarios we haven’t explored with Yu-gi-oh before themes that are relevant. Konami wants us to buy these new types of cards and by doing a story that is all about promoting the game.. it feels less jarring as a commercial because it’s actually part of the plot. 

However the episode itself is quite bad. The school newspaper writes an article about them and it says that Rush Duels are simplistic and for kids.. which is an opinion.. so it’s fair game to write! They have misquoted people so I get why the group would want it redacted.. but that isn’t really the issue they object. It is that their game is getting a negative review. Everyone in the school papers reads it and beliefs it.. so Romin distances herself from the group.. but only for a scene. Of course the dispute over whether or not this article should get a redaction is settled with a duel. To my pleasant surprise they decided to let Rook fight this duel instead of Yuga, which was great. The duel itself however might be the worse one yet.

The editor of the newspaper has a deck that is completely centered about journalism, the card art looked incredibly tacky and if this is not made specifically for this duel I think this is a horrible set. Every single card he plays feels catered to him and feels like it has a narrative flow as well. First he plays a scoop.. than live from the scene of the accident and then he plays a printing press.  It might seem clever but in duels .. it feels quite stale. Like if someone always goes 1–>2–>3–>4–>5 .. it is a logical chain of events that tells a tale.. but it takes away the tension of a duel.. this is always the order the cards are played in so their effect.. are just what the situation needs. That really was felt throughout the duel. If the game is not really being played there is no tension.

Comedy wise this episode was decent with Yuga’s promo bot becoming increasingly broken as he modifies it.. now chasing after girls constantly and some subtle shots of them disabling it now that Rook can’t use his Pauli Effect since he is dueling, yet that can not save this show. It feels like a very solidly constructed railroad with a bullet train that moves faster than ever before. The direction and the tech is solid.. but the stops this train makes are at Snooze-Town,  Forced-Ville, Fillage and some random places that just hold nothing to do. Where BNA feels like a great show that will falter in pay off , this feels like it COULD get a nice pay off but with  bad episodes. This week I seemingly caught up with the series. If it has been delayed by Corona and I need to replace the timeslot I will not be returning to it, if it goes on I shall give it next until next week’s episode to convince me.. after next week I will have to change my line up anyway.

Bofuri
Episode 9 and 10

With the end of Bofuri in sight we get two episodes I really enjoyed, from today on I will discuss double episodes in the same column to save us some time. Which easily works this these episodes because they handle the same event. The start of the guild competition, which I am pretty sure it will end on as well with maybe some minor epilogue. Both episodes did a great job in bringing this event to life in their own way. I was so invested that I nearly forgot to take my breaks. Yet I managed to sneak them in.. although a bit late.

The first episode mostly sets up preparations for the game, it will be a capture the flag game but with orbs. Obviously Maple is charged with defending Maple Tree’s Orb giving her May and Yui as back up in their defence.  Our beloved Rubiks Cube boy stays behind as well. Or at least that is the plan. First they go prepare, which is mostly a montage. They also visit a beach with tubes that have their own paterns on.. which is super cute. When Yui and May splash water they create huge tidal waves which was funny and charming. It all has become part of Bofuri’s charm to me. But we quickly move to the highlight of that episode to me. Sally’s fight with Frederica. Scouting for their rival guild Frederica wishes to get information from Sally who then challenges her to a fight..seeming equally matched Frederica gives up after Sally reveals her best techniques.. or does she?! It turns out Sally faked skills to give out false information to hide her incredible gaming reflexes I love these kind of mind games.


Other than that the first episode is fairly uneventful with people just doing their jobs and mostly taking on some lower tier guilds.  Iz finds a new robe that allows for on the go crafting somewhere but all in all it as all low key. There is some scouting here and there and some encounters but it is all set up for the much more exciting tenth episode! Still I really like the gamer feel this game really has to it.. much better done than Sword Art Online in my opinion, these characters have much more a gaming mindset. Which is amplified by Maple lacking this. The tenth episode is about big encounters with the two biggest guilds. We see Sally be overzealous and be cornered by Frederica.. about to die.  She has claimed a lot of Orbs which her team will then lose so the chances of their tiny guild getting a top ranking seem to go out the window. Which leads to my favorite moment of the 10th episode. Maple coming in to save Sally. Risking it all saying she will never allow Sally to die in game was quite touching. In a game we all think very lightly of death.. but Maple will never abandon her friends if she can stop it. 

However.. directly after May and Yui are left alone to defend the orb and they get killed after putting up a fair fight against Dread. Just before he can steal their orb though Maple returns and finishes off the already damaged Dread. It feels a bit conflicting with the message the show was telling earlier that Maple will never allow her friends to die.. but does highlight the reality of games. I kind of hoped Maple would save them all. By now we already established that this isn’t about fair fights. This show is about Maple being the most cute badass we have ever seen. Seeing how far she can push being so broken so I really wish she could have backed up those words she just uttered, or at least felt some consequence of not being able to do it. So the resolve with Dread was my least favorite moment.  Sally is super tired and can not go out anymore so now it is time for Maple to go on the offence. The episode ends with her facing the Flame Emperors. So I am pretty sure next two episodes she will be tangling with the top 2 guilds. 

Bofuri to me has become a show that I like for its simplicity and it’s lightheartedness. It’s a show that consistently makes me smile despite it clearly having it’s flaws. With these episodes I could really ignore those flaws, this is Bofuri.. I could wish for more but this is more than enough. I would not be able to remember these episodes if I would try to think back about it a few months from now but I do not need to.. it’s not that type of show.  Bofuri exists for the casual smiles and giggles and with very few exceptions it has consistently done so for me.

Hikaru no Go
Episode 5

Each time I begin to doubt if this show is for me, it pulls me back in with a very strong episode. We see Hikaru lose TWICE in this episode which are bold choices and we see Tetsuo , the popular Shogi kid re-embrace the magic of Go. Hikaru loses the Tetsuo which means he would have to jump in an Ice-cold pool.. but given how close he got to winning still Tetsuo decides to force him into something else instead a Go Team Tournament. Because of how things are set up.. if Hikaru’s teammates win he now is able to lose..so he wants to play for himself, a nice set up for an episode about putting coloured stones on a wooden grid if I have ever seen one. 

It’s just GO! Hikaru!

For the second time in this show we are introduced to a glimpse of brilliance Hikaru might have concerning Go as soon as he is able to step by step recreate a game.. after a guy fumbled some stones of the board. This pleases Sai , who for one of the first times I found a more welcome addition than an obnoxious mentor. The fact that Hikaru can render him obsolete one day is a nice promise. With Yugi the final duel against Atem felt somewhat unearned because we never saw  tiny Yugi duel instead of the pharaoh except for some mystical reasons. Hikaru is a much more fully fledged character and this stroke of brilliance makes me belief Sai can at one point even be taken out of the equation in this show. Great long time set up and very solid character building.

Immediately after we see him proceed to play Go, trough visuals he imagines building entire galaxies and star systems.. is this another sign of how genius he can be as a go player? The way it is framed certainly builds up to Hikaru discovering some latent abilities deep within him, of him beginning to enjoy the game for himself… but he totally washes out and loses badly. Getting called out by Tetsuo for it. Speaking of the latter, he dominates his match even if now he gets being bullied for a Shogi player. What a weird world… I guess  we do the same thing though… oooh you play PUBG instead of Fortnite.. poser! Well not me persé because I  think Fortnite sucks but you know. Still I would think members of unpopular clubs would stick together a bit more. If you play Shogi you might enjoy a game of Go as well but well let’s be honest none of these people should ever get laid..at least in reality.. so perhaps there is a lot of build up tension. Just something I will keep finding weird.

Best episode of the line up. My favorite moment was the Galaxy building scene that ends in Hikaru’s defeat.. there was no derpy music playing at the end.. it was all just subtle. It was a perfect illustration of a boy trying to learn the game, having a fun time with it. .but with a realistic result. Very good. My least favorite moment happened when Akiri’s moment with Hikaru was totally skipped. She just kinda vanished. She deserves better.

Round Up

Throughout the line up we had much better episodes than last week. Even Sevens improved though that only applied to the framework of the episode rather than the meat on the bones itself. Next week I might need to replace it from my programming anyway so please leave a suggestion for me to watch in its stead! Next week I will regretfully wrap up Bofuri as well which just might also get a series review from me but I am still undecided about that!

I had another great Saturday morning and I hope your weekends are all amazing next well!
Love you all!

Pinkie’s Saturday Anime Adventures (Week 4)

Hello everyone, it’s sunday again which means Pinkie watched anime! In my saturday morning program I have slotted 5 shows in time slots including commercial breaks! Today I review the episodes of my fourth week! Check the anime tab on my homepage to track down the originals!

BNA
Episode 4

At 9:00 I was ready for some more Brand New Animal. Studio Trigger’s show that I so far quite liked and this episode was certainly no exception. It spotlights Michiru even more than before taking Shirou out of the equation for a bit as the Tanuki girl gets a brand new phone..from her mink “friend” to get access to human internet.  This leads her to discovering a girl named Nina, living in anima city. She is streaming on Facelook as she desires to be part of the human world and.. while Michiru approaches her she gets knocked out and captured. My least favorite moment of this episode as I thought we would be in for another one of Shirou’s heroic  moments, but luckily this was quickly subverted.

Once Michiru wakes up she finds out Nina is the daughter of the gang leader of “The Family” lead by Flip.. which is a last name but he is referred to as Flip and he looks like a Flip to me. Flip in Dutch was a fairly common name for people of the Silent generation and before. Flipje is the mascot of the city Tiel and it’s jam factory and he is like a raspberry man so it sounds like a first name to me..This also results in me thinking Flip will turn into a raspberry but it looks like he is actually some kind of whale. As I get side tracked we move back to our story by saying that by being honest to Nina about her preferences  of the human world, she is able to take on her human shape. The two then decide to visit a party they saw on Facelook together. 

I am happy they are giving Michiru a friend and I do hope the character stays that as well.  It felt nice and needed for her character as well. I dislike  that the first friend she made is connected to the Family.. it feels so convenient again. The Major also has made some discoveries about Michiru’s condition which conveniently allows for some exposition on Beastman lore. While kinda cool to know the conversation is kind of nonsensical. “Michiru if A Tiger Beastman loves A Lion Beastwoman very much.. their kids take on the properties of one parent and can not become a liger. It has to do with your spirit and all. “Your cells can morph so it’s completely not like that”.  I mean I know Michiru might not be smartest .. it kinda felt off. 

Shinies?! *Readies her Pokéballs*

What I did liked about the episode is that it shows the other side of racism, people like beast people at the party so when they discover Nina is a beast person they revere her and want to play with her.. however apparently aquatic beastman can not breath under water or at least Nina can because she was tired so they put her in an aquarium and she ends up choking. The whole turn around showing that some people are supportive but not understanding made the show feel nicer. It did not hammer in “humans are racist butterscotchcandy-holes. Yet there is also danger in the unknown a lesson that prompts Michiru to go back to Animacity and learn. That was nicely set up!

I also liked the stand off with Flip and Shirou and how a random guy just got killed by Flip. Shirou did not stop it.. so clearly he knows something we do not know yet. Shirou is also said to be a beastman with an immortal body by the scientisty bad guy person.  So things are feeling like they are heating up! Still we do not get overfed exposition and each episode just offers us some puzzle pieces. All in all this was probably my most enjoyable watch of the day.

Yu-Gi-Oh Sevens
Episode 4

Ugh… Episode 1 was all about Yuga, Episode 2 introduced us more to Rook, Episode 3 was about Romin so that means Gakuto is up next right? Will they colour within the lines?  The first 10 seconds already tell you that you are going to get what you expect and nothing more. A narration of the fourth main character shows us this is his episode. Unoriginal.. but maybe needed.. yet he turns out to be not very well written as this episode crashes before it ever takes flight. 

Gakuto is the studious boy the one who plays by the rules. He arrives each day at school at 6:66:66 which make me think he might be the son of the Goha President or something later on as that is exactly the time they give you to redeem your flaws.The episode for this plot is that the student council president has trouble keeping up with his work now that he hangs out with Yuga and Rook a lot. (I know Rook might be called Luke but my translation says Rook so running with that one)  So obviously to make time for his duties again he decides to ban Rush Duels on School Grounds. Yuga challenges  him to a duel and if he wins there will be no ban on duels but if Gaktuo wins they will promise not to duel in the school.

This already creates a problem, the consequence to this duel is to limiting for the narrative to ever take fruit. In the duels with Rook and Romin , Yuga CAN lose because it would not block the plot, in this setup there is no way the main character can lose because it would not allow the story to continue .. or at least place it under severe restrictions otherwise. This is somewhat resolved by letting Gakuto place his title as council president on the line.. but why would they force their friend to lay down something he loves that much.. that is quite horrible. Of course it could be to give him some free time to join their adventure but that would be super convenient again.

The duel itself is the worst one so far. Gakuto’s ace card SUCKS! By changing mode it can prevent either side to tribute for a 7 or higher level monster on the next turn. The set up he has to do to utilize this is quite large and the pay off blows. You can still special summon a level 7 monster.  Since it’s Yu-gi-oh this is super easy and the boy gets his ass handed to him by Yuga. Sure he learned to enjoy himself a bit more during this duel instead of sticking to ceremonies and traditions, that  was a trait he did not need to have from the get go. His aides never showed up before and now they are everywhere where he goes.

This feels forced and as soon as Gakuto loses his Student President title he gives it up as he promised… then he runs for Student President again in the next election which makes no sense! Why would the school allow these shenanigans, he also gets reelected (in favor of his only competitor Rook) as well. Such a weak choice! This really was a weak episode and the only highlight is that Romin wore a cute new outfit! I really like her more and more.

Bofuri
Episode 7

Ah that is better, a nice dose of Bofuri cuteness. The seventh episode is all about preparation for the third and fourth events. Mostly the guild competition. We see Maple grind a dungeon with Yui and May, the one with the Hydra she ate to get some levels on the two. Because of one Maple’s ridiculous plans to speedrun it the group manages to complete it under two and a half minute which allows them to gain a skill that doubles their attacks. Putting them on a similar track as Maple. Iz makes new hammers for them which they now also are able to dual wield..because of another skill they unlocked. For the most part I think this part of the episode worked quite well as they are a sort of reflection of Maple.  They also finally use a montage without skipping some sweet parts this time it skips grinding! Yay!.. Also I am happy grinding is a thing it makes the game more legit.

The white hammer girl is my favorite! She has pink details!

The second part relies on the guild members doing their jobs, gathering materials helping each other train etc. Kuromu is the only one who died enough times to unlock a secret dungeon from which he gets a pretty edgy armor that seems pretty good. He kind of feels like the Yamcha of the group.  Kasumi goes hunting for wool so Iz can craft robes for the event, which gives the group some bonus event drops. She encounters Maple while doing this who was playing with some sheep and learned the Wooly ability. An ability that allows her to turn into a ball of wool, or a poisonous ball of wool. Shielding her from attacks. It does seem to trap her though which results in some cute wholesome comedy. 

The final act of the episode has Maple wandering in town figuring out how to be useful once more when she encounters a quest.  What actually should be a high level escort quest becomes easy as Maple just flies with Syrup, This entire questline was my favorite part of the episode. The NPC spouts random dialogue based on their location which confuses Maple as she is totally immersed. The npc is startled by npc’s they fly over, the program thinking she is on ground level. I like this a lot, it contributes to the MMO feeling of this game, this episode that that very nicely throughout. The fact that Maple found the item needed as a follow up already and can finish it then and there is something that happened to me in MMOs as well, so that is some relatable writing. 

This ghost encounter…obviously ends up getting skipped…………….

Of course the questline awards maple a skill that breaks her even further, into complete unfair territories. She gains a skill named Loving sacrifice. By giving up a chunk of her HP all her guild members standing in the light share her defence modifier which by now has surpassed the 1000 mark due to her finding modifiers. While it is cute to see her transform into a golden haired angel I dont think this form has much to offer in the form of great moments that I love this show so dearly for. All in all quite a good episode.

Bofuri
Episode 8

An episode that I liked significantly less, than the previous episodes.  I likes Syrup Hyper Beaming a boss into oblivion but this episode to me waaaaaay overdid it in terms of hand me outs to Maple.  Let’s begin at the start though. It’s the day of the third event and the guilds can now hunt ..cows… for medals titled cow. Since these cows are kind of fast. Maple or the guild for that matter is not very geared up for it.  So Maple tries to find spawn spots where no one else can come using Syrup’s flight. Clever enough.. but she falls off and stumbles into a dungeon and a secret boss again. Using Wooly she survives his onslaught of Attacks while Syrup uses its new beam attack. Wiping out the boss first form.. the second form absorbs Maple and would deal her poison damage.. but since she is resistant.. she eats him up from inside. Thus Maple gains a demon form.

Like always we see Maple demonstrate the abilities to her group, who all acknowledge that Maple now officially has transcended into something that is not human anymore, completely leaving her humanity behind. While it sure is another funny, her getting a new form this close after her Angelic form and having it feel almost just as broken feels a bit wrong. Rather unrewarding. I still had some laughs for Maple sounding very ridiculous as a demon so it was still great for laughs it just didn’t feel clever or compelling. Slapstick if you will. Demon voice Maple still is something worth your time so do not mind me nagging on semantics though. 

After the event the third level opens which now is a steampunk , cyberish city which delights Iz for having so many new crafting Materials. As everyone goes explores we go into another montage which includes great things such as the “Do Not Push” button. I love this trope! I am sad yet again we did not see what happend.  By now I begin to notice how far Sally is relegated away in importance in these last two episodes. She barely said a line and even when Maple become an actual demon she was just there in the background. The whole real life thing also has kind of extinguished , which by now I kind of yearn for.. to see Maple normalise just a bit.

The final act involves Maple stumbling upon a questline again, falling of Syrup landing in a dungeon with a new mysterious boss with lasers that seems to knock her back quite a bit.  Trough an item she found during the last event she now manages to unlock a mecha form, with  big lasers and all sorts of guns going off. A well animated fight.. but TWO brokenly OP new forms in ONE episode. I mean I get that is part of the joke .. but the fight is also set up in almost the exact same way?! Again.. unlike Yu-Gi-Oh it wasn’t bad but it just is not memorable at all. I had trouble memorising this 3 hours after I’ve seen it. So Bofuri for me was a bit Meh! I totally want a Syrup though! Since this episode it talks and says Kame Kame.. so I am pretty sure it’s actually a Pokémon as Kame is turtle.

Hikaru no Go
Episode 4

Unfortunately even the fourth episode of Hikaru no Go could not stop this saturday viewing experience from being mediocre. As I feared Hikaru backed out of is fight with mister Touya thinking that placing the stone as epic as he did was because Sai took over his body. Mistrusting the spirit for a bit, this is quickly resolved.  I mostly noted that Sai at one point seemed to address us as the viewers, though it was probably just him thinking to himself, which felt a bit to in your face exposure like. Hikaru is beginning to like go and that is scaring him?! Alright?! Sure. Touya Senior seems intrigued by the boy but has not played him long enough to judge his skill.

He meets up with Akari and she invites him to some sort of fair.  Hikaru refuses not liking those kind of things. This is the scene I disliked the most because Hikaru really is a rASSpberry here. Maybe he is stressed ? Maybe it’s because he is so young? I am not sure. What’s even stranger when he finally decides to do what is right Akari doesn’t show up at all. I mean I would not wait for him either if he said he would not come.. but still it felt like a very clunky setup  Sai hints at possible romance but he gets the typical girls have cooties kind of reaction and both Hikaru and Akari seem to react against the character previously established. Hikaru seems a lot more prickly and Akari  seems much more spiteful towards the boy. She still sees him talking to himself and notices his behavioural changes, if you really like someone I’d say after being hospitalised and claiming to have a voice in your head you can at least give them a few days.

She’d even buy him Takoyaki! I’d travel to Japan for that offer!

Luckily the second half of the episode picks up the slack of the first half.  First we see Hikaru take some interesting puzzles, which remind me of the duel puzzles in Yu-Gi-Oh games, before a guy solves the final problem for him.. with gum! Uh-Oh! It’s a Go bad boy!  He looks like your standard Vagrant and bully and in a way he is. I squirted milk out of my nose laughing when he told his new passion though. This bad boy.. who looks like danger.. or a villain.. now is into SHOGI. He used to be into Igo but now Shogi is the shit, even if he has beaten Akira in a game.  Why is this so funny?! Because it is basically your high school bully, or standard movie bully if you never had one, saying I used to play checkers but that wasn’t bad ass enough so now I play Chess.  The way how menacing they made him sound while saying this was just hilarious to me. 

If Chess club looked like this.. they’d have Cheerleaders!

Obviously the two eventually decide to settle their difference over a game of Go, making some wagers that involve Hikaru jumping into a pool if he lost?! Seriously how uncool is man. Why do they try to make him so cool?! In every other show he would have a bowl cut, a buck tooth and super thick glasses. If he is the cool one.. how uncool is Hikaru?!  Regardless of this brainworm I had to yank out, their showdown is pretty well set up and seems very intense. Sai enjoys playing this boy so he doesn’t give it his all.  Once Hikari gets distracted by Akiri walking by he places a wrong stone allowing mister cool guy to get 5 Moku.. Will Hikaru be able to come back from this?!  Or will he have to .. jump in a pool.. find out next saturday.. I can hardly wait. 

In Closing

Now that last line sounded sarcastic and in a way it was meant like that.. but in a good way.. I find it funny how enthralled I can get by the little stuff in this show.

Overall all episodes where quite okay with BNA being the only one that really sang for me. It makes sense though I have been singing praise on Bofuri for three weeks now, at some point I will not see episodes that top the best. Hikaru fizzled were I think it could have popped and Yu-Gi-Oh.. I might drop that one at the 6 episode mark and first line up change.  Now that all characters are in play it has until Bofuri finishes to impress me or it will be pulled off the pink network!

When Bofuri is done one time slot will go to Tower of the Gods and one to another episode of Hikaru. If you have any good suggestions I could replace Yu-Gi-Oh with?  Let me know in the comments!

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