All posts by draggle

Ano Hana 08 — Haunted Clubhouse

Ano Hana,

Another storm of emotions in this episode. Ano Hana is doing a great job at keeping things interesting and turbulent. This episode had (at least) five touching moments. It started with Menma’s mother’s break down. Then Anaru made a teary confession, both of how she likes Jinta and how she feels guilty to have been glad Jinta said he didn’t like Menma. Jinta shares a touching moment with Menma’s brother talking about their parents, and then has a moment with his own father. Finally, Matsuyuki nearly strangles Jinta to death for claiming to see Menma (with the tacit support of everyone but Poppo). In the end, Menma reveals herself to everyone by writing a message in her diary.

I really love when a show can tie together a lot of different threads and characters, building them in parallel. It’s probably because I have a short attention span it really gets at the interactions between the characters. Hourou Musuko also did a great job at this. I greatly prefer this kind of interleaved format to more episodic formats.

One question though: if Menma can actually call people, write in her diary, cook food, and isn’t a figment of Jinta’s imagination, why didn’t she just do these things earlier? It would have saved them both a lot of misunderstandings. It’s not really important though, and it probably did make the show more interesting by adding some extra questions to answer and allowing some suspicion and distrust between the characters.

 

Hidan no Aria 08 — Jeanne D’Arc

Hidan no Aria,

Having the descendants of Holmes and Lupin fight apparently wasn’t dumb enough, so they decided to make the latest villain a descendant of Jeanne D’Arc.
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Ok. I don’t know what these people are thinking. At least Holmes and Lupin being enemies kind of makes sense… but Jeanne D’Arc? Seriously? If you’re going to do a revisionist history, at least put some semblance of logic behind it instead of just tossing out random names.

Otherwise, it was a pretty uneventful episode. Two thirds are spent finishing up the battle with Durandal, and the rest on a reset ending. Much of the episode didn’t make much sense— Shirayuki randomly disappears and reappears, Kinji shoots at Shirayuki because she isn’t sufficiently embarrassed, miko costumes deflect bullets, etc., but it’s not like I’m expecting things to make sense at this point.

Steins; Gate 09 — Butterfly Effect

Steins; Gate,

This episode picked up where the last one left off in expanding on the effects of time travel. As I predicted last week, the IBN 5100 has disappeared from the lab and seems to be getting further and further away with each of Kyouma’s efforts to recover it.

For an episode purporting to be about the “butterfly effect” in time travel, the cause and effects for all of these changes didn’t seem too far-fetched to me. I would guess that Moeka sent a message related to the IBN 5100 (what else would she send?) which could explain why it wasn’t at the shrine. My guess is that Moeka actually did take it originally. Then when Feyris prevented her father’s death, the machine was no longer donated to the shrine. The main question I have is why was it at the shrine originally? Did someone else use time travel to get it to be there? The shrine seemed to be holding it specifically for someone who would come looking in the future. Anyway, casualty has gone kaput in this multiverse.

All the time travel aspects are fun to think about, but the best part about this show is just watching the interactions between Kyouma and Christina. Christina really brings out the best side in Kyouma by actually bothering to argue with him. And as I’ve said many times before, Kyouma has the best evil laugh I’ve heard in a long time. His voice actor deserves an award for this. I still can’t believe it’s the same guy who did Setsuna F. Seiei.

 

Dog Days 09 — Battle Princess

Dog Days,

This was a battle episode so things picked up, but it still just wasn’t as fun as the first few episodes. The main problems are all these prophecies and the drama with the princess. It is impossible for this show to convince me that the princess has any chance of dying. And if she did die I would probably just break down laughing. I think the show would be vastly improved by either eliminating the princess entirely or at least making her funny. Seriously, why so serious?

I think another issue may be that the way the creators present the story is rather formulaic. The announcers say something (usually something which is painfully obvious), they shift the camera to a new two minute battle, rinse, repeat. They also have the same painfully formulaic setup whenever a character goes somewhere (e.g., Riko above). She says “I’m heading out” as they waste ten seconds with watching her leave. All in all the show just does not flow smoothly. It feels like a bunch of two minute segments glued together.

In other news, the ninja squad got taken out by some random small fry this episode since they ran out of characters from Biscotti. Anyway, have some Eclair fanservice.

Hanasaku Iroha 09 — Ohana’s Rival Appears?

Hanasaku Iroha,

Am I reading too much into it, or will this new girl who made her appearance at Ko’s job become Ohana’s love rival? Considering that she took up the ending splash screen, she’ll likely have a role of some importance.

Ko was kind of pathetic in this episode though. He went all the way there, only to turn around and come home at the train station when the inn was out of rooms. You would think he would call before he went. Or, having arrived, he would at least look for another inn to stay at. It’s partially Ohana’s fault though, since she is pretty oblivious. And Ko just can’t keep up with her pace at all.

Minchi is making progress towards becoming a cook, due to necessity. I think she would be quite jealous of Ohana if she knew everything that happened between her and Tohru.

In the grand scheme of things, I don’t feel like much has changed from this arc though. Minchi has started cooking, and we have a greater appreciation for the manager’s bookkeeping skills. Ohana has gained a boost of confidence (not like she needed one), but otherwise this seemed like a reset ending where everything is back to how it used to be. It was an entertaining set of episodes, to be sure, but I’m most looking forward to the point in this show where the plot gets moving again.