Hanasaku Iroha 10 — Goddess Ohana

Hanasaku Iroha,

Who is this Madoka person? There is no God but Goddess and His name is Ohana.

Does anyone know who the fox and the little girl hiding in the corner are supposed to be? My knowledge of Japanese mythology is unfortunately quite limited…

Ohana spent most of this episode in bed with a fever. It was light on drama, but I still enjoyed the episode immensely. It did an excellent job portraying the mild sense of disorientation you get when you’re sick through some messing around with the chronology of events, and Ohana’s confused decision to go back home.

Ohana’s actions in deciding to work even though she’s sick were right in line with what I would expect her to do. Everyone else’s reactions to her illness were more amusing: from cooking her food, getting jealous, and reading her erotica about her grandmother. The last one probably would have been a pretty awkward situation if she were more awake.

Unfortunately it does look like we’ might get a Minchi —> Tohru —> Ohana love triangle. I’m not really a big fan of this setup, especially when one way is completely hopeless. Tohru has no chance. Nako seems to be the only one who’s missing all the action.

C: The Money of Soul and Possibility Control 08 — So Long Singapore

C: The Money of Soul and Possibility Control,

The pace is starting to pick up, and this was probably one of the best episodes of C so far. There’s lots going on: Kimimaro’s teacher tries to commit suicide, Japan is decaying, something’s going on with Hanabi (the purple haired girl we haven’t seen since the first episode), Kimimaro burns all his Midas money, and Singapore’s about to be wiped off the face of the Earth.

I’ve been complaining for a while now that Mashu and Kimimaro are the two most boring characters in the show. Kimimaro’s still is usual self, but it seems that things will get more interesting with Mashu shortly. She seems to be related to Kimimaro’s father’s past, and is probably Kimimaro’s sister. Hopefully we won’t get the siscon end. I’m guessing that Souichiro’s asset, similarly, is that girl in the hospital. Perhaps the assets are the futures that are being bet, the futures that could have been.

The biggest flaw of this series is still that none of the econbabble makes any sense. The actual workings of the financial districts remain a black box (i.e., why do they run out of money?) and I doubt that this will be addressed at all. Furthermore, all the philosophical debates about “future” vs “present” are rather silly and pointless in my opinion. I really hope that the ending of this show doesn’t have Kimimaro and Mashu shouting “I believe in the future!” and destroying the financial district with the power of trust. I’m concerned because I can actually picture this happening.

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.
…
…
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.