Just like every other season, I reach the time when I take a look at what I want to cover for the next one. I don’t like to reveal them until the preview post, but I’ll say that one is an absolute definite, while the rest on the list are maybes. With sequel seasons of Attack on Titan (notably the final season), The Promised Neverland, Re:Zero, Dr. Stone, Log Horizon and more likely to dominate in Winter 2021, what is left for someone like me who prefers the lesser known shows instead of the big franchises?
Would it surprise you to even know that I’ve never even seen either Re:Zero or The Promised Neverland?
Assault Lily: Bouquet Episode 7
There was no Assault Lily: Bouquet last week, and now it’s back I was expecting plenty more silly yuriness and maybe a little more parkour fighting. I was not expecting this at all.
Yes, that’s an egg, washed up on the shore after a Huge attacks an unmanned cargo freight ship. And what emerges is a girl. Even with yuri dominating a good portion of the show, Assault Lily: Bouquet is set in the not-too-distant future, which I suppose makes it a sci-fi. Something like this should normally be in the realm of imagination, but I genuinely was not expecting a subplot of a girl hatching from an egg, and Riri being her caretaker until she’s able to feed herself and stand on her own two feet. It doesn’t stop there either, as this is clearly going to be something that carries on right to the end of the show, when the academy find out her Magie is high enough to be considered a Lily.
This revelation of her being a Lily will, I think, definitely be something that crops up again. After all, we know next to nothing about how Magie even works, or how girls are discovered to be Lilies. So if one pops out of an egg that came from a freighter, what are we to think? Can Lilies be artificially created? What are these menacing-sounding people speaking on Zoom (audio-only) to the academy’s principal? And what even is the connection with the Lilies and the Huge? Opinions on a postcard on this one, but I have some ideas…all of which I won’t put up here, in case I’m way off.
Oh yeah, and with this new girl being introduced, a certain someone is getting jealous and wants her fill of Riri, and our girl Kaede is loving every minute of it. Yuyu’s eyes in that scene, though; not sure what happened there…
Tonikawa: Over The Moon For You Episode 8
As I was still weirded out by egg girl in Assault Lily, we had some more stability in this week’s Tonikawa, when Tsukasa finally gets to meet Nasa’s parents. They’re both absolutely nuts, but perhaps that might have been a given for this kind of slapstick comedy show. I mean, just having normal & dull parents doing normal & dull things just doesn’t cut it really, does it?
I had gotten worried that the show was going in a strange direction after all these filler episodes of their trip to Nara, but it’s kind of come around full circle now. This week was an especially sweet one. Nasa and Tsukasa act more like a newlywed couple now, as opposed to Nasa just acting incredibly awkward. Meeting the parents is something that just comes naturally, but as we see at the end of the episode, we understand why Father was so nervous. A big thing happens right at the end of the credits, so it’s worth sticking around for that. With this, it becomes even more important for Nasa and Tsukasa to stick together and to be a good married couple.
Last week gave us the strange encounter at a service stop with Chitose trying again (and failing again) to break up the two, but now I’m happy to see this go in a better direction.
I will say one thing I did notice this week, though. There are more moments where Tsukasa just hints at…something. Way back in episode 1, as he was bleeding to death, Nasa saw a Princess Kaguya in Tsukasa. Now she’s already said to Nasa that she doesn’t have much interest in history, but we see here in episode 8 that she is clearly very knowledgeable of it. She talks in detail about the history of landmarks dotted across Nara, that dated back to the Nara and Heian eras, and also, when Father, an archeologist, shows Tsukasa his office, she looks at an old manuscript in complicated Kanji and is easily able to tell that it’s a love letter. Reddit has already had some ideas that Tsukasa really is some kind of Princess Kaguya kind of person. I haven’t read the manga, and so I don’t know what will turn out if she is or if she isn’t. But ultimately, does it even matter?
Adachi & Shimamura Episode 7
In Adachi & Shimamura, the winter break is over, and the end of the school year looms, meaning there’s a chance that the two of them might end up in different classes. The slow burn continues into episode 7, which I think might have thrown some viewers off by now, who are really itching for some action. We get more of the lovesick puppy Adachi this week, but a lot more is shown on Shimamura for a change. Her standoffish behavior has annoyed some, but I know for certain that there is far more to all that than meets the eye…
We notice her falling back on this one time in elementary school when she got close to one girl who didn’t return the favor/loyalty. I used to think that, with this, this would make Shimamura really scared in doing it all over again with someone like Adachi, but there’s more than just that. Some viewers see her as someone rather standoffish towards someone giving affection, but the real truth is that she can see right through Adachi, and see that she has a crush on her. She just doesn’t really want to be seen as a burden, and so puts on a mask of obliviousness, and makes out that she is just some regular girl looking for another friend to hang out with. I complained about the metaphors we see in the show in the past, but now they make so much more sense.
As well as this, and going back to the elementary school thing, Shimamura is very cynical when it comes to other people. We’ve seen her talk about Nagafuji and Hino as ‘some girls to hang out with’, and in the episode where she meets Adachi’s constantly absent mother by coincidence, she doesn’t hold back on how she feels a caring mother should act towards a daughter full of conflict and teenage hormones. Saying this, Shimamura does enjoy the attention, and likes the thought that there is at least someone who wants to reach out (leaving Nagafuji and Hino out of the picture). Just as I’ve said that I want to see more of Shimamura as a person in the show (since so far, it’s been all Adachi), I want to see her actually tackle these emotions of her, and to be more open with her new best friend.
A plot point does come out in this week’s episode, and I don’t want to go too much into that, but what I will say is that it certainly comes across as a hurdle when it comes to Shimamura, and what she wants to do in the future. It may suddenly dawn on her (or Adachi for that matter) that these outings they’ve been going on might as well be construed as actual dates after all, and they haven’t quite realized it yet.
BNA – Brand New Animal Episode 8
While the last episode saw BNA head more into its sociopolitical message, episode 8 finally goes into more detail about this Ginrou deity that is being worshipped in Anima City. Prepare for some high-quality sarcasm:
Shirou was Ginrou the whole time, and it was a massive twist that none of us saw coming. So this unnatural strength and keen senses of his weren’t just some fluke and the fact that it took this long for Michiru to figure it out is just mind-blowing. He (as in Shirou) has some mixed feelings about this. The Ginrou deity is using him as a vessel as he has already absorbed enough beastmen blood to still sustain himself, so no wonder Shirou feels pretty uncomfortable being, effectively, a host to a parasite…only the parasite is a deity that a cult worships and is willing to die for.
I was already getting frustrated with Michiru and her reckless behavior, but Nazuna now winds me up even more, by refusing to budge and remain having this holy complex of hers. She still insists that Michiru call her by her guru name, and now that she knows about Shirou/Ginrou too, I can’t honestly tell what will happen in future episodes. Although given her holier-than-thou attitude, I doubt that it would affect her as much as the actual cult members; she is only a poster girl for them, after all.
Every week I want BNA to be better, and every week I end up disappointed. I should just not bother with this optimism anymore, huh. Semi-related though, thanks to everyone who took part in the poll last week to decide what out-of-season show I’ll be watching at the start of next year. A Lull In The Sea won in the end…and as it’s a two-cour show, it’ll carry on through the Spring season too. I had only watched a couple of episodes of this, but never got around to continuing it – I remember enjoying it though, so that’s something at least. I also found out only as I was writing this week’s post that the famed Mari Okada was scriptwriter for this. Sooooo, let’s see how this’ll go on when I start it in January.
Shows went in some unexpected directions this week. Assault Lily: Bouquet gave us a girl hatched from an egg, and both Tonikawa and Adachi & Shimamura had surprise endings/plot-points. We’re reaching December after all, so I suppose now’s the time for shows to get more substantial. So have the shows you’ve been watching gotten any better? Or maybe worse? Feel free to hit that like button and air your opinions in the comments below!