It’s actually hard to believe that Christmas is only in a couple of weeks. I suppose living alone has done this to me; made me so numb to public holidays and celebrations. I’m looking forward to the Winter season coming more than what I’m planning for December. 25, to be honest. I know for certain that 2023 will be a better year for me, both IRL and anime-wise. Some stuff in life has started to turn in my favor, and I know to avoid the sketchy-looking shows this time. I’ll be going into more detail on those sketchy-looking shows I unfortunately chose in the top 5 of the year post, which will be coming soon. In the meantime, let’s get into the two remaining shows I have left…or three, if you count Odd Taxi.
Raven of the Inner Palace Episode 11
The light novels for Raven of the Inner Palace are being translated into English by Seven Seas, and after what I’ve seen in this week’s episode, I’m beginning to worry whether we’ll get the kind of show ending that can only be explained in light novel lore. It picks up from what we saw last week; a court lady’s body thrown against a mangled tree, with her throat ripped out. It’s a pretty grim sight, which I won’t share here in this column post. Thanks to some digging, it comes out that this court lady served in the same palace as the Magpie Consort.
The Magpie Consort is bedridden right now, having grown ill from what happened to her brother (died in an accident outside the palace). Way back when, someone came in the middle of the night to visit Shouxue asking if she could bring someone back from the dead; well it turned out that this woman was the Magpie Consort all along. Now it seems that she has become so desperate to bring her brother back, that she has turned to someone else to help her…or maybe something would be a better description. The consort is only letting one person be in her chambers while she is bedridden right now, and while everyone around her thinks this person is just another eunuch in the palace, it comes out that this person is the one who has been tormenting Shouxue right now.
Feng Xiao Yue is still a bit of a mystery character, but he is a definite threat to Shouxue. She has been referring to this person as ‘The Owl’, which may be a reference to some past lore in the show. To be honest, I have forgotten a lot of it. It’s not so much that it is boring lore to listen to; instead it’s more like there is so much of it, and my poor brain is struggling to keep up. This is why I worry that the show’s ending may mean followers should read the LNs so they can understand. Or perhaps it’s just me still not quite used to this kind of drama story.
Anyway, what is Shouxue meant to do now? Feng Xiao Yue has been identified, and we don’t even know the extent of his supernatural powers yet. I also want to go back to what I said last week, where Shouxue is doing things that her predecessors would never do, and socialize. The Raven Consort is meant (or destined, even…) to live a solitary life, and here’s Shouxue keeping ladies-in-waiting and eunuchs, and socializing with the emperor. Interesting what Li Nian has said this week, in how she should not get too close to anyone, as death seems to follow her wherever she goes. On top of this, there is also the new fact that a Raven Consort dies 8 years after the next one is chosen. This links to why Raven Consorts are meant to keep to themselves: so they don’t worry about losing anyone.
Raven of the Inner Palace is approaching its end, so a faceoff against the Owl is due either next week or the week after. As for how the show will deal with Shouxue’s relationships with her ladies-in-waiting, eunuchs, the emperor, and so on…well your guess is as good as mine.
Bocchi the Rock! Episode 10
The studio are continuing to push limits when it comes to the art direction in this show, as we see in this week’s episode. Picking up from the cliffhanger of last week, Hitori finds out her school’s cultural festival is imminent, and so feels torn. One half wants to show off Kessoku Band to these schoolkids who she never talks to anyway, while the other half just wants to crawl into a ball and never have to think of taking part in any kind of public performance again. Unfortunately for her though, Kita has already submitted the application to perform on the school stage.
This cultural festival performance would be Hitori’s chance at proving how ‘cool’ she is, and how much of a rocker she is. Of course this entire scenario is living rent-free in her head. As our favorite drunk rock girl Kikuri tells her this week, everyone is scared of doing something for the first time. To help cheer her up, she invites the four of them to her band’s show that night, at the venue she has a residency in. Kikuri acts as bassist and lead singer for SICK HACK, a psychedelic rock band of three, who are actually pretty popular in the indie scene; Ryo is already a die-hard fan of the band. Kikuri later goes on to tell Hitori that she was drawn to her especially because she can relate to her struggles. She was the anxious loner in high school too, and knows exactly what it feels like to be scared of taking the next step forward. Not great to hear that she used alcohol as a coping mechanism though – not great advice at all.
Well I’ll say that her band, SICK HACK, really do rule. The performance we see is something I want to highlight in particular. It combines psychedelic animation to match the music with Kikuri’s impact on Hitori as a new mentor. Our hero gets to see how the veterans do it, and while she’s in complete awe, she remains convinced that it’s something she could never do. Taking a leap of faith is tough, no matter what it is for, but it feels all the more apt because we know it is something that Hitori would never dream of doing if she wasn’t in Kessoku Band and hadn’t performed well at her first gig. The animation team at Cloverworks put on their creative hats in every episode of Bocchi the Rock!, but this one stands out as we see more of a connect between the two of them now.
In the meantime, Kita has to make it up to Hitori, for submitting the application without her consent, and decides to stop her guitar practice with her (in favor of Ryo), so that Hitori can muster up the courage and work on her own performance. I mentioned last week how followers are shipping these characters, and I must seriously be the only one who can’t see any of that. All I can see are our four girls (and the adults) jam and have fun. Or am I just so jaded that the only way I can see yuri these days is when full-on confessions come out?
In case you’re wondering, I don’t miss The Eminence in Shadow one bit. Maybe I’ll talk a little more about that in the season review post, but other than that, considering that chapter closed now.
Odd Taxi Episode 11
The goings-on in Mystery Kiss have been quite a…well…mystery to me, but having watched episode 11 of Odd Taxi, a lot of things now make sense. And it turned out not to be as deep and complex as I was somehow expecting it to be. I was half-expecting this episode to revolve around the upcoming heist, yet it was good to see this section of the show somewhat resolved.
Most of the characters we’ve seen in this show have something in common, in that they all have damaged or broken sides of them they want no-one to see, and Rui Nikaido is no exception. She is an overachiever, and desperate to get the top spot in everything in life. And so the thought of another idol girl coming along and taking the top spot from her is something that just cannot happen in her eyes. Episode 11’s first half acts as both an origin story of Mystery Kiss’s conception and an explanation of what happened to Yuki Mitsuya. When a music producer puts out the idea that Yuki take center stage instead, Rui conceives a plan to kill her, but when she arrives at the meeting spot she arranges, she finds Yuki already dead. She later confesses to Yamamoto what she had planned to do, and so he gets in contact with Yano, who strikes a deal with them. He acts as a fixer and deals with Yuki’s body, and in return he takes 50% of Mystery Kiss’s profits. And through all this, Yuki is replaced by another girl, a doppelganger to fool the public…but of course this plan all collapses when Yuki’s body is discovered by the police.
The resolution of this story was overdue, I think. Here and there in the show, we had been drip-fed all these things about the idol group, the managers behind them, and what their relationship was with the Yakuza. I really enjoyed this sub-plot, but it has also opened up some more questions:
- Who really killed Yuki if it wasn’t Rui? Her father was a famous comedian apparently, called Donraku, so was this related to that?
- Why does the name Donraku seem to appear so often in this show, despite us knowing so little about him? Does he have a bigger role to play in all this than we thought?
- Who is this replacement girl Sakura? Let’s not forget that she was the one who planted the GPS tracker in Odokawa’s taxi, for Tanaka to find him.
- Also, it hasn’t really been made clear on who Odokawa really drove on that day? Was it Yuki, or was it her murderer?
- And of course there’s this investigation Goriki is doing. We get to look at an old newspaper article of what happened to Odokawa’s parents, but what about what happened in him after that?
With the big heist coming up, and this thing regarding Mystery Kiss being one of the secondary plot points in the show, I suppose there was no time like the present to wrap it up (or rather…then, as this is out-of-season). Now with Yamamoto out of the picture, Dobu’s ‘Odd Taxi’ plan is in jeopardy, not to mention that Tanaka is still on the streets. I really am going to miss this show.
What’s your Christmas going to be like? KFC doesn’t open on Christmas Day here sadly. Perhaps I’ll use the final weeks of this year to binge on some 2022 shows I was not able to catch. I haven’t actually been watching this second cour of Spy x Family, so maybe I can binge on that before Christmas comes around. And I will be watching Chainsaw Man eventually. Maybe in a year or two, when the hype starts to die down.