Despite giving me some very enjoyable shows, 2022 has really felt like the strangest year for me, anime-wise. Has my radar for finding enjoyable shows been ruined now? Or has the recent presence of the big and overhyped shows skewered my perception of anime as a whole? I guess these have been a funny three years for all of us, with a good portion of the world shutting up shop. And so I go back to myself questioning whether these were the right picks for this Fall season. I mean, if you read last week’s column, I say that all three of my picks are decent enough watches. I suppose I’m asking myself this because these aren’t really the types of shows I’d normally choose.
I probably am overthinking this far too much that it is beginning to drive me crazy. I mean, these are just meant to be entertaining shows, right?
The Eminence in Shadow Episode 2
So this show is going to be 20 episodes long then. I haven’t really been sure on my plans in 2023, and watching the second half of this show certainly didn’t factor in any of them, so I don’t really know what I’ll do. I’ll think of something though. But after the very unusual (and very divisive, apparently) first episode we had, what did we get now that Truck-kun took Potato-kun away, and the main world has been established? Well, you’ll have to watch episode 2 carefully, as it’s told at a pretty fast pace.
Potato-kun is reborn as Cid Kagenou, but like we saw at the end of episode 1, he still wants to maintain his persona of ‘The Eminence in Shadow’. To become the background character to whatever the main protagonist is in this new world he is in now, and to overwhelm enemies in the shadows. And as he is reborn, we literally see massive amounts of magic resonating in him, so this automatically makes him a standard overpowered isekai character. Now there are an endless amount of isekai shows out there where you can just switch your brain off and enjoy the action, but The Eminence in Shadow is not one of them.
Cid finds a living blob on a treasure hunt and by practicing his magic on it, it turns into an elf girl who he decides to trick into following him on a ‘crusade’ to fight the Cult of Diablos – a cult he read about on the cover of a book he found there and then in that abandoned hut. Using the overpowered magic he has, he trains Alpha the elf girl into becoming a part of his chuunibyou organization Shadow Garden. Soon enough, more harem girls with their own magical powers arrive. Now we’re only just getting warm in this show, so I don’t really know how I feel so far about this trickery…but I do find it amusing that this Cult of Diablos actually exists, as we see when Cid’s older sister is kidnapped.
The Eminence in Shadow is meant to be lighthearted and humorous, by putting a new spin on the isekai genre. I think my issue with the show so far is that I’m not liking the charade Cid is putting on. He is self-aware in this new world, and is being presented as a bit of a con artist, and a clueless one at that. He may have all of these magical powers, but that doesn’t really make him a likeable character, which in turn makes me feel more sorry for these poor harem girls he has collected. Perhaps there’s more I need to know about the story, and I’m just jumping to conclusions here. But right now, the show is not winning me over as much as I had hoped it would. Episode 1 was very divisive, and now with Potato-kun firmly in this new world, I’m not sure who I prefer: this Lord Shadow con artist, or the Batman wannabe from episode 1.
Oh, and apparently we will be seeing that girl from episode 1 again…in some form or another.
Raven of the Inner Palace Episode 3
Bandai Namco Pictures clearly spent their time on that flower blowing animation, because I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen it now, and it’s only episode 3.
Having seen this episode, I’m now not sure whether we’ll get actual story arcs or whether the show’s story will operate on episode-by-episode. This week tells the story of a whistle owned by Yun Huaniang, the Second Consort, and a childhood friend of the emperor. Her lover passed away in the uprising, and as it is thought that dead spirits from Paradise blow into the whistle when the spring comes, she finds it alarming when his spirit does not.
This episode serves more of an introduction to Huaniang’s character, as it seems like she will be someone who will be seen fairly frequently in the show. But not just that; it looks like Shouxue’s past is about to catch up with her. In this episode, we get little flashbacks of how she was ‘selected’ to be the Raven Consort, how she was raised after her parents died, and so on. But she still can’t hide the fact that she is a part of the outcast Luan Dynasty. After last week, I thought that it was simply a matter of having natural silver hair, but as we see in this week’s episode, more people in the Luan Dynasty have malicious intentions, as we encounter a court lady possessed by a long-dead sorcerer who is collecting spirits, and is telling Shouxue to use her powers to overthrow the emperor and bring the Luan Dynasty back.
I continue to pick at this show’s pacing; it’s going far too quickly for my liking now. Raven of the Inner Palace offers such a detailed and intrinsic story, and gives us a lot of characters to follow and root for, and yet it still decides to push forward as quickly as it can that there’s not much room to take in background material that, to me, seem rather interesting. Now after the events of this episode, Shouxue will have to open up to more people, and not be the traditionally lonesome Raven Consort of old, so how will she be able to handle all of these court ladies and tea meetings and gossiping with fellow consorts? As she says this week, growing attachments to others will cloud her judgements and affect her duties as the Raven Consort. Will the writers be able to show her as a fish out of water, or will it just skim over it all and cut straight to the main story?
Bocchi the Rock! Episode 2
After watching the debut episode, I wasn’t really sure on whether it would try and emulate the magic that K-on! gave, but as we see in this week’s episode, Bocchi the Rock! wants to do something of its own. Their first concert is done, and without a vocalist, the band needs to think about their future. Interesting how the show talks about how bands such as theirs make money; if the bands apparently do not meet their set quota of attendees, then they have to pay the venue out of their own pocket. This week it seems clearer now that the show will center more around the venue Starry itself, which Nijika’s big sister manages. And who is very obviously a big tsundere.
So to raise money, the band (or rather just Nijika and Ryo) decide that part-time work at the venue will help. We get a lot of visual gags here, as the thought of confronting people at a public venue terrifies Hitori. And it was here where I began to think how the show was going to tackle the subject of social anxiety, a topic very close to my heart. Bocchi the Rock! is a show with strong comedy elements, yes, and I don’t expect the story to turn super serious, so watching a mixture of the two here is something I’m not totally sold on yet. But I’m sure it’ll be something that’ll grow on me.
I didn’t really say much last week about the other two girls in the band so far, Nijika and Ryo. They seem like polar opposites, and yet the two work well together. Nijika is positive and outgoing, while Ryo is withdrawn yet not unpleasant to be around. The episode even likes to point out the difference between loneliness and a loner, so that Hitori and Ryo aren’t really that much in the way of kindred spirits. As for Hitori, she has been thrown into new experiences that scare the heck out of her, and while we get a lot of visual gags on how difficult these seemingly-easy tasks are for her, we also notice when the show tones down the humor and makes Hitori’s social anxiety something more serious.
Hitori still has a huge mountain to climb, and while I would normally say ‘she can do it’ in an instant (because that’s what ‘cute girls doing cute things’ shows are about), it’s hard to call so far. Her social anxiety is crippling her, and despite having done a show with them and spending a day working at the venue, she still can’t understand what the others see in her. This is a common thing though; sufferers find themselves so without worth that even when they do good jobs, they see nothing but more misery and depression. I’m still not 100% sold on how the show is constantly cracking jokes about it though; to give it credit, at least they aren’t crude and demeaning jokes like what we saw in Watamote. The band will see its vocalist arrive next week I’m sure, so I wonder what kind of personality they will have, and how Hitori will gel with her.
Odd Taxi Episode 3
Episode 3 of Odd Taxi picks up directly from where the previous one left off, with the gangster Dobu holding Odokawa at gunpoint and wanting to talk to him what he knows about the missing girl. Dobu tells him that he is working for a Yakuza lieutenant, and is pretty much just a delivery boy for him. He’s been labelled the prime suspect for the girl’s disappearance, but swears he had nothing to do with it. Even still, he tells Odokawa that his boss Kuroda wants what Odokawa knows about the girl (as she was allegedly one of his customers) because he has history with her. This now explains what we saw at the end of episode 1, where elder Daimon is being bribed and delivers dashcam footage to him.
Odokawa eventually agrees to help Dobu, but only when he brings up Shirakawa’s name. I suppose this shows that, despite that gruff anti-social façade of his, there is someone in there that wants to look out for others. Although Shirakawa tells him that she knows capoeira, what exactly can she do when there’s a gun in her face? But while all of this has been going on, another plot point has emerged that I wasn’t quite expecting to see.
I originally thought that Kakihana’s search for a lady in his life was just some side thing in the story, to add some comic relief to the show, but as we see in episode 3, his story goes on its own serious path. We’ve known since episode 2 that someone actually messaged him on the dating site he is on, with a made-up profile. Well it turns out that that 18-year-old messaging him is actually Shiho, one of Mystery Kiss’s backup singers who wears a mask at her concerts and events. And as she and Kakihana finally meet in this episode, it’s plain to see that she isn’t revolted at first sight. My senses are actually telling me that Shiho read Kakihana’s dating site profile, noticed he makes in excess of 20 million yen a year (which of course he doesn’t), and her managers are telling her to play a kind of entrapment/gold-digging game on him because Mystery Kiss isn’t making as much money as they should be. This is a crazy idea, but giving what kind of story Odd Taxi is giving us so far, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was actually true. This all goes to show how there are no black and white characters in the show, and that there is always something going on in everyone despite how innocent they appear to be.
I had heard the online chatter last year about Odd Taxi, but real life circumstances meant I couldn’t catch it when it was airing. I’m really engrossed in the story so far, and have no idea which direction it will end on. Each character is going on their own direction too, and precisely because they’re all murky (and not black and white), I have no idea how their stories will end either. But I’m so anxious to know. This is the kind of slow burn show I like watching, and I’m not usually one for slow burn shows.
With how I feel about The Eminence in Shadow, and my complaints about the pacing in Raven of the Inner Palace, I think my Fall season picks might be ones that’ll take time for me to warm to. As I said, I’m not particularly liking Cid Kagenou, and I want to see the story slow down so that I get to see more of the Inner Palace and its assorted characters. And I will get around to catching The Witch From Mercury…eventually.