Spring ends. Well, the spring season ends. Summer has already begun here, and we here in the UK are already complaining about the heatwaves we are getting. We live to complain, you see. Anyway, I still have some shows to complete, and some other shows to start shortly…literally. I think that’s something all of us feel when it comes to seasonal anime; we enjoy our shows, and yet really relish turning over new leaves when new seasons/cours begin.
Since Kaguya-sama‘s finale is an hour-long one with a lot to pack in, I’ve made the decision to make a separate post for that, so watch out for it in the very near future. In the mean time, here are the other shows:
The Demon Girl Next Door Season 2 Episode 11
Next week will be the final episode for this season of The Demon Girl Next Door, and in the way this week’s one ends, we get a better impression of how the show itself will end. Season 1 showed us that the Light and Dark clans were more intrinsically linked than Shamiko and Momo thought, while here in season 2, Mikan and her crippling magical girl curse will be the big focus instead.
To those who have paid far more attention to the gag moments of the show than the actual long-running story (I’ve guilty of that too at some points), Mikan lived at the Chiyoda residence as a young child, but because her parents failed in a magic attempt, she has to live with a curse for the rest of her life. Only Momo as a young child would interact with her. Now she’s this age, she’s kind of resigned herself to being solitary, but since she is transferring into Shamiko and Momo’s school, she has to put on the face of a happy kid. And it’s something that isn’t always working, no matter what Shamiko does.
So, with the two of them frustrated at Mikan’s apathy towards her curse, they decide to do something about it, by entering her subconscious and taking care of the devil inside…something I would have thought they’d have done a long time ago if they were that concerned about removing it. As they discover, the name of the devil is Ugallu, one of the eleven mystical monsters created by the sea goddess Tiamat. So what are we all going to expect in the finale?
- Shamiko and Momo to negotiate nicely with this thing.
- Both of them to screw up, with Momo using her Darkness Peach powers to destroy it.
- Uguallu will leave Mikan’s body, but will later end up becoming a secondary character in a future season.
It could be any one of these things, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be all three.
I have been surprised that Momo’s older sister Sakura has not appeared in the flesh this season, as I was really expecting her to. But I’m okay with Shamiko and Momo facing off against a mystical devil creature in their friends’ body. If anything it’ll make Shamiko a stronger demon girl so she can make Momo her vassal that much quicker.
Komi Can’t Communicate Season 2 Episode 9
Over in Komi Can’t Communicate, the show goes in a slightly different direction. I was expecting to see plenty more of Tadano, Najimi and co, but the focus shifts squarely on Komi…as it really ought to. Her and the group she was put in: fellow classmates Ayami Sasaki and Mikun Katou. The whole episode in fact is on the three of them.
Before watching this episode, I had an idea that we would see these two again maybe in a fleeting manner, but for have them for the whole of one episode was pretty cool. Who are these two? Well…no-one, but that’s the point. Sasaki has a passion for yo-yo spinning, while Katou wants to become a professional shogi player. The episode does not really portray them as outcasts or misfits, like maybe what you’d see in someone like Yamai or Nakanaka. The show has been very heavy on Komi making friends with the crazies and the misfits in the school, and in comparison Sasaki and Katou are extremely normal, on Tadano’s level in fact. And so if Komi is able to converse and have fun with someone who is more on the normie-side of the classroom, then she can make many more kinds of friends, crazy or not.
Maybe I’m reading too deeply into an episode that some people might just call filler and others might just call dull, but I think an episode like this was needed. Not so much as a break away from Tadano, Najimi and co, but for Komi’s character to develop that much more. Actually, the fact that Tadano, Najimi and co. aren’t really in this episode until the very end makes it stand out in a really good way.
I don’t want to think that Sasaki and Katou will be characters we may not see that much more of again, because they were both amazing here. Both of them know of Komi’s extreme social anxiety, and so do what they can to accommodate. Katou draws together an elaborate schedule of things to do on their one day off, while Sasaki just wants to chill and take it easy. I know that we probably won’t get an episode like this again, especially considering how it ended. But hey, let’s just enjoy this episode for what it is and what it had: a girl in school uniform with a hannya mask threatening ninjas with yo-yos for tourists’ entertainment. When is that spin-off show coming?
Iroduku: The World in Colors Episodes 12 & 13
I said last week for episode 11 that I was starting to like the new urgency in the show, with a new moon approaching and Hitomi needing to go back to her own timeline. Episode 12 might have had the school festival going on in the background, but the main theme was Hitomi picking out the things that needed to be done before she can go home – things like confessing to Yuito.
This episode ought to have led on to what we saw in the previous one, where Yuito got a glimpse of Hitomi as a younger girl, and where he discovers her mother abandoned her when she found out her daughter could use magic (and she could not). This could have been a really awesome plot point to continue on; at the very least, Hitomi could have spoken about it some more to Yuito, and we as the viewer would get a much better understanding of what kind of person she became, and perhaps how she became colorblind in the first place.
But that topic of colorblindness is something that does return, when we see that it has been Hitomi’s internal feelings and emotions that have prevented her from seeing color, and remaining in monochrome. Her eternal depression through her teenage years has made her ambivalent, nonchalant and not bothered about the world around her. To her, the world means nothing, and so why bother bringing color into it? This is the one thing that is expanded further into the final episode, and pretty much makes sense of why she was sent to the past in the first place.
Hitomi wasn’t a terrible mage, like she thought she was; it was just that she had closed herself off from the rest of the world that her magic became her monochromatic prison. And it was spending time with the dorks that had to bring the color back, get the magic inside her to work, and sent her back to the future.
I’m glad that something like that was brought in to explain why she was sent back in time. I think my biggest complaint in Iroduku was that there were many plot points that could have made the show really awesome that were either left unexplained or barely touched on. The biggest example of this is how magic even exists in this show. It becomes something that is woven into modern society with next to no explanation. Another example is the overall chemistry between the dorks in general. The character designs themselves were fun to watch, but it often felt like something was missing that was stopping us from really connecting with them, and for us to understand their own little romances. I never even got why Sho even liked Hitomi, for instance. And then there’s Yuito himself.
A little accident happens in the spell casting leaving Yuito and Hitomi trapped in a time bubble, and it’s here where he finally fesses up to liking her. And it’s also here where I noticed something about him that I should have seen right from the very start: in terms of closing off society, he is no different from Hitomi. And it’s possible that the times where he gives her the cold shoulder is because he saw too much of himself in her.
Iroduku was a fun watch, despite the slight shade I have been throwing at it. I absolutely loved Hitomi’s character, and her discovering the reason she was sent back in time, and her fighting her own demons. The other dorks were cool to watch as well, and the story idea itself was a novel one. I only wished that the things that could have potentially made the show really stand out as a quality P.A Works show were built up and expanded more, or even written better. And while it was great to see the happy ending of Hitomi being sent back to her own timeline and the others giving her a good sendoff, I thought the ending was a little lacking in something. She’s back in her own timeline and ready to start her life all over again, as a girl who has opened up to the world now, but should there have been more added to it? Well Hitomi’s story ends here sadly and we’ll get no sequel, so we’ll never know.
A little something else to end this post on. Sunrise, who does the Love Live! franchise, put out an April Fool’s joke way back when that they would make a show exclusively about Yohane. People did indeed see it as a joke, thinking that a show like that would never ever happen. Well guess what? The madmen are actually going to make it after all.
Just a teaser PV and some images so far, but it has been green-lit and been slated for 2023. I’m seeing this is either going to be some elaborate fantasy parody, or a silly little isekai. Either way, this show will be something I don’t think Sunrise will take super seriously. I mean come on, this was all built on an April Fool’s joke.