As I was typing this, I heard the news that Made In Abyss has landed on Disney+ now (in Japan though). Here was me wondering why they’d want some not-family-friendly shows like Black Rock Shooter: Dawnfall and Summer Time Rendering, and they now get the rights for a show like that. Either way, it’s clear to see that Disney no longer wants to sit at the loser’s table in terms of anime streaming. While they have the funds, I personally don’t think they’ll succeed at this. The followers have placed too much faith on the platforms they have always known, and don’t like change. Why else do you think Netflix gets as much hate as it does from the anime crowd?
Komi Can’t Communicate Season 2 Episode 5
When it comes to Komi Can’t Communicate though, I do think that they have finally won them over, after their initial skepticism. It had to take them a whole season though…
Following the previous Christmas party episode, this one was a little more subdued, focusing less on the regulars we see and more on Komi and her family. One sweet little thing we had was the opening section, where Tadano and Najimi invite Komi to make a snowman outside their house. Barely a word was said, and visual characters and props were used instead. It really made a refreshing change to the kind of dialogue we expect in every scene in every episode. I know that this will be something that we probably won’t see again, and so I think it’s worth enjoying while we have it.
As we move past a snowball fight, we meet some more members of the Komi family, where we get a very amusing Hanafuda card game face-off. Covering After School Dice Club for Otaku Theater way back renewed my interest in analog games, but even so I had never heard of Hanafuda cards before. Here in Komi Can’t Communicate we get to see a Koi-Koi faceoff with Shoko, cousin Akira and Grandma Komi battling it out for an increase in New Year’s allowance. Koi-Koi is apparently in the Switch game Clubhouse Games, and also appeared in the Yakuza games and Sakura Wars. Goes to show how out-of-touch I can be, I guess…
This had a slightly different pace to the kind of episodes we normally see, largely due to the fact that the rest of the main cast played less of a role this week. Will we get more episodes like this one? I really hope so, but I doubt it. The winter break is over now, and the gang will head on back to school, where Komi will feel even more awkward.
The Demon Girl Next Door Season 2 Episode 7
Call me cynical, but when a show goes on a week-long break and then returns with a recap episode, things might not be going so well. I know how well this season of The Demon Girl Next Door is being received, and I know that I poke at it too much because I forgot how fast-paced it used to be. Well perhaps if I look at it another way, a recap episode might have helped me, and given me a refresher on what I had forgotten in this season. And truth be told, there was a lot.
We got a really weird recap episode as well, and by that I mean that it went into several layers of meta. Breaking the fourth wall being a big one, and Shamiko stumped on what ‘episodes’ are and who the ‘audience’ is is another. What non-recap stuff we did see in this next episode was all events that took place in their summer break, and it made me think that summer activity episodes were wasted here. Or maybe this just was not the kind of story that would suit a pool party episode, or a beach episode, or something like that.
I did find it funny how Shamiko tried some Schadenfreude on Momo and motivate her to get her summer school work done. I think that when it comes to the future development of Shamiko and Momo’s relationship, it will be tiny things like these that will have the bigger impact than the ones that are more in-your-face. Oh and this ‘motivation’ ended up being tickets to the local zoo, so it’s very possible that we’ll get a zoo episode pretty soon…even next week. Another date/not date for the two of them.
Kaguya-sama: Love is War Season 3 Episode 8
Well, it’s coming. The Cultural Festival arc has arrived with a bang now, and of course like in every single anime show, couples need to confess. It’s like the law. As we have seen in every episode of Kaguya-sama, A-1 Pictures have adapted the heck out of the source manga, and added their own little touches to it. This means that when the confessions come, and they will come, we’ll get far more than just some blushes and humble scratches of the head.
I said last week on how I thought that Miyuki was noticing tiny faults he has far more than the great accomplishments he has really made in high school. Now with him heading to Stanford, it really feels like he is trying to put his pride to a side. But there’s always something that is keeping him. Kaguya on the other hand, has just gone and admitted it now. This was something that I genuinely didn’t expect, but it seems that after so so long, she has just had enough of this ongoing battle. Of course she still doesn’t know he’s heading to the US, and my money is on that that will be the big bombshell in the penultimate episode, to get us hyped for the finale.
With this final arc of this season, I guess the question is whether the regular sketches we see (along with the booming narrator) will be less prominent, and the story will just run at a different level; the kind of level we saw in past episodes like the election day one in season 2. Maybe we’ll even get more episodes that focus solely from a secondary character’s point-of-view; that would actually be very cool if it did as it would give us another level of focus in this ongoing battle that Miyuki and Kaguya are kind of doing…or rather not anymore.
But one thing for sure is that the secondary cast will feature a lot more in these final episodes; understandable since so many people are a part of the Cultural Festival. Yuu still hasn’t confessed to Tsubame-senpai after all. Both Chika and Hayasaka need to cause more chaos. And Kei (Miyuki’s sister) needs to be more tsundere than she already is…
This is the beginning of the end, I’ll just say that.
Iroduku: The World in Colors Episode 8
I’ve started to compare Iroduku to other P.A Works shows a lot more than normal now, and I see a lot of elements in this than I initially thought. You see I had no issue with the gang-of-five we saw in Glasslip; the weirdo transfer student who claimed to hear voices from the future arrived and ruined it all, I think. I also saw some elements of the school life I saw in A Lull In The Sea; kids just being kids, and letting their hormones run rampant. P.A Works have always been a studio who love to take risks when it comes to bringing out shows, and with this show premiering on Amazon Prime (before moving on to HIDIVE), I think some followers didn’t really form that much of a decent opinion like they would to a P.A Works show that appears on, say, Crunchyroll or Funimation.
I’ve also started to accept now that these unplanned outings of theirs are just what a large portion of this show is about, although I am thinking back to how I did my photo shoots in my college days, and to be honest they weren’t really any different. I had no real set plan in mind then; I just took my camera and went off.
Anyway, while episode 8 of Iroduku had little in the way of progression in these characters, it made up for what the ending could potentially be. Kohaku offers a running commentary on how she began using magic as a child, and is formulating how to send Hitomi back to her own timeline. I was very interested to see how Reddit reacted to this episode, and how they went off on time and physics.
In this episode, Hitomi talks about a picture book that she was able to see the colors of, and so it’s highly likely that said picture book will turn out to be something Yuito puts together. I’m not naturally a physics person, but after watching this episode, and watching Kohaku struggle with putting together a plan to send her granddaughter back to her own time, I find myself suddenly interested in the things the Reddit thread talks about – causal loops and temporal paradoxes. Thanks to Hitomi now being a part of this timeline, whole new events will happen that will effect the future. This is something that Kohaku needs to consider if she wants her time magic to work.
But does Hitomi really want to go back? This is something that is also discussed in episode 8. She has become so much happier than she was in her own timeline, and she feels that she belongs here now. On top of all the physics, I’m scratching my head even more on what kind of ending this will have. Hitomi staying will have a direct impact on the future – on her own timeline.
I had picked out 4 potential out-of-season shows for the summer season, and did a poll for them not so long ago, and there’s still time to decide which one it’s going to be. They are all ones from this year, by the way.