People have a lot to choose from for the Fall season, really. Season 6 of My Hero Academia, season 5 of Yowamushi Pedal, season 4 of Encouragement of Climb, season 3 of Mob Psycho 100, second seasons of To Your Eternity, Uzaki-chan, Kancolle and Pop Team Epic, the second halves of Spy x Family and Tiger & Bunny 2, brand new seasons of Bleach and Urusei Yatsura, and of course, Chainsaw Man. And they are only the ones I know off the top of my head. People can’t go and say they have nothing to watch in October now.
As for me? Well I have my shows picked, and as how I prefer to avoid sequel seasons as much as I can, my picks turned out to be ones I wouldn’t normally choose.
When Will Ayumu Make His Move? Episode 7
After all the things I have said about Ayumu, is it safe for me to say that the show is finally growing on me? I think it’s done so only because a lot more time has passed by, and that we know a lot more about the characters; both the ones we enjoy, and the one we don’t. This week was the start of the new school year, with Urushi, Tanaka and Takeru (who is still technically a club member by the way) out recruiting first-years. One such first-year arrives, in the form of Rin Kagawa. And it’s here where we finally learn a little more about Tanaka’s past as a kendo master.
We have a little flashback moment earlier on in the episode where he and Urushi meet for the first time, while she is recruiting for the club on her own. Tanaka and Takeru go off looking for the kendo club and then Tanaka has a love-at-first-sight moment when he picks up a stray shogi club leaflet. And where he actually shows an emotion…
Anyway, moving on to the present, and the tomboyish kohai Rin is very eager to take back her senpais Tanaka and Takeru after discovering that they have moved onto shogi after being so dominant and devoted to kendo before. It’s all a rather sweet story that shows us that while Urushi’s goal is to get more people to join the club and for it to be recognized, losing Tanaka becomes just as important to her.
Rin is apparently the kohai/childhood friend character of the show that was added to the manga earlier on in the story, and so with her arriving at this point in the anime, I’m not totally sure on whether she’ll try to be some kind of third wheel or not. Well one thing is for certain is that she will gain a lot of new followers.
Yurei Deco Episode 8
Not going to lie when I say I completely forgot what happened in last week’s Yurei Deco, so I had to look up the last column post. Turns out that an AI that went into hiding after researching too much into the Zero Phenomenon and Phantom Zero stumbled upon something called ‘Mark Twain’, and was then mysteriously shut down. These have been some very chill episodes of Yurei Deco, and have had far too much in the way of filler. All of these plot points added willy-nilly leaving me very confused on what the main story is really meant to be about. Berry and Hack are meant to be working hard clearing their names, and yet she still treats it like some fun and games. Perhaps I’m missing something there, and her narrating her diary in the show is meant to be some kind of coping mechanism, because she still doesn’t seem too worked up about having to abandon her family and friends like that.
This week’s filler episode concerns a satellite containing a capsule of sensitive data about Tom Sawyer Island that is due to come back down to earth and land in the nearby sea. The term ‘Mark Twain’ has been used more and more now, and yet we still don’t really know what it means. Finn has begun looking into a floating object stealth cloaked in the sky. Well if the Customer Center were willing to shut down the sea just to retrieve that capsule, then what that data is must clearly be important. But we are given a bombshell when Finn says he will be disbanding the group as he never really played along with their plan to begin with. I was meant to feel shocked by this sudden shift in story, but I just wasn’t.
Do I think that Finn is really looking out for himself and meant what he said when he said he was only using the others? Or is he only saying this to protect the others? Does he have some connection to Phantom Zero that he isn’t telling the others? Is he Phantom Zero even? Do I even care anymore? Well that last question is easy to answer. We are approaching the final arc of the show, and even with this story being so developed now, I still feel nothing for any of these people. This is largely down to what I said in a past post, about how we don’t really know these guys’ motivations, and why they are doing what they are doing. If we don’t know what they are fighting for, then how are we meant to care?
There are four more episodes of this, and with all the various plot points that have been added to this show, will all of them even be wrapped up? I want to be optimistic and say yes, but to be honest, I’ll be expecting some questions unanswered and some things unexplained.
Call of the Night Episode 7
Well I can say some more good things about Call of the Night at least, as this week we finally get to meet even more new people – new vampires, at that.
We were introduced to Kiyosumi last week, and I had initially thought she was going to be a character we’d never see again, yet she reappears this week. I am still convinced that she will be someone who will appear and reappear every now and then, and not really be a full cast member, like some of the others are. But having been so long with just Nazuna and Yamori (and sometimes Akira), it actually feels good to see more characters at last. These people who appeared on the show’s promotional posters and marketing and yet anime-only folk like us knew nothing about them…until now.
This was a very different style of episode compared to the others, in that it sticks to one story line, compared to some of the others which have had 2 or 3 story tangents. It seems that Yamori has caught the attention of the other vampires in town, who all want to have a little ‘chat’ with him.
After being carried away swiftly, he is placed squarely in front of four very pretty women indeed: Niko Hirata, Midori Kohakobe, Hatsuka Suzushiro, and Kabura Honda (while he meets Seri Kikyou earlier). I thought it was pretty funny to have a storyline of five brand new vampires suddenly arriving and telling him they can turn him into a vampire there and then; some teenage boys would kill for a harem like this.
Yamori can say as many times as he wants how committed he is to becoming a vampire (and letting Nazuna be the one to do the deed), but as the other vampires tell him, he still doesn’t really understand the gravity of the situation he’s gotten himself into. Call it childhood naivety perhaps. But I like the comparison that was shown here; one camp being Nazuna and Yamori, while the other being the new vampires he meets. They have all accepted their new lives, settled into them and done new things, while Nazuna and Yamori are still wandering around the dark, bored and looking for things to do.
I really really want to see Seri, Niko, Midori, Hatsuka and Kabura return in future episodes; these five femme fatales are too good to just have disappear like they almost tried to do with Kiyosumi. They have all acknowledged Yamori’s existence it seems too, and sort-of understand his connection to Nazuna, who despites their differences is still one of their kind. Maybe the five of them can give the two of them some kind of direction. Some guidance. Or maybe just a kick in the backside.
Akebi’s Sailor Uniform Episode 8
For episode 8 of Akebi’s Sailor Uniform, we touch on something that hasn’t really been done before in the show’s story: competition. One would think that a plotline where kids fight to be the topdog at something would be something that would crop up early on, but it’s only when someone like Riri Minakami shows up that Akebi begins to feel the heat a little.
I was half-expecting some kind of classroom spice to arrive by now, and maybe when the show originally aired, I think some others were wondering why some of these girls hadn’t developed any kind of animosity against each other yet. But that just isn’t what Akebi’s Sailor Uniform is about. For episode 8, the school athletics festival is coming up, and the girls group together on what area they want to specialize in for it. Akebi chooses swimming, but when Erika points out that she is pretty good at it, the school’s star swimmer Riri makes a challenge: if she loses a 100-meter run, then she gives her her school uniform.
We saw a different kind of Akebi for this episode. Wearing that sailor uniform to this new school has meant so much to her, and to just hand it to someone she barely knows in class really brings out a competitive streak in her. But as I said, this is not a show about competition or petty animosity, it is a show about friendship. And by the end of the episode, it’s obvious to see that the two of them will be good friends, considering how well they ultimately praise each others’ swimming. And so considering the show’s focus on the theme of friendship as opposed to rivalry, I’m rather interested to see what the athletics festival episode will have. Having seen all of these wonderful episodes so far, I think seeing some back-talk and bullying would just seem too out-of-place. These girls are all so nice to each other.
Keeping with the theme of out-of-season shows, the poll is open once again. What out-of-season show will join my Fall season picks? That one is on you guys:
I’ve begun to look back on the shows I’ve picked for 2022 and wondered what happened to my good show meter. The scale has ended up being very up-and-down, with me finding my show choices either really great or really mediocre; there wasn’t really any in-between. And I fear that as I will be avoiding the numerous sequel seasons and large franchises next season, what will be left for me to pick? Or has this just been something I haven’t noticed before? I have been watching both Spy x Family and this season’s Lycoris Recoil in my own time though, both of which I enjoy, so I suppose that is something. Maybe in the future, I should just give you guys complete control on what I watch in each season…