New Game!! is the only show that isn’t finishing this week…
In this penultimate episode, we see everyone with yuri goggles on. Nene and Narumi are suddenly buddies again after the former hears about how hard the latter had to work to get to be at Eagle Jump, and the two have to work together to fix a long list of bugs after the latter rushes her work just to impress her superior, Umiko. Meanwhile, Ko sees how Aoba and Momo seem to not want to work together, so when the test for the master version of Peco is available for staff to play, she sets it up so the two of them have to cooperate to progress in the game.
With a cliff-hanger on us for this season’s finale (again yuri-related), I’m still thinking that too much focus was put on the new characters than necessary. Sure enough, seeing Nene more often, along with new characters Momo, Narumi and Christina would help the New Game! show develop, but with the on-off drama that appeared more than often throughout this season, it felt like the comedy between the original cast was put at the back of the shelf. I hope that next week’s episode (where I’ll be writing the Summer season review) will satisfy me some more, and not make me think that all the drama-filled moments were unnecessary.
So, what about Manoyama? Well it will be absorbed into the nearby city of Tomikura regardless of what happens, and while it’s pretty easy for some of the residents in Sakura Quest to feel gloomy and depressed over the news, but more level-headed people like Chitose sees this as ‘a necessary evil’. As the festival wraps up and the cherry blossom season begins, Kadota has an epiphany when he learns of documented evidence of Sandal’s ancestors meeting in Manoyama: become sister cities with Sandal’s hometown in Sweden. This would give Manoyama some leverage in keeping its history and heritage as they merge with Tomikura. So it’s pretty coincidental (or not, depending on how you would interpret a realistic show) that the town’s mayor is in Japan for vacation.
Something else that is on the cards is whether Yoshino plans to stay in Manoyama or not, now that her 1-year contract of being Queen is about to end. I am watching episode 25 next week, for the season review post, so I have no idea whether she’ll stay with a steady job in Manoyama, or leave for either her own hometown or back to Tokyo. It would be kind of hokey to see her stick around, and she also mentions in episode 24 that she has enjoyed the unpredictability of the job she has done in this year in town, and that going back to the 9-5 would be such a bore for her.
Watching Sakura Quest has been a bit of a chore, but it’s been a worthwhile one, as I have enjoyed most of the show and most of the characters.
The other show that ended this week was Love & Lies, and I’ll say that I was a tad disappointed, in that it was left so open-ended. At the end of last week’s show, Ririna proposed the idea of Yukari choosing Misaki instead. This left me at an odds totally, as the chemistry between the two was so much more natural and believable. If she thought she was only doing this to please everyone then this clearly didn’t work as it’s very evident that she’s not the only one who wants everyone to be happy.
On the day of the girls’ photo shoot, we learn that Misaki has her own plans to keep everyone happy as well. It’s only when Yukari finally shows up to the shoot that her little plan falls apart and we see how bad a liar Misaki is. What are we supposed to think now? Will he choose Misaki? Will he choose Ririna? Will he end up bagging both? I was rooting for Ririna ever since the beginning of the show, but as the friendship between her and Misaki got stronger and stronger, I began to think that she would do something like this in order not to lose the new friends she has found after being a loner for so long.
Which brings us now to my classic/out-of-season show for this season…that I did not enjoy: Squid Girl.
It could well have been the ‘old guy anime fan’ that was screaming at this show; it’s very possible that in any other circumstance, I would have quite enjoyed the show. I think my main gripes with it were down to not just the mini-stories, but the characters themselves. Sure enough, I didn’t really have any high expectations when watching the show, but I would have been happy with at least something substantial. Instead all I got was a rather annoying main protagonist surrounded by humans who were more than happy to poke at her to make her react, for 12 episodes that seemed to last for hours.
Has Squid Girl shown me up as a hypocrite, since I love other slice-of-life comedy shows that don’t have an epic storyline (eg. Hidamari Sketch, which I adore)? I suppose a truly successful slice-of-life comedy show has a lot of high expectations to live up to if it wants to impress everyone. I know that people liked and loved Squid Girl, but I did not. Sorry.
[And after all this, I still have no Nintendo Switch and no Splatoon 2 🙁 )
I will doing a season review of all the shows I’ve seen next week, and will be talking about what will come in the Fall.