Shows are ending now, and I echo what I said last week about us all now really itching for new seasons to begin. Since I never watched MHA or Blue Lock or Tokyo Revengers or Bungou Stray Dogs or any of the bigger and more well-known franchises, I don’t have that big of the urge perhaps. Or maybe that’s purely in the eye of the beholder. My Netflix is back and working again which means that I can finally get back to covering Dorohedoro again. And since there are only two more posts for me to do in this Winter season, I’ll be covering 2 episodes this week, with the finale next week in the season review post. Also, as NieR: Automata Ver 1.1a doesn’t seem to be returning any time soon, it looks like I’ll be covering 4 seasonal shows in the Spring…probably.
Tomo-chan is a Girl! Episode 12
This may be the penultimate episode of the show, but it is by far the strongest one so far. Heck for all we know a better one may come next week, although that’s doubtful considering all the stuff that is covered this week.
This was the cultural festival episode, but I think it was interesting how the festival itself didn’t smother it. Misuzu got to embarrass herself in front of the entire school by playing Cinderella while Tomo was able to make everyone swoon by playing the prince, and Jun was able to get everyone to forget his presence as he played a tree. But as the bonfire dance approaches, Jun is able to sneak in something in conversation which makes Tomo seriously panic; it’s the fact that he knew Tomo’s confession all the way back in episode 1 was a real one all along, and he just didn’t tell her.
Was this out of fear of rejection? Was this just him being immature over all this? Or fear that he would lose the bro dynamic that he and Tomo have developed over the many years? Having watched this episode, I think that it was a mixture of all of them. I think that, for Tomo, their relationship had to be one or the other. Either bros for life, or boyfriend and girlfriend – there would be nothing in-between. It hadn’t helped that both Misuzu and Carol were poking her into being more girly to try and get Jun’s attention some more, but I suppose neither of them could read Jun’s mind either. Misuzu may have gone out with him for the shortest amount of time, but as we see this week, it might just have been their breaking up that led Jun to where he is now. It’s something that Misuzu refuses to agree with him on, but she knows for certain that it was…and I do too.
But outside of Jun finally admitting to Tomo that he knew all along and was just too afraid to come out and say it, we had a small amount of activity between Tomo and Misuzu as well. Throughout the entire show, she, along with Carol, has been egging Tomo on and trying to mold her into a model of a girl that they think Jun would fall in love with. And Misuzu finally realizes that she’s done the wrong thing. I think it is a result of Jun’s confession that triggered her apology myself. The dynamic that Tomo and Jun have is something that has lasted for so long and is nigh-on unbreakable, and getting her to go all-or-nothing on that turned out to be the wrong thing to do, especially as the both of them love each other as the way they are.
We may still have one more episode to go, but I’m really happy with this final result. I’m sure the actual finale will act more like an epilogue and give us something like a Christmas party or a New Year’s party. Or maybe it will even lead us to a second season. Tomo-chan is a Girl! has proven to be a popular school rom-com this season, but then again given both Tomo and Jun have the result they were looking for, would a second season even be necessary?
In/Spectre Season 2 Episode 12
Speaking of epilogues though, this final episode of season 2 of In/Spectre was quite the one to end on. A single-episode arc revolving around the murder of a woman mugged in the street, with the mugger’s best friend pouring over any suspicions he has while they eat together at a traditional unagi restaurant, where Kotoko just so happens to be too. We’ll get to that part in a moment, but as for the murder itself.
It’s an episode like this where I think a lot of viewers may see this as a Monogatari-lite show. The murderer is bombarded with wild accusations that all turn out to be true (of course we don’t know that until the very end) while he muses about how he misses his wife. Well as we see, the wife’s ghost is still there, and has been clinging on to him since the day she was murdered. He brushes it off as anxiety and grief, but it is by pure coincidence that Kotoko happens to order expensive unagi there, and pure coincidence that the ghost comes over to her and tells her the whole story. And not the theory the two men put out that she is some kind of Kokuzo Bosatsu.
Love comes in various forms, and can drive people to do crazy things. In this case, the murderer was worried that his wife would divorce him. In his eyes, his wife being with another man drives him insane. And so instead of trying to be a better husband, he chooses to go down the road of not letting her be with anyone else ever again, even if it meant killing her. Now he is stuck with her ghost clinging onto him for what will probably be the rest of his life. Making his body heavy and giving him insomnia and sleep paralysis. Like Kotoko says, it is entirely up to him whether he turns himself in or not; the fact that this weight will be on him until he dies won’t go away. It’s like a ball and chain on the husband’s leg that will never disappear, regardless of whether he goes to prison or not.
I did think it was rather amusing how the two men glanced at Kotoko at the restaurant while she was ordering. A beautiful and pristine doll that is mysterious and dangerous at the same time. But she didn’t go to that restaurant because an ayakashi told her to; it was because she wanted the unagi to boost her sex drive for her date with Kuro that night. Kotoko is both the most elegant character in the show and the most horny one.
This was a very strange episode to end on. Here was me thinking that we would see the return of Rikka, and yet she did not appear again after the glimpse we had of her last week. I’m sure this adaptation is following the original source novels to the letter (or trying to, at least), and so maybe if another season is green-lit, she will make a return. But at the same time, this was a decent enough one to end the season with. This entire season has covered arcs that revolve around love, and what people are willing to do to have it, or keep it. And even with Rikka largely out of the spotlight, the pacing as a whole is a massive improvement to season 1. I’ll be talking about that and more in next week’s season review post though.
Dorohedoro Episode 10 & 11
This show revels in unpredictability. It is a part of its charm and is likely the biggest reason it attracted the cult fanbase that it has. Well the person who was in Caiman’s mouth really was Risu after all, and Ebisu really was the one who gave him the lizard head. This is all stuff we knew already, or suspected at least, but as the show hits its final episodes, it seems like the whole cast is going down a long road of death. Either Caiman gets his revenge, or Nikaido is able to return to the Hole (and kill as many Sorcerers as she can along the way), or En gets what he wants and brings Nikaido back to the Sorcerer realm where he feels she belongs.
For starters, the end of episode 9 left us with the cliffhanger of another mushroom growing on Nikaido’s back. Well it detaches itself and proceeds to turn the doc into one too. I go back to the show’s unpredictability; I think that’s where the genre of horror as a whole enjoys being in. We are lulled into false senses of security until the unexpected hits us like a wrecking ball, and then we have to learn to live with this craziness whether we want to or not.
Well the good news is that Shin and Noi are able to renew their contracts so they can remain being partners, although Fujita is unable to get Ebisu as his as he ran out of time. But the bad news now is that En has been able to bring Nikaido back to the Sorcerer realm, and make her his new partner. It is here where we kind of discover that her magic is centered around time, hence why it is so powerful and unique. We also find out that there is a specific reason why En was so desperate to find Nikaido.
It turns out that En has had more of an impact in the Sorcerer realm than we initially thought. Because he was unable to control his mushroom-transformation magic as a child, he was raised by a criminal gang. When they stabbed him in the back and left him to die, he was picked up by the head demon Chidaruma, where he began building his own family and unleashing his rage on his enemies. But then the Cross-Eyes gang appeared with a sorcerer hunter cutting down his family, including Shin and Noi at the time. So now En is hell-bent on finding this hunter again and killing him for good; the first time didn’t go so well when his inner rage overwhelmed him and turned the entire neighborhood into a mushroom farm. En believes that Nikaido can help him find that hunter again, and so now he has decided to brainwash her and make her his new partner.
Of course Caiman is still in this realm, working his awful job at a pie shop. But it isn’t long before he finds out what has happened to his friend, and is now prepared to drag her back into the Hole, kicking and screaming if necessary.
I think that because Dorohedoro is so full-to-the-brim with plot points, sub plot points, easter eggs, black comedy jokes, and gory violence, it can overwhelm the viewer at times. I won’t lie when I say that it has overwhelmed me too at times, and should I want to rewatch this show, I’ll need to pay even more attention to each and every little detail in every episode, so as I don’t avoid anything that might be critical to the story. The question is whether I want to return or not. Well I still haven’t seen the final episode yet, and I think that I can only really make that kind of judgement then. This isn’t the kind of show that will have a happy ending though. Like I said, all of these characters are on a long road to death, so who will come out alive and who will come out dead? As we’ve been cheering on the Sorcerers for so long, some of us might want them to make it out. I know I want to; I’ve grown quite attached to the Shin and Noi pairing.
Because of certain circumstances, I’ve had to make some slight changes to what I’ll be watching for the next season. It shouldn’t affect my approach to it though. I mean it isn’t like I’m suddenly deciding to watch the new Demon Slayer season, or the new Dr. Stone one. They just aren’t my kind of shows, and never will be. What kind of critic am I meant to be then, if I only veer towards a handful of subgenres? Well to be honest, it is something that no longer affects me. We watch the anime we like, and not every single one. We’d just become more jaded sooner if we did that.