Is this around the time where us viewers start to look up what to watch for the Spring season? Week 7. Past the halfway point. We’ve gotten ourselves comfy with the shows we’re watching in the Winter, but are we that eager and curious to find out what April will bring us? Maybe it’s just me though. I mean for this column I do need to plan and think ahead about what shows to choose to cover…and worry about whether they’ll go to Crunchyroll or HIDIVE or Netflix or Disney+. I mean I did have my eye on last year’s uber-edgy Black Rock Shooter show before I found out that Disney had gotten the rights for it. NieR Automata Ver 1.1a is back though, and while it’s awesome that the studio staff are back to doing what they enjoy doing, the show itself hasn’t really done much in the way of hype and excitement. I’ll be getting into that later though, but in the meantime I have other shows to cover.
In/Spectre Season 2 Episode 7
Previously on In/Spectre, Kotoko and Kuro head out to a coastal town on their latest case: a possessed life-size wooden doll that appears at night and destroys the town’s fish. The show was very quick to compare this all to The Adventures of Pinocchio, as the titular character creates all sorts of mischief of his own; the story isn’t all about him growing a long nose every time he tells a lie.
Anyway, we see that the doll that Zenta made before his mysterious death isn’t just some twisted manifestation of him. Kotoko theorizes that it acts like a voodoo doll as well, and she is proven correct. While the people around him were able to move on, Zenta could not bear living after what happened to his grandson, and wanted some kind of retribution on the college students who ran him over. The four of them were able to escape prison, but that didn’t mean he wanted them to feel any less pain.
It’s quite a plan he put together before his death; I might as well spoil it since this is another one of this seasons’ tiny but satisfying arcs. In the same manner that a voodoo doll would be made to look like the person to be cursed, Zenta carved the names of the four college students into the doll. He must have known that the townspeople would think of a way to destroy the doll in his death, most likely by burning it. Except by doing so would mean those college students would suffer painful and terrible deaths of their own…just as he has hoped would happen.
Just like with the other small arcs, this one has been really something to watch. The story was enough to keep me enticed and interested to know how the three of them (Kotoko, Kuro and Tae) would neutralize the doll, and it only ended up being the simplest of ways ever: lure it into a hole dug in the beach. It has a simple ending, but that’s okay because the journey to it was satisfying to watch.
I thought it was interesting how one of Kotoko’s early theories about the wooden doll was whether it was one of Rikka’s latest creations, which caused Kuro to freak out. Makes me think of what her next supernatural creation will actually be. Not going to lie, but I thought the idea of a monster that was born out of rumors from an internet fan site (the Steel Lady Nanase arc from season 1) was pretty out there, in a good way. These recent arcs have been bitesize, but something tells me we’ll be getting to a much bigger arc pretty soon.
Tomo-chan is a Girl! Episode 7
This week’s Tomo-chan is a Girl! is split into two parts: one is a flashback of how Tomo and Jun met, told from his perspective, and the other is the typical beach part. Safe to say that this shows a turning point in their relationship.
In the flashback section, we see that Jun beats himself up because his new neighbor Tomo (who he thinks is a boy, by the way…) is strong in all the ways he is not. She can handle herself in a fight, she shows loyalty to the people close to her, and genuinely wants to be outgoing and friendly to this new boy. And all the while, Jun is the gamer kid who keeps to himself. But in the time he gets to know Tomo, he feels ashamed of his weakness. He can’t exercise well, can’t stand up to bullies and doesn’t want to poke into anyone else’s business.
I’m choosing not to talk so much about the beach segment of the episode, because it was every bit as predictable as I thought. I know other reviewers are saying that Jun actually seeing Tomo in a swimsuit acted as some kind of light switch for him. The thing is though that for weeks I have been begging for moments from Jun’s point-of-view, and so now that we’ve got them, I don’t know what to think. It definitely makes the relationship look less one-sided, but it feels like because he’s hiding how he feels so well, I can’t quite get a grasp yet on what he wants to do and how he really wants to progress in this relationship with his old friend who stood up to bullies for him. Is it really just bottling these feelings up out of some masculine pride? Or is he still acting like that gamer kid too afraid to be like his boisterous and outgoing neighbor? I do hope we’ll get into some more detail in future episodes.
NieR: Automata Ver 1.1a Episode 4
Okay, so this show is back…and what happened at the end of episode 3? Well I actually had to go and rewatch it since I had forgotten; it really had been that long ago. Oh yes. 2B and 9S headed out into the desert and encountered machines trying to imitate human life, only to then be ambushed by an advanced android. Well they decided to retreat and give a report back to the Bunker. So far, this adaptation is following what happens in the game pretty well, while adding a few things of its own. I would only imagine that these little things were put in to make the story appear more like a show and less like an interactive game.
I like that we are seeing some more of what goes on in the Bunker. In the game it feels like this one destination that is far away, but here in the show it feels much closer to home. After receiving some new orders from the Moon, the Commander begins to get frustrated at how the YoRHa units under her command are being treated as disposable to the humans. When I played the game for the first time, the Commander wasn’t really a character I could get into; it only took a couple more playthroughs to understand things from her point-of-view. She may be an android too, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t feel some level of responsibility and concern for the soldiers she sends to die.
Meanwhile back on the surface, 2B and 9S are dispatched out to look for a YoRHA unit that has gone missing-in-action. Following its black box, they find themselves in what is actually my favorite area of the entire game: the Amusement Park. Both 2B and 9S have been watching first-hand how the machine lifeforms are trying to imitate humans, but it’s in a place like this amusement park where it hits them properly. They remain confused at why these machines would want to do this, but if these machines aren’t hostile and actually work together like any human civilization would, why should they be seen as the enemy? There’s this whole “what is the point of war?” debate that can go on for hours and hours. We’ll be presented with a lot more philosophical questions like this one as episodes go by, I can assure you of that. But the game story could be something we could play and pause and interact with. How will these questions be presented to us in anime form?
I go back to the missing hype and excitement I mentioned at the beginning of the post. Players of the game took one look at it and knew that it would make a good anime show. And so now we have it, where has all that hype and excitement gone? It isn’t that the show itself is bad; it’s been quite enjoyable to watch in fact. Instead it’s more like it has become something that can disappear into the anime void pretty quickly. Not dull…just something we are likely to forget in a couple of seasons’ time. That is unless the studio decides to make this adaptation a full-on franchise and release a 1.1b or something along those lines.
With all that being said, the action sequences we have seen in the show so far have been pretty stellar to watch, and the fact that it isn’t becoming some frame-by-frame copy of the game is something noteworthy. The fight we get at the end of this episode is the most high-octane we’ve had since episode 1, where 2B and 9S take down the Lady Songstress (she is called Simone in the game, by the way). So if we get plenty more scenes like this one, will the show really be something we’ll remember in 5 years’ time?
Dorohedoro Episode 7
It’s an episode like this one, around halfway through, that we need to remind ourselves not to take this show super seriously at all. Episode 7 gave us a good amount of plot intrigue, but just randomly adding a town tradition baseball game amidst all this Human vs. Sorcerer chaos is something I’d easily expect to see here. But I suppose it is kind of awesome to see something like this: old traditions in a post-apocalyptic wasteland city; humans actually living life, instead of just trying to survive.
Saying that though, we get to see in this episode how much humanity really has been lost among these people, as we get to see impaled sorcerer bodies displayed across the baseball stands, as well as getting to see Kasekabe stitch together Matsumura, Fujita’s dead partner, and fielding him in his zombified and manic state. I mentioned before that I was surprised a show like this was given a ’15’ rating by Netflix, and I still am. Even as 7 episodes have gone by for me, I haven’t seen the studio compromise when it comes to violence, blood and gore.
Hidden in this baseball game ‘filler/not-filler’ episode are more important plot points in regards to the Sorcerers. It seems like so long ago when Caiman cut Matsumura into pieces, but Kasekabe decided in a fit of madness to stitch him back together purely because they needed a ninth person to play in their baseball team. When Fujita heads off to the hole on a vengeance mission (with Ebisu in tow), he’s shocked to see him in such a state, and so decides to bring him back to his realm. Meanwhile, En and Shin are looking into Ebisu’s own magic after they find out about the shop that Nikaido tore up a couple of episodes ago. It seems like Nikaido isn’t the only ‘remarkable’ sorcerer out there either.
Her magic smoke spills onto Noi by accident, turning her into a lizard-like monster, which brings about a very touching moment where Shin has to take part in a ritual to bring her back. And this along with another transformation in the realm reveals to us that Ebisu is the one responsible for Caiman’s change.
I have to say that it’s quite something how Dorohedoro has been able to combine this mysterious level of intrigue with stand-out aesthetic and the occasional laugh-out-loud black comedy. I’m still on the fence about the balance between scenes of the Sorcerers and scenes of the humans though. As it seems to veer so much towards what goes on in the Sorcerer realm, it gets harder and harder to decide who we should be rooting for. The discourse between En, Shin, Noi, Fujita and Ebisu has become a very central part of the show, and often overwhelms what Caiman and Nikaido go through. We have been drip-fed little things about who Nikaido is and who Caiman was before he got his lizard head, but outside of that it feels more like the Sorcerer’s show than the Human’s show. I don’t exactly have an issue with that as it’s so entertaining to watch; I’m just curious as to why the writers would do that. Having not read the source manga though, I suppose I can’t really make any solid and substantial theories. I still have some more episodes to go though, so a lot more could change.
Past the halfway point now, and my Spring shows are locked in. Since I’ve had such poor luck in choosing different subgenres in the last year or so, I think I might stick with the kind of shows I know I will like. And I’m fairly sure that my Spring shows will be ones that will not only keep me very happy, but potentially make my top 5 of the year. Thinking ahead of myself there, I know, but…umm…yeah…