In/Spectre’s second season concludes with a wry and clever “quickie” episode—a case that doesn’t seem like a case at all, but simply two good friends regarding a doll-like young woman eating alone at an extremely pricey unagi restaurant. She’s a mystery, and mysteries keep Kajio up at night. He hasn’t been sleeping well since his wife Yukie died. His bespectacled friend Jujoji serves Kotoko’s role for much of the lunch, theorizing about how rather than the victim of a random mugging, Yukie was actually murdered by Kajio. In fact, Jujoji feels oddly compelled to prosecute his friend because o ..read more

The dragon that shows up at the end of last week isn’t just a dragon, but a great ancient dragon, who is the force behind the Empire’s invasion. When talking with the dragon (with a giant drone-projected image of herself) fails, Mitsuha and her military contractors let him have it. Small arms fire doesn’t do much, but heavy machine gun fire and a bazooka to the mouth does. Once sufficiently beaten up, the dragon flies off with its tail between its legs, and the imperial army retreats. It’s an unqualified victory for the Messenger of Lightning. Because of her contribution to that vi ..read more

As an anime-only viewer, I was really getting into NieR, and the stories of 2B and 9S and Adam and Eve looked finally ready to connect. Unfortunately, Covid doesn’t care about narrative momentum or my anime viewing preferences, and so the series has yet again been delayed, with episodes 9 and beyond to air at a later date to be determined. Thankfully, it’s not a matter of if but simply when the remainder of the series airs. But as nice as it is, far more important than the anime re-airing is the short and long-term physical and mental health of the production staff, so relatively speakin ..read more

The season 1 finale of Urusei Yatsura is given over entirely to the Tomo-1 Queen Contest teased last week. Seemingly entirely arranged by Ataru, it’s a multi-faceted competition that draws upon the myriad skills and specialties of its five finalists: Lum, Shinobu, Ran, Sakura, and Ryuunosuke. None of them are especially enthusiastic about participating, but a 150,000 yen prize is nothing to sneeze at. The challenges range from “guess what’s in the box” (Ten with a watermelon, guessed by Ryuu) to bottomless ramen bowls (won by noted glutton Sakura), culminating in a five-woman final batt ..read more

Misuzu performs her role as Cinderella seriously, even if Carol fails to be a remotely evil Stepmother. As she dances with “Prince” Tomo, it’s just another confirmation to her that she really is the perfect prince. This is who Tomo is, and Misuzu is still beating herself up for getting Tomo to think making herself more girly would appeal to Jun. No, Tomo simply being her natural self is best. When Jun asks her to soak in the festival with him, she goes with the flow, and whether it’s coffee and cake or going up against each other at soccer, she realizes she still has a blast with Jun. But if ..read more

Last week ended with the promise of an unprecedented duel between Anis and Euphie, to decide who will become queen by being made to suffer in one form or another: Anis having to give up everything she is, or Euphie losing everything she has. Both want the other to be happy, neither wants to hurt the other. The duel, while only occupying five minutes, is nevertheless epic in is presentation (like a great boss battle, only between two bosses!) and in the catharsis it provides. The duel ends quickly because, well, Euphylia Magenta is the titular Genius Young Lady: even with her Dragon Power, An ..read more

“Norsemen won’t follow a weakling”, says King Canute’s Gunnar as he and a worried-sick Estrid watch her brother sparring with Wurf, the head of his royal guard and a much larger, stronger man. Estrid is just shocked to see Canute even handling a sword, he used to fear touching them. And while Canute ends up using Wurf’s crush on Estrid to distract and beat him, impressing his subjects, Estrid can tell her brother is in pain. The late King Harald’s body is barely cold when Canute assumes the throne and gets to the work of keeping the kingdom financially solvent; no mean feat when he insi ..read more

Fire Hunter employed a few more Postcard Memories this week, starting with Hinako’s terrible fever that turns out to be some kind of demonic-esque possession or awakening into an acrobatic, feral form. These images represent this show’s great potential and great folly: while beautiful, these images are just that: stills that lack movement. The technical execution of an occasionally meandering and opaque but nearly always engrossing story was never anything more than adequate at best, and more often than not, disappointingly mediocre. God bless Hayami Saori’s Kira, who acts as audience surrog ..read more

Though she can transport herself and Captain out of danger, Mitsuha doesn’t want to abandon the innocent refugees to be slaughtered by monsters. So Captain holds off the horde with bullets along enough to teleport home, grab all the firestarter paste, newspaper, and fireworks she can, and uses it to burn/blast away the remaining monsters and their human handler. With the refugees saved and able to cross the river, Mitsuha and Captain return to the mercs’ base, where she dons a custom-made “battle gown” and delivers a stirring speech to rally the sixty men who will have to go up against 20,00 ..read more

Kotoko’s Columbo-style “One More Thing” involves the remainder of her interrogation of Fubuki, the yoko with whom President Otonashi contracted to murder Sumi. At the end of their chat, Kotoko deduces that Fubuki didn’t actually kill Sumi. He was about to, but someone beat him to it. He kept this secret from Otonashi so that he’d hold up his end of the bargain. Fubuki also transformed into Sumi to scream out that the killer was a man in black in order to obscure the true killer: Kaoruko. She was able to fake the time she broke her leg after all, and made it look like a burglary. Sh ..read more