Last week we finally had our meeting between Rimuru and the council. And as we saw towards the very end, it looks like there’s a reason why things aren’t going to go particularly smoothly. It’s not like we didn’t see this coming, but I’m curious what exactly the council has proposed for Rimuru to get so angry. Let’s not waste any time and let’s dive right into episode 6.
A moment of selfreflection
And yeah, as expected, their demands are pretty damn crazy. Access to free trains, weapons and managing the dungeon, a yearly fee and for good measure they put in some racist crap about only humans being able to actually be part of the council, no wonder Rimuru got angry. This isn’t even harsh negotiating, this is basically just telling them to piss off. Unfortunately this is probably all part of the plan. Raphael-sensei confirms what I was thinking and someone has been interfering with the councilors. A light bit of coaxing turned them all against Rimuru and a light bit of magic by Rimuru to undo it all.
Don’t worry buddy, your redemption starts before the end of this episode, you’ll be fine.
It is interesting to see that in almost every bit of fiction the prince of a given country is a total dick. It’s funny that all of the people hired by the prince are stooges that couldn’t even make it through half of the dungeon, let alone stand a chance against Rimuru. One thing that baffles me from the writing is how we all know Demon Lords and Hinata are some of the most powerful people around yet random stooges still somehow think they can defeat them. But they’re at least not confident enough to come in without a plan. At least it’s not a good plan.
You’ve pissed her off. You’re cooked now.
It’s so good to have Hinata on our side. When we think of strong women in fiction there’s often a lot of middle ground where the characters aren’t actually particularly well written. Flawed as she is at times, her actual personality traits are very grounded and she is far from stupid. Watching her defeat some stooges will always be a fun experience. Also, shout out to the dumbest mercenary out there. At least we get to see some great action with Shuna looking absolutely gorgeous in her suit. Now this is the kind of fanservice I signed up for. Absolute domination of a bunch of no name stooges and looking utterly amazing while doing so.
Putting aside Benimaru and even Shion, Shuna is by far the scariest of the Kijin.
I don’t comment on the animation of this show very much because it’s usually not the type of show where that matters a lot to me, but in scenes like these where Shuna clashes with Gaiye it would be great if the animation looked like modern day One Piece. After Prince Elric almost gets assassinated by the church member from last season, it looks like he finally figures out just how dumb he’s been. Rimuru tells him to chill out and learn from his mistakes. After all is said and done, Rimuru and the king of Engrassia shake hands and it looks like things are finally headed in the right direction. Gaban – one of the councillors – is chosen to take the fall for the entire mess while Maribel and Johan get off scotfree. A new agreement is set up and Tempest officially joins the council.
If the prince actually died here, they would pin it on Rimuru and things would be quite bad. Luckily we have Raphael.
What I really like about Rimuru as a character is that despite being a bit of a himbo, he does have his moments. The combination of Raphael’s cunning with Rimuru’s disarming personality makes for a terrifying opponent in politics. With Tempest joining the council we’re one step closer to coexisting, but we’re still very far from our goal. Not to mention that the people behind all of this are still on the loose. It looks like Souei is planning to deal with one of them at least. I do like the twist here of combining the power of a gun with spatial magic to be able to actually hit someone at very long distances. Guns aren’t going to be a way to kill everyone in this world, with how powerful some of the people involved in the core story are, but for the average person they are still an incredibly deadly weapon. Just because Rimuru can stop a bullet in under a 100th of a second doesn’t mean that Steve the baker can do the same thing. Although this week’s cliffhanger isn’t nearly as intense as last week’s cliffhanger, after seeing Shun fight with a metal fan while wearing a suit I am completely satisfied and confident I can make it through another week. Thanks for reading!
And Shuna is back to being calm and respectful in the background. My goat.
After unfortunately having to take a week off last week, we are so back. I wasn’t aware there was a week off at first, so when I sat down to watch the episode I was thoroughly disappointed, but it is what it is. Without further ado let’s head to the capital of Engrassia and meet the council.
ten out of ten, no notes.
But first, it’s time for a shopping episode. Whenever I hear that, I’m brought back to about a decade ago where I was watching Critical Role (a Dungeons & Dragons podcast) and they did a shopping episode, where half the cast spent hours roleplaying a day of shopping for potions a gear while Travis was fully asleep by the end of it because of how boring it is. But if I get to see Shuna in those casual clothes I can sit through any shopping episode. The guys look good too I guess. I love Rimuru’s trick for buying good clothes, just ask the shopkeeper for advice, he’ll know best after all.
Surely this won’t backfire immediately.
Now I’m not one to judge other people’s coffee habits all that sternly. I put a lot of milk in my coffee because drinking it black is far too bitter for sensitive lil’ me. But I draw the line at putting in too much sweetener or sugar. Coffee that’s too sweet is disgusting. I take sweetener with my coffee because I’m trying to monitor my weight, but sometimes I’ll accidentally put two instead of one in there and it is vile. Hinata calling him out is great. She’s here on Rimuru’s request to give him the download on what happened in the previous meeting. These two have such great chemistry as friends / murderous rivals. Then again, anything Hinata does is drenched in murderous intent.
This face reminds me of the character from Arakawa under the Bridge that is the “I see you’re a man of culture as well” meme.
I like when shows save on animation and instead add in some really cool hand-drawn art to show some scenes. Animation is a very stressful job with long hours, so if you get creative about saving time I think that should be applauded. With three routes for the Eastern Empire to attack, Rimuru is confident that they are unlikely to do so, but we already get some hints that Raphael thinks differently without yet having any data to back it up. As viewers we of course know that with how much an attack by the Eastern Empire has been hinted at, they are likely to play a big role at some point in the future, but the characters in the world don’t have that same kind of information.
What do you have there? A gun!
And of course nothing will go as smoothly as it seems, with Maribel Rozzo (I flip flop on how to spell her name) having plans. The fact that she says Rimuru will be the one to stop it from happening is giving me Sabaody Archipelago vibes. Some old-fashioned racism combined with needless violence will definitely do the trick. Rimuru has already shown that although he wishes to coexist with humans, if they mess with him that’s off the table. With Maribel trying to mess with everyone involved, I wonder if Yuuki is going to reveal that he’s not actually under her control. Perhaps I’m wrong on this, but I cannot imagine he’s actually caught under her spell.
You’re getting closer to the “find out” part of “fuck around and find out” with each episode.
All councilors are created equal. Some are created more equal than others. And we dive right into the racism from frame one. It’s a funny scene, but sometimes having these over the top bad guys can get a bit dull. They’re even laughing like cartoon villains, but I suppose that’s their job. We enter into the meeting room and get to hear the three conditions that the council has for Rimuru to join them:
They probably knew what would happen when you saw the end result of the negotiations.
Adhere to international law
Opening up their market
Supplying military forces
You fucked up.
So far this seems like some minor inconveniences but nothing major that they can’t accept. Of course there are some objections that Rimuru – I mean Raphael – has written down on paper. You can’t come across as overly eager. And it helps to have essentially a supercomputer living in your head. With everything looking like it’ll go well, the reviews of Rimuru’s reviews come in and the conclusion is clear. They fucked up. Whatever is written down by the humans has seriously pissed off the latest demon lord and we all know what happened the last time that a human nation pissed off Rimuru. I’m guessing there’s some sort of language included that makes the monsters lower on the totem pole than humans instead of equals. We’ll have to wait until next week to find out though, and I have to say, this is probably the most excited I’ve been about an episode in a while. I thought the avatar team stuff was cute, but it wasn’t exactly a high-stakes scenario. Now with all the pieces coming into place, I’m curious to see what will happen from here on out. Thanks for reading!
Scarlet the red Meteor. Blue Death the Blue Reaper. The Heavy Armor of Purple Smoke. The Laughing Golden Skull. Together, the four cheaters protected their underground dungeon from the people they themselves invited to clear it. But everything changed when their morality set in and they felt bad. I don’t know about that last part yet, but the joke has gone on for too long already. Welcome to Tensura Saturday!
Hell Yeah
After the gang finished playing their VR games, there’s a visitor and the moment Shuna brings up Milim’s presence it was clear that it would be Frey, likely here to pick up her demon lord daughter from playing with her friends. She’s in trouble. And it looks like the rest of the gang has absolutely no intentions to defend her in the fearsome presence of Frey. And thus Milim has been taken away and the rest of the gang isn’t going to get off scott-free as they still have Shuna to deal with. Luckily he’s saved by Mjöllmile who has an invite for the council that Rimuru is going to have to attend. I wonder if the story will acknowledge that their absence will hurt the dungeon’s popularity in some way, considering the team of avatars was a very popular part of their advertising. We also learn the answer to a question I had about Rimuru’s other work, and it turns out he just let Raphael do all of it for him. What a total slacker. At least he does some reflecting in the end. And he still gets caught by Shuna. Such is life. Repent for your sins.
Tall woman spotted!
We learn that Maribel is completely in charge of the council and everyone above and below it in the pecking order. Her control over currency stems from her knowledge in our world after all and it makes it much easier for her to understand how and where to manipulate things. And currently her council is debating whether working together with Rimuru is a good thing and if he should be allowed to join the council at all. They’re even talking smack about Hinata while she is present. And this is where we see the real power scaling of the series. Hinata points out that the meetings in Tempest were much more productive than this one. Meetings prevail. The people in favor of working with Rimuru bring up some pretty good arguments but the people opposed to working together have arguments that basically boil down to “monsters bad.” And greedy as they are, they’d like at least a gift of sorts and some promises from Rimuru. Surely this will go over well with the slime himself. It is kind of crazy that they invited Hinata to listen in on all their blasphemous scheming.
The benefits of having a hyper-intelligent voice in your head at all times are pretty big. Behind the scenes, this is everything that Raphael has been working on while Rimuru was off slacking around.
And here we hear a name that I don’t think we’ve heard before, but if we have, I apologize. The Nasca Namrium Ulmeria United Eastern Empire has mobilized its military. They’ve been made out to be one of the biggest obstacles in the series for quite a while. They’ve been working with Yuuki as well as Maribel, they’ve been manipulating Hinata and they’ve tried to interfere with Rimuru’s growth as a demon lord on several occasions. They’ve avoided getting their hands dirty as much as possible, but surely they’ll start becoming a proper threat soon. We learn that they got this big by absorbing other nations through force and I doubt that plan has changed. It’s still kind of crazy that Veldora is considered to be so incredibly strong that he can stop entire empires from even making a move. It’s a good thing Rimuru became friends with him. Councilor Johann brings up a good point here. If Rimuru joins their camp, they can have access to his military might, at the very least as a threat against the Eastern Empire. But if I remember correctly, Rimuru claimed in a previous season that he had no interest in joining the human council if they treated his people the way they have been treating them.
The Tsundere Dragon is truly a force to be reckoned with.
Hinata seems to disagree with my opinion that talking about the Eastern Empire was a good plan. She is taken aside by the first prince of Engrassia who wants to test Rimuru before he’s allowed to join the council. Exactly the kind of thing she expected them to ask of her. Luckily Hinata is about as no-nonsense as they get and doesn’t owe any fealty to the nation of Engrassia. The prince seems to have the complete wrong idea about Hinata and Rimuru. He also thinks she’s likely stronger than Rimuru, which she is not. At least not 10 out of 10 times. She is at least kind enough to give them the advice not to mess with Rimuru, which they are obviously going to ignore. The author of this story dislikes nobles about as much as any sane person should dislike the rich elite. Good on him.
Douchebag spotted.
Rimuru tricks Shion into thinking he’s leaving her behind to defend the city and not because she would absolutely destroy half the city if allowed to join. So Rimuru, Shuna, Benimaru and Souei set off to the capital of Engrassia to visit the council of the western nations. You know what that means, it’s time for another meeting! Are you as excited as I am?
And with that, we are ready to go. One of the benefits of writing these posts is that I get to watch more of the anime by rewatching it once and then rewatching some scenes again. Not that I need an excuse, but it’s nice to be able to point to one.
A large part of why I liked to watch anime and read manga is the escapism it provides. I’m often too much in my own head about romantic relationships and it is something I do not actively want to be a part of due to how much impact it would have on the rest of my life. I’m already glad I’m getting by somehow. I don’t fight monsters, I don’t own a farm and I certainly haven’t started my own village and become a demon lord ruling over swathes of monsters. None of these things are available to me in real life, which is why it is so nice to live vicariously through these characters and feel inspired by the stories that people tell about them. But sometimes a story comes along that does end up hitting close to home. A single person in their 30s who loves writing, holes up in her room all day, doesn’t pick up the phone when a number calls that she doesn’t recognize and is all around unapologetically abrasive? That feels so personal it’s almost targeted. Today, let’s tackle the uncomfortable and dig deep into our own flaws as we journey through the beautiful tale of Journal with Witch.
Based on a manga by Yamashita Tomoko, Journal with Witch tells the story of Makio Kodai and Asa Takumi. Makio is an author and spends most of her days alone, trying to hit her deadlines. Introverted as she may be, she does have a small group of friends as well as an ex-partner she still meets with regularly. One day, her sister and her sister’s husband die in a traffic accident. They leave behind a teenage daughter, who is suddenly without anywhere to go. Appalled by the way her niece is treated, Makio promises to take care of Asa, despite very strongly disliking her late sister. Asa agrees and the two start living together.
Makio’s sudden outburst was very out of character on the surface as she’s known to be introverted and quiet, but her sense of justice is stronger than that of most people and the gal all of these “adults” had at treating a teenage girl so poorly was something she couldn’t let slide. Reality hits the next day when she recognizes that she doesn’t have the means, skills or social bandwidth to raise a teenager. Adding on top of this, Asa is understandably struggling with her own feelings about the matter, having just lost both of her parents and now living with the far less strict and borderline antisocial Makio is a lot to take in. Drawing from her experience as an author, Makio recommends her niece to keep a journal about her daily life, feelings or whatever else she feels like writing.
Alongside our main two characters, we have several recurring characters with their own subplots. Kasamachi is Makio’s ex boyfriend that clearly still has feelings for her but knows he should respect her space too. He regularly helps the two out in the beginning. Emiri is Asa’s close friend who is struggling with her sexuality throughout the early episodes of the show, eventually figuring out how to be more comfortable with herself. We also get several flashbacks of Asa’s parents and her late father is the most emotionally dead character I’ve ever seen in a story. Finally, we have two stories happening at the school where Asa is trying to find her own path and joins the school band while a friend of hers struggles with the realization that a scandal at a university reveals a larger problem with sexism in the educational system.
Mixing all of these stories together creates the feeling of a living, breathing world where people are real, honest and tangible. Makio in particular really strikes a chord with me as many of the thoughts, feelings and habits she shows off during this anime hit close to home. A quickly depleting social battery, the constant masking outside of her home, the holing up in her room writing her stories, and even the way she treats Asa felt almost personal to me. As many of you might know, I’ve been a teacher for a few years now and although I’m both confident in how I teach yet also know I still have a lot to learn and grow compared to some of my more experienced colleagues, when I see the way Makio treats children so earnestly and doesn’t diminish their problems feels a lot like the way I like to treat my students. As much as there is a level of authority that comes with teaching, it is incredibly valuable for children to feel heard and seen, and to be taken seriously. Think back about your own childhood, who are the people you remember? For me it’s the people who told me I was capable and could do the things I wanted to do, but also those who listened to my problems as if they were more serious than they were. Asa and her friend Emiri experience this treatment by Makio first hand and it ends up helping them out tremendously.
With a main character that is almost certainly somewhere on the autism spectrum and the painful subject of dealing with loss, this show can be quite confronting at times. As much as I think this is the best written show I’ve seen in years, I would not be quick to rewatch it due to how strongly it affected me. In some ways it reminded me of my favorite anime; Sangatsu no Lion, in how raw and confrontational it was. It doesn’t mince its words and doesn’t treat the viewer with any care. The world is the way it is and we just have to find joy and beauty in what we have. Out of all the shows I’ve watched in the past year, this is probably one that will stay with me for many years to come. Here’s to hoping there’s a sequel or the manga gets published in English. Make sure you also give a listen to the opening and ending theme, as both are very fitting for the story, and feel like a warm hug that is sorely needed before and after some of the episodes. Thanks for reading!
Normally I would input images from the show – and I still will do so later on – but my totally legal anime watching website is not cooperating today.
In today’s episode we finally learn a little bit more about Maribel and her family. I had my suspicions about her – being so powerful at such a young child – but she is indeed someone who has reincarnated from another world, just like Rimuru, Yuuki, Masayuuki, Shizu, Hinata and all the others we’ve encountered so far. I kind of like that so many people get transported or reincarnated here, it makes the fact that Rimuru is beyond overpowered a little less boring, because there are other forces at work in this world as well. I am going to call this super early, but Leon is also someone from the modern world and whatever it is he is trying to do has something to do with bringing someone else – perhaps a lover – into the world of Tensura. I’m probably very wrong about this, but sometimes it’s fun to throw out crackpot theories.
Interestingly enough, it doesn’t seem like Maribel has used her powers on her grandfather. Either that, or she has and he is unaware somehow, but I find that doubtful.
Either way, we learn that Maribel was a powerful noblewoman in Europe in her previous life who had it all and died of old age, happy and rich. Due to how she was in her previous life, she’s become the epitome of greed in her new life, quickly using her newfound powers to control people by making use of their inherent greed. She then teams up with her grandfather – who is apparently over a millennium old? – and they want to create a world where all humans are equal but under the rule of the Rozzo family. And it probably shouldn’t be lost on us that it said humans instead of people, and if my Japanese is right they also used the word for “humanity” here, which very clearly excludes a whole group of people that this story happens to be centered around. After this lengthy introduction, the opening theme plays.
We’re looking a lot more like a proper team of monsters here.
We return to the dungeon and the newly formed Avatar Team which is of course the avatars of Ramiris, Milim, Veldora and Rimuru. As we saw at the end of last week’s episode, they are not very good at working with their avatars yet. They need to learn to work as a team, but first they’re going to Kurobe to get some gear. They then go on a training arc on the first few floors of the dungeon and weak avatars or not, it feels a bit unfair to have three demon lords and the storm dragon gang up on a bunch of beginners in the dungeon that they themselves are charging money to enter. With team Green Fury about to enter the 50th floor, Rimuru and friends need to be ready at a moment’s notice. And by fully cheating, they manage to defeat team Green Fury. Are we the bad guys?
The schemer in chief hard at work.
So we move back to the Rozzo’s and it’s now Maribel and Yuuki – the sponsors of team Green Fury – talking about how to take out Rimuru. I suddenly feel a lot less bad about how team Green Fury was treated in Tempest, knowing who’s backing them. We talked about the opening already in the first post and how I thought Maribel might be possessing Yuuki, but at this point I’m not certain that’s true. There was a glow to his eyes though and although the wet nurse we saw with Maribel earlier this episode had that glow too, according to her grandfather both of Maribel’s parents were also taken by her power, but they didn’t have the glow in their eyes. Perhaps Yuuki is already under her control and working with her for that reason, but she hasn’t unleashed a more full control over him because there has been no need? I’m probably getting ahead of myself again.
I am not buying it one bit, Yuuki is still in control.
This is one of the big downsides – or upsides depending on how you look at it – of writing large parts of this post while watching the episode for the first time. Of course I will regularly go back and adjust things when I’m wrong or when there’s a change in how certain information is presented, but it also turns into me explaining a power right before the show explains it. Here we learn that Maribel’s power does indeed have two effects. She can basically charm a person into working with her, or force her will upon them. The reason she’s taking her time with Yuuki and hasn’t immediately cast her magic on Rimuru is because if someone strong catches on to the power, they can negate it. And of course she’s fully gotten Yuuki under her control. I somehow doubt it’s that easy, and I think this is just Yuuki playing pretend with a back-up plan so he can fight Rimuru and then claim he had no choice later on. Finally, before we end the episode, the nobleman at the end of season 3 – the one that tried to get Rimuru indebted – gets assassinated by Maribel’s agents before Souei can get to him. Not only that, Souei couldn’t spot the assassin which makes them quite the threat. With that we are now three episodes in and things are already speeding up. A friendly reminder that with 5 cours, we still have over 50 episodes to go before we’re at the end of what’s been promised, so lots of things could still happen. Thanks for reading and I hope to see you all here again next week!
This has nothing to do with the episode, but I found this image apt to celebrate that I have the next two weeks off AND that my contract at work was renewed for another year. That second one was pretty certain already, but confirmation is nice.
There are shows that derive their appeal from the fun cast of characters with interesting personalities and personal problems to work through. There are shows that derive their appeal from the fun or high quality animation and artstyle that accompany an otherwise not as impressive story. There are also shows that derive their appeal from having a fantastic soundtrack or even just a great opening theme. And then there is You and I are polar opposites, a 2026 romance anime that absolutely nails all three of those. Quickly becoming one of my favorite romance anime/manga out there, this show has so much to offer that I don’t even know where to begin. So let’s just begin at the beginning.
Showing off the cast
Miyu Suzuki is a popular girl with an extroverted personality and good looks. Yuusuke Tani is a quiet boy that is much more introverted than many of his classmates. Despite this big difference in their personalities, Suzuki always tries to include Tani in their conversations, even though her friends are certain she’s just bothering their quiet classmate. But Suzuki isn’t doing so because she wasn’t to annoy him, but instead because she’s had a crush on him for quite a while. Opposites attract after all. It turns out that Tani has had a crush on Suzuki for exactly the same reason. It’s the age old meme of an extroverted person adopting an introverted person, but now in anime form. The two pretty quickly reveal their feelings for each other and the romance starts.
Taira is a much nicer and better guy than he gives himself credit for and it’s great to see him break down Azuma’s walls
What keeps the actual story fresh is the diverse cast of characters that it takes its time exploring. In this sense, it is very similar to one of the more popular romance manga out there; Horimiya. Instead of just focusing on Tani and Suzuki, they also develop the friendship between the pessimistic Taira and self-doubting Azuma as well as the blossoming relationship between the funny and social Yamada and the shy and quiet Nisshi. By including all sorts of different characters and their complex relationships with each other, the show stays fresh and avoids getting stale.
I absolutely adore these two together, such a great duo.
I talked about the different ways that an anime can appeal to you in the opening paragraph of this post, and I think I would be remiss not to explore the animation, the art direction and the opening theme song. Although the art direction is incredibly fun and colorful throughout the series, with the style regularly changing to more simplistic and even what I would call more western cartoonish shots, there is no better place to demonstrate this than by exploring the opening theme song Megana wo Hazushite by Noa. And before we talk about it, I highly recommend you give it a watch first. If you’re still not certain that you’re going to watch the anime itself, do yourself a favor and at least watch the opening, it’s only 90 seconds after all and if it doesn’t sell you on the anime, nothing I say here will.
I love this goofy shot of Suzuki, showing off just how silly of a character she can be.
With an abundance of creative shots including but not limited to – kaleidoscope shots, different frames of animation on the edges of a clock, lego bricks, playing with the angles on assets, looking through glasses, playing with perspective and all sorts of fun old ways to create an animated effect before animation as we know it was even a thing – I want to focus on the one throughline in this entire opening that is just done incredibly well. There is a running gag in the series about how Suzuki is terrible at taking photos, and always makes a silly face when she doesn’t intend it. This gag is extended into the opening, where the characters take several pictures of each other. At first, they all get into position to use their bodies to make the kanji for the title of the show, before all the pictures snapped are lined up and shown by each of the people’s hands. Later on we see this same picture motif again where every character jumps to create a running animation when all of these pictures are combined. And in both of these moments we see how each character looks normal and then Suzuki looks like a total blustering fool. It’s the eye for detail as well as the creativity of these shots themselves that really makes the opening pop. I don’t think there has been an anime opening as fun in the past few years. I know I hyped up the Darwin Incident opening the other day, but truthfully the animation for that is kind of forgettable. Here we have incredible art direction and a banger song. What more can you ask for?
Let’s ignore for a moment the lack of diversity and just focus on how creative this shot is.
I think I’ve said all that I could about this show now, all that’s left is for you to go check it out. While writing this post I managed to convince myself to order the entire manga – which is already finished with 8 volumes. There is a second season of the anime already announced which will probably cover the rest of the story, but I can’t wait that long if I’m honest. Thanks for reading!
Bringing back the camera for this shot was a fun idea too, with the filters showing off Miyuki’s silliness while you can see that Tani is not really all that excited about it.Using the backwards writing of the credits on the window while showing off the proper writing on the mirror is a fun idea.Poor Hon-Chan
Now that we’ve had two longer breaks from the One Piece anime, I’ve really started to appreciate how nice it was to have the same show airing almost every single week for about half my life. Let’s not think about that too much, I think I just took damage to my life points from realizing how old that makes me. With opening 29 we enter the Elbaph arc in all its glory and for those of us reading the manga, there are a ton of little easter eggs throughout this episode so please beware that you do not read this post if you aren’t up to date on the manga. You have been warned. Seriously, I’m talking about everything we see in the manga, so do not read this!
The harley still looks a little bit vague here, but if you zoom in and enhance you can see what it’s all about.
We open on Luffy’s Elbaph outfit and immediately jump into a lovely shot of the Harley at the bottom of Yggdrasil. The prophetic wall paintings were a huge deal in the manga and have resulted in tons of speculation about what the final arc of this show might look like. With Egghead being the way it is, we’re almost certainly going to learn that the void century was a time of technological prosperity the world hasn’t seen again since then. Speaking of the void century, the shot of the Harley is interrupted by a shot of Joyboy standing next to Emet before we’re shown the important people that traveled the world before Luffy donned the Straw Hat that has become a vital symbol of freedom throughout the world.
I love this shot in particular, having a voice to go with Emet’s huge robotic frame has really upped my love for the character.
With the weapons reflecting the sun and the sky we’re reminded that Dory and Broggy only returned to Elbaph to pick up some new weapons. These two – I love them to death – are about as stubborn and dumb as you can be. After a hundred years of fighting for a cause that they long forgot, they broke their weapons, the world is in turmoil and all they can think about is returning to Elbaph, grab some new weapons and get right back at it for another century. Men, am I right? While the Sunny is parked nice and safe on land, we see three tiny dolls in Rodo’s room where the clothes he’s made for Luffy, Nami and Usopp are sitting, ready to be put on his livedolls. We’re followed by a shot of the underworld that could almost be mistaken as a bunch of mountains, but instead shows us the chains that bind Loki, prince of Elbaph and the next member of the Straw Hat pirates. Maybe.
Rodo’s livedolls, what a creep.
Luffy marvels at the bar that Shanks frequents, where the giants often drink with any visitors they have, although I can’t imagine they have too many in this part of the world. We’re then shown a shot of the New Giant Pirates, who of course are part of the Straw Hat Grand Fleet, but first we see them as children, in a very pencil-drawn style. Of course this is to show off St. Killingham’s ability to turn nightmares into monsters, but here we see the young children looking happy, perhaps portraying a more kind dream than the ones we see throughout the arc. We’re then shown what they look like now, with their captain Hajrudin at the center.
Some serious cottagecore going here.
From here we go quickly so stay with me. Harjudin leaves our shot and is replaced by his brother, Loki, who looks away. We’re then shown the library and the children happily studying at it, as well as a quick shot of Chief Jarul with the weapon stuck in his helmet. Next up is the abandoned Elbaph Castle where disaster struck when Harald gave control over to Imu, not quite understanding what he was doing and dooming the nation of Elbaph to subservience. At least that would have happened if a certain someone didn’t prevent tragedy.
I love them.
We see some shorts of the Straw hats in their Elbaph gear and yes that’s right, she’s there. Nico Robin with her old haircut. Ever since we left Punk Hazard behind, I don’t think the crew’s outfits have missed at all, but I really like their Elbaph garb. Franky’s long beard really suits him, Usopp and Luffy with viking helmets look great and as an official member of the Nico Robin fanclub, seeing her with her old bangs, showing them off to her old friend, is such a sight for sore eyes. Speaking of sights for sore eyes, here comes the sun and with that I mean Nika, the sun god. We see him in a book before the watchful eye of Imu, alongside the Holy Knights that appear during this arc, looks at us.
Our brave little warrior. Rayleigh was the only one of the big three on Roger’s crew to be smart enough to not have any kids. Then again, being the mountain eater probably isn’t a bad deal either.
Here we move into much darker shots although if you haven’t read the manga yet, their meaning might be lost. We see the children drawing their biggest fears, which of course get turned into reality by St. Killingham’s powers. We see the thorns that St. Sommers employs as well as the arrows that St. Gunko uses. All of these are combined to force the children to walk off the cliff and into the hands of the world government all while Collun puts on a brave face. Meanwhile Loki rages at the world for treating him unfairly and for what they did to his mother while Hajrudin – presumably – rages at the fate that put him against his brother for all these years. Hajrudin’s had a rough life, especially with being turned into a toy at Dressrosa, but with the big reveals throughout Elbaph it seems like he might finally get into a better place. I also don’t really think Loki will join Luffy’s crew directly, he’ll probably join up with Hajrudin’s crew.
Okay but can we just remember that he was supposed to marry Lola at one point? The woman that’s about as tall as I am? Yeah.
Finally, we end with a montage of shots that don’t hold a ton of meaning from what I can see but are mostly there to show us all of the fun characters we’ll get to meet throughout this arc. We see a quick shot of Gunko and fake shanks – I mean Shamrock – as they’re on their way to deal with Loki, before we’re shown all of the Straw Hats, the New Giant Pirates as well as the two captains of the old Giant Pirates. Finally, we’re ending on a shot of Luffy transforming into his form where he is the most free, while the sun shines brightly upon him. * symbolism *
Look at our boi!
With everything we’ve discussed so far, I think it’s safe to say that after the last few openings, Toei studio is continuing to cook with this one. It’s not going to be my all time favorite, nor will it be a top five entry, but having listened to the song a lot on repeat over the past week, I do think it’ll be one to remember. At least it’s a lot more memorable than a lot of the openings in the 10s which are all serviceable, but some of them I cannot tell apart. AiNA’s husky voice tickles my ears just right – you might recognize her from the latest Dandadan opening – and the song itself is a fun tune that builds up well then crashes into you with all the force of the pirate crew that will free the world from 800 years of oppression. Thanks for reading!
I really appreciate that Masayuki seems to be a decent guy and relatively appreciative of the fact that he did not earn any of his fame directly, because I feel like his character would be unbearable if he had even the slightest hint of arrogance to him. Either way, with the help of his special skill and dumb luck he manages to improve his reputation even more which in turn helps out the success of the dungeon greatly. Now that a second team is on its way to clearing the early floors of the dungeon rapidly and there is a hostel for people to relax at during their trip to the dungeon, it has become much more appealing and this in turn has resulted in more trust in the city as a whole.
The people have already starting hanging up fan art of their Oshi everywhere throughout town.
The bottom floor of the labyrinth is dedicated to Rimuru’s research facilities where Gabiru, Vesta, Ramiris and Rimuru himself are all working on different projects. The vessel that Rimuru is creating for Diablo’s assistant – surely that’ll not summon another insane demon – looks different from the more fleshy things we saw in these tubes during the intro song, so I’m curious what that is all about. We don’t get to find out yet though, as Rimuru’s hyperfixation is interrupted by the fact that team Green Fury is about to clear floor 30 of the dungeon. Still far away from the deeper levels, this team is employing every trick they can think of by abusing the different mechanics that Rimuru has put in place. Can’t help but respect the hustle.
Outgunned, outmanned, outnumbered, outplanned.
There is a pretty big problem with their rapid success, and it’s not the fact that they are using cheap tricks. The problem is that the lower floors – past floor 50 – are currently not very usable. The reason for this? Well one of the crusaders said “bet you can’t beat them” to Hinata and that went over about as well as you’d expect. At least when she got down all the way to Veldora, she ended up losing to the Storm Dragon. And to add to the trolling, Rimuru is not going to give her any payment. Unfortunately it is up to Mjollmire to bring her the bad news. Best of luck to the poor guy. Now Rimuru has to go down and fix each boss floor. Adalmann’s faith in Rimuru is restored and he’s given a cool boss room to sit in and look menacing from.
My guy’s pogging.Now this is what a Dungeon Boss is supposed to look like.
In the meantime, both Gobta and Ranga have somehow survived Milim’s training. Besides serving as a fun bit of comedy relief it also shows just how much talent the duo has. We now see the fruits of Rimuru’s labor and they’re pretty damn crazy. He’s managed to create a set of magical items that allows you to create an avatar that is to your liking and then use the other half to possess it. Ramiris chooses the form of a golem, similar to the one that was just broken by Hinata, while Veldora chooses a simple skeleton. Finally, Milim chooses to be a pink slime, as she was told she could be whatever she wants to be, she didn’t go for something all powerful. I’m not going to lie, I thought she was going to imagine her lost baby dragon for a second, but I’m glad we didn’t get that sad, that quickly. Unfortunately nothing in life is easy, and the foursome of avatar fighters is totally not used to their new bodies yet, getting defeated by the first group of rookie adventurers that come across their path. Imagine finding out you just defeated three demon lords and the storm dragon all before second breakfast. Might be best not to tell them, to save some face.
It’s honestly surprising they’re still alive and conscious.
It looks like the series continues to casually stroll along without rushing into anything, and next week we’ll see more of these avatar fighting shenanigans. As you’re well aware if you’ve read my thoughts on previous seasons, I am all for this slow pace. Some of my all time favorite scenes in One Piece are when they are just exploring the different rooms on their new ship, or having fun in town without any real stakes. There’s something really soothing about watching the downtime that characters have with each other and it also builds much more of a bond between the viewer and the characters as they feel much more rounded when they suddenly do end up getting into high stakes situations. It makes for more immersive worldbuilding and as much as I love stories with deep meaning and complex moral conundrums, I do like a bit of good escapism too. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you all here again next week!
Remember how last week I said these were probably spirits working with Ramiris? Turns out I was completely wrong and they’re the four avatars of Rimuru and his friends
It’s the end of the winter season and although it’s a season that felt dominated by some incredible sequels and quickly overshadowed by the upcoming season – for me at least – it still ended up having some very good anime. In the next few weeks, we’ll look back on a season full of surprises. Join me next week as we talk about the ever cheerful You and I are polar opposites and the week after that for the deep confrontational story that is Journal with Witch. But first, let’s take a much quicker look at some of the other shows you might have missed out on this season. I am going to exclude most sequels, but I will take a moment to talk about the final season of Fire Force as I have some thoughts on that show. Let’s get to it.
With the goofiest smile on our faces, let’s dive into the winter season head-first.
Fire Force
Besides having one of the best ending songs in the anime industry right now – and that’s a tough competition these days – the final season of Fire Force tries its very best to go out with a bang and give us something to remember. I’ve not talked about Fire Force much on this blog now that I think about it. As a massive fan of Ohkubo’s other work – Soul Eater – this newer manga has always felt like it was falling short compared to its more creative older brother. Following Kusakabe Shinra, a young man with fire powers in a world where those are somewhat common and the main cause of death has become spontaneous combustion, we see his growth in the eight fire force division. Throughout the seasons we spend time figuring out what exactly is going on with the world and is causing this phenomenon of spontaneous combustion. Meanwhile the white-clad cultists are trying to bring about the end of the world. In this final season, what the story ends up focusing on is the world-rending great cataclysm which allows for the story and the animation to get funky and creative. A clashing mix of styles is used to denote different periods in the story’s time and the creativity of the human mind is pushed to its boundaries in this season. The world is what we make of it, and combined human consciousness is now responsible for what the world looks like. I like the concepts presented in this final season a lot, it feels like classic Ohkubo insanity that straddles the line of being nonsense or genius storytelling. But where Soul Eater leans towards the genius for me, a lot of Fire Force unfortunately leans more towards the nonsense. Despite all this, the reason I wanted to include this sequel where I’m skipping the others, is that I think you should still watch it even considering its flaws. It’s a creative idea done justice by studio David Production and you might come away from it thinking it wasn’t very good, but I doubt you’ll come away from it thinking it wasn’t creative and different. And I dare you to listen to the ending and not feel incredible afterwards.
A leftover from the previous season, you can already see how the night sky has been touched by the madness. This is a sign of what is to come.
Fate/strange Fake
Welcome to the American city of Snowfield where the next holy grail is about to start. How do we know this? Well, there’s been a little bit of a set-up. This time around, the idea was to only summon six servants, making it so the grail war wouldn’t officially start. Unfortunately the grail itself had other ideas and now we’ve somehow ended up with fourteen masters and fourteen servants. As usual we have an unorthodox mixture of crazy people and their crazier servants battling it out in the streets as only one pair can win and claim the holy grail for themselves. This season focuses on a woman named Sajyou Ayaka and her servant Lionheart of the Saber class. The duo must fight their way through the holy grail as conspiracy looms everywhere for this grander than ever grail war. This entire war has been set up by a man named Faldeus who seems to be working for the US government. He’s a real piece of work and shaping up to be a big antagonist in this and future seasons. We have your classic spread of good and evil characters with a lot of morally grey folks caught up in the middle. The original story was written by Ryohgo Narita – of Durarara and Baccano fame – so you know it’s written by someone who is excellent at writing a large but cohesive feeling cast of strange characters, as that is what he’s historically done best. With a sequel already confirmed, this show is a must watch for anyone who misses the old days of Fate/Zero and wants to relive that feeling of being completely lost on what’s going on but still enjoying every second of it.
Oh no, he’s hot
In the clear moonlit dusk
Takiguchi Yoi looks more masculine than your average high school girl, earning herself the title of “prince”. She’s not the only one, as one of the upperclassmen is also given this title, for looking handsome and apparently being from a rich family. After a chance meeting, Yoi and Ichimura-senpai start hesitantly going out with each other. This romance focuses on the distance between these characters and their different histories when it comes to dating which eventually leads to their relationship blossoming. I had a lot of fun with the first half of this show, but where it started to really nosedive for me was the very forced love triangle it put into the story in the second half. It was clear from the beginning where it would end and it just made for two or three very frustrating episodes towards the end that made me want to punch some of the characters through the monitor. Despite this complaint, I would still say I enjoyed most of my time spent with this show and if you’re looking for a more muted romance that feels very, very shojo – and that is saying something, coming from me – then give this one a go. It was a bit too much for me at times, but if that’s your thing, then definitely give this one a watch.
When people say “boys will be boys” I can’t help but think about how every boy’s dream is to be good at hardcore parkour and jumping off of things.
Sentenced to be a hero
When the world is under attack from a strange demon blight that devours everyone and everything in its path, the worst punishment a criminal can expect isn’t to be sentenced to death. It’s to be sentenced to death only to be brought back to forcefully have to fight against this demon blight. Xylo Forbartz is one of the unlucky people being sentenced to become a hero and he’s desperate to avoid dying and reviving, since it’ll strip away your memory over time. In the midst of this chaos, he comes across a box with a goddess in it. Goddesses allow their knights access to crazy powers and in return wish to be praised. Teoritta – the goddess in the box – immediately takes a liking to Xylo, and not long after do we learn that she isn’t the first one to do so. Xylo’s crime was letting the previous goddess die. Although from the snippets we see, she burned out on her own accord during a dire fight, it seems like Xylo still got falsely blamed for the whole endeavor. With this set-up for a story, we start diving into this crazy world where some people even want to coexist with the demon blights. We meet an eclectic cast of criminals – some proper pieces of work, others more falsely condemned – and although heroes are mostly looked down upon, the actions of Xylo and his comrades slowly earn them some respect from the knights and people they fight alongside and protect. Of course there seems to be a much deeper conspiracy lurking behind the shadows and as much as I ended up enjoying this show, it really irks me that it ended on such a big cliffhanger. In an industry where sequels aren’t always a given and even if they are, it might take a while, that feels bad. Luckily, a sequel is already in production and I honestly cannot wait.
One of the selling points of this show is that – although a lot of them don’t seem to have much intelligence – the enemies have a very cool and colorful design.
The holy grail of Eris
Out of all the shows I watched this season, it was this political intrigue story that surprised me the most. Ten years after the execution of Scarlett Castiel – one of the coldest political schemers in the kingdom – we meet Constance Grail, a young woman from an honorable family in a world full of betrayal and wickedness. Young Connie is being tricked and berated by a fellow noblewoman, and is about to lose all of her standing. In a desperate plea to get some help in this dire moment, she calls out to someone, anyone, and the ghost of a vengeful woman answers. With Scarlett’s wits and skills, the young girl masterfully takes down her enemies and immediately gains several new ones in the process. Now that she’s managed to get out of this mess, things aren’t going to get any better as she quickly finds herself caught up in a massive political plot that keeps getting more and more convoluted as she’s trying to help Scarlett get revenge on the people that wronged her. That is her payment for Scarlett’s help in this. What I really appreciate about this series is that although Connie doesn’t tell every soul she meets about Scarlett, she does share the knowledge with some characters, allowing them to act much more rationally. I was worried this would become a show where the secret would play a big role, and I was pleasantly surprised when that didn’t end up being the case. We meet many nobles throughout this story and the two women become close friends towards the end of the show. With the entire story finishing up in a single season, this is a fun one to watch and I would highly recommend it if your interest was even slightly piqued by this description.
People die when they are killed. Except when they don’t. Then they just return to come haunt you as a big tiddy goth ghost.
The Darwin incident
Let’s finish this up with a weird one. And yes, they are turning our anime woke. The Darwin Incident tells the story of Charlie the Humanzee. Charlie was born in a lab to a human father and a chimpanzee mother. Due to his unique existence in the world, it has been a difficult road to get him any rights, as by law he is not considered a human and most of the laws only apply to humans after all. Charlie himself seems to be the least bothered by all of this, just trying to live his life. The story starts with Charlie attending college while a terrorist organization called the ALA is trying to recruit him to their nasty schemes. The first couple of episodes focus a lot on the idea of being vegan and how it’s bad to eat meat while on the other hand some think it’s bad to be vegan as their family owns a steakhouse. It’s a pretty in-your-face way of talking about this topic and it is quite frankly the opposite of subtle, but it is fun to see everyone up in arms about it while Charlie does not really care. As the season continues, the story starts to go off the rails more and more with school shootings, terrorist bombings and even some fights wearing night goggles in the middle of a forest. It’s a pretty bizarre story all things considered and although I don’t think it really works well as actual social commentary, if you just take it as a weird story I found it very enjoyable. The villain is comically evil, Charlie’s friend Lucy is overly caring and definitely much more invested in Charlie’s rights than the man himself and the cliffhanger at the end of season 1 completely caught me by surprise. There’s definitely some criticism to be leveled at this show, but it never gets boring. And that includes the opening theme. The absolute banger by Official Hige Dandeism has been on loop on my Spotify account for the last couple months and I’m still not bored of it. Even if you think this anime isn’t for you, I would recommend at least listening to the opening theme Make me wonder. Beware of flashing lights though.
mmmm Monke
And with that, we’ve reached the end of this season’s quick reviews. There are a few more shows I’ll talk about in the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned for those, but this should give you some time to catch up before the next season starts. Now I’ll go back to rewatching Ace of Diamond before I start the new season of that. Thanks for reading!
We open on a quick recap of the founding ceremony of the Jura Tempest federation which we watched in the second half of season 3. With the opening of a coliseum and several other fun events it was a great success, turning the once tiny goblin village into a proper hub of civilization. All of the important characters are shown doing their various jobs throughout this episode and both Masayuuki as well as Mjollmile are shown to be great assets. Can I take this moment to talk about Aoyama Yutaka’s fantastic performance in this role? Mjollmile is the type of character that would be grating and annoying when voiced by a less talented voice actor, but the personality that Yutaka brings to this wonderfully shady merchant really makes him stand out as a memorable character. I’m blown away by the performance every single time. Besides seeing that Rimuru and his friends are working hard on building the first trains in this world, we also get a quick look at the antagonists for this season. The Rozzo family seem to be the main focus for now, but we also see Yuuki, Kagari and the rest of the moderate harlequin alliance. As much as Yuuki is being made out to be a bad guy – and he definitely is an ‘ends justify the means’ type of character – his actions are ultimately headed towards the same goal as Rimuru has. The Rozzos, Rimuru and Yuuki all want dominion over the west. Maybe Rimuru is much less direct in his approach, but his economic dominance has already caused one kingdom to fall and many others to jump in line with him. I can’t help but like Yuuki and his team, but we’ll see how common of a threat he will end up being in this season.
A quick reminder to everyone out there that these are the good guys, not the scheming villains. I think.
And since we’re in the first episode of a new season where I doubt too much is going to happen, let’s mainly have a look at the opening today. And any theories I have based on the opening are purely from what I think and probably wrong, considering I haven’t actually read the novels yet.
They really put their all into the art for the opening, it looks so much more crisp than in previous seasons.
We open on a shot of Veldora, who is undoubtedly going to play a major role later on in the series, as he’s mostly been pushed aside for now due to being too powerful for the story to be any interesting with him around. Luckily he’s got his good looks to carry his popularity for a while. We see several of the cast going about their day including Shion, Shuna, Diablo, Milim and Ramiris, who are all close with Rimuru. Rimuru himself is enjoying the fruits of his labor, walking through a thriving city while eating all sorts of dishes from his home world. We transition from Ramiris flying to the camera to what looks to be a bunch of spirits in her labyrinth. Perhaps we’ll gain some new friends or there will be some issue in the labyrinth this season? From there, we get some looks into Rimuru’s research, and seeing him in a room full of bodies like he’s the lead scientist at Germa66 makes me wonder what he has planned. When I first saw this shot I thought this was going to be a peek into what Leon might be doing, as the synopsis for these seasons mentions that he’ll be doing something as well, but it does clearly show Rimuru himself, so who knows. We quickly move past this shot to the dream of every person on the autism spectrum, trains. With the railway to Eurazania being started, this should make travel and trade much quicker and safer. Speaking of safety, Rimuru has moved the kids to his own town now that he knows Yuuki can’t be trusted with their safety. While the lightspeed hero is busy promoting the dungeon, we get our first shot of Mariabell Rozzo. Although I don’t think any of her powers have been confirmed yet, we heavily lean into a vampire and mind control aesthetic with the light up eyes and the blood everywhere. Speaking of which, I’m not planning to cover the ending since it doesn’t seem like there’s much of value there, but the sand coming from Mariabell Rozzo there does make it look like she’s pissing herself something fierce. Really awkward choice in my opinion.
Surely this won’t result in heartbreak and tears.
We move on to a shot of a young girl walking with her baby dragon. I would assume this to be Milim as a child, as we know her backstory is a tragic one that involves the death of her dragon and the botched revival as the ascended to demon lord. It was the same ritual that Rimuru used to revive his friends after the attack by the Falmuth kingdom, although in Rimuru’s case it succeeded because the magical barrier kept everyone’s souls stuck in the city. We see the dragon a few more times in this opening and it makes me wonder if we’ll end up seeing someone manipulate this dragon into having to fight with Milim at some point. That would be quite sad. We then see Yuuki and Rimuru clash and I’m curious if Yuuki’s shining red eyes are just his normal eyes lit up by the moonlight or if there is some sort of control happening here. I don’t think Yuuki would benefit too much from a direct fight with Rimuru since it will just send a hoard of monsters into Engrassia to fight him, but who knows. We also saw Rimuru fight with Hinata in the openings long before she ever really fought him, so this could be a hint for an event in a couple of seasons from now. Your guess is as good as mine.
A quick montage of all of the big villains – minus the eastern merchants and their bosses, first the Moderate Harlequin Alliance.The creepy Mariabell RozzoAnd lastly, Yuuki as he faces off against Rimuru
Next we get a montage of monsters fighting against the aforementioned dragon as Yuuki and Rimuru duel on its back. Diablo, Benimaru, Shion, Shuna, Ranga and Gobta all get to show off their prowess, before Milim goes in and delivers the final blow. Or she would if she didn’t waver, and she sadly looks on at the dragon she once saw as a friend. If Yuuki is behind this I might have to take back my earlier comments about liking his character, cause that would be cruel beyond necessity. We’re then reminded that Hinata, Kagari and Luminous Valentine are part of the story and if my hunch that Rozzos are vampires is correct then I wonder if she has something to do with them. I should really look at a map of the Tensura world as the anime and Crunchyroll’s subs do a poor job with giving your a proper legend whenever it’s on screen. With that, the opening comes to an end and we have finished the first episode. Like I said at the start of the episode, very little happened that we couldn’t have derived from the final episodes of season 3, but it was a great way to ease back into the show. I’m excited for the series to properly start in the next couple of episodes and I hope you’ll be here every week alongside me.
The moderate Harlequin Alliance under the leadership of Yuuki. I hope you’ll enjoy these weekly recaps, thanks for reading 🙂
Opal Kaharis 