You and I Are Polar Opposites Ep. 5: The coupling begins

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We finally get a proper introduction to Nishi, and she’s personally pretty relatable. It’s not that you ever want to eavesdrop on the conversations around you, but we have ears. Even when you try to distract yourself, you can’t hear but hear things with those same ears. Luckily, her chatty classmates don’t seem to mind. They even try to loop her in, but she just can’t keep up with their tempo. In any other show, there would probably be a side plot where Nishi gets bullied by the popular kids, thereby forcing one of Suzuki’s friends to step in and save her, blah blah blah… then bam, romance. I’m just glad this isn’t that type of show. I’m not trying to deny that bullying exists, but from a storytelling perspective, I’m just so tired of it.

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Frieren Ep. 32: When the going gets tough

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Fern is carefully choosing her outfit and making sure her bangs are in tip-top shape, ’cause that’s what you do when you prepare for dates. You want to look your best. You want the person you’re dating to find you attractive. But that leads to a natural follow-up question: does Stark even care how she looks? I’m not asking whether or not he finds Fern attractive, because in order for him to answer that question, he needs to know that it exists in the first place! Fern’s probably thinking, “I hope he thinks I look cute in this dress.” Meanwhile, Stark looks slightly concerned as he waits for Fern to arrive for their date. He’s probably dreading the fallout if the date is unsuccessful.

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The Holy Grail of Eris Ep. 5: Nice doesn’t have to mean naive

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When we last left off, a mysterious man had pulled a gun on Constance, but she is luckily saved by Aldous. Wait, who? Oh, that guy we met for the first time in the previous episode. That guy who was onscreen for about… what? A minute or so? See, this is the problem you run into when your pacing is frenetic. Obviously, Constance isn’t going to die midway through the series. But how she survives the dangerous encounter can still surprise us. When the story is all over the place, however, nothing ends up having any impact. Aldous apparently works for Abigail, who apparently runs a brothel (I’m not even going to get into how gross that is). Shocking? Or just more extraneous details to add to the long list of information that the anime is constantly throwing at us?

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Sentenced to Be a Hero Ep. 5: Heroic magnetism

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Does Xylo have a plan for the upcoming suicide mission? Of course he’s got a plan. The plan is to lure out the demon lord, then have Xylo swoop in and kill it like he has been doing since the start of the series. This way, they don’t have to rely on the original strategy of poisoning the demon lord (and themselves) to death. But as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. So of course, the plan falls to pieces when they fail to account for every possible contingency. It always goes wrong, because it has to. ‘Cause we need the drama. And the problem is precisely because Xylo is too nice — too heroic for his own good. And this is all in spite of his surly attitude.

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