Frieren Ep. 32: When the going gets tough

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

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

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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Tamon’s B-Side Ep. 6: We needed more romance, but not like this

I’ve been griping about how this anime doesn’t really feel like a romance. After all, not only does Utage worship Tamon like a god, she only sees herself as one of his millions of girlfriends. She loves him in that distant, platonic way, not the “I want to go on dates and snuggle with you” way. Or to put it more simply, she loves him, but she’s not in love with him. But what does Tamon want? Unfortunately, this is a Pandora’s box we might not want to open. Ever since Tamon misunderstood Utage’s encounter with Ori, he’s been off his rocker. When Utage takes her weird-looking dog on a walk one day, the “criatura” somehow leads her straight to Tamon’s apartment. It has great timing too, because when the girl looks up, she sees Tamon about to jump from a building. Yep, it’s that serious. We’re actually talking suicide.

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Everything Else: Winter 2026, Week 5

Yup, I’m feelin’ it too, buddy.

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