No! You mind your own business, mister! By the way, I’m skipping Kanojo ga Flag o Oraretara this week ’cause I just feel like it. It might make a return next week, it might not. We’ll see.

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Nisekoi Ep. 19

Do you remember when Marika was first introduced into the story, the three haremettes couldn’t test their individual keys on Raku’s locket because it was broken? Yes, yes, I remember it clearly now. Our harem lead had sent his locket in to be repaired after Chitoge’s key had broken off inside of it. Since then, the anime hasn’t even mentioned the locket even once, so I can only assume that the locket is still broken. Not only that, seeing as how we’ve gone through an entire summer over the past few episodes, this must be the longest repair job ever! Ah, you just can’t find good help these days, can you? Still, we must wonder if we will ever see any of the girls unlock said locket. Hell, will we ever even see the locket again? Heh, don’t hold your breath…

Anyway, onto this week’s wonderful episode. As you’ll recall, Chitoge turned down the role of Juliet in last week’s episode. Kosaki thus becomes the next best candidate even though I would rather have a conversation with a block of tofu than with the girl herself. Marika tries to steal the role away, but Tofu summons up all the courage she’ll ever muster in her life to hold onto her position. After all, Romeo & Juliet is such a feel-good story for any lovestruck teenager. There’s just nothing quite like a 13 year old girl committing suicide because she can’t marry a guy she had just met a few days ago. In the end, Marika accepts the role of understudy.

Yeah, Raku is absolutely elated that he now has an excuse to creep on Tofu. But u-uguu, Chitoge is still mad at him, and he can’t seem to understand why he even cares. I mean, what is this? A conscience? An ability to sympathize with another human being? Bah, what harem lead needs those things? Still, he tries to talk to Chitoge anyway. Unfortunately, Raku is too dense to realize why she’s even mad. How can you not realize it though? C’mon, anyone with half a brain should be able to think, “Hmm, when was the last time I talked to her? Oh yeah, it was at the beach where I told her she sucked!” But no, I guess simple reasoning skills are too much to ask for. When God created harem leads, the Almighty doubled down on their hard-working earnestness, leaving no room for any sort of brains or, well, even compassion.

Predictably enough, Chitoge remains frigid. Raku tries to remind her that they still have to pretend to be lovers in order to avoid a bloodbath from breaking out between their respective gangs, but Chitoge no longer cares. Still, I can’t stand the girl’s behavior here either. Raku’s an absolute idiot in a lot of ways, but he’s right about one thing: “If you’ve got a bone to pick with me, just say so! What’s wrong?” I do think it isn’t difficult for him to realize what he had done wrong. Nevertheless, pop culture loves to perpetuate this bullshit idea that women will never tell men what they’ve done something wrong, i.e. “You should know what you did wrong!” And as a kid growing up, I bought into this too. But when you actually get into a real relationship with a mature and well-adjusted individual, you’ll soon realize that nobody’s got the time to play games.

So the next few scenes are pretty pointless. Raku and Tofu try to rehearse for the play, but our bean curd is too busy coagulating even further into a personality-less block to read her damn lines. Meanwhile, we see Chitoge with the script in her hands. Even though she totally hates Raku now — read: she doesn’t — she still totally wishes it had been her standing opposite Raku instead! But I mean, it’s n-not like she likes Raku or anything — read: she does. After all, it’s  Raku’s fault for being such an idiot! Anyway, Marika tries to butt in where she isn’t wanted, and Tsugumi appears long enough in the episode to remind us that she still exists. But let’s face it, no one really cares about her since she’s just a gimmick character: a cross-dressing girl with big tits and nothing more.

Every now and then, the thought of Chitoge creeps back into Raku’s head. He’ll absolutely gush over Tofu’s ugly outfit, but then he can’t help but imagine how Chitoge might’ve looked in said outfit had she accepted the lead role instead. You might naturally assume that perhaps the harem lead has developed some feelings for his blonde haremette after all, but nah, I don’t think so. After all, for Raku to have feelings for Chitoge, he would have to legitimately care about her. He doesn’t, though. The saddest thing about this episode is that he doesn’t really care that he might’ve hurt her feelings at some point in the past, and this is why she’s treating him poorly. Rather, he’s just frustrated that he is being treated poorly. He’s just frustrated that he is being shut out.

After all, Raku’s natural inclination here isn’t to apologize to Chitoge. Even if he honestly doesn’t know what he’s done to upset her, it’s plainly obvious that she’s upset about something. Any decent person in his shoes would thus say something like, “If I’ve done something to upset you, I would like to apologize, but I can’t start to make amends unless you tell me what I’ve done wrong.” But no, his first instincts was to coerce her back into playing games. After all, bad things will happen if they don’t pretend to be a couple. More importantly, bad things will happen to him. That’s right! Raku starts to see Claude hanging around the school again, and this freaks him out. As a result, he tries to reach out to Chitoge again, but it’s not because he gives a shit about her. He’s only looking out for numero uno.

They thus get into yet another argument, but this time, Raku has the gall to to get all butthurt when Chitoge pretends that she had never enjoyed spending time with him. So being the well-adjusted individual that he is, he decides to fight fire with fire: “I’ll bet even the memory of that day ten years ago was just a misunderstanding on your old man’s part, wasn’t it?” You know the gloves are off when one or both of the harem lead’s eyes disappear. But seriously, the guy just gets denser and further up his own ass with each passing second. Chitoge then reacts with her limitless maturity as well by slapping our harem lead across the face. Woo! Assault and battery is cool, because we believe girls are too weak to hurt guys!

At this point, most people would be like, “Alright, you guys are completely dysfunctional around each other. With over seven billion people on this planet, let’s just move on with our lives. But nah, despite all the over-the-top drama throughout this entire episode, one simple accident is all it takes for Raku and Chitoge to end up being on good terms with each other again. That’s how cheap and worthless the conflict between these two has been. If there had really been a serious spat between Raku and Chitoge, it would never take just the last few minutes of the episode to resolve. But alas, here we are.

See, Tofu tries to save a girl from falling off a ladder, but in the process, she ends up injuring herself. Tofu is thus unable to participate in the play. But uguu, everyone has worked so hard for the play! If the play is cancelled all because of her, Tofu would never forgive herself. So once again, Raku comes running to Chitoge. And once again, it’s not because he’s contrite or anything like that! No, he’s only coming to her for the third time in a single episode because we can’t let Tofu feel terrible about herself! Oh God no! Now, Chitoge can be a bitch all she wants, but as soon as Tofu even looks down(s), the harem lead must do everything in his power to rectify the situation!

Eventually, Chitoge spares us all by preventing Raku’s denseness from collapsing in on itself: “After what you said at the beach… You said it yourself, remember? There was no way what you and I could work.” Finally, Raku realizes that his harsh words from that night have been eating away at the girl this entire time. So what does he do? He tells her the exact same thing he had said at the beach! But y’see, there’s one critical change this time around: “It’s not like I hate you.” Wow, the harem lead doesn’t hate one of his haremettes! How fucking gracious of him! Oh lawdy lawd! And here I was, worried sick that Raku might actually hate Chitoge after nineteen episodes of this diarrhea of a Shaft adaptation. Thankfully, we now learn that he doesn’t hate her! Woo!

But the music turns. A smile creeps onto Chitoge’s face. She even walks past him just so that she can fall back and lean upon his back (what?). In magical harem land, you can totally trash a girl by saying things like, “You’re not graceful, you’re violent, and you’re not sweet at all.” But at the end of the day, everything will be A-OK… as long as you don’t hate her.

This is so fucking stupid.

Miscellaneous notes:

• The animation is getting worse and worse:

• There’s a brief side-story featuring Kosaki and that notable picture from their trip to the mountains. I’ll spare you guys the pointless details if you’ve forgotten all about it already. Basically, she learns that Raku is a nice guy. Ho-hum.

• Raku creams his pants over this:

Tofu’s always got a dumb, slack-jawed look on her face though. It’s like she’s never quite sure where she is or what she’s supposed to do next. Seriously, she looks absolutely brainless in this picture, but maybe Raku is into that sort of thing. Also, those costumes are hideous.

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Seikoku no Dragonar Ep. 7

As soon as the episode begins, we see tentacles coil around a naked Eco. Welp, we’re off to a brilliant start. Oh wait, it gets even better! When Ash Blake wakes up, he finds Eco staring at her bed with embarrassment. Now, he thinks she may have “discharged” fafnirite, but nope, she simply wet the bed. Ah, water sports! What would harem anime do without you? According to the girl, however, it would’ve been even more embarrassing had she really discharge fafnirite. I’ll just let you guys come to your own conclusions.

I’m already tired, so I don’t want to make this post too long. Basically, Anya gets a part-time in the town of Ansullivan so she has an excuse to spy on her crus–… I mean, her “target,” Ash Blake. Meanwhile, Ash Blake is chosen for some special training camp even though he should’ve have been chosen. Rebecca, however, has made a special exception just for our harem lead, but she is oh-so-interested in his special potential. And then we are introduced to yet another character, Lucca Saarinen.

‘Cause y’see, every dumb anime with dragons and magic must also include an elf girl. Not only that, she’s either a loli or a big-breasted elf girl. Since Rebecca already has the big breasts covered, Lucca is thus a pettanko. Nevertheless, the story insists that she’s a third-year student. Mm-hmm, this diminutive girl who looks incredibly under-aged is actually Ash Blake’s sempai! And like every haremette, Lucca’s got a problem that only the harem lead can solve. Y’see, she can’t ride her dragon anymore. In fact, if she doesn’t fix this astral flow problem between her and her dragon Gawain, the latter will die. Aw, poor thing.

Speaking of pettanko, Eco tries to put down some clean, new sheets, but visions of her tentacle rape causes the girl to rip her sheets apart. Cool! We then cut to Anya’s bare ass as she takes a shower because… uh it’s an important plot point, okay? She swears she’ll learn all the secrets while she’s here, but then visions of Ash Blake causes the girl to drop the soap. Again, I’ll let you come to your own conclusions. But look at those shower stalls!

What a useful design! But lets go back to our previous pettanko for now. As always, you must insert crepes here in order to get the ride to operate. As soon as Ash Blake does so, Eco tells him all about her horrible hentai-fueled dreams. The “big” revelation here is that Eco feels as though she’s known her tentacle monster since forever. Well, that’s neat. It’s starting to sound like a hentai plot already!

Later that night, Ash Blake does the manly thing of sneaking himself into Eco’s bed. After all, when a girl tells you all about her tentacle rape-filled dreams, the best thing to do is to surprise her in bed. U-uguu, it’s all innocent though! This is what kids do in order to sleep at night, so by extension, it should be totally okay for him to do it with his loli dragon! Unfortunately, he makes the mistake of bringing up the urine-soaked bedsheets, so she kicks him out of bed. Darn… Even so, things are relatively back to normal with Eco for now. As a result, Ash Blake prepares himself to face the next problem in his life. I hope he’s saved his progress so he can get all the endings.

Our hero is thus in the right place and the right time in order to see the rift that exists between Lucca and her dragon. Since he’s this amazing dragon whisperer who can ride every single dragon in existence — even an undead one — Ash Blake will certainly solve this latest predicament. But before we get to the serious stuff, we must first have one loli attack the other. When Lucca sets her eyes upon Eco and her supposedly cute horns, the former tackles and starts nibbling upon the latter’s horns. Eco then blushes bright red because we all know horns are erogenous zones on animals, mm-hmm.

In the end, although Eco can kick and punch Ash Blake as much as she wants, a little elf girl can metaphorically rape her. But this rape is different from the tentacle rape! It’s girl-on-girl. So it’s hot! And as such, Eco won’t wet the bed over it! Anyway, now that we’ve got the requisite fanservice out of the way, it’s time to get to the “serious” stuff. Our heroes try once more to get Lucca to ride her dragon, but it doesn’t work. As a result, Ash Blake has to don his armor and become the Silver Knight in order to approach Gawain and see why the dragon is rejecting his master. But oh no, the dragon attacks! And thankfully, the episode ends there and I can now take a break.

‘Cause fuck these anime.