That’s the sex number… twice! But yeah, a not-so-random fortune teller just gives the girls a new frequency to try, and as a result, they find themselves in a world in which girls are married off as soon as they turn 17. That’s… unpleasant. And since Nana’s birthday is coming right up, she gets to deal with this problem firsthand! Other Asuka (a.k.a. “Seriousuka”) shows up briefly to give us a brief spiel on parallel worlds and diverging timelines. We’ve seen enough anime to know all about this topic, so a deep dive isn’t necessary. The only important distinction is that every time the girls enter a new world, one of them will have to serve as some sort of anchoring point (link according to the anime). And in World 696.9, Nana is that VIP. In other words, we’ll probably be doing this for each of the main characters.

I really enjoyed it when the girl went home and tore into her parents. Y’see, her mother is no longer with her father, so Nana has a stepfather that she’s never been comfortable with. You can really feel the years of resentment and frustration come pouring out of her mini-speech. Unfortunately, her tune quickly changes as soon as she realizes that her husband-to-be is some megahot celebrity. Lame… hella lame. So yeah, this is basically the girls’ problem at the moment. They want to return to their original world with Nana, but they have to somehow knock her out of her stupor. But what exactly does this accomplish? Assuming that the fortune teller lady is a villain, how does tricking Nana into embracing this bizarro world further her aims? Well, at the end of the episode, we see one of those killer bunny things hop out of a portal. Maybe if Nana doesn’t return to her original world, this weakens the barriers that protects us from Twilight or whatever.

Anyways, Asuka and Seriousuka have a brief chat, and we learn that they both lost their brother Kyohei the same way: he just disappeared one day. Probably wandered into another world or Twilight even. Maybe Seriousuka is desperately hopping between timelines because she’s looking for him.

So is this show any good? Eh. It’s like a C right now. It’s not super boring, but it doesn’t light my soul on fire or anything.

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Golden Kamuy Ep. 13

Oh hey, these guys are back. Sadly, this show doesn’t interest me as much anymore, so I don’t really feel like giving it a dedicated weekly post. Still, I kinda wanna know what’s happening, so I’ll watch it until it just becomes too boring to continue. So what are the key takeaways from this week’s episode?

— Tsurumi wants to create fake copies of the skins in his possession, and normally, you’d have a hard time finding someone who is crazy enough to work with human skin. Luckily, this is Golden Kamuy, so there are psychopaths around every corner. Case in point, he bumps into Edogai, a mentally-deranged taxidermist who likes to dig up human bodies in order to stuff them. This includes his own mother. He hears her voice in his head like Psycho or whatever.

— Edogai also considers himself a fashion designer of sorts. This whole scene just keeps getting weirder and weirder and weirder. It’s finally capped off with him screaming for Tsurumi while spastically riding a stuffed polar bear. Yeah…

— We also briefly pay Hijikata a visit, which yields a short Russian history lesson. Basically, Kiroranke can’t be trusted.

— As for our gang, well, it’s the same as usual. Asirpa continues to teach them everything that she knows, then they eat some good food.

— Speaking of Asirpa, Tanigaki is now on a mission to make sure she’s safe. Why? ‘Cause Inkarmat, that shady fortune teller, showed up to the village and started talking about how someone (Kiroranke) is going to betray the girl. Since Tanigaki is the best man for the job, he has to say his goodbyes to the Ainu village. Apparently, Osoma really, really likes him. Hm.

— Tanigaki doesn’t really trust Inkarmat, which is good. Unfortunately, what he doesn’t know is that the lady is in cahoots with Tsurumi.

So yeah, that’s the episode in a nutshell. Golden Kamuy is just kooky. For instance, Edogai should be creepy, but they play him off as comic relief instead. Welp, okay, whatever. He’s just another silly character to add to the story’s ever-growing cast of weirdos. Golden Kamuy was relatively exciting when it first started, ’cause I really thought that this would turn into a rat race for the hidden cache of Ainu gold. Unfortunately, I should’ve realized that the author would try and milk this story for as long as it’s profitable.

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Ken En Ken: Aoki Kagayaki Ep. 2

Right now, I’m only watching this show because I wanna see what happens when the two sisters and Zhao finally cross paths again. How are these three going to react to being on opposing teams? Look, all I live for is drama. The war stuff doesn’t matter one bit to me (it doesn’t help that the CGI is absolutely ass). Unfortunately, this week’s episode is pretty much 99% flashback.

We get to see how close the three main characters used to be as children. In fact, both girls seemed to like Zhao, but he only had feelings for Yin. So of course, big sister stepped aside for her little sister. Sadly, that’s when the evil empire attacked. Ning lost her arms when she tried to protect Zhao from being enslaved, and as a result, Yin continues to blame herself for what happened that night. In her mind, she probably thinks that it should’ve been her by Zhao’s side that night. I think it’s silly that she feels guilty, but obviously, these types of emotions often feel too strong and visceral to rationally ignore. What will be interesting to see is if these romantic feelings are still there when the two sisters bump into Zhao again? He has Cheng now, right? So will he still be in love with Yin and vice versa? And likewise, will Ning still be in love with him?

Speaking of Cheng, we get to see how her father had raised her to eventually take over for him when he dies, which ended up happening sooner rather than later. Oh well. I don’t really care too much about her at the moment, so I’m just gonna leave it at that.

All in all, I’m still pretty interested in this show. The animation is really subpar, but eh, the story has a decent foundation so far.