It’s that time of the week again.
The World’s Strongest Rearguard Ep. 5
Atobe’s need to open the black chest gets him in contact with yet another large-chested lady. Damn, another one? How many do you need? The other girls are already secretly dry humping him in his sleep. He can’t even appreciate the ones he already has. He doesn’t need more haremettes. Men can be so selfish.
Still, it’s hilarious when low budget shows try to give us fanservice, ’cause it looks like absolute shit. C’mon, I can’t goon to this.
Opening a chest in this universe is a hassle to the tenth degree. You essentially have to complete a tricky mini-game that involves navigating a bunch of balls through a maze. What happens if you fail, e.g. a ball touches the sides of the maze? Oh, just complete destruction of the entire city via a horde of mobs. This also implies that something similar has happened before. But there’s nothing to worry about here, because Falma, their new large-chested friend, is an expert, uh, chest opener. As a result, the party receives a mountain of loot. Everyone gets new equipment, including bikini armor for Igarashi. Sadly, that’s just par for the course.
What then follows is a bunch of poorly animated EXP grinding. Doesn’t matter if they reach a new floor, ’cause it all looks the same. But everyone is super strong now thanks to Atobe. The girls even unlock new skills. I think it’s from humping him daily at night. See? We’re not gooning because we want to! It’s for important gameplay reasons!
It’s weird how Aoi Koga is credited with voicing Theresia, the lizard girl, but I don’t think her character has uttered a single word. All she’s done is grunt in the first five episodes. I’m sure she has actual lines later in the series, but damn, talk about an easy (and probably very small) paycheck.
Anyway, Misaki, the supposedly lucky girl, somehow trips and falls on a teleport tile. The group then has no choice but to follow suit. It’s the “no haremettes left behind” policy, famously instituted by the Japanese government to make sure dudes, especially isekai enjoyers, never lose their waifus. Abe was a great visionary.
The episode ends on a cliffhanger as Atobe and his girls anticipate the trials ahead. There’s a non-zero chance he’ll just find another waifu, though.
Skeleton Knight in Another World S2 Ep. 5
Arc foolishly uses earth magic underground, which sends the party careening into the depths. His happy accident, however, helps them discover what the bad guys have been up to all this time. Basically, they force elves and beastmen to toil away beneath the surface — the lesser races yearn for the mines — and when slaves collapse or succumb to injury, Yakof uses them for his undead experiments. Yeah… yeah, that’s just standard world-building for this show.
What follows is pretty boilerplate isekai action. Arc and his powerful team defeat the horde of undead with ease. Yakof tries to summon a giant golem to stop them, but the magic construct somehow has his wife’s remains lodged inside it? As a result, the golem turns on him. Oh well, at least the elvish couple from last week’s episode is still alive and well.
But again, these one-off incidents are merely symptoms and not the cause. Our heroes are no closer to solving the relentless bigotry that’s choking their world from the inside out. And yet, at the end of this incident, Arc and friends have the gall to say, “But we never did find out who was behind it all.” Oooh, it must be a shadowy organization operating only under the cover of night, right?! Nope. Just before this exact scene, the episode showed us a religious kingdom full of racists, led by a man named Thanatos. The klan meeting is literally right there!
Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs Season 2 Ep. 5
It took them a while, but the idiot suitors finally manage to break Leon free from prison. They are quickly arrested, but it’s okay, because the kingdom now understand that they desperately need Leon’s help. The only problem is, well, pacing. Y’see, the Principality of Fanoss summons not one but two massive guardians, and they’re laying siege from both air and sea. Having played the game, Leon knows that only the true saint, i.e. Olivia, can defeat both threats. She simply needs the support of her romantic interest. That’s easy! It’s Leon! Unfortunately, he still thinks of himself as a mob. If this was the first season, I’d understand it a little. But at this point, he’s just being dense for the sake of being dense. He’s also blatantly dismissing Olivia’s obvious feelings for him.
The butler-looking guy — the one whom Leon refers to as his master all the time — has to show up and remind Leon the importance of protecting people you care about. Such a basic lesson, but this has somehow slipped the kid’s mind. Oh yeah, didn’t Angelica humiliate herself in order to convince Marie to save Leon? And yet, I don’t think he thought of her once in this entire episode. Before his master talked sense into him, Leon was contemplating cutting bait and running to spare his own hide. Man, what a hero…
Anyway, Marie exposes herself as a fraud when she fails to stop the monsters attacking the kingdom. We’re also told that tens of thousands of people — mostly soldiers on ships — have already died. Meanwhile, Hertrauda probably just killed herself for this silly war. Summoning the big monsters drains the flutist of their life, a sacrifice Hertrude never had the courage to make. Welp, I guess Leon will just have to settle for one of the sisters. He can’t save all the waifus. But look at Hertrauda dancing happily in the ED! How can you kill off such an adorable character! Sarcasm aside, the tonal whiplash is so silly.
From Overshadowed to Overpowered Ep. 7
This episode is more like a series of random events, so let’s just go through them one by one:
- In our vaguely European fantasy setting, Eftal descends into his former treasury that is guarded by a genie in order to fetch his special very Japanese sword, i.e. a katana. Don’t you just love a good cultural melange?
- In town, they’re holding a treasure hunt. The reward for winning? Tickets to a nearby hot springs. Anastasia urges Eftal to participate, but only because she wants one of these golden dolls. Why? Apparently, their smile resembles Eftal’s. Yeah, I don’t get it.
- Merlin not only molests Anastasia — because her master requires only the best sex slaves — she also identifies a very special, very dangerous slave crest on Anastasia’s body. What does this mean? The show doesn’t elaborate further.
- Eftal finally attends his new school, which, until now, was reserved for demons and elves. As such, we get all the usual bullying tropes that you see in practically every school setting in anime. One of the mean girls even says, “I’m sure you can barely use any magic at all…” The problem isn’t that she’s dead wrong. The problem is that these characters are written to be so blatantly stupid, what’s even the point? Why on earth would anyone make this assumption about someone they’ve just met?
- Merlin constantly singles Eftal out for praise, which leaves the rest of the class flabbergasted. Like I said, same ol’ boring tropes. But Anastasia also adds fuel to the fire by volunteering Eftal for a swordfighting duel against one of the bullies. It’s the hypocrisy that gets me. This show is obviously written for people who do want to show off. It’s written for people who do want to stick it to all the jerks in their lives and show them up. So for Eftal to sit here and be like, “Woe is me, I just wanted a peaceful school life,” it comes off as insincere. It’s so disingenuous.
The Exiled Heavy Knight Knows How to Game the System Ep. 6
Elymas is so desperate to recruit clown waifu that the other girl starts getting suspicious. She would be right, too. There is something they’ve overlooked. Luckily for our heavy knight, the other guy is too arrogant and haughty to admit he’s wrong, so he insists on letting clown waifu go. Welp, as they often say, one man’s trash is another man’s increased treasure drop rate.
Ruche isn’t the brightest bulb around, but weren’t you listening? She over-invested in luck, not intelligence! As a result, she thinks Elymas recruited her simply because he finds her pretty. Alas, Elymas doesn’t care about her looks at all. Men are only after one thing: skills. I personally wanted clown waifu to finally show up, because we would get a steady supply of amusing reaction shots. Elymas and I are not the same.
So are they gonna introduce themselves to each other? Is Elymas going to explain why he needs so much money and what his overall goals are? Is clown waifu going to dump a sad backstory on us? Nah, the heavy knight immediately drags his clown waifu to grind EXP and thus loot, because hey, money isn’t going to make itself.
And on the way there, we get some rudimentary world-building. Just a reason for why dungeons appear in the world, because our duo is heading into one. See mob, kill mob. We see clown waifu’s level go climb like crazy, because of course we do. That’s the MMO experience in a nutshell. Number go up. Small number become big number. Rinse and repeat.
In terms of actual happenings, however, this week’s episode only has two major events: 1) recruiting clown waifu and 2) level clown waifu. So tune in next week for getting rare drops with clown waifu. Can’t wait. I thought about explaining what treasure mobs were, but I’m sure the show will spend a good chunk of its runtime doing exactly that for me.
Hell Mode S2 Ep. 5
Hell Mode doesn’t concern itself with ideas and concepts like character development or subtext. Naw, man, we’re doers, not thinkers! So before you can even say “Hell Mode,” the story has already introduced three new characters to join Allen’s party. This is a fantasy setting, and what fantasy setting is complete without elves and dwarves? The new elf girl is even a princess who blushes when she sees Allen — something about how he’s the great hero as foretold by elvish prophecy. See, I told you Cecil is nothing more than an NPC these days! We have a new waifu candidate!
But like the original party, the new trio doesn’t get any time to breathe either. It’s just grind, grind, grind, dungeon, dungeon, dungeon! What about after all the grinding? No time to rest, because once again, there’s going to be another martial tournament. Allen still refuses to participate, but Helmios tempts him with an MP regeneration ring. As a result, Allen finally debuts his powers in public, beats Krena, and is awaiting his chance to take a crack at Helmios for the invaluable accessory. Meanwhile, Krena is stuck fighting Dverg again, but the episode ends on a cliffhanger after both combatants activate their limit breaking skills.
Growing up, English teachers would always tell us how we shouldn’t rely on CliffsNotes, because you can’t fully understand a book that way. You lose out on subtle character moments that might not belong in a summary. You lose out on the nuance, the careful layering of subtextual clues, the emotional impact, etc. Well, if Hell Mode had CliffsNotes, I don’t think you would lose a damn thing. We don’t have CliffsNotes for anime, but even then, every episode might as well be a summary on Wikipedia. This anime is as straightforward as it can get.
And it’s not like the story is completely devoid of potential. How do Allen and Krena, children of serf parents, feel about the class system? They get to fight side-by-side with nobles, but when the war is over — if it is ever over — they would go back to bending the knee to those same people? Are they cool with that? Is Cecil truly over her brother’s death? How does Dogora deal with being overshadowed by everyone around him? Does Keel still harbor any misgivings about the way his family was brought down? There are so many potential character beats to explore, but the creator of this story refuses to engage with the world they’ve built. This is insane to me.