When you’re on your deathbed, but your granddaughter still insists on torturing you with slop.
Though I Am an Inept Villainess Ep. 5
So what do you do at a Ghost Festival? You have the maidens dance, and a good dance means a bountiful harvest. Basically, if the yield is poor, you know whom to blame. For an episode that is all about dancing, however, Doga Kobo does a poor job of animating it. Most of the performances are full of jump cuts, so you can’t really appreciate the choreography (if there is even any). Only Reirin gets to truly show off her skills. Apparently, the Sogdian Whirl is quite difficult. Shrug, don’t ask me. I ain’t a dancer.
Ultimately, Reirin puts on quite a show, impressing everyone including the crown prince. He’s starting to doubt what he sees and hears. It doesn’t help that Keigetsu is doing a poor job of charming him in Reirin’s body. Anyway, Reirin uses this opportunity to return Seika’s hairpin, so her court lady is no longer on the hook for thievery. Curiously, however, when they try to confront Gayou, the court lady who blackmailed Leelee, Seika has no idea whom they’re referring to. Gosh, there’s a schemer in the royal court.
Well, I long suspected that Keigetsu wouldn’t be the big bad. She’s just so pathetic. She can barely survive in Reirin’s frail body, and her own super healthy, super robust body is wasted on her. Keigetsu is destined for an 11th hour redemptive arc. She just needs to suffer a little more before she wakes up. As a result, Reirin needs a true antagonist. I’ve no clue as to who it might be, though. It could be anybody. It could be someone we haven’t even met.
As a quick aside, I don’t really care if Reirin ends up with anyone, but I certainly hope it isn’t the crown prince. Even if he finally realizes one day that Reirin and Keigetsu had switched bodies, I think that ship has sailed. He’s just too stupid.
A Livid Lady’s Guide to Getting Even Ep. 6
For once, I don’t mind Elizabeth’s brutality. The invading soldiers are murderers and rapists. They deserve their punishment. Why don’t I feel the same about the bandits she killed in a previous episode? As far as I know, they were only bandits. If they were explicitly murderers and rapists as well, then that would of course change things. I also think it’s fair to ask if Elizabeth would’ve even gotten involved if her business wasn’t being threatened by this war.
Unfortunately, the rest of the episode is uninspired. All this war room talk — when and where to attack, where to position your troops, etc — immediately goes out the window, because Elizabeth is basically a one-man army. Elizabeth can take on a squad of soldiers all on her own. Why did she even bother recruiting those mercenaries then?
So just like that, Sarjas is waving the white flag, and the Empire demands reparations for the losses incurred. Elizabeth laments, however, that her father will more than likely cover up Haldoria’s involvement. Basically, her former fiance will get away scot-free… unless, of course, the upcoming meeting with a knight from Haldoria changes things. I doubt it, though. I’m going by just the timing alone. I feel like Friede’s comeuppance will be a season finale sort of thing. But if he still manages to avoid punishment like a slippery eel, I wouldn’t be surprised. Hell, it’d be realistic if anything. Can you believe not a single person on that list has been arrested in America? So yeah, the rich and powerful get away with heinous shit all the time.
The Forsaken Saintess and Her Foodie Roadtrip in Another World Ep. 6
It’s so funny to me that this show actually has ambitions to be a serious adventuring anime. First, Rin and her party stumble upon a puzzle room. A legit puzzle room. You gotta interpret some Chinese poetry, find the right (and strangely flat) carvings on the wall, push in on them to unveil bird statues, then place said statues in the impressions found on the giant, marble tree. This is the only way forward. It’s so video gamey.
This then triggers a boss fight against a derpy-looking eel. All of a sudden, we’re reminded that this is supposed to be a cooking show. As a result, you can’t have a truly fearsome, threatening boss. Everything has to be edible.
Finally, the gang reaches the dungeon core, and the flying cat finally remembers that it’s supposed to be the final boss. It’s supposed to defend the core against outsiders. But since Rin has already tamed Gomamiso, the cat just goes and smacks the core for them.
In the aftermath, the party and the guild ponder over recent events. They wonder if a saintess like Rin is supposed to bring peace to the land, or if it’s the other way around. Rin fears that her arrival is the reason why monsters are showing up all over the place. Like I said, it’s weird that the show is taking this so seriously.I thought I was watching another generic isekai about cooking, but the cooking has taken a backseat. I’m a bit confused by the show’s true identity. Nothing here screams “foodie” to me.
In fact, there’s very little cooking here. Only at the very end do we finally see Rin make any food. Naturally, she turns the eel into a classic Japanese dish. Eel over rice is an amazing combo. I am, however, less enthused about eating orc ribs. Orcs might be traditional RPG mobs, but aren’t they supposed to have similar intelligence to humans? Yeah, I don’t know about this. I don’t want to eat anything with sapience.
The Oblivious Saint Can’t Contain Her Power Ep. 7
Interestingly, Carolina’s father shows up and spills the beans. Under his king’s orders, he reveals everything about the evil archbishop’s plans. I guess we can wholeheartedly trust him now. He might have been a shit, absentee dad, but he has her best interests at heart now. Unfortunately, he’s still a bad father, since he has no clue that Flora utterly despises Carolina and is plotting against her own sister.
I’m more surprised about King Nathan. He doesn’t hesitate to warn the Empire at all. We find out there’s a reason for this, which I’ll address later. But even so, Carolina is a cheat code. People will suffer or even die without her… assuming, of course, Celestia can’t get its affairs in order. I wouldn’t blame King Nathan for at least wanting her back. Maybe they can set up custody rights!
Well, Carolina has already married Prince Edward. It’s a little too late to demand her back, right? Celestia is apparently a “holy nation,” and this somehow means they get first dibs on anything related to the divinity. If the Empire refuses to hand Carolina over, this might incite the zealots. Opium of the masses and all that jazz. You gotta disempower these people before the religious fervor overtakes them. People will commit all sorts of heinous deeds in their god’s name.
The Empire settles on a two-pronged approach. First, they’ll try to expose the archbishop’s misdeeds. He’s so obviously evil, you just know he has skeletons in his closet. Sure enough, a cursory investigation by Gilbert quickly reveals that the archbishop might have had the previous saintess killed. So if he had never tried to reclaim Carolina, his crimes would have gone unpunished? It sounds to me like no one really gave a shit about the archbishop abusing his powers until their golden goose was threatened.
The Empire’s other tactic is to set up a saint system here like in Celestia. This way, it wouldn’t be illegitimate for the Empire to house a saintess like Carolina. But Carolina isn’t just someone who can cast a healing spell or two. She literally prevents monsters from attacking. She literally allows crops to flourish, thereby solving world hunger. Someone with that much power shouldn’t belong to any one nation. Fine, don’t hand her back to Celestia, but — and I think I’ve said this before — Carolina should really be traveling the world, saving lives and protecting people… not just being some dude’s wife.
All Works Maid Ep. 8
The story is getting needlessly convoluted. First, we see a grandma in a hospital bed, being visited by her grandchild. The kid shows her an early version of the game, which features a heroine much like Melody. In other words, Ritsuko, the real person behind Melody, was a Japanese child who always wanted to be a petit bourgeois European maid, hopped onto a plane to England, met a pair of childhood friends who are super into this specific game, which just so happens to feature an initial concept about a heroine who insists on wanting to be a maid, gets killed in a plane crash, and is now living out the original original storyline where Luciana doesn’t become a villain. Then to top it all off, the grandma dies and reincarnates into the game as one of the orphans.
The grandma, now a child, knows that her orphanage will then go into a rough patch, which is why she’s so desperate to find a job. But it’s kinda weird, because if she truly knows the game, then she should know that the heroine eventually rescues the orphanage. Shouldn’t she be looking for the heroine like Anna-Marie? And oh yeah, the new kid probably has some relation to someone who died on the plane — a certain Hideki. Was that the crown prince’s previous life’s name? It’s such a mess, dude. Plus, when you do these massive reveals, they’re supposed to recontextualize what the audience thinks they know. But what am I to make of these “earth-shattering” revelations? Okay, so the isekai was always meant to have a maid? So what? Why do we need to know this? How does this affect the story?
To be perfectly fair, however, this subplot is at least ten times more interesting than the rest of the episode, which simply features Luciana and Melody moving into the school dorms and getting acclimated to their new life. Basically, most of the kids are shunning Luciana for hogging all of the attention at the ball, and by extension, their maids and butlers are shunning Melody as well. Oooh, I know how that feels. Everyone thinks your grandma should automatically love you, but not if they don’t love your mother! But I digress. Luciana manages to make one friend, and in turn, Melody also becomes friends with that friend’s servants. Ah, don’t you just love class differences?