When your fake husband keeps bringing home a new mouth to feed…

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Black Torch Ep. 11

Huh, I previously labored under the assumption that this was a long-running series, but it’s not. It’s definitely not. Now it makes sense why Amagi ate all of his allies. Hell, Jiro didn’t even get a training arc. He went to the mountains for a brief camping trip, and now he can magically control his powers. Granted, he can only do it for like ten minutes, but still, we’re just going to bum rush the conclusion. Neither the characters nor the setting was ever really developed. Take Ichika, for instance. All we got from her were ass shots. Will she ever save her mother? Beats me. Better yet, just use your imagination, ’cause you won’t get any satisfaction from this series.

I dunno why both Crunchyroll and Viz hyped up this adaptation just for it to fizzle out like this. Can we really say that Black Torch was a good watch? Eh. The start of this week’s episode gives us a glimpse into Amagi’s backstory, but once I realized that the story was practically over, I kinda lost all interest. I especially wanted to harp on the fact that the mononoke seemingly pop into existence outta nowhere. That’s weird, right? Well, I don’t really care anymore. Why bother, y’know? Just have the final bombastic fight so we can move on and watch better shows. I guess next season, I can piss and moan about the other shounen series that also has the word “black” in its title.

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Daemons of the Shadow Realm Ep. 23

Calm down, everyone, calm down… Bunbun survives. Azami, the kid from Higashi Village, is still okay as well. She’s just a little traumatized, because she now has to sleep in a room full of posters of a (sometimes half-naked) white dude from Britain. If there was ever a culture shock… I mean, do you think villagers like her could even conceptualize the idea of other races? But I digress. With the two emotional linchpins (for me, at least) safe and secured, I guess I can now yap about the rest of the episode, which feels like a part of an extended denouement.

— In the chaos of the explosion, Akio manages to escape. Welp, there goes the twins’ lead on their parents’ whereabouts. That little mystery isn’t getting solved anytime soon. Akio even murders some poor dude on the way out. Well, I guess I can’t assume that anyone affiliated with the Kagemori is innocent. Even so, Akio isn’t totally sociopathic. He at least cares about the daemons. So how does that work?

— He eventually meets up with a woman he calls his mother. So he also cares about his family. But, like, not his found family. Sadly, people only mean something to him if they are blood-related. But is he even sure that this woman is his mother? Maybe she’s manipulating him. After all…

— …he wasn’t meant to survive. The story finally introduces us to the third faction, and they’re obsessed with the idea of the “West” winning again. What “West,” you ask? Western Japan, of course! Here’s an excerpt from a book I’ve been reading on Japan’s history:

“Historically, the two most important plains have been the Kanto (the metropolitan Tokyo region of about 5,000 square miles) and the Kinai (the Kyoto-Nara-Osaka area of around 1,250 square miles). Throughout Japanese history, the residents of these large plains—located in eastern Honshu and central Japan, respectively—have maintained an adversarial relationship, with both the population and political center shifting back and forth.”

Maybe the anime is trying to tap into that long-dormant tension.

— Yuru is now sick. In fact, this probably should’ve happened a lot sooner, since he has no immunity to all the germs and viruses floating around in modern civilization. This kinda reminds me of how smallpox and other infectious diseases pretty much ravaged Japan on a cyclical basis, and they were brought into the country from the outside. People wouldn’t live long enough to pass on their immunity, nor was the population dense enough to wipe any of the provinces out completely. So for a few centuries, Japan faced a slow but steady population decline because an epidemic would repeatedly flare up then go away. Life was brutal back then. Without factoring in infant mortality (which was sky high), you might live to 40 if you were lucky. No wonder they banged like rabbits back then. Might as well enjoy life when it’s that short. Plus, all they could really do was build Buddhist temples and pray that the sickness would disappear for good. Anyway, Yuru will be fine.

— Normal people can’t see the daemons, but do they at least notice their stuff disappearing?

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Tomb Raider King Ep. 10

The show continues its relentless pacing. After saving Irene and helping her master her relic, the bad guys form an organization called Pandora. Their mission? To prevent the public from acquiring relics for their own safety. Look, if you’re going to pretend to do good, could you not name yourself after the mythical woman who unleashed all of the evils upon the world? Like c’mon, you learn about this in middle school! Yes, I know they probably wouldn’t teach Greek mythology in middle school where this series was created. It’s just a joke.

Anyway, our hero meets Irene’s parents, who are wasting away due to something called relic syndrome. Anyone who comes close to relics will eventually develop this illness. Kinda sounds like the same thing that was afflicting people in Solo Leveling. I’m just gonna assume that all of these stories are derivative, so they copy each other endlessly (even down to the main character’s looks). So how do you solve relic syndrome? Why, it’s by developing a cure with the help of a relic, of course!

Let’s see, I’m trying to think if there’s anything else worth mentioning… well, Irene is super in love with the main character now, but we all knew that was coming. Also, whenever that American general uses her relic, it turns her temporarily into a baby. I like how her clothes also become baby-sized. Very considerate of the relic.