Is she stupid? The bars are wide enough for her to pass on through!
The World’s Strongest Rearguard Ep. 12
What the hell…? I thought Atobe and his harem still had one more thing to do regarding Ariadne and her armaments. But instead, we get a filler beach episode. Some people are saying that the project was doomed from the start when the director passed away unexpectedly. If that’s truly the case, then I can only offer my condolences.
Skeleton Knight in Another World S2 Ep. 12
After turning into a giant monster, Cardinal Charros keeps gorging and gorging. His whole situation actually reminds me of Aldrich from Dark Souls 3. Despite their monstrous nature, however, neither Charros nor Aldrich look particularly monstrous. Charros falls short mostly because the animation is lazy. He’s just a purple blob covered in mouths — mouths of his eaten victims, to be exact. In truth, Aldrich isn’t all that different. He, too, was consumed by his voracious hunger and thus turned into an indistinct blob. But when you enter his boss arena, you find Gwyndolin’s undigested body — he’s one of the gods in the world of Dark Souls — sticking out of Aldrich. Obviously, this design has a two-fold purpose. First, fighting a blob simply isn’t interesting. Miyazaki and his artists are attempting to convey Aldrich’s horror to you in a way that is both personal and relatable; the monster wears a human face even if it isn’t his own. Furthermore, if you’ve played the first Dark Souls, then you may have interacted with Gwyndolin in the past. But it goes even further than that, because Miyazaki doesn’t want to numb you with shock and disgust:
Why do I bring this up? Because Charros’s design essentially fails on both fronts. It lacks the intricate level of refinement and dignity that Miyazaki demands of his monsters, but it doesn’t even manage to shock or disgust the viewers either. I mean, it really is just a purple blob. And god does Charros yap a lot. The more he talks, the less monstrous he seems.
Well, “big” spoilers incoming: Arc saves the day. We get to see the royals from various kingdoms comment on the situation in Tajiento, but the actual content of their words is of little consequence. All it serves is to establish that this story is hardly over. And of course it’s not over, because nothing really happened. No real change has been effected. Are we closer to ending racial discrimination? Nope. Are we closer to stopping the bad guys or even figuring out what they’re up to? Nope. Our heroes are only now planning to investigate the Holy Hilk Empire. Most of all, does anything major occur between the characters? Ariane tries multiple times to tell Arc about a major change in her life, but people keep dropping by and interrupting her. We eventually find out, however, that she simply transferred her affiliation from Maple to Lalatoya, which means she and Arc now have the same last name. Yep, that’s it. That was her big announcement. The girls nevertheless tease Ariane about it. Again, this is the kinda show that goes nowhere, so of course the elf woman’s ladyboner for her skeleton man continues to spin its wheels.
The biggest crime of the episode, however, is what looks like beans on a pizza.
Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs Season 2 Ep. 12
Even though the main conflict is over, this finale still feels rushed somehow. Specifically, Marie and her himbos have been thrown behind bars. Julius was supposed to marry Hertrude as part of a treaty, but he refused. The rest of the dumb bois then stopped Marie’s execution. I find it strange that we’re only being told about this. I guess the adaptation just didn’t have enough time to animate this part of the story.
Leon begs the king for clemency, so Marie’s life is spared. In fact, she’s supposed to be exiled to live out the rest of her days peacefully. Unfortunately, she has something that Leon doesn’t: knowledge of future games. The otome game they’re trapped in spawned multiple sequels, so if Leon wants to prevent the world from ending, he’ll have to consult her. Wait, didn’t she become a deadbeat mother? Didn’t she throw her life away for shitty men? I guess she still had time to play the sequels somehow.
Both Angelica and Olivia confess to Leon, but he still can’t choose. In fact, he oddly avoids them even though he claims to love them…? As a result, everyone — from his own father to the king himself — has to trick Leon into attending his own wedding, where he gets to marry both girls. Why is he complaining? What is wrong with this guy? But that’s just anime protagonists for you. For some bizarre reason, you have to drag them kicking and screaming into their own fucking harem. Being a married man, however, hardly changes anything; other girls still flirt with Leon. Well, why not? They could simply join the harem.
And with that out of the way, Leon is off to study abroad, i.e., prevent whatever world-ending scenario might unfold in the sequel, but his wives don’t get to come along. They’re just going to stay home and wait for him to return. It feels a bit pathetic, no? It’s almost as if he’s conquered them, so they’re no longer important. They need to step aside so Leon can build the rest of the harem he so reluctantly wants to be a part of. To add insult to injury, Marie and her himbos are forced to come along. Any sequel we get will just have more of his annoying sister and her gaggle of idiots.
Well, I don’t think this second season was all that popular. I saw an anime react channel whine about how putting up videos for this show was actually hurting them due to low views, so they had to take the videos down. Youtube’s algorithm is so nutty. But I digress. My point is, don’t bother with yet another sequel. People didn’t even care to watch this one!
The Exiled Heavy Knight Knows How to Game the System Ep. 13
I must play RPGs for very different reasons than the people who write these stories. Shows like The Exiled Heavy Knight Knows How to Game the System always yap about game mechanics, so they obviously know what they’re talking about to a certain degree. But is this really why people get into this genre? For example, Elymas and clown waifu are finally leaving the starter town. One of the many reasons we get excited for an adventure, whether it’s in real life or fiction, is the opportunity to explore the world, see new places, experience different cultures, so on and so forth. But our duo leaves the safety of their starter forest for… another forest? They leave the safety of their starter town Rondalm for… just a bigger town with the exact same architecture and overall look? Like, where’s the imagination?
More importantly, however, where’s the camaraderie? I don’t play RPGs just so I can larp as a hero, defeat the demon lord, and save the princess. I fell in love with them mainly for the world-building that I talked about above as well as the party interactions. Before I got into RPGs, I only played platformers or action games where you would control one character and one character only. At best, you might have a total of like… 30 lines of dialogue all game. Think Mario, Mega Man, etc. It wasn’t until I got into Final Fantasy that I finally realized there was so much more to video game storytelling even back in the 2-D era.
The plot to this week’s episode is pretty simple. Once again, clown waifu puts too much trust in her party. Once again, she lets them dictate her build, which has literally screwed her over in the past. Luckily, Elymas is a nice guy, he wouldn’t do that! As a result, they need to farm up some gold to buy yet another ridiculously expensive skill book — one that will help Ruche realize her true potential as, uh, a clown waifu. We don’t even get to see them explore the new town. These two immediately hop into a dungeon so they can pick on a few smiley bois. That’s exactly my problem with this anime. It’s just so… dry.
I actually wanna highlight a relatively modern game to better explain my point. When FFXIV initially crashed and burned, it came back as A Realm Reborn. On paper, it was a completely new game. In truth, it was pretty much a World of Warcraft clone with a Final Fantasy-themed shell. The storytelling was slightly better, but not by much. Heavensward is where FFXIV truly distinguished itself. Gameplay-wise, it was still a shoddy WoW clone with terrible netcode, but the MMO finally had a story worth bragging about. Almost every fan will point to the same pivotal scene: a quiet moment around the campfire between the Warrior of Light (your player character) and their companions, i.e. party members. Alphinaud, Estinian, and Ysayle don’t talk about stats or builds. Estinian doesn’t go, “Bro, you’re a fellow Azure Dragoon, so help me out! What materia should I slot into my gear?” No, they open up about their past failures, their misconceptions, and what they hope to achieve on their ultimately ill-fated peace mission. This is the sort of RPG chatter that made me fall in love with the genre.
I didn’t ditch platformers for turn-based combat because I love quirky gameplay interactions like how you can cheese bosses with the Vanish+Doom trick. But that’s what it feels like when I watch these shows. It’s almost always about the gameplay mechanics and not the party interactions, i.e., what I actually find appealing about RPGs. Even after thirteen damn episodes, it doesn’t feel like Elymas has really opened up to clown waifu and vice versa. Granted, they haven’t known each other for all thirteen episodes, but you know what I mean! If you’re going to put your life in another person’s hands, which is exactly what Ruche is doing when she asks Elymas to decide her build for her, then I feel like they need to become closer as companions. And yet, where is the camaraderie? At the end of the day, I can only conclude that these writers fell in love with RPGs for the numbers whereas I fell in love with them for the storytelling.
And boy does the show love numbers! Elymas and Ruche fight a Smiley. Then they fight multiple Smileys. Thanks to clown waifu’s luck, they encounter the elusive Frowny! With every kill, the system announces the exact amount of exp they receive. With every drop, the system announces both the stats of the item and the market price (wouldn’t that fluctuate?). The frowny drops an ever-so-precious rune, which prompts Elymas to launch into one of those classic RPG tutorials. But has he ever asked Ruche about herself or her life before she met him? The numbers, oh god, the numbers!
Well, no dungeon is complete without a dungeon boss, so that’s what our duo will tackle in next week’s episode. Nevertheless, I wish they would take a break, build a campfire, and have a friendly, little chat about life.
Hell Mode S2 Ep. 12
The episode opens with a flashback revealing that Rehzel, the guy leading the demon army on the elven front, was a former dark elf. He deliberately chose to become a demon in exchange for power. He even ditched his son because winning back the World Tree is more important. Pretty pathetic, if you ask me. I can’t imagine any object ever trumping my love for my own kid, and I’m not even a parent. There are lots of stories about people fighting over a holy land, and I’ve never understood it. I really, really don’t. Even if you don’t have a kid to worry about, to covet something so much that you would spill blood over it seems monstrous to me. This is why all I can do is roll my eyes when Rehzel goes on and on about how the other elves stole the World Tree from them and rewrote history. I just don’t care. It’s a tree. Go plant another one and worship it instead.
Unfortunately, Rehzel is no chump when it comes to fighting. Krena and Dogora are simply no match for him. Even with the kids’ teamwork, they can’t even scratch the tree hugger. But that’s why Allen called in the big dog. Rehzel lets his guard down, which gives Helmios just enough of a window to land a direct hit. Buuuuuuuut it doesn’t fully take Rehzel out, because he has multiple hearts. Haha, whatever. And like a typical JRPG villain, he unveils his second form. Allen tries to sacrifice himself so that his friends could escape, but they obviously wouldn’t. After Dogora pulls him out of the rubble, the kid charges at Rehzel alone… aaaaaaand the show cliffhangers us. Yep, we unfortunately have at least one more episode to go. Will we finally have a death on our hands? There’s a nonzero chance Dogora might die, and I’m sorry, kid, but we might need you to bite the bullet to give this show a bit of gravitas. Like always, I would feel bad if the show had done its homework and properly developed the side characters. But since it didn’t, eh…
