I have no quippy remarks this week. Let’s just get right to it.
As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I’ll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World Season Ep. 29
The war does end, but we’ll probably get an even bigger one. As Couran puts his brother to the guillotine, Vasmarque warns that Couran is the real snake who will show his true face soon enough. Couran then talks to Ars about war, suggesting that war is necessary for peace. So Ars goes back to his group and asks them how they might achieve everlasting peace for good. They then suggest what fiction loves: just become the emperor! Dude, c’mon. Even if you manage to build an empire, they always inevitably fall apart. The logistics of maintaining control over a wide empire are immensely difficult. There’s a reason why countries stopped bothering with empire-building. Maintaining control over distant colonies is expensive and often leads to unrest both at home and afar. Not only that, you really think subjugating multiple ethnic groups and cultures will lead to peace just because you’re strong? Just because you promise to rule with benevolence? But fiction always does this. Durr, if multiple nations leads to conflict, then let’s just have one nation! Yeah, how did that work out for ya, Imperial Japan?
Full Clearing Another World under a Goddess with Zero Believers Ep. 3
Lucy, the elf that Makoto saved last week, begs to join his party. He resists at first, but why bother? Judging from the OP, he’s going to have multiple girls fighting over him like every other isekai protagonist, so let’s just get this over with.
Lucy is a lot like a certain popular anime mage that people know and love. Y’see, Lucy can only cast one spell (fireball), it takes forever for her to cast it, she can barely control it when she gets the cast off, but the spell can burn down the entire forest. Like I said, deja vu.
Anyway, they take down a giant bison by the end of the episode, but then a griffon shows up. We have that to look forward to next week.
From Far Away Ep. 4
When Izark overheard the mayor wanting to take Noriko in, I honestly expected him to go with the plan. But after taking out the rest of the bandits — and defeating Keimos in the process — he actually returns for the girl. Well, that’s nice, I guess.
Speaking of the fight against Keimos, eh… it was kinda poorly animated. Then this old dude chimes in and spoils the outcome of the fight! I jest, of course. It was obvious that Keimos was gonna lose. Then Rachef intervenes by… uh, astral projecting a giant hand to save Keimos? Well, that’s what it looks like to me. Anyway, I’m sure Rachef will find some way to give Keimos even more power. At some point, Noriko will get captured, then Izark will have to break his limits to save her. That’s just how these stories roll.
Reborn as a Space Mercenary: I Woke Up Piloting the Strongest Spaceship! Ep. 4
All Hiro and his girls do is eat, fuck, and murder pirates. They can buy all sorts of weird food, including facehuggers, but carbonated drinks are apparently difficult to come by. Dude, just do it yourself then.
Eventually, the crew has a run-in with spies from… I dunno, some federation, so they get a black box revealing the enemy’s invasion plans. Hiro naturally brings it to Serena, but she exploits his weak sense of manliness to get him to agree to a military operation. Then during the mission briefing, he suggests engaging an entire fleet alone. I mean, it’s trashy isekai, so he’s obviously going to succeed and probably add Serena to his harem. Poor girl is already blushing whenever she sees him.
So What’s Wrong with Getting Reborn as a Goblin Ep. 5
Akira tells Karen to inform Simon that he’ll be taking the three elves into his custody. “Custody” seems like a strong word, but these damn ladies are in love with him already. Well, one of the girls is a bit resistant at first, but he wins her over anyway. You always gotta have a tsundere in the harem. Karen then shows up in a more revealing outfit. Fucking hell, isekais just gotta isekai. But if you’re gonna do fanservice, natural breasts don’t look like this when a woman is lying down. So unless this fantasy world invented silicone implants, learn what a woman actually looks like.
In other news, humans keep drawing close to the village, thinking that they can wipe it out. At first, Akira would just defeat them, but this wasn’t a good enough deterrence. He then decides to tattoo their foreheads with a humiliating message. I guess that works. It might sound cruel to permanently alter someone’s appearance, but these people would be murderers if they hadn’t been stopped.
Reincarnated as a Sword S2 Ep. 5
We finally get the conclusion of this arc, and it’s kind of anticlimactic. By harnessing the newly acquired “Unleash Potential” skill, Teacher… doesn’t actually do anything. Instead, the “System Lady” gains sentience, then performs a bunch of “complex calculations,” i.e., spending evolution points or whatever, that allows the party to survive this encounter. But just before the System Lady can explain anything, she has overtaxed herself and thus loses her sentience. Of course. As the party is plummeting to the ground, Teacher then hears the voice that greeted him at the very start of the series. But before “he” can explain anything, he disappears. Of fucking course. Finally, everyone is back on solid ground, so it’s Stephan’s turn to disappear! Ain’t nobody sticking around!
In the second half of the episode, we get the Lich’s backstory. Basically, he was that kid who was constantly being tortured and experimented on by some evil kingdom. Eventually, he turned into a Lich, but he still had his mental faculties. The problem was the Animus Engine. It pretty much made him lose his mind, but thanks to Stephan feeding on his mana, it assumed the Lich’s form back when he was still a child. So while the Lich might have gone mad, the idea is that his memories and sense of self transferred over to Stephan. As a result, he could rest in peace or whatever. But wasn’t Stephan a ghost before he possessed the nameless undead eater? So doesn’t it kinda suck that the ghost also had to fade away? Eh, whatever, it’s a throwaway character that only exists for this arc and this arc alone. I’m not gonna dwell on it.
In the end, Fran and Teacher say their goodbyes to Jean and continue on their journey. Their next destination will apparently have a beach. Between Fran, Teacher, and Jet, hopefully we won’t get any fanservice? There isn’t exactly anyone or anything to ogle.
Magic Knight Rayearth Ep. 4
I feel like there isn’t much for me to talk about with these episodes. I feel like anything I write would just be a plot summary, and that’s not particularly interesting. Uh… what are the highlights? I guess there’s a love connection between Fuu and Ferio, the new guy. The girls aren’t sure if they trust him, but Mokona clearly likes the guy. You can always trust animals, right? What else… what else…? Oh yeah, Alcyone is waiting for them as soon as they leave the forest. This isn’t really an interesting encounter or anything. It’s just an opportunity for Umi and Fuu to unlock their own magic powers. Fuu is the healer of the group. I’m not really sure if Umi has a specific archetype to fulfill. Maybe she’s the mage? Eh, whatever. But that’s it. They meet a new friend, battle an old foe, then escape from the forest. In terms of interesting story ideas or character development, there isn’t much of either yet. It’s a pretty straightforward adventure story so far.
The Exiled Heavy Knight Knows How to Game the System Ep. 18
Elymas thought that Guildmaster Hailenn might have been responsible for the centipede evolving, but she’s even more shocked about it than he was. Shocked and quite scared at the prospect of a level 80 boss just hanging around near her town. Elymas had to remind her that they already defeated the damn thing. After that, it’s all business. Hailenn quickly bumps the duo up to B-rank, and even offers them a job with the guild. Our heavy knight and clown waifu pairing prefer, however, to remain independent. They then immediately seek out a specialized blacksmith who can make a mythril sword for Elymas. And that’s basically it.
This show is so impersonal. We’re eighteen episodes in, but there hasn’t been any major character development with either of the two leads. We know very little about Elymas’s background, and practically nothing about Ruche. They’re definitely not on the road to being a couple or anything either. Yeah, they’re friendly with each other, but they’re not even close friends despite going through several harrowing encounters by now. We never get to see Elymas and Ruche sit down and talk about their dreams, their aspirations, their fears, what they hope to do once they’re done adventuring, so on and so forth. It’s like if two complete strangers got randomly matched up thanks to dungeon finder, then they proceed to do stuff without ever chatting or shootin’ the shit. The fun of RPGs — Japanese or otherwise — is learning each other’s lore and background. It’s having a proper sit-down dinner at the end of the day and having a chat while scarfing down good food. We see this in Grandia between whenever the party stops by a town. Metaphor: ReFantazio has this whenever the party returns from a trip. I’m sure there are countless other examples that just aren’t coming to my mind right now. I think there was something similar with Xenoblade Chronicles 3? With this show, however, we see images of this sort of thing, but we never get to experience it. The show admits that they share meals together… for about two seconds. Then it cuts away to something else (probably another dry, boring explanation from Elymas about how RPG mechanics work). We are never privy to the conversations they share around good food and drink. The story is content to keep its viewers at arm’s length. Again, it’s dreadfully impersonal.
All of the nearby dungeons are currently too low level for our duo, so Elymas suggests going on a bit of a fishing trip. Much to Ruche’s chagrin, it is not a date. You might think a peaceful day of fishing might be conducive to all the stuff I just talked about — perfect time for these two to bond — but judging by the preview, our duo will probably end up in some stupid fishing competition with a pirate lady and her crew. Meh.
Crazy boob physics on the guildmaster notwithstanding, this show obviously isn’t full of dumb harem shit. The story also could’ve taken the trashy revenge bait when Malice got Elymas kicked out of his own family, but he’s more than content to do his own thing with his clown not-waifu. So out of all the dumb isekai anime this year, I wanted to at least enjoy this one a little. But it just refuses to deliver the goods. It’s not crammed to the brim with fanservice, but it’s not crammed to the brim with much of anything else either. No compelling story, no strong character beats, no nothing.
A Wild Last Boss Appeared! Ep. 17
Virgo is suffering from a bout of imposter syndrome, so Lufas has the girl enter a hunting tournament where she excels against normal mobs. We also learn a couple more things about Sei the Hero. He wants to find out more about Lufas’s actual character, so he’s also in the tournament. He ends up helping Virgo take down a dinosaur. Unbeknownst to them, however, a sniper actually finished the job. I have no clue as to who it could be, but Lufas seems to know. Shrug.
The most interesting part of the episode sadly only took up like maybe a couple minutes of runtime. Libra sorta confronts Lufas about Dina. In her robot opinion, they should just restrain the girl and interrogate her. Lufas points out, however, that Dina would simply escape, and they’d learn anything. Better to keep her close instead. As suspicious as she’s been, everything Dina tells them has been beneficial thus far. Welp, the plot continues to thicken… really, really, really slowly, but it’s doing it!
Magical Explorer Ep. 5
Honestly, I watched this episode at the end of a very long day. I’ve been watching anime on and off while gaming, doing chores, and eating dinner. In fact, this is the 12th show I’ve watched today. It’s 1:30 AM, and I’ve just popped two Benadryl pills. So as you can imagine, I got nothing out of this episode. Utterly nothing. But seriously, is there anything more pathetic than Kousuke geeking out over the opportunity to recite his character’s lines from the game? What’s even the point of being isekai’d into your favorite game if you’re just going to follow the script? Are you that desperate to be an NPC? It doesn’t help that this show is just so ugly, and his oversized scarf makes him look like a manchild — a manchild who nevertheless gets to restrain a girl just to stare at her panties.