Yup, people die when they are killed.
Overgeared Ep. 7
Grid is so unlikable. He wouldn’t have succeeded without Huroi’s help, but he has no sympathy for the guy. He then wastes a ton of gold just to try and get a glowing weapon when his family is in massive debt. Grid is such a jackass.
I also would never play this MMO. You can only normally enchant a piece of gear up to +5. If you push it further than that and fail, your enchantment level actually goes down. That’s fairly ridiculous. Needless to say, Grid can’t help himself. This reminds me of how dying in older MMOs — and I’m talking about super old MMOs from before even World of Warcraft — carried a harsh penalty. In FFXI, you would lose a huge chunk of your EXP instantly on death, and if you were right on the border, then yes, you would literally level down. Having a white mage with Raise III around would mitigate that, but eh… back in the day, white mages weren’t efficient for EXP parties. Anyway, I’m too old for such hardcore MMOs anymore.
It’s a small world, so Grid stumbles upon his real life bullies stuck in a monster’s web. Seeing as how our protagonist is a jackass, he starts beating them up instead of freeing them. When he tries to lure the giant spider mob back to them, he finds out that they’ve simply logged out. Good. Of course, bullying is a big problem too. No one’s denying that. But Grid is such a loser. If his failure didn’t mean his family would suffer, I wouldn’t mind seeing him fuck up and lose all his gear and levels.
Eventually, Grid gets to the end of his first job quest. Why the hell does a blacksmith class have fancy sword moves?
The Laid-Off Cheat-Granting Mage Enjoys a Second Lease on Life Ep. 5
This episode goes like a mile a minute. Rein tries to keep the suspicious note away from the girls, but they snatch it anyway. Margaret immediately believes what she reads, so the girls start fighting. But it turns out Cornelius had planted it. Luckily, Rein sniffs out the ruse and ties up the culprit. And just like that, Margaret has a change of heart. Even Rein and Lily are shocked by this sudden development. This all happened within the first five or six minutes of the episode, too. We’re burying the hatchet at speeds never seen before!
But the hijinks don’t stop. They still gotta fend off Mirabelle, the kid assassin. But Rein gets hungry, so Lily whips out everything needed to make Margaret’s sister’s stew. Yup, in the middle of a dangerous dungeon that got her previous party killed, while an assassin is also bearing down on them. The thing is, Margaret already believes Lily is innocent.
Finally, the dreaded two-headed dragon shows up, and Lily remembers what happened on that fateful day. Unsurprisingly, she wasn’t a wuss. She valiantly tried to stand her ground so her party could escape. She was just completely and utterly outmatched. But things will apparently be different this time, because Rein’s super enchanted newbie sword will supposedly cleave the dragon in half. We’ll just have to wait till next week to see if that ends up being the case. But wait, right before you go, how ’bout a flashback regarding Mirabelle’s abusive upbringing! They managed to squeeze everything else into this one episode, but not the conclusion. Pfft.
This show still has pretty decent energy. The story itself is hardly ridiculous, but it tries to keep things amusing with its tempo. It’s just hard for me to get over the fact that our heroes wussed out against Cornelius a while ago. Yeah, I’m still harping about it.
A Returner’s Magic Should Be Special Ep. 17
Most of this episode is a diversion, which is why it feels kinda pointless. Desir and his party face off against three goons. The good guys could’ve won at any time. We were just burning the clock for no reason. Then as soon as Desir gets serious, the goons are whisked away with spatial magic so there are no consequences to this fight either. We were literally just buying time. This episode isn’t technically filler, but it sure felt like it.
Finally, right before we hit the credits, the big bad — the guy with the crow mask — completes the ritual to summon forth the Devil of Calamity. In case you forgot, this was the monster responsible for killing Romantica in Desir’s previous life. Guess we’ll see if she heeds his warning this time around. She can’t possibly die again, right?
Sasaki and Peeps S2 Ep. 5
Man, anime always does this. We want to know what happens next after a major incident (Sasaki literally losing the bottom half of his body), so the show gives us a flashback instead. Ugh. Luckily, the flashback isn’t very long. Also, the main takeaway from the flashback just makes me feel gross: Otonari wants to repay Sasaki, but she thinks the only thing she has to offer is her body. Yeah, I don’t really wanna listen to a child think this shit? I hope she gets whatever help she needs to get, but this is really unpleasant to watch.
Ultimately, this episode is incredibly anticlimactic. Thanks to Abaddon driving back the angels, the quarantine space disappears. As a result, the lower half of Sasaki’s body is fully restored. Yup, just like that. Such a cop-out.
They then decide to share information, with Sasaki pondering whether or not he should agree to work with Abaddon. Dude, the demon and Otonari have killed people. He probably hasn’t concluded that Otonari gave Abaddon those orders, but he at least knows that the demon has blood on his hands! He’s seen Abaddon kill someone right in front of him! Two people, in fact! What are we doing?! How can we even consider agreeing to this?
Naturally, Otonari will still continue trying to win Sasaki’s affections. Even worse, she has met Shizuka and might consider her a rival. Ugh again.
The Iceblade Sorcerer Shall Rule the World S2 Ep. 5
Elisa is meeting the elf side of her family for the first time, and for some reason, this freaks her out. In a panic, she refers to Ray as her boyfriend. She claims that people were treating her like an object, but all they were doing was saying hi to her. Nevertheless, Ray has to now pretend to be her boyfriend, which means pretend dates, pretend sleeping in the same bed, and so on and so forth. Uh-huh. And then Cathy, one of Elisa’s half-sisters or something, gets overprotective over a girl she has just met, so she forces Ray to go through all sorts of challenges — challenges like finding a mandrake or, uh, hanging out with old people. Our Gary Stu obviously aces all of them. Meanwhile, the other girls are so steamin’ with jealousy that they’ve decided to create a support group. After all, everyone just loves Raymond! They’re mostly just afraid Ray will pretend so hard that he accidentally falls in love with Elisa. Dude, what even is this show anymore? What is the damn plot?
Demons’ Crest Ep. 1 & 2
I thought about giving this show its own first impressions post, but after watching the first two episodes… eh. I think it’s kinda boring? The first episode provides you the hook at the start. A kid wakes up from his… I dunno, VRMMO pod? He wakes up and finds the entire facility in complete darkness. He hears a scream. Suddenly, he spots what looks like a classmate walking slowly toward him with a dismembered arm in one hand. Then after that, we just get boring VRMMO bullshit. Questing, dungeoning, fighting a raid boss, y’know the drill. Most of all, they never communicate like how I, someone who has played MMOs and has led a raid group, expect them to. No one tells their teammate to draw aggro or duck. People should fucking know that. But it’s like those fake ass demos you often see at the Summer Game Show — the ones where they play Call of Blops or whatever the fuck these games are called:
“I’m gonna breach and clear, can you watch my six?!”
“Got it Red Baron… looks like we got 4 tangos at 3 o’clock, engaging now!”
“Good job. Shadow, can we get a sitrep?”
“Yeah, we got 30 more seconds until the hack is uploaded to the mainframe.”
NOBODY TALKS LIKE THIS. You could be fighting the Destroyer of Worlds, but all you’ll hear is a debate on whether or not Goku can beat Superman. But I digress… They beat the raidboss, then they suddenly discover that they can’t log out. Welp, this is from the SAO guy, so this is just par for the course. End first episode.
In the second episode, the classmate gets closer and reveals that she’s some kind of monster. Where did her eyes go? No matter, main character’s twin sister swoops in to protect him. She tells him that this is real life, so he needs to get with the program and activate his MMO powers! So he does, and they almost defeat the classmate. But the main character can’t finish her off because he probably has a crush on her or something! So next best move: capture her and turn her into a summonable pet! Sweet MMO! In SAO, the idea was that MMOs were like real life. Die in an MMO, die in real life. Meet a waifu in an MMO, get a waifu in real life. Big bad wants to cuck you in a video game? Well, guess he wants to rape your waifu in real laifu too. So what’s the twist this time? That the MMO is encroaching on real life? That MMO and real life are indistinguishable? Is that really the case, though? Or are these kids still stuck in an MMO but they just don’t realize it?
Either way, I’m not exactly drawn to the premise or what we’ve seen of the characters. They’re super young. They look like middle schoolers. I don’t know why the author went with this route. Maybe it’s just more fun to see little kids die or whatever. There are some weird things going on. For example, one of their classmate is just gone, and there no signs that she left on her own. The main character’s twin sister seems to know more than she lets on, but… eh, when I really think about it, I don’t really care. I’m not hooked. This might have been a cool concept 15 years ago, but it’s kinda bog standard now in 2026. Overgeared‘s quasi-dystopian setting, where people literally depend on a video game to earn a living, is arguably more interesting to me than whatever this is.
Magic Repo Man Ep. 6
The humiliation ritual for Lent’s old party continues. First, they’re told that chugging MP potions is bad for them. It leads to extreme nausea and dizziness. Okay, now you just know one of them will end up brain dead or whatever from overdose. Second, the party tries to throw their weight around despite their crippling debilitation. With the curse rendering them completely useless, it would’ve been wiser to keep their nose out of trouble. But no, Guy and his gals are too prideful, so they almost lose their lives to orcs. Another B-rank squad has to come to their rescue. The funny thing is, this B-rank squad is also fond of Lent. It seems like Guy and his gals are the only fuckwits in this entire world who don’t like Lent. Of all the people Lent could’ve grown up with, he got stuck with the two sorriest childhood friends possible. Like everything in this show, it borders on being ridiculous.
Man, these dorks are still on their way to confront Lent. How long is this gonna take? Don’t tell me it’s going to end up being the climax to the entire series.
Anyway, we also learn that Linka has an incredible self-buff, but due to her low MP cap, she can’t keep it up for very long. Obviously, Lent’s talent means she has virtually infinite MP. Okay, so what’s the catch? Well, the self-buff also turns her berserk, so I guess Lent is going to have to bring his waifu back to her senses at start of the next week’s episode.
