Shameful Otaku Secret!

Baffled Yuji

It’s almost time to take this horse out back and shoot it. It’s not that its legs are broken, it just seems to have forgotten how to use them. I so want to check the category box for “action” every time I write about this thing, until I realize that nothing has happened. And yes, I understand you’re going to get some filler since we’re pretty far in, but I think they’re setting things up for a run way huger than 24. We’re currently on what I hope is the tail end of a really insulting amount of filler. I’m almost wishing the action would just start, and do that Bleach/ Dragonball/ InuYasha thing where a single fight draws out for 8 episodes.

Almost.

Anyway. Let’s get going.

Wait, who’s baffled?

Yuji doesn’t seem baffled at all. He’s singularly determined to fuck shit up, and he’s being given the tools to do it. Margery Daw teaches him how to throw silver fireballs and turn the Blutsauger into a bookmark so he can carry it around with him.

Kazumi…. ah, who gives a shit.

When Yuji’s mom gets sick, Shana starts thinking that maybe Yuji’s not really ready to take on his weight of responsibility, leave town, or any of that nonsense that he’s got roaming through his head these days.

Shana seems to worry about Yuji’s mom far more than Kazumi, which I assume is some kind of value judgment? Either way, I’ll keep no secrets that I learned the meaning of “tsundere” from Shana, and this cemented the fact that they’ve killed off most of her redeeming qualities as a character.

And finally we get the new Tomogara — Zarovee the Collation Flux, who sounds like a copy machine malfunction but oddly enough seems to be able to duplicate himself so maybe that’s intentional. He sneaks up depresso-Yuji, who’s wandering around after kind of being told off by both girls.

What we’ve learned

Not a lot… not a lot.

Please, Please, Please

It’s not just a James Brown song, it’s me begging for things to move. There was the barest hint of development, and I hope they’re setting up the ball very carefully for a big swing. We’re down to the wire, and almost every other show of the season is behaving like it. Knowing this show, I won’t even try to worry about it until I turn it on and find a new OP playing, but a fight between Zarovee and Yuji seems promised in this OP. Next week? Maybe? Please? I’m hardly an action junkie, but like sugar in the cokehead’s stash, the filler is bringing me down.

Each and Every Person’s Path

I swear this show is gonna lose me any second. If something doesn’t blow up or get stabbed with a flaming sword soon, what the hell is the point? There’s the inane high school love triangle, but even that seems to only really advance when the world is coming to an end. The new OP is promising big stuff, what with Yuji swinging that Blutsauger around, but he doesn’t even practice with it all episode. All I can say is, thankfully Kazumi took a bit of a backseat here. I’m going to fill this out with gratuitous screenshots since there isn’t much I can say about… nothing.

Lowdown

Yuji trains more, but just with some rattan sticks, no Blutsauger.

Satou hears about the Outlaw, who are really just a bunch of librarians, and figures that’s something useful that a human can do. He asks Margery Daw if he can join them. Only problem, Sydonay (while wearing sunglasses at night so he can so he can) has destroyed the Outlaw and killed all the humans. Marco taunts Satou’s puny human face.

Tanaka on the other hand, still hasn’t gotten the image of Ogata, cut down by Margery’s rage of vengeance, out of his mind. He won’t talk to Margery, but he finally decides to quit being her henchman in favor of a real life enjoying tea, volleyball, whatever, with Ogata.

What We’ve Learned

We’ve learned that Tanaka can open is eyes, if he’s really really distressed.

I liked Tanaka’s character development, and it seems to come at the expense of relegating his character to the far background, which is good — because this show has too fucking many characters. And half of them have two names. Manipulator of Objects, Interpreter of Plot Holes, it gets to be too much.

There was barely any Kazumi, thanks to the Tanaka plotline, just this lovely scene that recapped where she’s at.

Most of all we learned that this show can maintain its status quo of uneventful nothingness for weeks at a time.

Hope against hope

The next episode preview shows a new Tomogara in town, and I hope his title is something like The Harbinger of Entertainment.

Everlasting Love

In spite of SNS’s often predictable storylines, or the way it tends to pile on incomprehensible lingo and convoluted lists of characters to make things artificially less clichéd, I keep giving the show credit — mostly for its believable characters and their realistic choices given the situations in which they’re placed. But the show is starting to burn its karma faster than it ever could with just some panning up to the sky (shades of Haruhi), thanks to the giant crack in its character-driven solidity: Kazumi.

Is love blind, or just retarded?

Don’t get me wrong: there are plenty of shy-human vs. magical-girl love triangles less involving or believable than this. And I (usually) enjoy the weird truce that Shana and Kazumi have going on. But the realism of most of the characters’ actions is exactly what gets the show in trouble here.

While the stilted, awkward anime-style non-romance in most shows like this is motivated strictly by “we’re a Japanese show,” “main character is a little thick,” or “just for the sake of drawing it out to the last episode,” I have zero problems believing Yuji’s lack of romantic awareness here. Let’s take a tally. There’s Pheles (who I really want to be Phyllis when I hear it, but the subbers disagree), the Silver, Hecate’s seal, Johan, Balle Masque, and Margery Daw’s murderous will to vengeance on the Silver, all living inside the Reiji Maigo. Any of those could kill him at any moment if it weren’t for the fact that he’s essentially already dead. I can one hundred percent forgive him for lacking the motivation to hug puppies and make out with Kazumi all day.

So her near-constant whingeing is really starting to chap my ass. Oooh, I’ll never be as close to him as Shana. Ooooh, if I want to participate in this deadly supernatural world and be of any benefit to Yuji I’ll have to kill myself using this Hougu from Pheles. There are things in this world that bigger breasts just cannot compete with, and magical powers or a big sword that help keep your would-be boyfriend alive… I think that’d do it.

The sad part is her transformation from ultra-shy to a little more confident in the first series was really winning. It didn’t seem to win over Yuji, no. But it was exemplary of just how decent these writers are at developing their characters, even through situations that are really silly at times. Sort of like how Margery went from the obligatory American drunkard to a scarred Flame Haze with a buried human soul somewhere underneath. Now is the time that I really hope they’re going to whip out one of their trademark little surprises that make me go “hey, now that’s real nice.” Because the show’s been in a holding pattern for a little while.

Recap?

In other news, Satou and Tanaka never really appeared to get over Margery’s berzerker rage. Tanaka has taken a sieze-the-moment approach by getting together in earnest with Ogata and mostly staying away from Satou’s house. Satou is still running errands for Margery, but he’s real sulky about it. I’d be surprised if something major wasn’t planned for him before too long.

Everyone’s forgotten Konoe, the vessel sent by Hecate to collect human experience. That makes Kazumi sad as well, and while that’s probably supposed to make us like her even more for her naive and unquestioning sense of caring, it just makes me think she grasps the weight of the situation even less than before. The final scene, however, has Hecate seeing a bird and contemplating it. Have her experiences as Konoe softened her? Is she now a wild card?

And Yuji, he’s stepping up to the plate to swing Blutsauger, the massive sword that Tanaka and Satou used to spend their days trying to lift. And watching him practice with it, Kazumi — about to throw the Hougu into the river — almost seems to get the selfish futility of her endless whine. But swordplay takes a backseat to paperwork when Wilhelmina makes him sort through endless useless reports from the Outlaw.

Yuji’s dad leaves again, to go… what the hell does that guy do anyway?

And what’s more…

If the horrendous new opening (they just don’t seem to get any better…) serves no other purpose, it at least seems to show us a lot of action that should be in store very soon. If I recall, the first series absolutely exploded at episode 17, culminating with the Seeking Researcher saying “Wow! This is really starting to get exciting!” or something humorously self-aware like that. Either 17 or 18 saw Kazumi declare her love, and apparently 20-some-odd episodes of non-reciprocation aren’t enough to deter her.

I’m ready for the explosion of rapid plot development, big action, and crazy realizations that marked the last series around now. Are we going to get them? I’m cautiously optimistic, but this show has a way of doing the unexpected just when I’m about to give up on it, so you can bet that I’ll at least be watching.