Tag: Summer 2018

Summer 2018 Week 10

Summer 2018 Week 10

Island

This series seems to be getting worse every week, and it appears to be symbolized by everything going wrong for our main characters. All of the untagged children other than Karen get murdered, Sara’s father is assassinated, and Karen, Sara, and Setsuna are being burned at the stake until Rinne saves them.

The four then leave the island and head to a cave out in the snowy wasteland which seems to be the same cave “real” Setsuna’s body was found in. Sara dies on the way there due to a gunshot wound and Karen dies shortly after due to Soot Blight Syndrome.

Setsuna appears to be in an infinite loop. He went to the past to change the future, back to the future to change the past, and is now going back to the past to change the future once again. At this point I think the future is his real time because he has sex with future Rinne, which means he chose her over past Rinne; I think.

Also, the series is still going by the name “Never Island.”

Hanebado!

The tournament continues with the boys’ matches. I’d use the names of the various boys, but MAL seems to think that the only male character in the series is the coach, and so doesn’t have the names of the others listed under the characters section.

The boy who’s good at badminton continues to win for a while in the tournament, but eventually loses. The boy who isn’t as good tries his best, but is defeated earlier on in the tournament. The girl who likes the latter boy (she’s also not on the character list) confesses to him, but he tells her she just loves badminton, not him.

Both boys decide that they’ll continue to play badminton in college even though earlier they had thought they would quit. It seems that this tournament changed something within them, although it isn’t exactly clear why.

On the girls’ side, Ayano is avoiding her mother and also bullying everyone else, but what else is new? She constantly insults Aragaki and tries to provoke her so that she’ll blow out her bad knee. In the end, Aragaki is going to face Ayano in the finals despite her knee injury.

I really hope Ayano loses.

Attack on Titan Season 3

The scouts storm the cavern under the chapel on Rod Reiss’ land to save Historia and Eren. They fight against Kenny’s Interior Police and wound Kenny, but Hange is wounded as well. Contrary to one of the mid-episode information panels, it’s stated at this point that Kenny’s squad does have to reload after every shot.

It seems I was right about Rod Reiss wanting Historia to eat Eren and take on his titan powers, although it’s not completely clear why Rod doesn’t want to become a titan and do it himself. He claims that it can’t be him for some reason, but I think he’s just scared.

Apparently with those powers, the Reiss family can control all of the titans and has the power to wipe them out if they so choose. They also learn the history of the world, and because of this, every Reiss has refused to kill the titans and save humanity once they gain the power to do so.

Historia refuses to eat Eren after learning this and decides to rescue him instead, but Rod turns himself into a titan in her place at the end of the episode. I was starting to think the plot was getting stupid with all these families having special powers, but now I’m interested in the Reiss family.

What exactly do they learn that makes them choose not to kill the titans and save humanity? I hope we find out at some point, but considering Eren would have to die at the hands of a titan Reiss for that to happen, I don’t think we will any time soon.

Rod Reiss from the anime Attack on Titan season 3
Rod Reiss

One Room Second Season

The new girl’s name is Mashiro Amatsuki, and she may be even better than Minori even though she doesn’t seem to make the smartest decisions. She thinks we’re a pervert because we took a picture of her the first time we met. I can’t blame her for that one.

Because of this, she says she’s going to report us to police, and every time she sees us from here on out she refers to us as Mr. Pervert. However, despite her looks she’s actually not a middle schooler, and even lives in the same apartment building as us.

For some reason, and this is where her not making the smartest decisions comes in, when the power goes out in her apartment she invites us into her room despite the fact she thinks we’re a stalker. In the end, she decides we aren’t so bad after all.

You heard it here first, stalk girls until they decide you aren’t so bad and agree to date you. Seriously though, what are you doing, Mashiro?

Overlord III

In yet another good episode of Overlord, the emperor makes his way to Nazarick in order to apologize on behalf of the Empire so it doesn’t get destroyed. There, he sees just how powerful Ainz and the rest of Nazarick are, and realizes there’s no way for humanity to win against them.

We also find out that his old mage has already gone over to Ainz’s side after Ainz revealed his true power to him as the adventurer Momon, or so it seems. If this is really the case, then it would mean the old mage is the only person outside of Nazarick to know that Ainz and Momon are one and the same.

There were also roughly five more countries which were named in this episode. The Empire plans to form a secret alliance with them in hopes that together they’ll be able to take down Nazarick. But, for now the Empire has an alliance with the newly formed country of Nazarick.

I wonder if we’ll get to see all the other countries that were introduced in this episode at some point in the series. I know I’ve complained about the scale of this series in the past, but at this point I just want to see how far it can go while still being a cohesive story.

How Not to Summon a Demon Lord

The demon lord Klem-chan has been revived by Diablo through some questionable means. He had to violate Rem in order to resurrect the demon lord, but Rem seemed oddly okay with it, as did the rest of the girls who watched on, with the exception of Shera.

However, despite being revived, Klem-chan doesn’t remember why she’s supposed to kill all of the mortal races and so she decides not to after she’s told killing them would be bad. It seems that she’s an incomplete revival of the demon lord as one of her followers claims.

Edelgard states that even if the demon lord won’t kill all of the mortal races, she’ll still follow her simply because that’s her duty. Klem decides to join Diablo and company because she wants to eat more biscuits (she’s basically a child), but it seems that Alicia is actually the evil one.

Alicia wants the demon lord to kill all of the mortal races for some unexplained reason. At first I thought it was because she wanted a reason to defeat the demon lord, but Alicia refers to the mortal races as ugly, so it’s probably something deeper than that.

In this episode, Diablo also fights against the most powerful Fallen soldier who recognizes his magic reflection ability as that belonging to one of the previous demon lords. It turns out Diablo got his magic reflection ring from being the first to defeat that boss in-game.

Harukana Receive

The first game between teams Harukana and Eclair begins! For some reason, Haruka and Kanata are worried they won’t be able to tell Emily and Claire apart even though Emily wears glasses and Claire doesn’t. You’d think they’d have figured that out by now.

Team Eclair takes the first game after Harukana tries to get Claire flustered by focusing on her. Emily responds by going on the offensive, which neither Haruka nor Kanata expected. Apparently Emily typically just supports her sister and doesn’t try to make plays on her own.

The second game begins at the end of the episode and we get halfway through it in a short amount of time. Team Eclair is winning once again, but Kanata begins a comeback by using an offensive receive which team Eclair wasn’t expecting.

Meanwhile, Akari cheers from the sidelines for all four girls.

Angels of Death

The story has completely broken down by this point. This entire episode took place either in one of Rachel’s dreams, a hallucination, or just makes no sense anymore. All three of these options are equally viable at this point.

First, Rachel encounters the ghosts of the various floor residents, then she’s put on trial by the Father. During this trial, he asserts that Rachel is actually a witch and that the floor residents are angels who she’s tried to coerce with her evil ways.

He has the ghosts of the floor residents, along with the still living Danny, give testimony during the trial. The entire time Zack is assumed to still be bleeding out somewhere in the building, but nobody really seems to care all that much about him.

I also just learned that this series is 16 episodes instead of the standard 12 or 13. I really wanted it to be over soon and I’m not sure how much more I can take. I may drop this series from these weekly reviews starting next week because I dislike it so much.

If I do that, I’ll still finish the series and write a full review of it once it’s complete. It’s just hard to force myself to write about things I hate every week.

Cells at Work!

This week’s episode of Cells at Work! was alright. It felt more like a continuation of multiple other episodes than an episode of its own. I’ve heard that the episodes in the anime are all out of order compared to the source material, so this may be the reason for this episode feeling strange.

There were a few scenes from previous episodes such as Red Blood Cell squeezing through an ally to deliver O2, or the platelets setting up their fibrin nets over a scrape wound. Even the primary antagonist of the episode had been seen previously.

Overall, however, the episode was about how Monocytes are the same cells as Macrophages; they just go by different names depending on if they’re inside or outside the blood vessel. I feel like this could have been worked into another episode rather than being its own.

Also, Red Blood Cell appeared to be surprisingly competent today. What was that all about?

The Master of Ragnarok and Blesser of Einherjar

Like Angels of Death, Master of Ragnarok is another anime from this season which I don’t enjoy and find it hard to write anything meaningful about. I planned on dropping it from this series this week, but I’ll do my best to power through it one last time.

As I mentioned for Angels of Death, if you wanted to read more about this series, I’ll still be finishing it and writing a full review of it after the season ends, it just won’t be a part of this weekly series from here on out. I also didn’t take notes on it this week, so this will be even more basic than the other series above this one.

The fantasy world version of Yuuto’s girlfriend is actually the emperor of the world or something, so I guess she’s not exactly evil like I once thought. Well, she could be, but once we learn she’s the emperor, she stops acting in any way I would consider to be evil.

Yuuto also goes into battle against the clan led by the guy with the hammer, but is outsmarted because the clan who’s led by his ex-brother comes to back up hammer guy (I don’t care enough to look up any of their names). That’s basically where the episode ends. Also the emperor is part of his harem now.

Conclusion

So next week there will likely only be eight anime showcased in this weekly series, possibly seven if I decide I don’t feel like dealing with Island anymore either. Based off how I’ve been feeling while writing these weekly reviews this season, the Fall 2018 season will definitely be different.

Instead of doing one weekly post like this, I’ll be picking out a couple of the anime that most interest me and doing weekly episode reviews of those just like I currently do for both Boruto and My Hero Academia. This will be more interesting for me to write, and will hopefully focus on what you, the readers, want to read.

Goblin Slayer is one series I definitely plan to write about next season, but if there are any others you want me to consider, let me know in the comments. If you enjoyed this post, or enjoyed the fact that certain anime are being dropped from it, leave a like down below.

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Summer 2018 Week 9

Summer 2018 Week 9

Introduction

It’s that time of the season when I’m beginning to lose interest in the currently airing anime, but I’ll continue to power through it because apparently I hate myself. There are a couple of series I wouldn’t mind dropping completely, but at least they give me something to write about.

Island

Island is one of the aforementioned anime I would consider dropping, even this late into the season, if I wasn’t planning on writing a full review of it once the season’s over. There was a lot going on in this week’s episode, and not much of it made sense, but I’ll try to keep this brief.

First of all, there was a new OP/ED combo which were snow themed, the reason for why is semi-explained in the episode and I’ll get to that in a bit. The entire episode also takes place in the distant future, and for most of the episode it isn’t clear whether the events that are happening is a prequel, a “sequel,” or part of the current timeline.

The island is the only habitable place left on Earth in this future, and the rest of the world is covered by a thick layer of snow and ice. It’s unclear why this is or why Setsuna has anything to do with the world going into an ice age. Also, everyone is governed by the church, which is a militaristic state now.

In this world, the people are separated into different casts as well. Those in the church are at the top, those in the middle are considered citizens, and those at the bottom are stateless criminals who are marked for death.

Sara is part of the church, Rinne is in the middle class, and Karen is the leader of the underground rebellion. Although Setsuna has arrived in this time from the “normal” timeline, this doesn’t seem to be the time he originated from either.

Of the three girls, Rinne and Sara appear to be older than their normal timeline counterparts, Sara much so, but Karen appears to be quite a bit younger. Karen also apparently trades sex for information in this world, which seems like a fairly drastic character change.

So, as I mentioned, nothing in this episode makes much sense, and not much is actually explained. As a final note, the title is no longer Island, but is now Never Island. It’s unclear whether or not this new title is going to stick around for the rest of the season.

Hanebado!

The final match of the tournament will likely take place next week, because instead, this week’s episode was all about the relationship between Ayano and Connie. Connie wants Ayano, Uchika, and herself to all be a happy family together, but Ayano refuses.

However, before we get to that point of the episode, Ayano, Connie, Erena, and Yuika all go to some sort of arcade together which is full of a character known as Wei-Wei. Wei-Wei is apparently a whale shark and is Ayano’s favorite character because she’s mentally five years old.

Connie wins a Wei-Wei key chain to give to Ayano as a way to become her friend, but then Yuika wins a Wei-Wei backpack and gives it to her first. After that, Connie doesn’t want to give the key chain to Ayano because her gift will be out-shined by the backpack.

Eventually Connie works up the courage to tell Ayano how she really feels, but Ayano won’t listen. Instead, she suggests they play each other in a game of badminton, which Connie agrees to thinking it will be a nice, casual match.

However, she couldn’t have been more wrong. Ayano goes all out against Connie who gives up partway through the match and asks Ayano why she won’t be a family with Uchika and her. Ayano tells her that she won’t be a family with them because she’s given up on Uchika.

The episode ends with Connie going back to her badminton club friends and wishing to one day introduce Uchika and Ayano to them, and with Ayano going home only to be greeted by Uchika.

Ayano Hanesaki, Erena Fujisawa, Connie Christensen, and Yuika Shiwahime from the anime Hanebado!
Ayano, Erena, Connie, and Yuika

Attack on Titan Season 3

The royal family has the power of the titans, whatever that means, as well as the power to alter the memories of the people. However, this memory altering power doesn’t work on two clans, the Ackerman clan and the Oriental clan. Mikasa is a member of both in case you’ve forgotten.

Eren’s father also had the power of the titans and used it to kill the royal family with the exception of Rod Reiss who managed to escape. He then passed this power on to Eren by turning Eren into a titan and having him eat him, gaining his power, and also his courage.

It’s also revealed that Mikasa, Levi, and Kenny are indeed all related. Mikasa is a member of the branch Ackerman family, Kenny is a member of the main branch, and Levi is the bastard child of Kenny’s sister. As members of the Ackerman clan, they all have special powers of some sort.

The Ackerman clan was also once known as the sword and shield of the royal family, but something happened which created a falling out between the two. It seems as though Kenny’s ultimate goal is to reforge the alliance between the Ackerman clan and the royal family, but he’s likely just being used by Rod Reiss.

One Room Second Season

Minori is pretending to be our wife, so you know what that means. That’s right, it’s time to ditch her and move on to our next fiance like we did with Yui. While Minori is one of my “best girls” of the season, the next girl looks pretty cute too so we’ll see if she can beat Minori.

After pretending to be married, Minori gets embarrassed and goes all tsundere on us. Later, she says that we can bathe together if we get married, and suddenly we agree to it. Apparently we have our priorities in order.

Overlord III

This week Ainz reminded us that he is, in fact, the villain of the series. He has all of the intruders in Nazarick either captured or killed in horrific ways, including the four main Workers who were teleported into the colosseum to face him directly in battle.

The girl who was saving up money as a Worker to run away with her younger sisters is the character everyone was rooting for as watching this episode. This is exactly why her death was the most emotional stunt Overlord has ever pulled off.

Ainz originally allows her to escape due to the pleas from her comrades, but then sends Shalltear after her to kill her anyway. He tells Shalltear to show her the fear of almost escaping, only to have her will broken when she realizes she’s going to die.

I don’t remember what that girl’s name was, but she didn’t deserve that. At the very least, her body didn’t go to waste. Entoma got her vocal chords, Demiurge got her skin, because he’s a creepy guy, and the rest of the parts were used as well for various things.

However, the best part of the episode was when Ainz took off the ring which had been concealing his magic power and the mage-girl immediately puked rainbows due to his immense strength.

At the end of the episode, after the credits, we learn that it was the emperor who sent the Workers on their expedition into Nazarick, not Ainz himself as I had previously assumed. In retaliation, Ainz sends Aure and Mare to the Empire’s capital to give a message to the emperor.

They tell him that Ainz expects an apology, and then they kill everyone in attendance as an upfront payment. If no apology is given to Ainz, he has declared that he will destroy the entire empire. So, as I said, Ainz reminded us this week that he’s the villain of the story.

How Not to Summon a Demon Lord

This week we were introduced to another Imperial Knight who’s also a paladin and who hates anyone who worships, or associates with worshipers of, the demon lord. Incidentally, Diablo has been referring to himself as the true demon lord all over town.

The two of them get into a fight and Diablo reflects the paladin’s magic back at him, turning him into a statue (temporarily). This is unlikely to be the last time we see this character, but that was all of his screen time for this episode.

Shera also brings a new “character” into the series in the form of her summon. She summons a small bird which she then makes a pact with. By using the bird’s powers, Shera is able to see through the bird’s eyes, which she can use in conjunction with her archery skills.

Shera also learns that the demon lord is sealed inside of Rem when the Fallen girl Diablo once defeated in battle appears while they’re bathing and reveals Rem’s secret. The Fallen doesn’t yet join the harem, but she does agree to teach Diablo how to resurrect the demon lord without killing Rem.

The Fallen want the demon lord to be revived because they worship it, and she says they also don’t want Rem to die because they’ll worship her as the demon lord’s mother as well. Diablo, on the other hand, wants the demon lord revived simply so he can kill it again.

The gang also decides to tell Cristela that the demon lord is sealed inside of Rem because they believe that she’ll be on Rem’s side, despite Diablo’s warning that although she’s their friend, she’s still an Imperial Knight. Nothing comes of Cristela learning this yet, but I think she’ll likely betray the gang at first, then save them in the end.

Harukana Receive

The first half of this week’s episode was from the perspective of Akari, because otherwise she wouldn’t really have a purpose for being in this series in the first place. That said, I’m beginning to like her character more, especially how she wears a single garter that doesn’t hold anything up.

As the manager, Akari gets the tournament bracket for the other girls in the beach volleyball club and finds out that only one of the two pairs can actually get through to nationals. They had previously agreed to play against each other at Nationals, but now this tournament will have to do.

She then gives all the girls matching hair ties to show that they’ll always be friends no matter what, because apparently she thinks they need something like that to remember they’re friends. But that’s okay, Akari is trying her best. Maybe one day they’ll call her Akarin if she keeps trying.

In the tournament, both teams make it through their first rounds without any issues. In the second round, however, team Harukana go up against a pair who want to defeat team Eclair and get their revenge for another tournament three years prior.

Team Harukana easily defeats this pair though, and I’m not even entirely sure how they made it that far in the tournament. They were obviously pretty bad at beach volleyball, so who lost to them?

The final round of the tournament will be between teams Harukana and Eclair, and the winners will go to Nationals! I’m assuming that team Harukana will take the victory because they’re the protagonists, but I’m always glad to see my expectations subverted when it comes to plot.

Akari Ooshiro, Haruka Oozora, and Claire Thomas from the anime Harukana Receive
Akari, Haruka, and Claire

Angels of Death

Danny offers to give Zack some medicine in return for Rachel’s eyes after he learns that Rachel wants Zack to kill her. However, Zack declines because he says she’d be boring without her eyes. But what about if he took her eyes out after killing her? Surely that wouldn’t be a problem.

Meanwhile, Rachel gets the knife Zack asked for as well as some bandages for his wound from his room. But, once she arrives back on the floor he was waiting for her on, he refuses to let her bandage him up and recoils when she tries to touch him. Hoe does take the knife though.

The two of them then head off to find where Danny has disappeared to by following a trail of his blood which as been slowly dripping out of the wound Zack gave him at the beginning of the series.

Before Rachel was reunited with Zack, however, she was chased down a hallway by a giant snake which turns to have just been a hallucination. I bring this up now, because when the two of them are searching for Danny, an actual giant snake attacks and is killed by Zack.

The episode ends with Zack bleeding out on the floor once again as Rachel goes off on her own to find Danny and get the medicine from him. She’s armed with Zack’s knife after it’s revealed that her handgun is out of bullets.

Cells at Work!

This episode focused on the various kinds of T cells. The Killer T cell and Commander Helper T cell used to be friends/rivals back when they were kids, and there was another kind of T cell with them, but I forget her name and she didn’t seem all that important.

It’s basically just a story about how the various kinds of T cells split up and become unique as they grow, although none of this was actually explained because they all passed the same test and still ended up in different roles. I guess in the end the type of T cell one turns into is completely random.

The T cells essentially all live in a military boot camp when they’re young, and then the final test is an exercise in which they have to identify and defeat a fake virus infected cell while not attacking any good cells. It’s at this stage that most future T cells get eliminated from the course.

The Dendritic cell was also in the episode just going around and taking pictures of everyone else because recording things is his job. He’s also seen showing an old photo album to the current Naive T cells which is what sparks the flashback to when Commander Helper T cell was a kid.

The Master of Ragnarok and Blesser of Einherjar

This episode wasn’t very good, and I think it took away from what little this series had going for it. I always knew that this anime was roughly based on Norse mythology, the title is enough to give that away, but apparently this anime is Norse mythology.

That is to say, Yuuto is living in the world and time which later becomes Norse mythology. His actions roughly line up with the Norse myths, and it seems as though his name is even mistranslated at some point to become the name of an invader who destroys the realm of the gods, Yggdrasil.

So, although I make fun of all isekai anime taking place in a world called Yggdrasil, at least this one has an actual reason for the world being called that. However, I have some mixed feelings about this turn of events in the series.

On one hand, I think it’s pretty stupid that the world Yuuto was sent to turned out to simply be the realm of Norse mythology, and not one loosely based on it. However, on the other hand it’s a fairly unique idea as far as isekai anime I’ve seen go. But remember, it’s still stupid.

The revelation about the world Yuuto is trapped in comes from his girlfriend back home, Mizuki, asking her friend’s cousin, who just so happens to have a doctorate in archaeology, about the world. She’s the one who determines Yuuto is living inside the world which eventually becomes myth.

It’s also mentioned that Mizuki’s name, if it was mistranslated, could end up being the name of Yuuto’s wife in the myths. However, this doesn’t give Mizuki any solace because the two of them are also killed in the myth, so that isn’t looking so good for Yuuto’s safe return.

At the end of the episode we have an interesting thing happen though. Mizuki cries on the mirror that connects the two worlds and it seems to have spawned an evil version of herself in the same world as Yuuto. Now, although this is a bad anime, I’m going to make a prediction and see it through to the end.

I think that Yuuto will make it back home to his world because this doesn’t seem to be the kind of anime that’s going to kill off the protagonist, but then why does he die in the myth? Is his disappearance mistaken for him dying? Not quite.

I think an evil version of himself is left behind in the world along with the evil version of Mizuki and it’s actually the evil versions of them both which end up conquering and destroying the world, and thus turned into myths. This would resolve all of the current events in the series.

Conclusion

I don’t know why I always seem to write more about the anime I don’t like when doing this weekly post, but that’s it for the ninth week of the Summer 2018 anime season. If you enjoyed this post let me know in the comments or by leaving a like.

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Summer 2018 Week 8

Summer 2018 Week 8

Introduction

We’re now eight weeks into the Summer 2018 anime season and I’m beginning to feel that I’ll be doing something slightly different for the Fall season. These weekly posts are a good info-dumps, but I think I may switch to a different format which focuses on only one to a few series.

If you have any comments or suggestions regarding that, you can let me know in the comments after reading through the rest of this post. Either way, any changes won’t come until after the conclusion of the Summer 2018 season.

Island

Let me set the scene for you. The episode was going well, the OP was even skipped in favor of more content, hinting that this would be an important episode. And, as expected, the story was beginning to pick up. Needless to say, I was somewhat hopeful for what was to come.

Setsuna and Rinne made it to the mysterious island where Rinne had been trapped with the “real” Setsuna for, apparently, five years. Once on the island, Setsuna finds the remains of the “real” Setsuna, along with his journal.

According to what was written in the journal, “real” Setsuna apparently used a strange machine found in the cave his body would later be discovered in to send Rinne back to the main island. The story of her simply washing up on shore was a cover for what really happened.

But then, of course, just as the story is starting to pique my interest, we got the now classic Island montage with random singing in the background. Why, Island? Why? The OP was skipped for more story time, and then you waste it on a pointless montage again?

Honestly, I would have rather watched the OP than another “Island montage,” and I don’t even like the OP all that much. Using pointless montages like this to waste time just goes to show that the writer/director is either trying to cut corners, or simply isn’t very good.

**I actually just looked up the director, and it appears he’s never actually directed anything good, so no surprises there. His name is Keiichirou Kawaguchi. It looks like the best anime he worked on was Great Teacher Onizuka, but he did key animation for that, not directing.

The "real" and "fake" Setsunas from the anime Island
“Real” Setsuna and “Fake” Setsuna

Anyway, cutting  back to the review of this episode, the episode itself suddenly cuts back to Setsuna on the main island, and Rinne is dead. She apparently drowned while the two of them were making their way back to the main island, but the trauma must have wiped it from Setsuna’s memory temporarily.

We then learn that scientists, including Karen’s mother, have been researching the legends about the two islands as well as the mysterious contraption found within the cave. The plot was always stupid, but it’s gotten even stupider now.

At the end of the episode, Setsuna decides to travel into the distant future to defeat a witch or something. I honestly have no idea where this anime is going anymore, but maybe Setsuna is actually Homura from Madoka Magica.

Hanebado!

Most of this week’s episode focused on Aragaki, but we still saw Ayano defeat some no-name girl and then tell her to forfeit the rest of the match because she’s a savage like that. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about savage Ayano, but I doubt she’ll stay like that forever.

Aragaki went up against Nozomi, the girl who went to middle school with her and Riko, and who defeated Riko earlier in the tournament if I remember correctly. Nozomi is being told what to do at every step by her coach for the entirety of the match, trying to get Aragaki’s bad knee to act up.

However, Aragaki retakes control of the match by simply using her brute force to stop Nozomi from making her run back and forth. In the end, Aragaki wins and moves on to the finals. When they read the scores of her games, it seems she won all three in a row, but I was pretty sure these were best of three matches, so who knows what happened there.

Ayano will likely be Aragaki’s opponent in the finals, although I’m not entirely sure if Ayano is in the finals yet, or if we still need to watch her semifinal match. Regardless, the finalists are invited to Nationals no matter the outcome of their match, so both girls are likely going.

I assume the only real difference between who wins and who loses in the finals is pride and seeding for the National tournament. I’m kind of hoping Aragaki defeats Ayano which could snap her out of her “savage mode” in time for Nationals.

Attack on Titan Season 3

A lot happened this week in the world of Attack on Titan. First, Erwin’s fate was decided by the advisors of the fake king. However, before his death sentence could be carried out, a plot devised by Commander Pyxis and the General was set into motion.

A fake warning about Wall Maria being breached was sent to the advisors, and they responded by telling Pyxis to close the gate so that none of the refugees could enter Wall Sina. Due to how the nobility reacted, Pyxis and the General decide that the nobility was not working for the common good of humanity and so they were deposed.

Thus the military coup began in the capital.

The military, except for Kenny’s interior police squad, takes over the capital and will replace the fake king with a king of their own. Thanks to this coup, the Scouts are also no longer wanted criminals due to their actions being proven justifiable.

However, Eren and Historia are still being held captive somewhere by Rod Reiss, the true king, and Eren is likely to be sacrificed to another titan so that they can gain his powers. To save them, the Scouts are making their way to a chapel located on Rod Reiss’ land where they believe the pair is being held.

It’s also implied that there’s something special about the royal bloodline other than that they’re simply royalty. It may be that their blood is actually connected to the titans in some way. To me, it also appears that Historia is going to be the one Eren is sacrificed to.

Next episode we’re going to learn the truth behind Eren’s father, but I already know what it is, whoops.

One Room Second Season

Minori Nanahashi wants to run her family’s bathhouse when she grows up, but her grandfather told her that bathhouses are going to be out of fashion and theirs will probably close before then. He also mentions that as a girl she can’t run it by herself. Doesn’t he know this is 2018?

Because of this, Minori asks us to marry her and run the bathhouse with her. Sounds like she’s just using us to me, but I guess we could always just go back to our other wife, Yui, if we get tired of being married to Minori. Also, I’m pretty sure she’s still a high school student, so there’s that.

Overlord III

The Workers from the Empire enter the Great Tomb of Nazarick by splitting into multiple teams and Ainz teleports himself inside in order to greet one of them. Before entering the main portion of the Tomb, each group comes across a different treasure room, which only inspire them to press onward.

One group, led by an old man, goes back outside to cover the backs of their comrades as they move into the main portion of the tomb, and also to search for any hidden passageways that might lead inside. This group is confronted by the Battle Maids and subsequently wiped out.

Once inside the Tomb, the rest of the workers get split up due to teleportation magic. Some were teleported into a chamber and fed to a giant swarm of cockroaches, and another was teleported into a torture dungeon with a slimy monster.

The Worker who everyone apparently hated was sent to a room in which he had a duel against Hamusuke while the Lizardmen watched on. Needless to say, Hamusuke easily killed him. His slave-girls then kicked his body while laughing, glad to finally be free from his tyranny.

The final group of four were teleported directly to the colosseum where they are to fight against Ainz himself. This will surely be yet another blood bath, but I’m also curious as to what exactly Ainz gains from killing all of these Workers within the confines of Nazarick.

Unless he’s going to allow some of them to escape so that they can tell the world of what they witnessed within the Tomb, I feel like it would have been more useful for him to do something out in the open like when he had Demiurge pretend to be his opponent and attack the Kingdom.

How Not to Summon a Demon Lord

Last time on How Not to Summon a Demon Lord, Prince Keera summoned a Force Hydra to defeat Diablo after being cornered. This week, Diablo turns the tables on the Force Hydra in exactly the way I hoped he would.

The Hydra is a creature Diablo doesn’t recognize from when this world used to be a game and so assumes it’s content that was planned to be released in the future. However, because of this, he doesn’t exactly know how to defeat its immense regenerative abilities.

Luckily, Shera informs him that there’s a core inside the body that must be destroyed, although it’s constantly moving and so difficult to pinpoint with an attack. To solve this issue, Diablo simply destroys the entire Hydra in one blast, rendering the movement of the core obsolete.

He then spares Keera’s life due to a request from Shera, but Keera is beheaded anyway by Lord Galford who suddenly appears along with his army. I really expected Diablo to revive Keera at the end of the episode, but apparently that’s something even he can’t do.

Diablo then fights Galford because Galford was planning to kidnap Shera and start a war against the Elves anyway. This seems like a strange development considering Galford was hailed as a former hero. You’d think that a hero wouldn’t be a warmonger.

Lord Chester Ray Galford from the anime How Not to Summon a Demon Lord
Chester Ray Galford

Galford is defeated by Diablo, of course, but we learn that he’s at least level 120. For reference, Diablo is supposedly around level 150 and Rem is level 40. Since the fight was so close, it’s likely that Galford is actually closer to Diablo’s level than previously thought.

At the end of the episode, Sylvie gets Diablo drunk and some questionable things happen between the two of them. But, at least Sylvie seems to be of legal age considering she’s the guild master and old enough to drink alcohol.

Harukana Receive

Emily and Claire’s mother, Marissa, comes to train Haruka and Kanata. Throughout this episode we also learn that Akari, the newest member of the beach volleyball club, is more like a club pet than the club manager. She’s also always the fifth wheel, but she’s growing on me.

We learn that when they were kids, Emily and Claire were defeated by Kanata and Narumi in a tournament, which is how they all met each other. Afterwards, Marissa trained all four girls together.

Suddenly the school year is over and we jump to New Years, because a New Years episode in what’s essentially a slice of life anime is just as common as the obligatory beach episode. For New Years, the girls take the day off from training and do all the typical New Years things such as visiting a shrine.

Then they get a call from Narumi’s teammate (whose name I forget) and are told that she and Kanata are in the area for a few more hours before their flight home. The beach volleyball club all race to the airport to see them before they leave, without a reason that makes any sense.

Kanata makes it there at the last minute, because suspense, and she “makes up” with Narumi. Now, I say she “makes up” with her because while that’s what she’s supposedly doing, all she really does is tell Narumi that she wants to win Nationals with Haruka now instead.

Last I checked, telling someone you found someone better isn’t exactly making up with them, but apparently it worked because Kanata and Narumi have some weird relationship going on. At the end of the episode we suddenly jump from New Years to Summer because Spring doesn’t exist I guess.

Angels of Death

As we saw towards the end of last week’s episode, Rachel uses the machine guns mounted on the ceiling of Cathy’s floor to kill all of the zombie-like prisoners in her path. However, she’s then visited by the ghost of Cathy, whose body is nowhere to be found.

Proceeding onto the next floor, she needs to turn the power on for the elevator once again. But, before she begins on her trek, Rachel again notices that Eddie’s body has disappeared as well. Shortly after making this discovery she also begins seeing ghostly hands coming out of the floor.

Rachel decides that stomping on these hands is the best course of action, despite them screaming and exploding into puddles of blood as she does so. It seems that as she does this she is attempting to convince herself that the hands are merely “stuffed” hands, and not real ones.

When she finally turns the power back on, she’s greeted by Eddie’s ghost just like she was with Cathy.

Now on Danny’s floor, Rachel needs to find the medicine she’s been looking for in order to save Zack from bleeding out. As with the previous two floors, Danny’s body is gone, but that’s not all. All of the medicine that was on this floor has disappeared as well.

It’s important to note that she does not meet Danny’s ghost while on this floor, but she does get chased by a strange, green, slimy monster which appears to have simply been a hallucination. At least, I’m still hoping Rachel is going crazy and this isn’t turning supernatural.

As Rachel continues downward to Zack’s floor, we shift to a flashback of Zack’s past after he leaves the orphanage. He’s taken in by an old, blind man who appears to be somewhat okay with the fact that Zack is a murderer. However, the old man himself gets murdered by someone else who was trying to rob him.

The death of the old man causes Zack to decide that he’s only going to murder people who look happy, specifically because the old man’s murderers looked happy after they killed him. This, more so than his time at the orphanage, seems to have made Zack what he is today.

At the end of the episode, we see Danny, very much alive, appear before Zack. I’m assuming he’s going to take Zack hostage as revenge for stabbing him with his scythe back at the beginning of the series, although I suppose he could save Zack for some reason as well.

As a final note, in this flashback we see Zack steal a knife from the old man’s house shortly before he gets murdered. This is likely the knife that Zack requested Rachel retrieve for him from his room.

Cells at Work!

This week, Red Blood Cell is determined to circulate throughout the body without the help of anyone else. She’s tired of always needing to rely on people, even though nobody else really seems to mind helping her out.

However, she’s still as directionally challenged as always, and so White Blood Cell decides to help her out from the shadows. She needs to make her way to the heart, circulate through it (this is the most congested part of the circulatory system), and then deliver fresh Oxygen to her final destination.

Throughout the course of the episode, White Blood Cell helps her along the way in a variety of different ways. Sometimes he returns things that she’s dropped, other times he takes out dangerous germs in her path, and in some situations he simply puts up signs to prevent her from getting lost.

In the end, Red Blood Cell is proud of herself for successfully circulating throughout the body “on her own” for the first time. White Blood Cell is glad to see that she’s happy and asks her to tell him all about her journey that day.

Overall this was a cute story about how everyone needs to help each other out even if they aren’t all that similar.

The Master of Ragnarok and Blesser of Einherjar

It’s Winter in the alternate world Yuuto has been living in for the past two years, and because of this he’s asked Ingrid to design a kotatsu, because what else would any sensible Japanese person want in the winter? This reminded me of when Kazuma did the same thing in Konosuba, although that was supposed to be a joke.

I forget her name, and she’s not listed as a character on MAL, but the slave girl is being ignored by her classmates at school, and so Chris and Al go under cover to find out why. It seems that it’s due to the other students being jealous of her relationship with Yuuto.

Chris solves the problem by becoming the most popular girl in the class, and so the slave girl’s popularity increases by proxy. I suppose the idea is that once the other girls actually get to know the slave girl, she won’t merely be popular due to knowing Chris.

Since it’s Winter, and there’s no gift-giving holiday like Christmas in this alternate world, Yuuto decides to make some presents for Felicia and Rune because their birthdays are coming up. He decides to make them what appears to be glass vases with Ingrid’s help.

He then also made Ingrid a glass pendant on a necklace to thank her for helping him in the smithy. Just another day in the alternate world, I suppose.

Conclusion

That’s all for week 8 of the Summer anime season. If you enjoyed this post, leave a like down below, and let me know which episode was your favorite from this week. I think my favorite was probably Cells at Work! this time around.

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Best (Worst) Girls of Summer 2018

Best (Worst) Girls of Summer 2018

Introduction

For both the Winter and Spring 2018 anime seasons I had originally planned to write “top 5 best girls” lists consisting of the best, new female characters introduced each season, but I simply never got around to doing them. This is in part because I would schedule them to be at the end of the season when there was already a lot of other, more pressing content to write.

To remedy this and make sure I release a “best girls” post for the Summer 2018 season, I’ve decided to do it now, just over the halfway point of the season when new content to write about is lowest. However, because of this, I’m aware that a new “best” girl could be introduced later on in the season, but that’s simply a risk we’ll  have to take!

But if this is a “best girls” list, then why does the title say “worst?” Good question! You see, over the previous two seasons there were female characters who I actually considered to be “best girls,” but unfortunately this season has been extremely lacking.

This means that while these girls on this list are pretty decent, they’re nowhere near the true “best girl” category if you compared them to characters from other seasons. I mean, really, can any girl from this season compete with the likes of Shimarin from Laid-Back Camp?

One final note before I begin is that each anime of the season can only have one girl on this list. This may seem odd since then the choices may be skewed, but I think it’s a lot more exciting than having me pick the entire cast of just one anime.

5. Karen Kurutsu

Karen Kurutsu from the anime Island
Karen Kurutsu

In fifth place we have Karen Kurutsu from the anime Island. I’m not going to pretend like Island is a great anime, or that Karen is even a great character, but she does have one important trait which is the sole reason she made it onto this list, she’s a tsundere.

But not only is she a tsundere, she’s the most stereotypical trope tsundere there is. I mean, look at her, she even has blonde twin tails, the sign of a true tsundere. Now, I get it, a stereotypical tsundere isn’t all that special, but like I said, this season doesn’t really have much to offer.

Some fun facts about Karen are that she’s the daughter of the island’s mayor, and her dream is to leave the island. I know, those facts aren’t very fun, but I’m trying my best to make her seem like a character who isn’t just a cardboard cutout with “tsundere” written on the front.

Honestly, if you want a blonde, twin tailed tsundere character done right, just go watch one of my favorite anime, Saekano. Eriri Spencer is basically everything Karen should have been, but isn’t, and she’s not even the best character in that series either.

4. Riko Izumi

Riko Izumi from the anime Hanebado!
Riko Izumi

Fourth place belongs to Riko Izumi from the anime Hanebado! So, Riko doesn’t really have too much going on for her other than the fact that I enjoy her ponytail, but let’s look at a few of her other traits and pretend like they make her a good character anyway.

She’s kind of like the mom-friend who has to take care of all the other girls on her badminton team. While this is a bit of a trope, what I did like about her was that she doesn’t solely deal with the problems of her teammates. That’s right, she has problems of her own which she needs to work through which makes her a more realistic character.

Also, the fact that she’s not a main character means that she’s able to actually fail at things, which adds to her realism. Sure, protagonists can fail, but typically their failures are just used to further their character development so they can overcome some obstacle in the end.

The protagonists almost always win in the end, but that’s just not how real life works. Riko is a great example of a character who shows that failure is something everyone has to deal with at some point in their life, and that it’s possible to move on afterwards.

3. Haruka Oozora

Haruka Oozora from the anime Harukana Receive
Haruka Oozora

Speaking of protagonists, Haruka Oozora of Harukana Receive is the third girl on my list. Design-wise, she doesn’t really have anything too special going on other than that she was clearly designed as a moe character.

So if her design isn’t all that unique, what makes her so good? Her personality. However, despite her personality being her main selling point, even that isn’t all that unique.

She has an extremely outgoing personality, much like other female protagonists like Akko from Little Witch Academia or Honoka from Love Live! It’s simply the fact that she’s the only character I could think of who has this sort of personality that got her onto this list at all.

Finally, as a bonus, she does wear a swimsuit for most of the anime so I suppose you could argue that she should get extra points solely based on that.

2. Minori Nanahashi

Minori Nanahashi from the anime One Room Second Season
Minori Nanahashi

Minori Nanahashi is the second main character of this list, but is only the main character of her specific arc, not the entire One Room series. However, despite being a main character for only four episodes, she’s still better than Haruka.

Not only is she only the main character for four episodes, but she’s only a character at all for four episodes, and the episodes are only six minutes long. So if she has so little screen time, how can she be considered such a good character?

You see, what makes Minori so good is that she knows exactly what she wants, and she’s not afraid to go after it. She knows she wants to run her family’s bathhouse when she’s older, and she knows that she can’t do it alone, but that’s not going to stop her.

She also apparently likes us, the viewer and protagonist, and is seamlessly able to tie that into her dream of running the bathhouse in the future. She is, in a word, smooth.

Minori also has the second best character design of all the characters this season. Her design isn’t overly complex, but it’s still very aesthetically pleasing.

One last thing I need to mention before moving on to the #1 girl of the season is that the third and final girl of One Room Second Season has yet to be introduced to us, but I’ve seen her character design and she may be able to give Minori a run for her money.

1. Linnea

Linnea from the anime The Master of Ragnarok and Blesser of Einherjar
Linnea

Linnea, from The Master of Ragnarok and Blesser of Einherjar, comes in first place on the list. I’m not going to sugarcoat it, this anime is bad, but it did bless us with one good thing, Linnea.

Now, there are definitely bad things about her character, but I’m going to pretend I don’t notice those and solely focus on the good things for the sake of this list. So what exactly does she have going for her that makes her a better girl than the previous girls?

For starters, she has pink hair. That’s right, there’s so little going on with the girls on this list that I’ve resorted to hair color in order to rank them. But seriously, if you’ve read a decent amount of my blog posts you may have realized that I have an affinity for pink-haired characters, the most notable being Sakura Haruno from Naruto.

Besides just the color of her hair, Linnea probably has my favorite character design of the season. Her overall color scheme of pink, green and gold, her pigtails, her giant bow on the front of her dress, everything about her design just appeals to me.

But Linnea isn’t just a well-designed character, she’s actually useful as well, being one of the few characters who appears to be highly educated. If Linnea were in a better anime, she could have some real potential as a true “best girl.”

Conclusion

I know what some of you are probably thinking, “how did none of the girls from How Not to Summon a Demon Lord make the list?” Well you see, as much as I’ve been enjoying that anime, none of the girls in it really feel all that special to me.

I get that some of them are good, but I really think that the issue is that they’re all about the same level of “pretty good,” with none of them being clearly above the rest. Because of this, even someone like Karen from Island can make the list above them simply because she clearly stands above the rest of the girls in her respective anime.

At this point I’d also like to mention that there was another girl who I thought was going to be on this list from the first moment I saw her, but unfortunately that didn’t come to pass. Nifa from Attack on Titan season 3 had the potential to be a real “best girl.”

Sadly, she only had about 30 seconds of screen time before she was killed off in the first episode. And no, that’s not a spoiler since she ended up being little more than a background character who was, surprisingly, named.

So who are your favorite female characters from the Summer 2018 season so far? Did any of your picks make my list? Let me know in the comments below this post, and if you found this content enjoyable, click the like button if you want to see more of it in the future.

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Summer 2018 Week 7

Summer 2018 Week 7

Island

We’re officially over half way through the Summer 2018 anime season, and unfortunately we have to start this second half of the season off by seeing Setsuna and Rinne acting like a real couple. Gross, get a room, you two. Luckily, Karen saves the day by kicking Setsuna in the head.

Setsuna then takes Rinne to get some shaved ice, but has to leave her there with the old lady who runs the shop while he goes to the hospital to pick up her Soot Blight Syndrome medication. The old lady mentions to Rinne how she and Setsuna used to always come to her shop together years ago.

This comes as a surprise to both Rinne and us, the viewers, because we know that Setsuna only recently washed up on the island. Switching back over to Setsuna at the hospital, we learn that Rinne is actually 23 years old, despite her appearance, and that she too washed up on the beach only recently.

However, unlike Setsuna who doesn’t appear to have originated from the island, Rinne actually went missing in the ocean five years prior and has no memory of that period. That is, until she was reminded of her past by the old shaved ice lady.

Rinne remembers waking up on a mysterious island with the real Setsuna after the two of them fell into the ocean. Over the years they spent on the island, Setsuna appears to have gone crazy, but then builds a one-person boat for Rinne to escape with, which she does.

After remembering all of this, Rinne does a complete 180 from her stance in the previous episode and decides she needs to throw herself into the ocean because she can’t live with the fact that she left the real Setsuna to die on that island alone.

However, in the end it seems that instead of throwing herself into the ocean, she steals a boat instead in hopes of making her way back to the mysterious island she left the real Setsuna on. This island is currently visible, as it is every time there’s a bad storm.

Hanebado!

The episode starts off with a match between Hanesaki and another girl whose name is Satomi. Unsurprisingly, Hanesaki destroys Satomi without even the slightest hint of remorse. It seems that she’s back to being the soulless badminton player she used to be.

Kaoruko, the girl with the pink twin tails, is Hanesaki’s next opponent and teammate of Satomi. In the first half of their match, Hanesaki continues her dominant streak and easily takes the lead. She then continues to win her first game against Kaoruko with ease.

At this point I figured Kaoruko was going to make some sort of comeback and we were going to see a game three, but surprisingly this wasn’t the case. Hanesaki continues on to defeat Kaoruko in game two, and then proceeds to taunt her afterwards. Hanesaki, you savage.

Not much else happened in this episode besides these two fairly quick matches. We saw some slight character development from Kaoruko after she was defeated, but overall I think her time in this series is pretty much over so that development doesn’t really matter.

The only two girls left from “our” team are Hanesaki and Aragaki. Will they both face each other in the finals or will one of them (probably Aragaki) get knocked out of the tournament before then?

Attack on Titan Season 3

We start off following two of Annie’s fellow Military Police as they patrol a forest and look for signs of the Scout Regiment on the run. You may recall these two characters from the first season of the series, Marlo and Hitch (I’m pretty sure their names were mentioned back then).

After Armin uses himself as bait, Marlo and Hitch are captured by Levi and Mikasa, and taken back to where a few other Scouts are waiting for them in order to start interrogations. It’s around this time that we learn the special gear the Interior Police (Kenny’s group) is made for killing humans, not titans.

Swapping over to Hange, we see her capture Flegel Reeves, the son of Boss Reeves who helped the Scouts earlier in the season. Flegel reveals that the Interior Police are after him because he knows the truth about his father’s murder; that it wasn’t the Scouts.

Back over to the main Scout gang, Marlo and Hitch decide to betray the Military Police and help the Scouts after being tested by Jean to see if they could be trusted. This makes sense for Marlo since he was a righteous soldier who wanted to change the Military Police from the inside.

While one could argue that it doesn’t make sense for Hitch’s character, however, I would say that it still does, although not for the same reason as Marlo. For Hitch, helping the scouts is merely her deciding that she has a better chance of survival if she goes along with them.

After having Marlo and Hitch return to their station before the Military Police get suspicious of their disappearance, Levi and the gang capture a member of the Interior police to interrogate next.

Meanwhile, Flegel Reeves is used as bait to capture more Interior Police thanks to Hange. These Interior Police are tricked into admitting to the murder of Boss Reeves in front of a large number of civilians who were hiding nearby. After this, Flegel takes on the role of the next “Boss.”

Moving back over to Levi’s squad, he and the rest of the gang learn from the Interior Police member they captured that Kenny’s last name is actually Ackerman. Apparently Levi didn’t know this, but you would assume he did since his last name is also Ackerman and he was raised by Kenny.

Perhaps Kenny is the one related to Mikasa, not Levi, and Levi’s last name was simply given to him by Kenny without his knowledge. I don’t know, but this is getting a bit complicated now that we have three Ackermans, none of whom really know each other.

At the very end of the episode, former Commander Erwin is brought before the “King” for his trial. Will he finally meet his end here now that he’s appointed Hange as the new Commander of the Scouts?

One Room Second Season

Last week our new girl, Minori Nanahashi, mentioned that we were going to take a bath with her in the bathhouse run by her family. This week, however, we learned that we actually aren’t going to do that. I had been mentally preparing for the past week for nothing.

Honestly, I wouldn’t really mind that we didn’t get a public bath episode this week considering we already had one with the previous girl, Yui, but I think it would have been better than what we ended up getting. That’s right, it’s time for the also obligatory Summer festival episode!

So, as you might expect from this episode, we go to a festival with Minori and she wears a Yukata because she’s a classy girl. Honestly, she’s already a better girl than Yui so I’m glad we apparently ditched Yui after basically proposing to her.

After the festival ends, we play with some small fireworks and Minori reminisces about her past.

Minori Nanahashi from the anime One Room Second Season
Minori Nanahashi

Overlord III

This week we were introduced to a new region as well as a large number of new characters. Seriously, Overlord already has such a large cast, why did we need to be introduced to like 25+ new characters this episode? I really don’t think it’s necessary.

The Empire is the new region we’ve now entered. It’s located next to the Kingdom we’ve been in for the rest of the series, and has been mentioned a number of times previously, but our protagonist, Momonga, has finally traveled there.

Some of the new characters we’re introduced to include members of the Ministry of Magic (not from Harry Potter), the Emperor, his advisers, his knights, and some Workers, who are essentially mercenary adventurers who aren’t part of the Adventurer’s Guild.

It appears that a significant number of Workers from the Empire have been hired to explore the ruins of a tomb, which I can only assume will turn out to be the Great Tomb of Nazarick. While this wasn’t said, I find it highly likely that Momonga was actually the one who placed the request in for this exploration.

Speaking of Momonga, he’s going with the Workers as their bodyguard in his Adventurer Momon persona. This is likely so he can observe them while likely using them as his pawns at the same time. Maybe he’ll rescue them to make himself look better, or maybe he’ll let them all die, who knows?

Going back to my point about there being too many characters in this series, I barely know any of the characters’ names and yet more keep being added just about every episode. At some point there are simply going to be too many characters for me to even care about individuals.

How Not to Summon a Demon Lord

In other MMORPG isekai news, How Not to Summon a Demon Lord starts off the episode with a flashback to Diablo’s childhood in which he’s getting bullied by other children who he thought were his friends. This is apparently the reason why he has interpersonal issues.

Prince Keera of the Elves comes back to the inn Diablo and his companions are staying at and plays his magical flute once again to make Shera decide to leave with him while Rem and Alicia are out. Keera apparently wants his sister, Shera, to bear his children.

Shera leaving forces Diablo to remember his childhood trauma once again. Because of this, he becomes depressed and partially believes that Shera, and the others, were never actually his friends, but were simply keeping up appearances and pretending to like him.

Although Diablo wasn’t originally going to save Shera from Keera, Rem comes back and gives him a pep talk about how they can’t just leave their friend alone while she’s in danger. This seems to be enough to remind Diablo of how much he likes adventuring with his companions, and so he decides to help out.

After easily defeating the Elven army protecting Keera’s camp, Diablo confronts the prince and they each try to prove that Shera should stay with them. Keera uses the power of the flute to make Shera say she wants to be with him, but Diablo uses the power of the enslavement collar to make Shera say how she really feels.

Obviously Shera ends up choosing Diablo and Rem over Keera, because this is anime, so the power of friendship always wins. Unable to accept this betrayal, Keera summons a Hydra which is apparently the Elves’ trump card, and Diablo will have to fight it next episode.

I really hope he one-shots the Hydra just to prove a point to Keera.

Harukana Receive

Harukana Receive had an unfortunate beginning this week. The episode starts off with a bad CGI idol OP. It was basically like watching a low-budget version of a Love Live! OP, but in an anime about volleyball instead of idols. Seriously, the 3D model looked terrible.

Aside from that train wreck of an OP, the rest of the episode was fairly decent as expected. I don’t think I’ll have to lower the rating simply because of the OP, but any chance the series had of going up in rating was just thrown out the window.

The Beach Volleyball Club officially finds its fifth member this week! Akari Ooshiro, a wannabe idol and former child-star (in a commercial), decides she wants to play beach volleyball. However, everything isn’t quite what it seems.

She doesn’t actually care about beach volleyball at all. Instead, she simply thinks that playing beach volleyball with an attractive, highly skilled partner is a great way to get the exposure she needs to become an idol. To this end, she asks both Emily and Claire to pair up with her, but they both refuse.

Akari then gets upset and runs away from the club because they ruined her dreams of quickly becoming a popular idol. Haruka and Kanata later discover that although Akari is known locally as a celebrity, she actually has no friends because everyone thinks she doesn’t want any.

In order to get her to join the Beach Volleyball Club, Kanata challenges Akari to a one on one match. All Akari has to do is score a single point against Kanata, but if she can’t, she has to join the club. As expected, Kanata wins and Akari joins the club as the fifth member.

This is important, because to be an official club you need at least five members. Up until this point, the Beach Volleyball Club has been considered a faction of the Volleyball Club instead of an official club of its own.

However, I’m not entirely sure how this is going to work out for the dynamic of the club. Beach volleyball is played in pairs, and as a fifth wheel, Akari doesn’t have a partner to play with. Does this mean we’ll be getting another new girl, or is she going to be the club manager instead?

At the end of the episode we meet Emily and Claire’s mother. I forget her name, but I’m pretty sure she’s a successful former beach volleyball player and current coach, so she’ll likely be training the girls for their next tournament.

Angels of Death

Zack is bleeding out on the floor due to stabbing himself with his own scythe on the previous floor last episode. You know what that means, Rachel is going off on her own this time, which is good, because I was getting tired of hearing Zack’s laugh.

She decides that she needs to explore the floor in order to find some medicine for Zack, because I guess medicine is what you give someone who has a giant gash in their stomach, not, you know, bandages which he already has all over as a choice of clothing.

This floor appears to be the final floor of the series even though we’re only halfway done and it’s only floor B2, not even B1 or the ground floor. Why do I think that? Well, dear reader, there are a number of reasons.

For one, it’s on this floor that we meet the person who appears to be the “final boss” of the anime. I say this because he’s featured prominently on the cover art and generally looks like a pretty bad dude.

However, what happens during this episode and what’s set up to happen throughout the rest of the series in this episode also hint at my hypothesis being correct, so let’s get into it.

For the first part of the episode, Rachel is either extremely high, or this series suddenly changed from the thriller genre to the supernatural genre. I’m hoping for and expecting the former, because I don’t think I could deal with the premise of this anime getting any stupider by adding magic.

After meeting the resident of the floor, a church pastor, Rachel is told by him that the medicine she seeks is back down on Danny’s floor. Danny, for those who don’t remember, was the mad scientist from the floor just above Zack’s.

That means that Rachel has to make her way back down the floors which she and Zack just spent so much effort climbing out of. However, because it’s for Zack, Rachel decides it’s worth the risk. I still don’t really think their relationship makes much sense.

After learning that Rachel is going back down to Danny’s floor, Zack asks her to go one floor further down and grab a knife that was left in his old room. The significance of this knife hasn’t yet been revealed, but it’s likely something Zack had from when he was back in the orphanage.

However, getting all the way back down there isn’t going to be easy. Rachel no longer has Zack to help her, because he’s too injured to move, and she has to go back through each floor individually once again. That’s right, there’s no elevator that goes all the way down.

To make matters worse, there are new traps and puzzles set up in each floor. The episode ends with Rachel making her way through Cathy’s prison floor, but this time she needs to turn the power for the elevator back on while also evading the escaped, zombie-like prisoners.

Cells at Work!

Killer T Cell, White Blood Cell, and NK Cell all work together, despite their differences, to take down the Cancer Cell. However, even the three of them together aren’t powerful enough to take him down, and it’s up to Red Blood Cell to come to the rescue.

While the Red Blood Cells were delivering a massive amount of nutrients to the location in which the Cancer Cells were living, Red Blood Cell tells Macrophage that there’s something strange going on. This in turn leads to a whole army of Immune Cells coming to the rescue.

Because of the scale of the battle and the high stakes, this episode felt more like a final episode than one that should be in the middle of the season, but I guess since it’s a mostly episodic series it doesn’t really matter.

The Cancer Cells were portrayed as simply misunderstood, but not necessarily evil. That said, they’re still extremely damaging to the body and so must be destroyed. White Blood Cell even comments on the fact that although they’re enemies, they’re all still cells just doing their jobs.

The Master of Ragnarok & Blesser of Einherjar

We start off with a flashback to when Yuuto was made patriarch of the Wolf Clan. This appears to have happened roughly one year after he was transported to the parallel world, and one year has passed between then and the current place in the series.

He was chosen over the son of the previous patriarch for some ungodly reason. Being mad about this, the son of the previous patriarch lashed out at Yuuto with a sword, but ended up killing his father instead, and then fleeing. He was also the brother of Felicia.

Since then, the disgraced son of the former Wolf Clan patriarch has become the patriarch of the Panther Clan and has vowed to destroy the Wolf. His rune allows him to copy technology (because I guess you need magic to do that) and so his army uses stolen Wolf Clan technology.

He and his Panther Clan are outsmarted and beaten by Yuuto and his men on the battlefield. The key difference between their two armies was that since all the Panther Clan can do is copy technology, they’re always one step behind. That, and Yuuto knew how he’d react to being baited.

Despite being defeated, I don’t remember the Panther Clan being subjugated by the Wolf at any point at the end of the episode, so it’s likely that they’ll come back as a future enemy. There still needs to be some conclusion to the arc involving Yuuto, Felicia, and the Panther patriarch.

Al and Chris from the anime The Master of Ragnarok & Blesser of Einherjar
Al and Chris

Conclusion

That’s it for the seventh week of the Summer 2018 anime season. If you liked this post, leave a like down below. And if you have something to comment, leave a comment down below as well. I know, those aren’t very self-explanatory.

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