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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