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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