Anime roundup 9/6/2013: Always Look On the Bright Side of Life

Gatchaman-8 Gatchaman Crowds #8 – Let’s hear it for O.D., who is half alien, grew up on another planet, saw it destroyed through the machinations of Berg-Katze, has an unrequited crush on Hajime’s friend the fire chief, and still manages to be the second most cheerful person on the team.

Now the Gatchaman squad faces its opponents on a new battlefield: public relations! As silly as it may have seemed a couple episodes ago, it’s definitely where they need to go now. With X now taking orders from Berg-Katze, the enemy is now every ordinary person willing to trust GALAX the next time it suggests a fun game. Simply brawling and blowing stuff up isn’t going to be the answer.

Which may be the point this series was trying to make from the beginning, although I expect we’ll still be getting more fireworks along the way, and not just from the badguy. O.D.’s power has been hinted at too many times now for him not to have to use it at some point.

DayBreak-9 Day Break Illusion #9 – So when Luna said that her older sister just stays at home, what she actually meant was that her sister vanished mysteriously one day and none of her other relatives particularly cared. Yes, that could do some things to your self-confidence.

Back home, wherever that is, it appears her only ally is her trusted butler, until Akari shows up, having had a mysterious change of heart that can only mean that yes, this is where we get the payoff for all the setup about Luna being outside Akari’s innermost circle.

It’s not really clear yet why Cerebran bothered to target Luna when she was already out of the way. Either it just looked like fun, or he’s following the unwritten rule of villainy that he has to overwhelm each of the hero’s sidekicks before he can attack her directly.

Eccentric-9 The Eccentric Family #9 – Snow, colored lights, and fried chicken– yes, it’s Christmastime in Japan!

Fried chicken? Yes, I’m afraid so. The origin of the tradition is unclear, but KFC was happy to encourage it with nationwide advertising in the mid-1970s, and now a bucket of fried chicken is a traditional Christmas family meal.

Despite Kaisei headlining this episode, we didn’t learn much about her. On the other hand, there was a wealth of information in that family tree that popped up in the introduction. Start, for instance, with tanuki society apparently being matrilineal, as both ichiro and un have taken the family names of their wives (who are listed there as simply “Mother from Shimogamo” and “Mother from Ebisugawa” respectively).

With ichiro’s sons lined up on the right side there, even if you don’t read Japanese, you can still see that there was a theme of some sort to naming them. All of them start with the kanji 矢 (“arrow”), followed by a number, followed by a counting suffix which is used to denote sons.

On Sōun’s side, you can see that he used a similar method. Kinkaku and Ginkaku (roughly, “gold palace” and “silver palace”) have been going by nicknames. But the most interesting thing is that they, the only sons Sōun seems to have, are actually #2 and #3.

Sooooo… what happened to son #1? Seems like the Shimogamo clan aren’t the only ones with some awkward family business that might come up at the election next time.

HxH-94 Hunter x Hunter #94 – Hooray for Killua, finally freeing himself from his brother’s control! Hooray for Palm, selecting a slightly less inappropriate crush! I wonder sometimes if Gon ever notices the way the universe quietly rearranges itself for his benefit, or if he’ll always be wondering what happened.

Since the narrator has gotten it wrong twice now, it falls to this reviewer to point out an embarrassing continuity slip-up: Gon was 12 when he passed the Hunter Exam way back in the first story arc, and it’s been the better part of two years (at least) in story time since then. So he’s probably 14 now, not that it makes Palm much less creepy about pursuing him, but let us get these things right.

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1 Comment

  1. That’s a good catch on The Eccentric Family. After this week’s episode (#10) I was really confused how this show was going to go 13 episodes. This is probably how. I’m really excited for it, though. Between that and Gatchaman, there are two excellent shows going now, which is fantastic. And a bunch of pretty decent ones, too.

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