Mob Psycho 100 II #5 – It takes six months of subjective time for Mogami to even start breaking Mob’s spirit. Even then, only the tiniest crack appears before Dimple turns up to remind him that this isn’t the real world. And then Mob merely has to fight his way out by defeating Mogami’s entire collection of malevolent ghosts.
So we’re in for another visual feast as Mob and the ghosts let loose and pulverize an entire imaginary world. Animation talent is spread very thin with the amount of anime being produced these days, but some weeks this show seems to have collected all the cream of the crop.
Mob may be a fool from a certain angle, namely Reigen’s and Dimple’s, but he’s the sort of fool that wins over even them. When it is laid out for him that it is only extremely good luck in friends in family that grants him the privilege of acting like the world is basically good, he chooses to embrace that privilege and put it to the best use he can. He may have already started with Asagiri. The next challenge lining up for him looks like his would-be cult.
(Crunchyroll — bilibili — Hami Video — LiTV)
kemurikusa. #4 – Moving along to the next island, the party faces a Nushi, the most feared kind of Red Bug. Luckily this coincides with Wakaba starting to make himself truly useful, and by pooling everyone’s skills it is possible to take the monster down.
The half-bridge, cut off in mid-air, suggests that this isn’t just a ruined landscape they’re traversing, but one where random pieces have been plucked from their context and jammed together. That would mean that Wakaba and the sisters aren’t in our world, but bits and pieces of ours have made it to somewhere else. So where?
Several pieces of information come together about kemurikusa this week. The Rinas’ duplication ability is due to a pink variety (momo = peach). Blue generates a shield when wielded by Wakaba, and orange grants administrative privileges to the robots when they aren’t infected by the red kind. The orange leaf also briefly displays text, not translated in the English subtitles: Kono sekai no shikumi ni tsuite. Part of that means “the structure of the world”, but there’s a verb with several possible definitions. So it could be a manual, or a warning, or something else entirely.
Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka #4 – With Nozomi secured in their hideout, the Babel Brigade gets busy making a torture video to send to her father. After some stock messing about with red-hot objects, the most horrible, evil thing that springs to the author’s mind to show just how depraved the captors are is… waterboarding. Yes, fellow Americans, that is now the international symbol of ultimate despicability.
But the rescue mission shows up sooner than expected, and Nozomi is freed, though likely with lingering physical and psychological wounds. If Sayako is able to face her fears head-on, Nozomi is probably going to be set up to show a contrasting reaction.
The newly introduced members of the Babel Brigade are Russians. Does that mean that’s where their headquarters is, or will it turn out to be a multinational organization using all sorts of world mythology? One of the surviving magical girls appears to be Russian, but she doesn’t seem to be involved at all. Still, you can’t help thinking that one of the old crew might have gone bad…
(Crunchyroll — AnimeLab — Wakanim — Hami Video — LiTV)
Dororo #5 – Regaining his body parts is causing Hyakkimaru nothing but trouble now. His new senses distract him so badly that he’s injured by his next opponent and has to hide somewhere and heal up. This gives him a chance to start finding something he does like about being able to hear, but when he fights the next demon he starts moving back in the direction he came.
Now that Hyakkimaru has lost part of his leg fair and square, it would be disappointing if it were to get magically healed again. That doesn’t seem very likely at the moment, but you never know. I also hope the narrative doesn’t go for a conclusion of “he was better when he was a magical cripple”. I’d like to see him learning to live with the body that he has at the end of his adventures.
Dororo being a pretty experienced kid when it comes to the seedier side of life, it’s surprising that he doesn’t figure out what Mio’s mysterious night-shift job is. Though he looks shocked, prostitution in historical Japan was never looked on as negatively as in Europe. At the time Dororo takes place, prostitutes were controlled more and more by an organized system of male pimps, which eventually evolved into a form of slavery, but the trade itself was not seen as inherently immoral.
The Promised Neverland #4 – Paranoia reigns supreme at Grace Field House. Isabella and Krone are competing against each other to find out what the kids are up to. Emma, Norman, and Ray feel like they need to expand their conspiracy, but realize that the more people know what’s happening, the higher the likelihood they’ll have a mole. And their fears are well-justified, because the spy reporting to Isabella turns out to be…
…not that big a surprise, really. Not after all the shots we’ve had since the beginning of the show of Ray glaring ominiously. Especially not after a point is made of not showing who slipped the note to Isabella. Ray has already suggested why he might have chosen to be a traitor. The main thing to wonder about at this point is whether he has a particular reason for choosing to implicate Don rather than Gilda.
(Crunchyroll — Funimation — HIDIVE — AnimeLab — Hulu — Wakanim — VVVVID — Aniplus Asia — bilibili)
