Granbelm #8 – Emerging from the battle world, Shingetsu, Mangetsu, and Kuon discover that not only has Anna lost, she’s been completely retconned out of existence and replaced with Rosa. Nene looks into it, but the only way a spell that momentous could be worked and the traces covered up would be if someone were walking around with all the magic that has been removed from the world, and that would be— oh, hey, look, someone walking around with all the magic that has been removed from the world!
The question is, why did this happen to Anna, when all the other girls who lost were fine afterwards? If Mangetsu was part of how it happened, then it may have arisen unconsciously from a desire to help Shingetsu. It’s either that, or Anna’s overload blew such a big hole in reality that the power which created Mangetsu was only able to patch things up this way.
How much of this does Suishō know? She’s very confident about taunting Mangetsu that she “has nothing”, so either Suishō knows everything about what’s going on, or she’s completely clueless about Mangetsu’s origins.
With Granbelm firing on all cylinders the way it’s been the last few weeks, it is extremely unfortunate that it takes a sharp turn into homophobia here. Making the villain into a lesbian adds nothing to the story; likewise, it would have been fine for Mangetsu and Shingetsu to express their concern for each other without the added layer of But Not Like That.
Dr. Stone #8 – Senkū has no idea what Ruri’s illness is, so the plan is to make the broadest-spectrum antibiotic possible and hope it helps. Attempts to work toward it highlight the fact that the sorcerers of science desperately need more people one their side, leading to a detour into kitchen science.
Along the way, Senkū gets to drop more interesting science facts. Yay, an author remembered axial precession for once! Boo, he forgot about magnetic declination! Or else that’s something being saved for later, as the business about the pole star was set up by Senkū’s sextant troubles.
Having discovered that the way to the village’s heart is through its stomach, Senkū may have solved one problem only to introduce another, in the form of needing to keep the culinary innovations coming. This might not solve his manpower problem after all.
(Crunchyroll — Funimation — Animate Gamer — bilibili)
The Ones Within #8 – In order to goose the ratings, it is decreed that there will be a hot springs episode full of awkward and suggestive hijinks. I mean the ratings of the game stream, but it might as well be the show, too.
Like the interlude in episode 2, there is some meta-commentary in here about media, but it’s not strong enough to excuse the show indulging itself. On the plus side, Karin finally gets a chance to stand up for herself and demonstrate abilities of some sort.
It becomes easy to see here that Akatsuki, Yuzu, and Mr. Paca are all working together to force developments that the rest of the group aren’t interested in. And Kaikoku seems to have found the final proof that something is up, though now he’s stuck in the White Room, the others will have to put the pieces together themselves. Assuming Akatsuki doesn’t find the reports himself first (doesn’t it look like the game he’s playing is about searching Kaikoku’s room)?
Once again, why is this material inside the game in the first place? Are we heading for some kind of weird reverse ending where it turns out the “real world” was the game all along? Are we going to get back to asking what (or who) the chromosomes belong to, and is there any way of coming up with an explanation at this point that isn’t going to sound completely ridiculous?
(Funimation — Hulu — AnimeLab — ADN — bilibili)
