Attack on Titan #68 – Escaping back home for now, the Paradisians have a chance to reflect on how wanting to live openly and in peace has somehow led to them building military technology they never dreamed of previously, running a POW camp, and now having a massive civilian body count on their consciences.
Oh, and the death of one of their most beloved comrades. We get a chance to see now that Sasha was still her old goofy self outside of combat, and she even had a nice young man waiting for her back home. The flashback structure works particularly well here, as this extra focus on Sasha beforehand would have been a great big warning flag that she was going to die soon.
All this has been because Zeke Jaeger has a plan. He found allies among Marley’s conscripts, arranged for them to be on the first scouting expedition to Paradis, and for three years they’ve been building the Paradisians up to where they can briefly take on a modern military. A huge amount of trust has been placed in Zeke, so his agents must have been very convincing.
And the Paradisians are desperate. They can’t see any way forward except to fight to secure their future existence. They’re especially desperate now, since approximately every other country in the world now knows that they’ve broken their containment. Zeke’s plan had better work.
(Crunchyroll — AnimeLab — Wakanim — Anime on Demand — Shahiid Anime — Funimation)
Higurashi: When They Cry – GOU #18 – Once upon a time loop, the curse of Oyashiro was lifted. The leading families of the village declared that the dam protests were over and done with, and all grudges should be released. Even the sufferers of Hinamizawa Syndrome went into spontaneous remission. But the onward march of time meant change, and not everyone enjoys that…
Satoko has survived the death of her parents, the disappearance of her brother, and abuse at the hands of her uncle and aunt. Hinamizawa is her sanctuary, where she has friends who care about her and games she can almost always win. Now she sees that sanctuary crumbling. First Mion’s gone, and now Rika wants to take her on a leap into the unknown.
So it’s easy to see how Satoko doesn’t find this development as wonderful as Rika wants it to be. Rika intends for them to stay together, but Satoko, from what we’ve seen the last couple weeks, wants to cling to Hinamizawa itself. The next question is, how did she find the power to start enforcing that wish?
(Funimation — AnimeLab — Wakanim — Ani-One)
Otherside Picnic #6 – Sorawo and Toriko are treated like guests by the stranded Marines, but they quickly decide they need to be on their way. Not only are the Marines likely to freak out if their odd powers become known, it’s a covert unit which has probably been Up To Something. Plus they are not exactly Uncle Sam’s best and brightest, as Sorawo and Toriko manage to do more damage to the nameless horrors in one evening before escaping than the whole unit has done in two months.
Also under “not the finest the Corps has ever produced”: Lieutenant Drake advising the girls not to use their phones, but forgetting to add that it’s because any phone calls are likely to damage their sanity and attract the attention of the aforementioned horrors. But it certainly makes their visit a whole lot more interesting.
First, there’s the scrambled communication between the Otherside and our world. Is it the result of a man-in-the-middle attack from alien forces trying imitate humans again, or is there some kind of weird semantic interference which occurs as a natural phenomenon? That would also explain why the waiter started sounding odd last week as the girls began to slip toward the Otherside.
After that, I believe Sorawo killed the Egyptian goddess Hathor. Last week, we had a Celtic deity, and now this. Again, the question is, were those deities manifestations of the Otherside to begin with, or is the Otherside drawing on pre-existing human beliefs?
(Funimation — AnimeLab — Wakanim — Aniverse — Bahamut Anime Crazy)
Wonder Egg Priority #5 – Ai has a friend group now. They all come over to her house for cake, they go on Egg shopping trips together, and they talk about what brought them to this point. But they all decide they need to keep fighting separately.
Wonder Egg Priority is starting to de-emphasize its fight scenes, showing that it wants to be something more than a fighting show. Instead, the focus is now on why the girls all keep fighting. They have different reasons: Neiru claims she’s doing it to stop the pain, Rika and Momoe are acting out of different sorts of guilt, and Ai just wants to know why.
That’s the biggest revelation in this episode, that Ai doesn’t actually know why Koito killed herself. There were certainly things dragging Koito down, but Ai doesn’t seem to think they fully explain it. And it may or may not actually have anything to do with Mr. Sawaki, though at the least he seems to have had some trouble with appropriate teacher-student boundaries.
(Funimation — AnimeLab — Wakanim — bilibili)
Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- #43 – In Emilia’s memories, Geuse, Fortuna, and everyone Emilia knows fight to keep the power that has invaded the forest from reaching her. Outside the mausoleum, Shima continues her story of the days when Echidna was alive and in residence. Presumably these narratives will intersect at some point but this is not that week.
Some of the witches we’ve seen along the way seem to have been named at random, but Pandora lives up to her name very well as she specializes in getting people to open things that should not be opened. First it’s Geuse with his box of evil powers, which goes some ways toward explaining how he developed in the ranting green guy he was in Subaru’s time. Next, Emilia and the door in the meadow which almost certainly has Bad Stuff lurking on the other side of it?
And in the meantime, we’ve also learned that Roswaal and Beatrice are connected with Echidna and have been for a very long time. Even though Echidna is technically dead and only lingering as a spirit in the mausoleum, her plans are still playing out in the world and it’s possible that she is the one ultimately behind the trap Subaru is trying to find his way out of.
(Crunchyroll — Animate Gamer — bilibili)
