Anime roundup 9/23/2021: Checking Out

Peach Boy Riverside finale – Sally’s plan to make peace with the latest ogres runs into a little snag when one of them is not the least bit interested in peace, just in lecturing her why it isn’t possible. Sally is willing to be flexible about her goals, though; anyone who really, really wants to fight can have a fight. Thus Juki is destroyed, Millia is injured badly enough to lose her memory and be ready to give up when faced by a second ogre-hunter, and Sally can at least celebrate getting the elves and lizardfolk to not kill each other.

Juki has an interesting story about the ogres being made, not born, and their raw material being human hatred. We did see that Juseline had created Sōmenki and another ogre, but we also know at least one ogre, Sumeragi, has a different origin. We’ve also seen that there are different ranks of ogre, so possibly some are created, some not?

It’s a question unlikely to be answered anytime soon, as this season has adapted most of the extant manga. The manga is published in a bimonthly magazine so new material is not coming quickly, though the collected volumes are being made available in English, if you want to see what there is of the story beyond this.

So, did director Ueda Shigeru make a good call, putting the episodes in the order they aired? I think he did; Frau is the best character and it was a good idea to introduce her straight away, and skipping ahead in episode 3 for how complicated the situation was going to get helped a lot in showing what the real themes of the series would be, and that it wasn’t going to stick with the standard, simplistic fantasy race relations that we got in episode 1.

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Sonny Boy #10 – Nozomi goes on a side quest with Asakaze, the fake Ms. Aki, and another student with a new power, while Nagara takes up Jhiday’s blackboard to figure out more of how Mizuho’s power works. Yet both wind up pointing to the same thing which needs to change in order for the drifting society to find its way out of stasis.

Fake Ms. Aki says they need to bring death into the world. That they do by removing War, who has reverted to looking like an ordinary student and seems to have used up his power. In the process they also lose Nozomi, who winds up fulfilling the Manic Pixie Dream Girl stereotype after all. She never finds her own answers, she just becomes a learning experience for Asakaze.

Meanwhile, Nagara’s discovery that Mizuho’s power is to prevent change leads to a much more poignant implication. She’s why everything destroyed on the island eventually repairs itself, and she can keep creatures from dying. It’s when you think about who in particular she would be staving off death for that you realize the last couple episodes may be very depressing.

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Higurashi: When They Cry – SOTSU #13 – Satoko continues torturing Rika until Rika finally agrees to give up her dream of leaving Hinamizawa forever. Meanwhile, Hanyū confronts Eua and gets nowhere.

I feel like we are all Hanyū, stuck watching an interminable wallow in grisly torture porn, regretting the decision we made to ever get involved in this. It was a mistake to watch. Making this series was a mistake. The entire franchise is a mistake. I feel terrible for every voice actor, animator, sound person, and so forth who has had to participate in it.

At least we’re finally back to Satoko being unmasked, and with two more weeks in the season, Higurashi could, in theory, show us some new material now. But I’m pretty sure at this point that it’s going to find a way to waste more time.

(FunimationWakanimBahamut Anime CrazyLaftel)


And where’s Magia Record? It only posted a recap episode this week, and should be back with us next week.

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