Forum - View topicArifureta - From Commonplace to World's Strongest (TV).
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smurky turkey
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We indeed got psychodrama this week. The latest dungeon is quite tricky in that it really tests your bonds. Said tests made for some fun/weird moments. I especially had to laugh due to a certain goblin. The dream sequence was pretty entertaining despite me usually not being a big fan of them.
One small thing I liked is that the show is mainly about Hajime and his crew and the episode made that abundantly clear. The tag along group is very much there for support (they even skipped that one guy being added back into the group). |
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Thesarum
 SubscriberPosts: 567 |
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This dungeon ain't nearly done yet. The whole crew is similarly in "perfect world" daydreams that they have to recognise as such to leave. We'll find some are better equipped for that task than others. And some kinda have to admit to themselves what those perfect worlds actually look like. How many we'll see adapted I don't know... I think probably a minimum of 3 because they're all important character development or explorations. For Hajime, his overwhelming drive is to return home but despite that he's developed strong connections in this world. So his perfect dream is that he never came to this world, but that even so Yue, Shea and Kaori remain close to him. He can't accept it as a freebie, but this is very much the future he is pursuing. Hajime shouting "Kiiick" as he booted Amanokawa into the trees was a stupid sort of hilarious, and the bond with Yue that works even when she's a mute goblin is both sweet and funny. (She's fairly taciturn at the best of times. 90% of their communication seem to consist entirely of them saying each others name and nothing else in the LN). Nobody needed that sort of bond to recognise Tio as the goblin enjoying being beaten a little too much though... |
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smurky turkey
Posts: 2868 |
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Well, we did not see any of the other dreams but they did allude to what they contained. Otherwise it was a wild episode with an aphrodisiac slime and attack of the cockroaches. Given the ending of the episode with bad CGI cockroach mutants and love and hate being seemingly flipped things are not done yet.
I have to give kudos to the show in regards to romance. Most of the characters and especially Hajime are very clear about their feelings. There is very little wishy washy unclarity. |
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Thesarum
Subscriber Posts: 567 |
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Yep, as it turned out the correct answer was "none". Bit of a shame we didn't get any glimpses into the various dream worlds. No Shizuku being a princess and getting swept off her feet by Prince Hajime, no Kouki actually being the hero of the story, and no Kaori getting her freak on. And we're not done with the testing of bonds just yet. I'd totally forgotten about the fan service aphrodisiac slime incident. Which I guess could have been far more fan-servicy. Tio appearing unaffected because she's entirely used to dealing with inappropriate pleasure is a decent joke. CGI roaches looked pretty terrible as you'd expect. The big ones perhaps a bit better (though the compositing was not good). Can our team still fight and pursue their objective when their emotions are inverted? Tune in next week to find out! |
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smurky turkey
Posts: 2868 |
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Hmmm, episode 8 was a bit of a weak one for me. Seeing Tio being the MVP of the episode was entertaining and the end is interesting but a lot of the episode was not that exciting with just a lot of roaches getting killed.
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Thesarum
Subscriber Posts: 567 |
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I vaguely feel this fight dragged a bit in the LN too? And the animation quality is rarely much better than "serviceable", so it isn't really quite up to making this big protracted battles interesting to watch. So yeah... Tio stepping up to be her true Black Dragon Guardian self is great though. While she's mostly played for laughs, and spends a lot of time indulging in her fetish play, it's always Tio that figures out the Liberators purpose with any labyrinth. The team can always depend on Tio when they need to. And today, with Hajine and Yue off engaging in their game of hate-flirt, the rest of the team needed to. Kouki. Still the useless idiot of the group. Think with your brain and not your ego for a change ya big poser. And now we have a compass that points to home... so they just need a means of travelling where it points. In the meantime, it's going to be super useful in finding all sorts of other things. 2/3 of the way into the cour... there's some wind-down from this labyrinth to get through (all RPG fans know that after completing a dungeon quest you gotta spend some time in camp upgrading your items and flirting with your companions, right?) which I think would bring us to the end of the current LN volume, but that's not going to see us to the end of the cour. So presumably we're going to race through the next one instead. |
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Thesarum
Subscriber Posts: 567 |
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Ep 9 is mostly a bit of down time for the crew. Shea finally makes a breakthrough (with a little assistance from Yue telling Hajime that he needs to make things clear and make Shea feel secure in her position) and Kaori and Tio mostly take this as encouragement. With the compass in hand and the promise of a route home, Hajime has softened a bit (just a tiny bit).
I'm a little sad that we lost the scene where (I guess LN spoilers?)spoiler[Hajime interrupts Shizuku's training session immediately post-labyrinth and spends some time totally rebuilding her katana (which is already a Hajime special of legendary artifact quality) and she sits and watches him work and admires his focus and skill, and he talks about how her respects her. He adds the ability for it to cut space-time, and people's souls, amongst other things. I like the Hajime-Shizuku relationship because it develops a lot more slowly and feels more natural than a lot of the girls that just throw themselves at him immediately upon meeting him on account of his sheer chuuni charisma, and that includes Shea and Yue really. ]. I guess the main candidate to swap for it would be Altina letting out her weird. But since that's the inciting incident for the Shea stuff, it'd be difficult. Aaand... cliffhanger! Kinda. The bads are on the move again, and since Hajime is all but invincible, they're making a different play this time. Still, the two characters we see (Myu and the girl from his class (Yuka maybe?)) have imprinted hard on Hajime, so they'll probably be more trouble than the demons are counting on. |
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smurky turkey
Posts: 2868 |
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I think that kidnapping people close to Hajime will only get you brutally killed in the end. With their newly added abilities/magic I do not see the demons being a close match to them anymore. Those undead beastmen may look impressive but compared to how strong the party now is they mean nothing.
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Thesarum
Subscriber Posts: 567 |
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Hajime doesn't customarily go easy on anyone (he's got a pretty binary enemy/wifu view of the world) but threatening Myu is a fast track to him going maximum overkill on you (which, let's remember, was orbital lasers BEFORE he got his most recent power up). The demons better have a real solid plan for how they deal with a very angry "currently gearing up to personally go toe-to-toe with God" surrogate father figure |
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Thesarum
Subscriber Posts: 567 |
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So I guess they just switched up the order a bit, and cut most of the chat which robs it of most of its import.. but better than nothing. Someone is super-conscious of our favourite chuuni, but he's doing his best to pretend he's got a case of anime-protagonist-obviousitis. I'm not sure a guy who has been fending off advances from everyone with a pair of X chromosomes for three seasons and now officially runs his own harem gets to play that card though. This episode, cut LN content includes spoiler[on route to the final labyrinth we colour within the lines of our TV rating by cutting a scene where those currently sitting outside official "special" status (Kaori, Tio and Shizuku primarily) press Shea for details of her first night with Hajime. And you know what they say about rabbits.] It's not exactly major character development or plot relevant though, so it's not exactly surprising. I don't think the anime is doing a fantastic job of showing the extent that Kouki is spiraling here, and has been for a while. Since joining up with Nagumo he's confronted repeatedly with the fact Nagumo is more powerful and more effective, but he cannot even begin to accept Nagumo's perspective and philosophy. He's determined to prove that his idealistic approach is superior to Nagumo's cold pragmatism. He's a guy who has never had reason to doubt his own rightness and righteousness. And he's not processing the inferiority well at all. We get some hints, but it's easy to miss. This labyrinth isn't going to allow him to suppress those doubts for much longer though... Was it me, or did we get even more static shots and still pans this episode? It seemed pretty light on the actual animation (not that this show has ever been a high budget affair). A little bit of a lacklustre episode then perhaps. Though Shea being super excited for snow was pretty cute. |
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Thesarum
Subscriber Posts: 567 |
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Yep, it's another mindf*ck labrynth, and rather than turning you against your comrades, this one turns you against your worst enemy... those niggly little doubts you just can't shake. You do your best to ignore them, but they just won't quit.
Kouki is, as we've seen a number of times before, not particularly mentally resilient. He's the first to crack. Hajime of course just grumpily stubborns his way through... until he's presented with his full edgelord reflection and his whispers says something like "you look like a middle schooler's doodles mate, where's your self respect?". The whispers-inspired flashback to Kaori and Shizuku in middle school (?) was pretty cute. They've been best buds a long time. I thought this week looked a little better than the previous episode, though still a little off. And we've got another break, so clearly there's still production issues at the studio(s). Still, providing it doesn't lose them slots in the TV schedules I'd probably prefer them to take the time to get things right than kill their staff and put out jank. |
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smurky turkey
Posts: 2868 |
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Although I like that the last 2 labyrinths showcase more of the characters including the mostly abandoned side ones, I question having them be back to back. I would have preferred a little inbetween adventure for a change of pace before jumping into the next one. I expect Kouki to go crazy pretty soon btw, it has been coming for a while now and he has only been getting more unstable as time goes on.
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Thesarum
Subscriber Posts: 567 |
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I'd agree, but in fairness to the anime, it works pretty much like this in the LN too. There's a little more fluff and miscellaneous chat (as I said above, the post-labyrinth scenes with Shea and Shizuku are longer, though not by a lot), but nothing of note really happens (there's a bit more of the scene on the airship on route too for example, but I think it's mostly just a wordier version of what we saw... more details on precisely what changes Hajime had made to everyone's weapons than that sort of thing). However there is a book break - the end of the Haltina Labyrinth is the end of one book, and the new one doesn't pick up until the following book, so maybe that helps break things up if you were reading them as they were released? |
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Thesarum
Subscriber Posts: 567 |
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Aaand, we're back wit Ep12! Eventually. (though I think it's fair to say production is pretty rough on this episode despite the additional time)
Hajime just brute forces this test like he did most of the others with some sorta "I evolved mid-fight" shonen trope nonsense. Though it is totally in character for him. He, and we, don't actually learn much from this fight, except perhaps we get some confirmation that he does have doubts and struggles. He's not processing them healthily exactly, but he's mastered forging on regardless. No doubt if he does return to earth he'll need some pretty intensive therapy for the rest of his life. Then we have Shizuku, and this labyrinth is really applying a big ole' crowbar to the cracks in the front she puts up that have been developing for some time. If you're not Hajime the only way to win this fight is to admit the stuff you don't want to, but Shizuku didn't get the message just yet. He's making a real bad (good?) habit of riding in on what is presumably his black steed like... well, not exactly the sort of prince she's always dreamed of, but some back-with-red-accents "dark fantasy" version of it at least. We probably really don't want to see how Kouki is handling this. |
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