World Trigger Season 2

Episode 6

I'm starting to think World Trigger might be cursed. First off, the latest chapter of the manga is delayed after health issues with Ashihara, now the latest episode gets delayed a week due to news coverage concerning an earthquake in Japan. I'm genuinely wondering if some god on high doesn't want this show to exist, and I am just about ready to square up and deck their holy ass for it. Leave this series alone, fates!

Well okay, I probably wouldn't fare well fighting a god, but you know who would? Chika Amatori, that's who! It's been well established by now that Chika's ungodly amount of trion makes her a force to be reckoned with through pure firepower, but “Strong Will” opens with a good 5 minutes of letting us soak in that fact as she effortlessly topples buildings with the most innocent smile you ever did see. There's just something inherently wonderful about an anime girl roughly the size of a greyhound casually firing a plasma cannon, raining hell and terror upon all who enter her sights. Her one and only weakness is her unwillingness to shoot people directly, but the day she surpasses that hurdle is the day the very heavens (and the Neighborhood) will quake with fear.

For now though, she's “merely” the linchpin in Tamakoma-2's strategy for this battle. With their wired territory firmly established, they set up a fun little prisoner's dilemma for the other teams by systematically destroying all the building outside of it, leaving their opponents to choose between racing into a trap or sitting still and eventually being crushed by falling rubble. It's both a shrewd tactic and one that only this current Tamakoma-2 team could pull off, with the way the fight is framed taking advantage of that. Rather than following Osamu or Yuma's perspective as they enact this plan, we're put in the shoes of Kakizaki and Katori squads as they try tiptoe into our heroes' booby traps, getting a ground-eye view of it all and seeing both teams falter. Katori squad takes a backseat this week, but it's fun to see that even Osamu, a largely mediocre combatant, can manage to stall and frustrate them. As any fighting game player can tell you, sometimes the worst opponent to face isn't one who's dangerous, but someone who's tenacious and annoying. I imagine for a frustrated talent like Katori that's especially irksome.

The back half of the episode then shifts to Kakizaki, and gives us some nice insight into who their captain is and why he's formed this particular team. Kakizaki is a decently talented fighter, but he's held back by his fear of making the wrong choice, to the point of becoming inert on the battlefield. Caution is a valuable skill for a leader to have, but if the captain can't act or command decisively, neither of his teammates can make proper use of their skills – as seen by Yuma slicing Tomoe's head clean off without taking so much as a scratch. Kakizaki played conservatively, and ended up paying the price. But he's also a good enough leader to recognize his faults, so he sends Teruya to deal with Chika on her own, choosing the brave but very foolish route of facing Yuma one-on-one. It's a mostly doomed tactic, since Yuma's a seasoned fighter who immediately goes for the killing blow, but it would seem Kakizaki knew that, subbing out his melee trigger for a gunner in the final cliffhanger of this episode. World Trigger isn't usually one for badass shonen final stands, but it handles this one pretty well.

Otherwise this is business as usual for Rank Wars. It's great to see Tamakoma-2 in action again, and super satisfying to see how far they've come since getting their butts handed to them in the last match. The battle itself is strategically compelling and tactically solid, but without a resolution this episode it's hard to speak too definitively. If nothing else, I'm just happy to see Chika blowing shit up again.

Rating:

World Trigger Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.