This Week in Anime

The Mouth of Madness

Nicholas Dupree got into anime in high school, and manga even earlier. From One Piece to The Promised Neverland, he's the man to talk to if it's Shonen and it Jumps. He counts Den-Noh Coil and Serial Experiments Lain as his all-time favorites.

Michelle Liu got into anime in middle school through Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan and somehow liked it enough to stick around. When she's not loudly proclaiming her love of Sayo Yamamoto, she talks about figure skating and strange children's shows.

Episode 6

Episode 6

Episode 20

Episode 32

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.

Nick D
Micchy, glad you're here. I have some important news to share.

Hit me

Well, this is going to seem sudden but, I'm engaged.

And I've brought my fiancé here to meet you.

I hope you'll both get along

Nick.

I'm not even gonna.

Isn't she beautiful?

Sure, you keep telling yourself that.

I will admit she's not bad tho, would not mind being gleefully murdered by her all that much.

I take back whatever criticisms I had of Re:Creators so long as she gets as much screen time as possible going forward.

She's a great addition to the cast, I'll say. We needed a chaotic evil to go with Alicetaria's lawful good, if you'll excuse the awful tabletop alignments. And boy is that sure a showdown!

I know, it was great. Magane's whole power is really neat. Tell a lie with so much conviction that the other person doubts their own reality, and make it real!

The pinnacle of chuuni!

Poor Mamika, she was convinced anybody with firm enough convictions would be worth working with :'D Kid wasn't ready for THIS.

Mamika's having a lot of growing pains now that she's not in the bubblegum world of Magical Girl world.

Pink bubble hearts can only do so much to defend against gravity guns and murderous Hot Topic teens, unfortunately

I really loved Magane's whole speech about killing with Alicetaria though. It's total BS but she knows exactly how to make an absolutist like Alice doubt her own sense of justice. Everything's a zero-sum game when you don't allow for shades of grey and all that.

Alicetaria's gonna have somethin coming to her if she keeps up the knight shtick. Personally I think she should consider taking a chill pill and actually talking things out, but that runs contrary to her character. Which I guess is the point.

At this point her options are to re-evaluate her life choices, or stay the course and skewer Mamika on her spear.

As delightful (?) as magical girl kebabs sound, I must decline :'D

pls stop hurting each other, children

We also finally get to see trenchcoat dude make a move, and his move is GUN

Not just any gun, but Extremely Gun

Alice may care about justifying her actions but Blitz is all business

Okay I just wanna say I love his name. BLITZ TALKER is the most anime goddamn thing and I love it. This show lifts the most batshit stuff from every anime genre to create the ULTIMATE ANIME stew and it's so good.

I can't stop thinking how batshit some of these fighters are gonna get once Rui's mech gets in on the action.

He's gotta stop flirting with girls first. Get in the damn robot, Rui.

Get in the robot so Magane can trick you into robopunching yourself.

Nick, nobody wants to know about your fetish.

I'm sorry I keep going back to her but the entire rest of the episode just kinda fell by the wayside of her personality!

It's Izaya Orihara in a skirt

So when's she gonna rip someone's phone out of their hands and jump on it?

I guess the rest of the episode was Selesia and co. trying to knock some goddang sense into Alicetaria but you're right, Magane's personality took over the entire thing. I'm pretty okay with that, though perhaps not as thrilled as you are wwww

I thought it was a solid episode overall - now that all the players are established and we've got a good idea of the various teams, it feels like we're ready to move forward with the story. Like the question of why Sota's hiding the identity of MUP from the others.

Somebody's a guilty weenie haha

There's obviously some kind of damage behind keeping this to himself, and I think that'll be a big part of whether this show sticks its landing. I'm fine with characters making bad decisions if I can understand their motivations - so I hope it's a twist with some teeth.

Yeah, it's looking like whatever he's hiding will be the big link tying everything together - hopefully the show remembers to make him more sympathetic than a potato.

I've got faith in the writing though; Rei Hiroe et al have done a solid job re: characterization thus far

On the topic of characterization...

AIN'T THAT THE TRUTH

Okay I promise I won't just shit talk Suka Suka this week. I actually kinda liked this episode! Warts and established writing issues notwithstanding.

I did too! The rapport between Willem and his old friend was genuinely entertaining. Turns out five centuries didn't make the guy any less of a petty turd.

I'm also glad to get more deliberate worldbuilding here finally. So much of the series' universe has been established by vague one-off lines or contextless flashbacks that this is the first time I felt I had a solid grasp of the fantasy aspects at large.

Also: talking skull. Eboncandle is really moe, Nick.

oh of course you go for the talking skull

and I'M weird for liking the murderous schoolgirl...

I never said I wasn't weird

But yeah, the revelation that the fairies are ghosts resurrected just to die again was pretty brutal. My post-Nier Automata heart was NOT READY for that.

It does add a little more depth to Ctholly and friends. I'm a filthy casual who hasn't played Nier yet so it just registered as "oh, okay" for me. : p

Chtholly's existential crisis was so A+++. Who is she really, eh?

It's a cool concept, and the direction and storyboarding surrounding her breakdown were really good! Probably the best the show has looked so far, actually.

I liked the flickering candle hallucination quite a lot

I just...wish the writing surrounding it was better ="D

Yyyyyeahhhh

The show has this bad habit of cramming build up, climax, and resolution of a conflict into about five minutes and that really hurt it at the end of the episode.

Willem starts tearing up and I'm like, "wait, was I supposed to be worried about Chtholly or...?"

That she passes out off screen doesn't help either.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Like, why not end the episode with him discovering her bedridden and unresponsive? build some tension for the next episode where we wonder just what's going on? Instead there's like a minute of him giving a eulogy and then she's back and everything's seemingly fine.

Or hell, even let the feeling linger for more than thirty seconds. I'm sure they could've done with a few minutes less faff at the beginning of the episode. This show keeps trying to compress the emotional beats into way too short a time frame, and it winds up feeling really hollow as a result.

There's plenty of good parts that could work well but whoever is putting this machine together refuses to read the blueprints.

So there's another thing I wanted to address: what do you make of Willem's claim that the floating islands are now "home"? To me it sounds a touch irresponsible, tbh

Hard to really say without knowing the specifics of the islands, but it definitely seems shortsighted.

Just going off of what we've seen in the show, those cities seem really crowded on tiny bits of land.

I get that he's mainly arguing to not, y'know, raise up fairies for slaughter to reclaim a homeland they've royally screwed up already, but everything we've seen suggests the islands are a stopgap - and one that doesn't seem to be long for this world.

Yeah, "Stop sacrificing innocent children" is completely legit but I dunno how I feel about his accusations of imperialism or w/e

I actually wanted to ask about something that bugged me during this episode - where, in the timeline of events, is that battle with the monster supposed to be happening? Because there's nothing to indicate Willem's trip to Skull Island is more than a daytrip, but we see Ctholly arrive at the Warehouse, then suddenly she's back fighting the monster, but then before sundown she's back at the warehouse.

I think that might've been a flashback? Not that the show made much of an effort to indicate so.

But they didn't kill the monster during the first fight, and they do kill it here. So...was this just like a quick field trip or was Willem on a skyboat for a month?

In that case, hell if I know???

It's really wack screenwriting and it probably bugged me more than the wonky ending to the episode.

It's not the first time the chronology's seemed really fucked. My answer ultimately is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yep. Suka Suka: it got better.

You know what else got even better somehow? My Hero Academia

Hell yeah, my son Shinso finally got to shine

Why am I feeling feelings over a grade-A scumbag, Nick, explain this

Hey, he's not a scumbag. He's just a very...troubled child. And also kinda what Deku could've ended up as.

That's the saddest thing! He goes on about how much he envies Deku for being born with a valuable quirk but we all know they're really not that different. And man does that quirk kinda suck when you think about it.

Anybody who knows about it is gonna be at least a little scared of even talking to you. And everyone's first reaction is to think of all the shit they could get away with if THEY had that power.

Years of weird assumptions can't have been good for the kid. But maybe he's gonna be alright? People in the audience remarking how awesome his quirk is, how effective it'd be against villains...

SHINSO LET ME MOM YOU

And he has Deku, who's so awkward he doesn't even think to hesitate when talking to him! I do also like that Deku acknowledges he's had his own fair bit of luck getting where he is. He's worked damn hard and is still an underdog, but he had All Might acknowledge him and friends to support him, and Shinso really didn't.

Deku is a precious boy and I hope they end up good friends even if Shinso doesn't think that'll happen

So was it the previous holders of One For All that gave him that opening or his own faith in himself? Who knows?

All Might probably does, but he's not telling. Too busy setting up Flags to explain stuff

Oh no. Oh no don't tell me

If he does I'm gonna KICK YOUR BUTT

All I'll say is if we get a Season 3 stuff's gonna be wild

aaaAAAAAhhhhh

I did want to mention I liked how Shinso's story also highlights UA's own failings. By all rights he's got a damn useful quirk and the desire to use it for good, but he's stuck in General Studies because of how the test was designed. Meanwhile Bakugo has the temperament of a burning landfill and he got 1st place on the test.

Education system that values immediate test results over balanced evaluation? Gee sounds familiar.

Combined with Endeavor being the #2 hero it strikes me as a sign that MHA's world may be peaceful but it's definitely not pristine.

Speaking of Endeavor, how 'bout that Todoroki rage

Poor Sero never saw it coming.

Talk about overkill! And then he uses his left hand to melt the kid outta there. That's gotta sting, using his dad's power in front of an audience as huge as that. :'D

He nearly froze half the audience too! Todoroki's the classic quiet kid who's all boiling emotion underneath the surface.

"Sorry. I got mad."

Now Deku gets to fight him like that =D

Good luck~

This is gonna be me next week

Don't be nervous, Uraraka, you just have to fight Bakugo next week

Good luck~

I'm super excited to see next week. It seems like the show's gonna (finally) expand on some of the other fights from the manga.

and we get to see Iida become a man

Good luck, my children, win that shit

Y'know who really needed better luck this week?

Eren

Answer me this, Nick: When did Attack on Titan turn into pro wrestling? I get enough of that crossing my twitter feed as is.

well, judging by my local Walmart...

I think that makes Reiner the Brock Lesnar of anime.

Though this episode was a little more MMA - nobody swung a giant folding chair, sadly. Apparently Isayama's a big Ultimate Fighter fan, and it definitely shows with Eren's grappling here.

Taught to him by the very people who would betray him, even

Yeah, bit of a whoopsie on their part. Though I guess (assume?) they didn't think anybody'd ever be able to use it on them in Titan form.

So in the present we've got Eren and Weiner duking it out, and then we flash back to their training days.

and they tease us with Annie vs Mikasa like dirty, blueballing bastards

I wanted to see that real bad, gimme the good girls tusslin'

The training flashbacks this season have been destroying me on the regular, by the way. Look at the children being less miserable, back when things sorta made sense! It's really tragic when you see the parallels between friendly wrasslin' Eren and Reiner and their current Titan battle to the death. Life comes at ya fast, I guess...

The whole episode's spectacularly paced though. S1 had several episodes that were just fights, but here it feels so god damn tense and explosive. Every hit and cut felt huge. And can I just gush about how good it looked this week? I know people are probably harping on the CG Colossal Titan but god damn did they blow the doors off with the action this week.

For what it's worth, they made pretty dang good use of the CG Titan. A lot of the perspective tricks would've been real tricky to do by hand.

It makes sense - the show utilizes a lot of CG backgrounds for the ODM gear movement, and the Colossal is so big it just BECOMES the geography of the fight.

Bert drank his milk as a kid, I guess

Unlike Connie, poor kid. Connie's still in denial over everything.

I don't think he actually even knows. He wasn't near Reiner when he turned heel, and wasn't with the rest of the scouts when they discussed Reiner being a traitor. For all he knows, the two worst titans in history just showed up to make the worst day of his life a historical landmark to boot.

Geez, these kids need a break

I'm sure everything will be fine once he's reunited with his parents.

Definitely.

nICK.

On a lighter note, Hange was pretty great this week. I too would geek out over a Titan understanding my orders.

Their blush when Titan!Eren grunts at them is just amazing. It's the little bits of levity that keep this show afloat sometimes.

Attack on Titan frequently walks the line between dramatic and camp, at least to me, so I really appreciate it when it rolls with the silliness sometimes. Funniest moment to me though: let's be real, telling Eren to use his head might not be the most useful of instructions.

"I should...headbutt him?"

"No Eren"

But he learned! And actually almost won a fight for once!

Mikasa did all the real work. Yea gurl, tear those ligaments!

That reminds me, maybe my favorite part was learning even Murder Machine Mikasa hesitated just a little when it came to killing compatriots. Much like how fandom osmosis had convinced me Eren was a whiny little brat in the break between seasons, I'd kinda forgotten that Mikasa does have personality and feelings outside of protecting Eren and Killing Stuff Good.

If I remember correctly, we're gonna be getting into Mikasa Feelings again pretty soon.

Considering what happened last time Eren got ate by a Titan, I can't wait.

Bonus Discussion

So I think I already know the answer to this, but you aren't watching Boruto, are you?

I didn't grow up with Nalt, so no Bort, no

Well I did, and for some reason beyond rational explanation I'm following Ninja Babies for now too.

So it's basically this right?

...pretty much actually

At the moment, the series' storyline is basically Ninja Pretty Cure: every week some mysterious Darkness possesses somebody and makes them act on their worst feelings, and Burrito and Co. have to punch the bad out of them.

BURRITO

...blame that on autocorrect.

aaaaanyway, it's been pretty standard stuff so far, but this latest episode kinda ticked me off. See, this week focuses on Cho-Cho, the daughter of the designated Fat Character from Naruto.

I don't like the sound of this

Specifically it centers on a kid with invisibility powers who Cho-Cho thinks is stalking her. And for half the episode the joke is Lol Who Would Stalk A Fat Girl

Is that Cho-Cho with the spiky pigtails?

yep

THAT'S NOT EVEN

I KNOW

But it turns out turns out that nope! He's actually stalking her pretty, skinny friend.

Wow! That sounds super shitty!

It's so baaaaaad. There's one redeeming line in it though. See, after the Evil Bad Thing has taken him over, Stalker Kid tries to take out all the girl's friends so he can kidnap her. Boruto gets pinned down and can't stop him, so Cho-Cho steps up and basically tell him "You're a pathetic creep, that's why nobody wants to notice you."

It's a burn so raw that THAT shocks the evil out of him and he apologizes.

The other kids don't get called out on their shitty jokes, do they?

Nope. They're more sympathetic to the stalker than they are to her. Cause she's faaaaaaaaaaat and that's funny.

:T

So yeah, that's all I really had to say about Bolt. You been watching anything good?

The second season of Eccentric Family's been really solid!

So this season, for the last few weeks, has been pretty deliberately paced. Eccentric Family's never been about the big dramatic conflicts so much as the little moments in life that make it all special.

Lot of talking about life in the rain, as I recall

Like in one episode Yasaburo and his mom visit his grandma, who at this point is a senile little puffball sitting on a cushion. It's a really touching scene when they just sit down to talk to her, that kind of thing. The quiet family moments, y'know?

That sounds really neat actually - senility's not something you see brought up too often in media.

That said I was getting a little impatient with the vague tengu politicking. The dialogue's never straightforward; everyone talks around what they really mean and it was getting to be a bit of a drag. Luckily this week we finally get some plot development: the villain from S1, Yasaburo's bitter uncle, reappears and sends our Very Chill Protagonist into Hell

like, literal Hell?

or like, New Jersey Hell

Literal Industrial Hell

so Detroit Hell

watch yer mouth kid, I'm from Detroit

...But yes, Detroit Hell

There he talks to a bunch of oni, who're just like, "yeah, times are a-changin', aren't they?" Which is a very Tomihiko Morimi observation to make. Leave it to Eccentric Family to have oni muse on modernization.

that sounds like the most Eccentric Family version of a trip to Hell

"So you guys deliver everlasting torment?"

"More like ennui and melancholy but same difference."

Eccentric Family really is the embodiment of Chill.

Anyway there's a bit of oni wrasslin', Saburo's tengu crush Benten tosses him back up into the mortal world, it's all good. And that's pretty much where we're at in the show: Uncle Tanuki planning to join the Friday Club to eat tanuki hotpot.

It's a lil' disturbing, but c'est la vie

Meanwhile, I'm watching a show with exactly zero chill.

possibly negative chill

Of COURSE this exchange is happening at sunset

TBH I kinda want to take a minute to...not defend Anonymous Noise, but make my case for it. So there's no denying it's a poorly plotted melting pot of boiled down hot topic with the musical inclinations of a high school garage band.

But it's kind of like, the most sincere version of this kind of story I've seen in a long while.

Are you sure it's not just the boy in a dress

The boy's not in a dress anymore, tragically

WHAT

0/10 PREEMPTIVELY DROPPED

But like, there's tons upon TONS of chuuni-ass anime right? But most of them are either self-aware otaku fare that look to celebrate the audience for being chuuni and rejecting being "normal" or they're cynical projects meant to target edgy teenagers who are impressed by their own edginess. But AnonyNoise kind of avoids either by just being super sincere with its overwrought drama. It /believes/ in these kids' emotions even if they are dumb as hell and the setup for it is pure power fantasy.

That first screenshot is from when Miou, the former vocalist who Nino replaced, is having a breakdown because she can't stand being in love with the boy who's in love with Nino. And she confronts Nino telling her she's a weirdo who has held onto a childhood promise for 6 years with no reason to besides desperation and that's stupid. And Nino's response is that yeah, it's dumb and doesn't make any sense and is probably even unhealthy but it's still important to her because it's part of who she is.

That's... honestly really sweet.

So the show's thesis statement seems to be it's valuable to be yourself even if that means being a cringy, embarrassing moron who sings Twinkle Twinkle Little Star when auditioning for a major music label.

Heck, that sounds like my kind of sap. I do love stories about dumb teenagers with big feelings they have no idea how to handle.

granted you still have to be willing (or excited) to sit through a lot of Ebony Dark'Ness Dementia Raven Way stuff to get there

I mean, now that the boy isn't wearing dresses anymore, I have no reason to watch the show. I'm sorry Nick you shouldn't have told me.

Eh, it's fine. We all have our own kinds of trash.

like you and...whatever the hell Heybot is

How do I even describe Heybot.

literally all I know about it is that you spew nonsensical screenshots from it on Twitter

Heybot is supposedly a children's show for marketing toys, but it also makes no goddamn sense. Like, it's the sort of thing that'll throw a dozen visual non sequiturs on screen a minute. The writers somehow have an extensive knowledge of film and culture, only to use it to make terrible screw-related puns.

Is there a plot? or a premise? Every image I see of it just seems like the mouth of madness

Supposedly it's about a boy and his robot pal collecting magic screws to... defeat aliens? Or something? The show sometimes pretends it has an overarching plot with a PROPHECY and a SAVIOR and a CHOSEN ONE. But in practice it winds up being a huge, terrible animated shitpost.

Ah, so of course you love it

The experience of watching the show is a constant stream of this

And I friggin' love it, even though it makes me want to gouge my eyes out. I bet you haven't seen another anime in which the zombie apocalypse is halted by jamming screws into their crotches.

...this sounds like if Minions memes became a show

The most recent episode involved a sham dentist/ice cream seller purposely giving kids cavities. Which in itself isn't that nutty, but their solution is to go into the dentist's teeth to find the aliens controlling him. And they find... another cow dentist. Repeat several dozen times.

...why?

did the cow make the ice cream?

It's really unclear; all I know is that they make really bad cow puns

...can we go back to talking about Love Rice

But Love Rice doesn't have a literal Haruki Murakami stand-in character! Or fart arithmetic!

You know what I'd like to go back to not understanding Heybot

Haruki Murakami agrees