The last couple of weeks have left me feel really strange; you can blame that on my epilepsy. It’s a funny thing, really: normally, it just settles in the background, and just suddenly, out of nowhere, it decides to creep up on me and really knock me out-of-sorts (and scare the heck out of my family and close friends too). I’ll live, though. Anyway, onto anime I’m watching this season…

In these past 7 or so weeks, I grew concerned over Release the Spyce. I found it a little…disappointing, and I felt that it didn’t quite deliver what I was expecting out of it. To be fair, I wasn’t really expecting that much in the way of yuri; the chemistry that these 6 girls in Tsukikage all have hasn’t impressed me. The episodes of Mei x Fu, and last week’s Hatsume x Goe all felt firmly like filler episodes, and the plot of the show in general hasn’t really improved or impressed so far. As episode 8 comes in this week, we all hope that the other chemistry (between Momo and Yuki) delivers, but it still feels very flat, even this far into the show.

On a mission to Okinawa, Momo, Yuki, Fu and Goe are dispatched to rescue a hostage and extract information from a server. Even though we are given cute and camp things, like the Okinawan Viking girl, the relationship between Momo and Yuki which seems to have begun to crumble slightly, and the general beach scene, there is nothing in this show now that can grab me, and make me look forward to what will happen in the following episode. For instance, in this week’s episode, the continuing plot point of Teresia being ‘rescued’ carries on, but I genuinely do not care what happens to her, and Hatsume’s persistence to keep her on a comfortable leash is beginning to annoy the heck out of me now. This show needs a major plot point (and an exciting one at that) in order for me to be interested in this once more.

While Release the Spyce has continued to feel disappointing (for me anyways), HIDIVE’s other yuribait show, Bloom Into You, continues to deliver; if only HIDIVE was able to fix their subtitles.

Touko’s behavior continues to frustrate me, and as an anime-only viewer, I can’t totally understand her reasons for doing this. This week has, however, been a stellar episode when it comes to how Yuu and Sayaka get along…or sort of get along. In past episodes, one could possibly think that Sayaka is totally and completely frustrated with Yuu and how close she has suddenly gotten with her best friend and crush, but this is also a good episode when it comes to highlighting Sayaka’s own sexual orientation. A lot of other school romance shows (both animated and live-action) have struggled when it comes to highlighting the topic of homophobia among secondary characters, and this week Sayaka runs into the same girl who dumped her in her last school and dismissed her romantic feelings as a ‘phase’, outright declaring that girls shouldn’t fall in love with each other. We see Sayaka’s experiences in junior-high with her senpai have had an impact on her, and she almost finds herself annoyed with herself that she has allowed herself to develop this crush on Touko. Inside, she suspects that Touko has feelings for Yuu, but knows how much of a pain her best friend can be, and so decides not to interfere, and accepts when Yuu attempts to extend an olive branch this week.

While it began last week with Sayaka having a casual chat with her homeroom teacher’s girlfriend, it gets better this week as we notice that Sayaka has known about Touko’s wish for Yuu not to fall in love with her all along. She has grown to be a well-written character in this show, having next to none of the atypical anime lesbian stereotypes we see in countless yuribait shows, like Citrus, Sakura Trick, and even in the likes of Revolutionary Girl Utena, Yuri Kuma Arashi and Flip Flappers (which I still refuse to see).

*btw, for a quality list of good LGBT anime shows, I highly recommend that you check out this tumblr post, even if the author calls out Hibike! Euphonium as a “hornet’s-nest-that-should-not-be-touched-with-a-ten-foot-pole”*

With me praising this excellent LGBT character design in Bloom Into You, there is one other thing that is bugging the heck out of me in this anime season (aside from Touko occasionally acting like a jerk), but it isn’t LGBT-related:

I swear that I’ve heard this song before. It’s appeared in the background on her music player in a couple of SSSS Gridman episodes, and I don’t know if it’s a track from the original soundtrack, or just a mainstream Japanese pop song. This is going to continue to bug me all the way until the new year :'(

Oh, but was this week’s episode a good one… 🙂 This week was the school festival episode and, due to hating it, Akane decides to build her strongest kaiju to destroy the festival along with the school.

We can look at this week’s episode of SSSS Gridman and feel a forever-long feeling that we want to protect Akane. Why her, you may ask? Well the writers have certainly portrayed her as the lonely heart of the show, who doesn’t appear to know any better. In addition to this, we see now that she holds a kind of candle for Rikka, as we have noticed that whenever the two of them interact, Akane treats her far differently than the others.

 

This chemistry between Akane and Rikka is something that will intrigue me for the rest of the season, regardless of what will ultimately happen between them. I think that is just one thing that has made me love this show so much: despite being a tokusatsu show, we notice the mecha action has taken a back seat to what we see between Yuta, Rikka, Akane, Utsumi, the 4 dorks in suits, and the rest of the classmates. Other studios who would use this strategy in an animated mecha show may not have as much success as Trigger have had here. Also, it was only this week when I discovered that SSSS Gridman is to be a single-cour show…so far. Trigger have not made any announcements to make a sequel, and as the plot was written long before animation, we could see any kind of ending to this show. For all we know, we could see the city end up like something from The Matrix, or Akane end up as the controller to something from The Sims. I honestly have no idea, and the viewers who are spreading tin-foil hat conspiracy theories aren’t really helping, to be honest. I believe that we should all just be patient viewers, and just wait and see what will happen. Netflix Japan have already announced that they have acquired the rights to air it there when 2019 arrives, which could well mean that it could come on Western Netflix too, just as Kill La Kill did.

After the events of meeting with the dental hygienist and later the love doll, what on earth can The Tatami Galaxy be up to now? Well, I’ll tell you…this episode (episode 8), we are finally introduced to Keiko, the pen-pal our protagonist ends up keeping in touch with. While the previous episode can only be described as the weakest episode, this one is sadly not much different, as our hero isn’t really any closer to escaping this time-loop. The answer is staring right in front of him; he almost seems oblivious to seeing it. It’s because of this that I’m struggling to keep up, which is a real shame and this extremely slow progress of his is really grating on me now…and making me lose faith in the show.

I knew from others who watched and loved The Tatami Galaxy that it had an unconventional story, and that the way it was told wouldn’t attract everyone. I don’t think it is that that is making me lose faith – instead I think it is more the fact that our nameless protagonist is making such little progress. There are only 3 more episodes left, and even though I don’t know how the show will end, if it is anything like what the last few episodes (episodes 6, 7 and 8) have been like, I’m not sure if I’m looking forward to this show’s conclusion.

This is really disappointing, as I was so looking forward to this show when you guys picked it for me way back in September…and to see it be pieced together like this in a way that I’m finding very difficult to both follow and enjoy is a shame. Others love this show, and good for them…I guess…

The yuribait has been odd this week, with it thrust in our faces in Bloom Into You, it being subtle and in the background in SSSS Gridman, and it being almost non-existant now in Release the Spyce. Elsewhere, the hardcore weebs went into meltdown when Zombieland Saga (available on Crunchyroll) introduced a trans idol (Lily). Funny how these same hardcore weebs have no issues with men falling for pre-pubescent girls in anime shows, but absolutely lose their minds when it comes to the introduction of a trans character, even though trans characters have appeared in many anime in the past; these must be the same hardcore weebs who frequent 4chan and refuse to accept change.

Of course, I am in the opinion that you should be whoever you want to be, and no mad anime fan should tell you otherwise. But Thanksgiving has been and gone, and Christmas is approaching. The Tatami Galaxy will end for me soon, and you guys have already picked Kemono Friends for me to watch in the Winter 2019 season…but have you thought about what to watch in 2019? Feel free to hit that like button and air your opinions in the comments below…

This post was written before the big Evangelion/Netflix news came out. I’ll talk about what I can about that in next week’s column.