We got the recent news that NieR: Automata Ver 1.1a will be coming back, with the fourth episode next week. Yes…episode number 4; for reasons outside their control, it has been put back for 3 weeks. Well I am glad that it is coming back at least. So far it is sticking very close to what happens in the game, but soon enough it will probably branch off into other points-of-views’ directions. Either that, or Ver 1.1a will solely be from 2B’s point-of-view, and we’ll get 2 separate seasons dedicated to 9S and 2A. I wouldn’t be surprised if they actually decide to do that, to be honest but we’ll see when it’ll come back.
Tomo-chan is a Girl! Episode 6
Something I brought up last week already but Tomo-chan is a Girl! is looking more like a buddy school comedy than anything else. This could be by design though, as leaving us in suspense in this seasons’ final episode paves the way for a second season, which is likely to happen since people seem to like the show a lot.
I think that things are starting to get that much more interesting now. The first half of this week’s episode is devoted to Tomo’s birthday; she relishes in the fact that she is actually older than Jun. But Misuzu and Carol have their own plans in mind to celebrate her birthday. Something that I found rather annoying in this show is the idea that Tomo needs to be the one to change her mannerisms in order to win Jun’s heart. Both Misuzu and Carol still believe in this, and decide to make her over, which makes her extremely uncomfortable. I’ve always believed in the idea of finding love in someone for who they are, and not necessarily what they are, and I don’t like how Tomo is being forced to dress and act feminine in order to get Jun’s attention. At least this isn’t the one thing that keeps the show together, as it easily could have been. Added to the fact that Jun can’t even recognize her in a fancy outfit and wig as well…
But I thought the second half showed a lot more of what kind of relationship Jun really wants with Tomo. Seeing things from Jun’s point-of-view is something that has been really neglected so far, but I like how this section of the episode played out. In the school’s dodgeball tournament, Tomo and Jun have to face-off against the captain of the judo club, and someone seen as the strongest person in the whole school. And while one would think that that would be the most notable section, it actually isn’t. We discover this week that while Jun has all of this sports talent, he chooses not to join any sports clubs. We don’t really get that much of a reason why he doesn’t, but instead he mentions that he only wants to catch up with the person who he sees is always ahead of him: Tomo.
If the show really does want to stick to its road of romance, then it appears to be going in a decent direction so far. By keeping Tomo’s forced feminism as a gag and making hers and Jun’s real relationship from their past as children more important, the show looks more genuine a school rom com to me. As I have mentioned, past episodes have made this look like a buddy comedy, but as we see this week, situations have changed as both Tomo and Jun have gotten that much older. They aren’t little kids anymore, and the both of them have to make some serious decisions on how they want to keep their relationship and make it grow.
I do hope we get more moments like this in future episodes. This is a comedy show, but when the romance part of the show appears (here and there), it makes it much more.
In/Spectre Season 2 Episode 6
The new arc begins, and it looks to be another interesting one. And once again, like the Yuki-Onna arc, the story is first told from another point-of-view. This time, it concerns a coastal town which is falling down on its luck when its fish die mysteriously. A local elderly woman, Tae, is seen as a wise figurehead in the town, and immediately dismisses any possibilities that it is all the result of a curse by a dead man who lost his grandson and decided to carve a life-size wooden doll. One may think she sounds like a skeptic, but she lets a bakeneko live in her house.
I think it’s interesting how this arc’s story is being compared to the story of Pinocchio; not the Disney version, but the original story by Carlo Collodi, which is much darker. In that, the wooden boy Pinocchio causes a lot of havoc in his local town, gets his creator Geppetto sent to prison, and interacts with a variety of talking animals who either mock him or die as a result of meeting him. Here in this episode, it becomes evident pretty early that the old man’s wooden doll is the one responsible for killing the town’s fish, by electrocuting them in the sea. What remains a mystery though is why a kind man like him would want to do it in the first place.
Looks like a case for Kotoko and Kuro; they’ve done this so many time, they should seriously charge money for helping people like this. How they would approach this though is something else. We got a glimpse of how strong this ‘Pinocchio’ is when some local yokai team up and fight it but get destroyed by his electric powers. And so if these strong yokai have trouble fighting it, then Kuro would get his backside beat even quicker.
Past arcs we’ve had in In/Spectre have made this second season a very good one in comparison to the first one. It largely stuck with one long arc, while this current season is feeling more and more like the supernatural detective story that I had originally thought it would be when I began watching the show all the way back in 2020. It’s good to see Rikka return in last week’s episode, as that makes us eager to see what the main antagonist will do when she reveals herself properly to Kotoko and Kuro. Last week painted her more as a bitter woman who got annoyed that a young girl like Kotoko was able to beat her to Kuro. Right now though, these bite-sized little stories are both interesting and awesome to watch. As for this one, I really have no idea on why the old man who loved his family and his town would want to do this, and how Kotoko and Kuro will be able to take down the ‘Pinocchio’. But that’s what makes it all the more cool to watch.
Dorohedoro Episode 6
I will say that the more I watch Dorohedoro, the more confused and conflicted I am. Not because of the animation style and excessive violence and gore, but instead because of the thin line between who I should be rooting for. This is something I know I’ve mentioned a lot here on Otaku Theater; the character designs of our so-called antagonists, the Sorcerers, have been done so well that I end up empathizing with them a lot. Shin blushing when he sees his kohai Noi naked, Fujita’s and Ebisu’s discourse, En fawning over his new pet…while Caiman and Nikaido aren’t really painted as anyone more comedic.
Episode 6 leads directly on from the last, where Nikaido sneaks into En’s mansion but ends up facing off against Noi. She’s able to escape relatively unharmed, but I think the more important thing to see here is how Caiman is still refusing to accept her being a Sorcerer. I that as she is a high-level Sorcerer herself, she may end up being the one to cure him of his affliction…or maybe there is more to his lizard head than meets the eye. I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t, since I think that despite watching these episodes carefully on Netflix, I believe that there’s still a lot of things I have just missed.
Flashback stories being one of them, I think. For episode 6, we get little glimpses of who some of these characters were, and while I would like to say they look like interesting stories, I’m not sure if I care as much. I genuinely do want to get absorbed in Dorohedoro, as it visually looks stunning. Character designs shine, and the aesthetic is something I dig. But there’s just something about it I don’t enjoy that I can’t put my finger on – a je ne sais quoi, so to speak. Would this be the kind of show that would need a rewatch for me to understand? Most likely. I will carry on with this though, of course, but I know that there are probably a thousand and one hardcore Dorohedoro fans that are screaming at me right now for even suggesting that I feel this way about their beloved show.
And to no one’s surprise, I have my Spring shows picked already. Instead of panicking and worrying about picking show genres that I might not like, I’m just going to stick to what I like the best. My mental health can’t handle dumb sci-fi ecchi and parody isekai now. There won’t even be an out-of-season poll either, as there is one show in particular that I’ve been meaning to check out but just never got around to it.