Gakusen Toshi Asterisk – 04
I love the composition here
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I mentioned in this week’s Cavalry post that I thought that Asterisk this week was a little better of the two, even if it didn’t have a confession. So let’s see what made this episode better. |
Do One Thing, Do It Well
Looks like a setup to me…
It’s something that has just struck me about Gakusen Toshi Asterisk: It doesn’t have a lot of settings per episode. Generally they go with one or two setups for the entire episode. Episode 2 was the school tour and Ayato’s tryout for Ser Veresta, while episode 3 was the bedroom scene with Claudia and mostly the date with Julis and Ayato. And here in episode 4, the whole episode deals with Julis’s clandestine challenge. It turns out that the culprit behind the attacks on the Phoenix Festa candidates isn’t Loser MacFail or Fireplug (whose normal boring name is Randy Hooke), the two people that Claudia had suspected, but the third member of the trio of losers: Bowl Cut… I mean, Silas Norman. But it’s not just Julis that Silas is trying to get rid of. He’s managed to get Lester there as well, saying that he had brokered a duel with Julis, but the reality is that he’s trying to pin the attacks on Lester.
Not looking particularly good for either of them.
The thing that really didn’t work for me this episode was the back and forth between Silas and Julis before the fighting started. The leaps in logic that Julis was making to say that she’d figured out it was Silas were pretty weak. There were people all over the place for that duel with Ayato. Everyone knew it happened, so saying that it was something that is incriminating just doesn’t make much sense. I’m wondering if there’s a translation error in there as well, since the line that was repeated here didn’t make much sense to me last week. Anyway, this isn’t one of the mystery shows. Silas admits he is the attacker, and that he’s going to pin them on Lester, while he gets rid of both Lester and Julis. But he’s not going to fight himself. He’s got not-people for that.
Understandably Saved
Hey, you, we’re back here
From the beginning of the fight, with Julis and Lester facing 128 of the constructs, it’s pretty sure that they’re not going to do very well. And Lester gets overwhelmed pretty quickly, like without making any headway at all. Julis does better, Summoning a fire (snap)dragon (Antirrhinum Majus is a garden snapdragon), she holds them off for a while, but eventually gets restrained, facing death. And that’s when Ayato finally shows up. I mean, we knew that he was going to, and it would be at the time he was needed, so that did take a lot of the suspense out of the moment. But Ayato’s heroics are sufficiently, er, heroic to get the job done, or at least get them out of danger for long enough to have a short argument about why Ayato shouldn’t have come. But in the end, he turns it around on Julis, that just the same as her free will, he’s going to protect her out of his own free will. I’m not sure whether Ayato is saying that he’s decided his purpose is to protect Julis specifically, or whoever is the heroine of the current story, but for now it’s protecting Julis.
The final boss put up hardly any fight.
And the final fight is a bit sexist, with Ayato carrying Julis throughout, although Julis does get to contribute by providing some flight power. Eventually, Ayato finishes off all of Silas constructs, including the last boss, while still one-armed carrying Julis. I guess if he’s going to fight, having her in his arms is better than her standing somewhere that she could get captured and used as a hostage against him. And his limit break finally runs out after he finishes off Silas’ threat, sending him down into the hands of Claudia. And then we finish up with a nice scene between Julis and Ayato as he recovers with a lap pillow. The show finishes up with bit of a telling scene with Claudia and Eishirou taking out Silas, referencing the “Shadow Stars”, apparently Eishirou’s side job as part of secret information gathering group (he also had Lester there to take some advantage of). And we finally get a look into one of the other schools, as the people who supplied Silas with his constructs from Allekant are also watching the happenings.
Quiet time for Ayato and Julis again
This is NOT a person to mess with
While it’s not quite as romantic as the scene in Cavalry, Julis does seem to open up to Ayato quite a bit, including some honesty with her own feelings. I think it’s also reasonable that Julis is a bit hesitant to open up, having always been the target of others. But I don’t think this show is going to end up with couple, given Claudia’s reaction to the scene between Ayato and Julis. She’s not going to give up without a fight, as much as she might like Julis and wish for the best for her. But there’s definitely an edge and a side to Claudia that we just get that glimpse of in her attack on Silas. Basically, he had no chance, and she hardly exerted herself. I’d hate to think what would happen to someone who actually hurt Ayato…
What are you talking about? She’s TOTALLY happy about Ayato and Julis…
About Highway
Proving that you don't have to be young to love anime, I enjoy all genres and styles of shows. If it's not hurting anyone else, you should never be ashamed of what you like!
POWUH: 600-699 and LN Enthusiast with 623 comments
Julis was referring to the one in episode 2, when she was about to duel Saya after Ayato conveniently left to buy drinks. They were about to duel then when they were ambushed and Saya blew up the fountain afterwards. Official reports only says that Julis repelled the attackers but nothing says that Julis was in the middle of declaring a duel against Saya then when it happened. Only the attacker, Silas, would know about it since he was around the place.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
Ahh, I didn’t get that, and at the time didn’t really think of that as a duel. If they were waiting for a duel, why not wait a few more seconds until they actually DID duel, instead of preempting it by attacking? It really felt like the attack and the argument had nothing to do with each other.
And really, that argument felt like a standoff more than the prelude to a duel, because it was obvious something was going to interrupt it, either what happened or Ayato returning with drinks or Claudia arriving or something. So I guess that’s why I didn’t make the connection.
POWUH: 600-699 and LN Enthusiast with 623 comments
In the novels, Julis actually announced it already that she was challenging Saya to a duel. Saya only had to accept it but they were interrupted. Quote from the novels:Show ▼
In the episode, Julis only touched the school badge near her chest before the arrows were fired. I guess her touching the school badge was an enough visual indication that a duel was about to begin.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
I guess, as I said, it felt to me a lot more like they were both doing that kind of “Oh yeah, you wanna go? I’m ready, you ready?” posturing that happens before a fight that neither participant really wants to get in, but have to show that they’d be willing to fight to save face. It never felt like they were actually going to fight each other in the anime, to me.
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1557 comments
I didn’t get that duel reference until Julis started explaining it. I did think there were bystanders around, so I didn’t think it was much of a secret.
On the contrary, I thought they were going to duel. Maybe not a serious to-the-death duel, but more of one to test each other’s abilities.
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1692 comments
Claudia did say she’s not the nice person she seems. Now we see she’s a total badass and doesn’t hesitate to kill. But will she turn out to be one of the bad guys?
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
Hey, she didn’t kill him. They have to keep him alive to torture some information out of him.
I don’t know if she’ll be a ‘bad guy’, since the story we’re seeing is from the perspective of Ayato and the students in Seidokan Academy. If the main character was from Queen Veil or Allekant, then Claudia would probably be the main bad guy. I think, like Ayato claims he wants to protect Julis right now, and Julis has to protect the things she holds dear, Claudia is doing the same thing. She just has different methods and thresholds.
Julis has already declared that Rikka is a town of low moral turpitude, so I think that malleable ethics are something that we’re going to see a lot of.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
Ugh. These fights felt like a lot of thud and blunder. I’m not a huge fan of “lets you and the robot mob fight”, as they, like this one, feel fakey and without any real consequence.
But I thought it was a good wheel to turn the characterizations around. We get exactly what and how Julis, Ayato, and Cladia will value to set their own unique stakes. Good development on them so far, and they didn’t make Julis a complete damsel-in-distress.
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
It was a very standard anime fight. Convenient pauses for Julis and Ayato to talk, for Silas to monologue, for Lester to bluster. Bursts of action to make it seem like things are happening. And being certain of what’s going to happen really takes all of the suspense and consequence out of it.
But you’re right, we did see some interesting points to the main characters. We saw the stick to Claudia’s carrot. We saw Julis genuinely smile. And we saw Ayato be honest with Julis about his capabilities and limitations. I think we also saw that Julis was acceptably reluctant as a damsel-in-distress, but also neither ungrateful or interfering. Tactically, it was actually the best move for both of them, it was good that Julis didn’t screw it up by being too petulant, and both managed to contribute to their win.
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
Oh, yah. That understanding and teamwork made the composition you mention in the lead image feel that much more alive.
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1557 comments
The one motive I don’t really understand is Ayato’s. I don’t get the leap from confused and lost to deciding to be Julis’ knight in shining armor. What gives? I don’t believe that there is a serious attraction to her (yet), so why did he decide to dedicate his sword to her?
It just doesn’t feel genuine to me, besides making the story move forward.
I think the third and fourth episodes have lost a bit of momentum from the second… while they were good enough to keep my interest, it feels like they’ still missing something. Like why should I care at all about Allekant, and right now those spying girls seem so irrelevant. If they were trying to position them as the new evil people hiding in the background, they did a poor job.