D’awww

…So the part with Ruka and Romio seems to have resolved itself relatively peacefully. Which is kind of sad since they’re my favourite Author and Instead couple thus far and I’d really like to see more of them. Oh well, on to more of Iwai and Kiri.

This episode was kind of a break from all of the action (which is probably for the best, since some really important things are coming up). We’ve already had the plot make Yamane look less like a psycho, so now it’s Houko’s turn. Well, her first impression wasn’t outstanding, but this episode pretty much told us that Houko is just your average teenage girl who has to deal with a lot of crap. With looking at her character in greather depth though, I think it’s safe to say that Houko doesn’t hate Yamane, it’s just awkward to be around her. I imagine Houko wouldn’t have felt guilty about leaving Yamane if she completely hated her. The two of them just live very… dramatic lives between Yamane occasionally freaking out and Houko needing to “die” all the time. The look into their relationship seems a bit weird coming now instead of back when Yamane’s character was more relevant.  But I guess at the same time, it does make sense coming out now since Yamane seems more like a reasonable human being.

I can’t think that Houko really hates Iwai either. She might have acted that way to distance herself since she had it in her head that Iwai was going to have to die some day for Yamane, but Houko even said this episode that she couldn’t stop caring about Iwai. So yeah, she’s not so much of a cold hearted bitch as much as she just tries to hide her feelings all the time. Will she attempt to kill Iwai in the future again? I think the chances of that lessened quite a bit this episode, but I imagine if Houko was driven far enough into a corner, she might. It would be hard on her though. Yay friendship. Iwai’s feelings about how she liked Houko and Yamane because they were the only people she had contact with felt like a really stereotypical heroine reaction to that scenario, but then again, pretty much all of Iwai’s reactions to things are stereotypical heroine actions. Plus the ending scene with the tears did manage to be touching.

Aaaand then we move on from Houko to Kiri. The fact that he was a complete creep to Kashiko was both a bit surprising and then, unsurprising. I would have thought that he had his hair cutting urges were more under control from the way he acted in the first episode. But then at the same time, he’s already proven his hair obsession to be a little over the top. I feel like Kashiko was officially friendzoned since Kiri specifically made a comment about never trying to creepily cut her hair again (and we all know cutting hair=life for Kiri) this episode, but at the same time, I don’t know if she’ll let it go that easily. I mean, why bring up their first meeting again if the plot isn’t going to go anywhere with it? Since Kashiko feels like Kiri is drifting away from her, then I can see her doing or agreeing to something drastic in order to join his little world or whatever.

Kaede continues to be a really odd character (especially for this show), in that he didn’t seem that involved with the party Gossip is throwing. Plus he was saying something about Kiri becoming like him, which leads me to believe that he has a lot more to do with Iwai’s family then just being a lolicon. Maybe he’s looking after Iwai because he had something to do with the other Hair Queens. …Or maybe something else happened between him an an Author, but still. It’s an interesting direction for his character and I’m glad they’re doing more with it rather than leaving him as the creepy guy who likes dramatic murder.

…I’m not sure if having Kiri and Iwai go visit the organization that’s trying to have Iwai killed is a good idea, but whatever. I guess it’s time to learn a bit more about Gossip. There are quite a few important things coming up (plus actual death!), so this was a nice break in between all of that. A nice thing about this series is that all of the characters (minus nameless sledgehammer guy) all have fairly interesting back stories and relationships between them. Hell, Iwai is starting to look a little bland now since as far as we know, she sat in a house her whole life until Kiri showed up (but hey, on the other hand, it makes her social naivety a bit more believable) . Kiri at least, is a bit more interesting with this new thing with Kashiko. I don’t know how important that particular flashback is since the translations stop shortly ever the next event, but I’m kind of wondering how many girls (or maybe guys) Kiri has accidentally creeped on because of their hair. Maybe Crime Edge has had more control over Kiri than the plot has let on.

Hey look, it’s everyone’s favourite dental abomination~

The fanfics are basically writing themselves at this point.

As I figured, they’re leaving Tokiya for last and it’s Natsuki/Satsuki’s turn for an episode. Surprisingly though, there weren’t as many wacky antics as I was expecting.

Like I said, this episode was way more serious than I expected. I mean, it’s centred around Natsuki, the guy who is obsessed with some chicken thing and who’s absolute favourite past time is ignoring Syo’s personal space. I was expecting a lot of bromance to be honest. However, they brought in a lot of stuff from the games and so much so that it feels like they’ve taken more out of the games for this episode than any other one. For one thing, they fully explained the backstory about Satsuki and how Natsuki’s teacher pretty much ripped off a small child and made his life miserable. Also, they kind of added his insecurities about how everyone (most Syo) seems to be progressing without him (which I vaguely remember being a large part of Debut). The only major plot point they didn’t seem to have is Natsuki accepting Satsuki, but I imagine that’s just in case if there’s UtaPri 3000% or more in the future. Taking away the Natsuki/Satsuki thing is basically taking away him being interesting as a character.

“Er, Shinomiya-san, your dazzling aura is making it really difficult to take pictures”

So overall though, this kind of seriousness worked. Natsuki seem to always be portrayed as a comic relief character, so this showed a different side to him. When he’s not hugging cute things or attracting the local wildlife, he does have his own insecurities about becoming stronger. Which makes sense if you think about how tough Satsuki acts whenever he appears. Also, this episode also proved that Natsuki can be as eye catching as the other guys. I mean, just look at Cecil’s reaction. …Though that seems to be Cecil’s facial reaction to all of the guys when they preform. I’m not entirely sure why Natsuki felt the need to sing during the lipstick commercial (…and it took me a while to realize that it wasn’t trying to sell lipstick for men OTL), but whatever works I guess.

Haruka also felt a bit more involved than usual in this. …Though maybe that’s because she was risking her fingers (which are important for her to play piano/compose) where normally she either trips herself into danger or provides moral support. She went out on a limb for Natsuki and I guess that was what won Satsuki over. …To be honest, it didn’t feel that convincing to me, but I’ll take it since it was Haruka being competent for once. I think she probably could have counted on Satsuki to do the job on his own though since he was doing it to protect Natsuki. Unless the director tried to make a move on him, I doubt Satsuki would have thrown around the set in a blind rage or anything like that. Though I guess giving himself a different image for once was good for Natsuki to grow on his own. Plus Satsuki kind of sort of trusts Haruka now, so that’s progress.

…I always feel like I say the same 2 things about Cecil, but then I realized that he does the exact same thing in pretty much every episode. He walks in, talks to whoever’s episode it is, learns something and then we see a little bit of growth. At this point, this is pretty much the only thing we have to remind us that this show actually has a plot I guess. Plus with him always around, we also get to see Camus. Though he has his own song now, so I imagine we’ll see an accumulation of this growth at some point in the form of a music number. Will they give us 2 insert songs? That’s some favouritism if they do since Otoya’s two songs don’t really count since one of them was taken from the games. Though Cecil obviously has favouritism already since he’s actually doing things every episode where all of the other guys don’t do much unless it’s their episode.

What else can I say? This felt a bit light with the reasoning behind things (“you refused to let me close a door! I guess I’ll trust you” and sunglasses solve everything), but it was quite a good character development episode. For Natsuki at least, because we all know that Cecil isn’t going to do much until it’s absolutely necessary, Haruka is just there to fix plot problems, and nobody else does much except for hanging around outside their episode. Seeing what will come after Tokiya’s episode should be interesting though. In 1000%, Tokiya’s problems took up like, 3 episodes, but I don’t think he’s having the same kind of issues now, so I wonder how they’ll spend all of that extra time.

I swear, 90% of the special effects budget goes towards sparkles.

Apparently being slapped through a window just wasn’t enough abuse for Kiri.

…Reading the manga, Dansai Bunri has left a bit out. Like, they explained that poison in Yamane’s syringe is super potent, but apparently she can use different liquids on herself too in order to enhance her abilities. Or the fact that Seiji needs absolute evidence before he can judge someone. …Oh, and they also shortened the pants of what Iwai is wearing this episode from biker shorts to bloomers for no reason whatsoever (other than the obvious reason of fanservice).

Hint: If you hear a voice telling you to assault girls, you probably shouldn’t listen to it.

Well that was a twist. I really thought it was Romio in charge. Since, you know, he was the one to explain the history of the object, he signed his name on that creepy letter and he was the one holding the whip in the last episode. …Iwai actually commented on Kiri mysteriously being able to let go of the scissors in the manga, but even then that still had no explanation of why Romio could separate the thing from Ruka. I’m just going to assume that it’s an Author and Instead thing and that Kanae’s explanation had a lot of BS in there for dramatic effect. Since the Authors can’t get rid of Killing Goods rule seems to be broken every other episode. Anyways, this turn of events certainly makes sense too, since Ruka has made her problems with men clear and it makes more sense if she’s the one controlling these guys as opposed to Romio (plus it’s slightly less creepy that way if you think about it).

If you’re wondering why Ruka’s brainwashed henchmen absolutely sucked (other than the fact that having Killing Goods apparently automatically gives you superhuman reflexes), it’s because she can only give them simple tasks. …I’m not entirely sure as what constitutes as a simple task, but there you go. Also, her whole motivation over hating guys (since they never really went into that and you’d think that she’d hate girls after the incident) was because she thought that all they do is follow their base instincts. So basically, she thought that she lost the popularity contest because guys don’t have much going on in their heads and are easily swayed by pretty girls.

I’m not entirely sure that her reasoning for going after Iwai was something the audience could sympathize with as well. She has a weird inferiority complex going on, which is understandable. However, of all things, it was caused seemingly by losing one popularity contest. I guess it was a soul crushing defeat since Romio also voted for the girl, but still. It’s kind of like how Kiri’s life was ruined by professional hairdressers. These Authors seem to take the slightest setbacks in life extremely seriously. Though maybe part of that desperation was also caused by happening upon the whip at the time, which empowered her at the time. If she was left alone without it, maybe she could have gotten over it eventually. I’m sure that wasn’t the only play Ruka could have ever participated in with a princess role.

…Kiri’s speech about Iwai being a normal girl in his eyes was nice and all, but that scene with Romio calling Iwai a monster just because he hair can’t be cut seems a little extreme. Yes, Iwai has a complex about her hair and that’s why the insult kind of worked. However, it seemed like on the same level as someone calling a double jointed person a monster. Iwai’s hair being uncuttable seems more like an inconvenience than anything else and he’s completely ignoring the fact that the person he hangs out with seriously needs to pretend to murder him once in a while so as to not loose her mind. But meh, details I guess.

In the end though, the plot effectively turned Ruka and Romio’s characters into something touching though (where their backstory failed). As fetishized their relationship was, the moment Romio called Kiri an idiot for insulting Ruka’s hair, you just knew that they had something genuine in there. Ruka was just too immersed in her own problems to notice that she was actually number one, if only to Romio. They have a pretty nice relationship. …Despite the fact that they have the roles of sadist and masochist perfected. It’s like with Kiri and Iwai (or even Houichi and Hitomi from the one episode we saw them in) though, where neither seems to mind their role too much and really, they probably wouldn’t have it any other way.

Speaking of Kiri and Iwai, wow. Iwai switched from being rather detached to wanting to monopolize Kiri’s hair cutting skills rather quickly. It felt like kind of a selfish switch for her to suddenly getting upset after blowing Kiri off (even if she didn’t mean it as such). Plus, after that she immediately still wanted to see other people as opposed to Kiri alone. …On one hand, I still get it since a relatively short time ago, she had no friends, but just like she doesn’t exclusively belong to Kiri, he doesn’t belong to her either with that mindset. ….Even if he’s under a slap-induced state of hypnosis. The last episode was great for Iwai’s independence, but I don’t think I’d be so annoyed with this turn of events if it wasn’t Iwai’s selfishness that brought him back, and if she hadn’t gone back to how she was acting before the whole thing immediately after. She realized on some level that Kiri was special, but other than that one moment, she doesn’t seem to have given a second thought to it. Oh well, I’m just going to attribute this to her emotional immaturity. Like how she didn’t quite think about how Kiri would react to her words about him being convenient to have around, she probably hasn’t had enough human interaction to realize what this whole episode looked like. All she was thinking was that something was wrong with Kiri, something felt wrong about the thought of him cutting Ruka’s hair and there was nothing she could really do but shout her frustrations. Then Kiri saved her, all was right with the world again, and Iwai could go back to living life as normal without worries.

It looks like Seiji and Kouzakura’s relationship might have more to it as well. We knew that she was desperately trying to stop him from killing people, but I never thought that Seiji would actually listen to her if she yelled enough. I guess either the sound of her voice stopped his killing high, or somewhere deep down, he does respect Kouzakura a bit. At first, I thought Seiji’s logic seemed like it was all over the place. Apparently it doesn’t matter if it was for defending Iwai and that Kiri didn’t actually kill Romio, I guess cutting people is still cutting people to Seiji. Though after a bit of thought, cutting an unarmed person (or cutting anyone really) IS illegal, so Seiji being objective makes sense here. How is he supposed to know that Kiri isn’t being brainwashed by the scissors? And what Ruka was doing was kind of mild compared to Kiri (I mean, dumbing it down a lot, it was basically her slapping people, compared to needlessly making Romio look one cut away from the Joker), which is why I assume that Seiji went after Kiri instead. And anyways, who’s to say that Kiri might have just been rendered unconscious? It was in Iwai’s defence that he went after Romio. Though of course, that’s not really something you’d want to wait and find out about, hence the struggling.

So yeah, I’ve read the manga up to where it’s been translated and I like the extra lines and details that it has in there. …I think I’ll stay away from the raws for now though since I have a feeling it will be a kanji nightmare (if the character names and the fact that the series seems to like throwing terms everywhere is any indication). Despite the ending being kind of all over the place, I really liked this arc. …Er, mostly because of the end bit with Ruka and Romio, so I guess you can just say that I liked the ending of this arc. Things seemed to have resolved themselves rather peacefully considering that Seiji was ready to kill Kiri and Ruka could have been a target for Seiji as well, but it looks like he’ll back off for now. …For a show about murderers, there have been very few actual murders. But that’s okay since the characters are pretty interesting.

Iwai’s haircuts of the week are interesting as well~

Oh look, Haruka’s clumsiness is contagious.

…I think I was supposed to be concerned during the blackout scene this episode, but watching Ren’s brother flail around was pretty funny. Yes, he was in a rush, but those injuries could have been easily avoided.

It’s nowhere as ridiculous as the games, but it seems like Ren broods a lot for a supposedly nonchalant character. The events of this episode didn’t weigh down his spirits too badly, but then pretty much everyone (minus Haruka, but that’s okay since she made up for it later) noticed that something was wrong with Ren. Oh well, things seem to have sorted themselves out fairly painlessly this episode. …Minus the giant blackout. And since it was one of that size that’s backed up by a company as large as the Jinguuji’s, I assume that someone, if not a few people lost their jobs. But hey, it’s okay as long as it’s not the main characters. Overall, Ren’s performance went pretty well and that imagery with him lighting a flame inside everyone’s hearts was… interesting. It’s a good thing that 99.999% of the people there were female, or that scene might have been kind of awkward. …I’ve just grown to accept Cecil as the 2nd heroine at this point.

…And I don’t even think I need to comment on his hobbies anymore. 

Haruka could have been a stalker and the CD could have contained the music version of The Ring or something, but luckily this is UtaPri and everyone has inherit goodness in their hearts/can be believed when they claim to be things. …Or at least, if you’re in the entertainment business, you can get away with more things than most people (I’m fairly sure that absolutely everything Shining does is illegal on some level). Plus Ren’s brother showing up was rather convenient. As was Cecil just happening to have the instrumental to Ren’s song. Haruka has steadily been more active in the plot and Tomo showed up! She hasn’t showed up in a while, but it looks like she’s been doing well. They’ve talked about all of the characters still not being ‘official’ idols, even though they kind of are, so I guess Tomo also fits under that description. Only, I don’t think she’ll be winning the Uta Pri award, so it looks like she’ll be stuck in that not-quite-an-idol position for her entire career (unless she becomes super popular for reasons that don’t involve awards). …Which is kind of depressing, but like the impending unemployment I mentioned about the staff above, it looks like we’re not supposed to dwell on this. At least we have conformation that she’s still alive, unlike some characters.

The only time lighting your audience on fire is okay.

Ah yes, brotherly love. As expected, Ren was completely misunderstanding his brother’s intentions and it was just a convoluted way of getting Ren to… follow his dreams I guess? To give him purpose? Well, in any case, it wasn’t just for profit for the Jinguuji Company like Ren thought it was. Ren sucks at expressing what he’s really feeling inside too, so I guess it runs in the family. …And since Souichirou apparently doesn’t appear to age, maybe Ren will get lucky with that too. Though, uh, that “I love your songs” line… Were this season one, that’s like the equivalent of confessing your undying feelings. I don’t think Ren flashing back to the conversation he just had a scene ago was really necessary either, but I guess they felt like they really wanted to draw that scene with Ren reflecting by a lake. Overall, I’m just glad that the drama in this episode didn’t come from one of Ren’s ex-girlfriends.

Oh, but hey, this episode aside, it looks like Ren also has a role in Karneval as Uro. …I’m kidding, but really. It’s the same VA (Suwabe), using pretty much the same voice and the characters themselves look like pallet swaps.

I see no difference.

Even Ren had a better episode than Masato (which is good, but still, I feel sorry for Masa’s character). I still remember the pure rage I experienced during Ren’s route in Repeat, so I’m just really, really glad that none of that nonsense continued on into the anime. Not that they’ve really pulled anything from the game’s plots before this. Though if I remember correctly, Ren did have a fashion show and that’s where Haruka first met his brother in the games. Anyways, Shining mentioned rivals appearing for the Uta Pri award, but will they show us who the so-called rivals actually are? Uta Pri’s entire cast has already been shown by this point. …Unless the rivals are the senpai, which would explain their mysterious disappearance, but at the same time, I thought only new and upcoming idols could win. From the way they were talking, the senpai have been in the business for quite a bit of time. …Well, I guess we’ll see.

Kira~☆

Obviously, this was the best date ever. Look at how excited they are.

At least Nakamura had fun.

Well it’s date time finally for Saeki and Kasuga. However, it’s obviously not all fun and games since I don’t think Kasuga knows what fun is he’s kind of sort of wearing Saeki’s uniform. Plus Nakamura seems intent on making sure that Kasuga turns into a pervert. Whatever that means.

Well, this was the most lively we’ve seen Kasuga since… well actually, this is the most lively we’ve ever seen him. His enthusiasm for books seems to have no end. Saeki didn’t seem all that impressed (or at least, the anime version of her didn’t seem too impressed) with the gift, but Kasuga’s attitude change was certainly is a change from the introverted, pessimistic guy we usually see. I wouldn’t say that Kasuga’s enthusiasm ruined anything either. There were subtle hints that Saeki was at least kind of interested in Kasuga’s hobby. Like asking what his favourite book was. Or not completely ditching him when he ran off like that. …Or agreeing to date him at the end of the episode. If anything, I’d say she just didn’t know how to react to Kasuga suddenly getting really passionate about literature as opposed to the awkward guy he usually is (and then later reverted to).

 He’s still going on about what an angel Saeki is, but after seeing her last episode, his statements aren’t just delusions. If not for Nakamura getting in the way (…and running in rainbow backgrounds), this would have been a pretty sweet date between the two of them. I don’t know if Kasuga would have asked Saeki out platonically if Nakamura hadn’t forced the kiss thing on him, but it worked out rather well at the end. …Provided that Saeki didn’t see the gym uniform after Nakamura’s outburst. I don’t even know how Nakamura managed to procure an entire bucket of water so quickly. Or maybe she brought it with her unnoticed at some point just in case things didn’t go as planned for her, which is almost equally odd.

This is the first time Kasuga has so obviously disobeyed Nakamura before. Though if he was going to that now, why didn’t he take the uniform off? Kasuga really needs to calm the hell down and think these things through a bit more. Yes, he did a terrible thing and is totally wearing the evidence like a creepy pervert, but if he acts so on edge like he this episode, he’s just making things worse. He could have had a relatively enjoyable date with the girl he idolized, but instead, he acted like a nervous wreck and maybe made Saeki more suspicious of him (if she was ever suspicious in the first place). He’s letting guilt and anxiety rule his life, and that’s probably not very good for his physical and mental health. Though it certainly makes Nakamura’s job easier. And after the events of this episode, he might be too scared to fight back ever again.

That’s just part of his character though I guess. He panics, doesn’t think things through entirely, and gets really suspicious about absolutely everything. Plus the fact that he pretty much lives in his mind probably doesn’t help him much. His imagination isn’t exactly his friend.

So finally, Nakamura. …I don’t know what they were going for with having her practically skipping through fields of rainbows, but, er, at least she was enjoying herself. She’s definitely having fun with Kasuga’s suffering and while her orders for a kiss weren’t too out of line (considering that she straight out pushed him into Saeki’s chest before), she probably knew that he would have issues with the idea. I just think it’s amazing at how deserted the town was (I mean, it was the weekend and everything). She stalked them the entire way and the only people we really ever saw were the three characters and then the guy in the bookstore (plus a few cars, but who knows if there were even people driving those things).

From the anime that brought you sideburns-with-braids-girl, now comes moustache-is-slowly-taking-over-his-face-man.

This was a… weird episode. Even for Aku no Hana. Though it still managed to capture the norms of the series (aka Kasuga making terrible decisions and the town being relatively deserted minus the main characters). It’s like no one exists outside of school or their jobs. …Or otherwise for the role of making it difficult to dispose of gym-uniform-type evidence that one time. Or maybe those parts with Nakamura prancing about while stalking and that scene with Saeki literally descending as an angel threw me off the entire episode. … Also, I keep forgetting that Hikasa Yoko is in this as Saeki. I can barely recognize her voice and Saeki is kind of soft spoken. On the plus side though, I’ve never noted this before but having the characters voiced realistically is a really nice touch overall. I mean (bringing in a totally unrelated VA off the top of my head), Sawashro Miyuki can do a pretty convincing male voice, but it’s definitely not the same as having an actual male VA play the role. The style of animation they’re obviously going for realism, but subtly, they’re also bringing it in for other aspects too.

…So my mind is kind of fuzzy about what happens next, but I do know that the image of Nakamura running is going to follow me into my nightmares.

It’s like staring into the depths of hell itself. 

Kiri x Iwai? More like Crime Edge x Iwai.

This was one of those anime episodes that made me sit back and wonder if I made the correct choice in blogging this. But hey, at least you can’t claim that Dansai Bunri isn’t entertaining!

So yeah, obvious things first. If sexual hair cutting wasn’t enough, we suddenly have S&M time (even more so than having one twin erotically stick needles into the other) and rape intonations. Yay? Well, we have a new Author. Lord knows what Romio wants accomplished by killing Iwai (if he even wants to do that), but it’s pretty damn obvious that he’s just a tiiiiiiiiiny bit sadistic. There’s killing a girl, and then there’s brainwashing (at least a portion of) the male population to assault her after pushing her off a boat and leaving her a threatening message where you clearly signed your name. Obviously he likes things overly dramatic. Ruka has issues too, though it’s not quite clear if it’s a typical story about trauma around males (like bullying, saying girls were stupid, etc), or if it’s something darker than that.

I’m glad we actually were given the backstory about Romio’s ancestor and compared to what they’re doing with the thing now, I’m surprised at how… tame the history is. On the other hand, that convenient exposition pretty much explained exactly what was going on in the second half of the episode with the mind controlling/brainwashing/whatever. Though I’m kind of curious as to how he managed to hit everyone since there appear to be a lot of people under his control and I’m quite sure nobody would listen if he said “please sit still while I whip you”. He must have put some thought and effort into either tracking down every single student individually, or gathering them in one spot and making sure that they didn’t leave. What can one take away from this? Well, I assume we’re supposed to just assume that every single Author and Instead is crazy and… well, that’s all I have. Plus, fanservice. …I don’t think there’s much to be misunderstood about that.

Iwai should have known that things were awry when Kiri let go of those scissors.

…I thought Kiri and Iwai were an item already, but I guess not. Funny how Kiri has changed from the one person who Iwai needed around to simply the guy who cuts her hair. Obviously they do care about each other more than that relationship and Iwai DID want Kiri to watch the stars with her, but man did the guy get friendzoned rather quickly out of nowhere. I wonder what will happen when Kashiko finds out about Kiri and Iwai. Not necessarily about the Hair Queen thing, but I think we can conclude for sure from this episode that Kiri has feelings for Iwai and Kashiko has feelings for Kiri.

Iwai actually turned out pretty level headed. She’s not leaping at the first male who was remotely nice to her and even though we can guess from her actions that Kiri is special, Iwai even says that she’s not quite ready for romance and she’s not getting into that until she’s ready. As frustrating as that is for Kiri, good on Iwai for that. The plot has painted her as the moe, helpless damsel in distress, but this episode showed that she does have a brain and is perfectly capable of making her own decisions with or without Kiri there. Having the male student body attacking her aside, I’m actually kind of looking forward to the next episode since it looks like it’s Iwai’s chance to save Kiri for once. Maybe she won’t do it in the effortless style that Kiri uses, but at least she’s doing something productive instead of sitting there waiting for him to snap out of it himself. Who knows how successful this will be, but at least she’s trying. Oh, and  the part about how she trusts Kiri in this situation instead of automatically blaming him for being creepy was nice too.

…Though at some points, I felt like I was accidentally watching Amnesia again.

The names this time seem to be more about sounding unusual more than anything else at the moment. Romio’s name is comprised of the characters for ‘dew’ (…or apparently that kanji also doubles as an abbreviation for the country ‘Russia’) ‘look’ and ‘man’. Zaiga is made of the kanji for …er, I can’t think of an English equivalent, but it’s something along the lines of ‘hastily (or at least, not very well) put together’ and then, ‘congratulations’. Ruka’s name is along the lines of “made of Lapis Lazuli” and then her last name is “four directional temple” …or “temple that faces four ways” or… something. It has the kanji for the cardinal directions in there and I’m not entirely sure how it’s supposed to be read with the kanji for 4.

Well this was an interesting episode and threw the plot back into action after an episode of relative peace. Some of the events of the episode were kind of shocking at first, but after going back (…to figure out the dialogue since there were more distracting things going on), it wasn’t as questionable as I had first thought it was. Hell, the dialogue between Romio and Ruka in that first scene had pretty much nothing to do with undressing each other. I have a feeling they just threw it in since it was infinitely more interesting than two people conversing in a dark room and at the same time stating “THIS IS A DARK AND EDGY SHOW ABOUT MURDERERS.” Ah well, the next episode we should see Iwai try her best to help Kiri and… well, that’s all I got out of the preview. Hopefully the two come to terms with their feeling too. Or at least I hope Kiri figures out that he’s more than just a pair of scissors to Iwai, since it would make her statement about not being ready for a relationship less meaningful if she enters one the episode after she says that.

So I guess we just have to forget about Hitomi and her killer piano for now. But on the other hand, it’s nice to know that Seiji’s introduction wasn’t entirely wasted since he’s apparently stalking Iwai now. I doubt he’ll lift a finger to help Iwai since he seems to enjoy watching from afar, but it will be interesting to see if he kills Romio or not after all of this is over and done with.

…He should probably still get those teeth looked at though.

Underneath that smile, he’s planning to kill them all.

…Pretty much every episode of UtaPri has had me going like this -> щ(゜ロ゜щ) chanting “OTP! OTP!” in my head. This probably isn’t good for my health.

Two insert songs? An almost confession? I’m sensing some Otoya favouritism. At least some parts of his backstory is being included though like the fact that he’s orphaned. We’re not into the deep part of his backstory where Shining is his (heavily implied, I can’t remember if this was confirmed or not) father, but at least they’re keeping some facts from the games in there. Actually, they did this too with Masa’s closeness to his grandfather, but I was too busy raging over the stupidity of the episode to link things together at the time.

Haruka being afraid of the least convincing haunted house ever created (and hell, she even helped set it up) was adorable. …Pathetic, yes, but still adorable. She also seems to be writing songs like no tomorrow, so good for her! Yay! No more silly writers block like in the last season. At least she can write songs like a mofo where she can’t seem to do anything else without endangering herself. Plus I guess coming up with multiple songs justifies her mysterious absence in the last episode. I just hope that Shining pushing her like this isn’t making her run out of steam before the end. All we need is another episode of spontaneous forgetfulness.

Cecil… really isn’t doing a a whole lot to convince me that he’s not a stalker. Just how did he know where Otoya’s orphanage is when nobody else did? Why is he on such good terms with the children? He’s obviously been there before, and yet, we’ve never actually seen him there. Anyways, if Haruka didn’t show up in the episode, I was just about ready to dub Cecil as the heroine of the show. Really, he’s the only character who’s been getting constant character development this season and he’s obviously realizing just what the other characters see in the idol business. Obviously this episode was all about the joy that comes from making people laugh/smile/whatever. Plus his senpai is the only one who hasn’t vanished off the face of the earth. Which is kind of ironic considering that Camus was the one character who vanished into thin air in the very first senpai introduction episode. I’m starting to suspect that he murdered the other 3 for more screen time.

The concept of ‘haunted house’ seems to be lost on these children

Well, at least these children seem to be the most musically inclined over all of the other instances of UtaPri children we’ve seen in the past. …If you can’t remember, Tokiya attempting to sing Amazing Grace with crippled children went from touching to hilariously off key and so did Haruka’s time with the children in the park (though that scene also resembled a satanic ritual). They were actually really cute (as was the parts where they were pushing Otoya and Haruka together) and I’m glad things worked out for the bazaar overall. …Though I’m not sure if having the rest of the guys dress up in animal suits was necessary. I mean, they practically have teenage girls throwing them their panties every time they do a job. All they really need to do is walk around in public and I’m sure that’s more than enough to draw publicity. …Though the fact that they’re not dancing suggestively or sparkling might throw people off. Kind of like how a simple pair of glasses worked as a disguise for Superman.

So after 5 episodes, at least I can deduce that there is some kind of plot here. …Or at least, there’s more plot than last season, where the show told Haruka to pick a partner and then she just kind of hung out with people and then made a really rushed last minute decision. There’s been steady progress with Cecil about what being an idol is (which I guess is what the show’s really about so that fits pretty well as a theme). Also, unlike from what I remember last season where it only occasionally showed the characters doing classwork, the characters HAVE been progressively working in their careers and the show is just highlighting the less frequent problems they’ve had.

So I guess we have Ren, Tokiya and Natsuki left for episodes. Plus maybe another 4 for each of the senpai if they all haven’t been sacrificed to the god of entertainment or something off screen.

This isn’t conspicuous at all. 

Just how many times can Kasuga screw himself over with his decisions? A lot. On the plus side though, this episode we got to see more of Nakamura’s more creepy facial expressions. …And her hear scream in the conveniently deserted woman’s washroom. Though maybe like the library, people are used to this and just ignore it now.

Well, the pay off from Kasuga defending Nakamura came pretty immediately. Ah, irony. Kasuga defends Nakamura, who he had nothing to do with before, and NOW Saeki pays attention to him. Though maybe he still would have stood up for Nakamura anyways in the same situation, which just makes this encounter with Saeki tragically late. But really, what was Kasuga expecting? If she was as nice as he expected, or course she would like that he stood up for Nakamura. Well, Saeki is pretty much exactly how Kasuga idolized her as. Really, she seems like the kind, caring angel that Kasuga has depicted her as the entire time and she doesn’t seem to care about what people think the way Kasuga does since she went against the peer pressure in the classroom. Hell, even her hobbies have a ‘well bred good girl’ image to them like piano and… studying.

When I first saw her character, I thought Kasuga might have been a bit delusional, but she really is a nice girl right now. Though maybe Kasuga already knew this because he’s kept an, er, close eye on her this entire time. She’s even saved him too now since he was kind of shoved into a corner with his despair. …Which just doubles the irony since he’s the one who took her uniform and caused her stress before. Not to mention that he might not have been in so much despair if he hadn’t stolen the thing in the first place. In any case, she only keeps improving her image in Kasuga’s eyes.

…And yet, he STILL refuses to throw out/burn/ do anything with the gym uniform. Life is finally looking up for Kasuga, and yet, Nakamura and the gym uniform still weigh him down. Er, at least Kasuga said he’ll stop sniffing it and whatnot. You’d think he would have stopped doing that when the guilt hit him in episode 2, but whatever. You can just feel how this is all going to come back and bite him later (or I guess it already has, since he’s wearing it on a freaking date with Saeki), but it’s a little too late now. Kasuga just can’t seem to pull himself out of the hole he dug himself and ignore Nakamura’s demands. At least he’s not going “nooo, she’s too good for me! Look at what I’ve done!” and panicking over that. He might feel guilty about her uniform, but at least the guy grabs the chance when it’s there. But for now, life is looking pretty good for Kasuga (minus the fact that he can’t exactly participate in a wet t-shirt contest at the moment). The girl of his dreams agreed to go out on a date with him, her actual personality fits what he thought it did and they even had come close contact on the stairs. If Nakamura wasn’t around, this would be the part where Kasuga’s life stops being shitty.

Is Nakamura’s declaration that she’s going to expose him (because apparently that one time in the library just wasn’t enough) something to be worried about? …Probably. I’m not going to comment on Kasuga’s “does she like me?!” bit since I think we’ve all made mistakes like that (and really, it did look like she was jealous), but she’s still proving that she really needs a hobby or something. Kasuga isn’t even really doing anything wrong now other than listening to her crazy blackmailing. Apparently lying about the date meeting time and place never even crossed his mind.

Another week, another episode where I can’t say what everything that I want to say because things haven’t happened yet. Sigh. In any case, Kasuga’s life really is turning out to be a story about how making one regrettable mistake really can change one’s life forever. Though maybe in Kasuga’s case, it’s multiple things since he could have told Saeki SO MANY TIMES about the uniform, or at least gotten rid of the evidence.

There was a random change of the OP song this week. I guess if the first one was about Kasuga (or at least, the lyrics fit his general state of mind), this one is Nakamura. I can’t see it being anyone else since the lyrics included the mention of her wish and the fact that they want to leave. It wasn’t anything mindblowing and the visuals just kind of changed from green to pink, but it’s always interesting when an anime changes the OP song. Especially one Saeki will get one too, though I’m doubtful since this episode was what I figured would be covered in 2 and she doesn’t get all that interesting until later.

And remember, Nakamura is always watching.

…The real reason Kiri took out the scissors was because that one piece of hair was annoying.

I have no idea what happened between this episode and the last one, but Iwai was absolutely adorable here. …Or maybe it was her haircut that I found adorable. Anyways, things are slightly less depressing this episode! Yay!

After an eventful meeting and dealing with possible murderers for a while, it looks like things have finally slowed down for Iwai and Kiri. Plus they’re in spring now, which is symbolic of beginnings in Japan and whatever. Iwai definitely seems more comfortable around people (in general, minus Authors), and it’s good to know that she’s not entirely dependant on Kiri. And hey! This episode wasn’t quite as insistent on reminding us on how much her life sucks! …Though things are more than likely to fall through again since she has no idea that her new friend is actually also an Author.

The Byouinzaka twins don’t seem to be all that bad now either. Yamane seems more like an average girl as opposed to a crazed killer now. Plus she’s no longer really hostile to Iwai anymore (for now), and apparently they weren’t even the ones who killed Iwai’s father. …Though I have a feeling that murder was more the result of the fact that Iwai dealt with antiques for a living. It’s definitely a logical connection considering that the entire plot for this anime is that old objects have murderous intentions. Though there’s still a mystery behind his death since the Hair Queen thing seems to be females only and I don’t think killing him would have granted anyone anything. Not to mention there’s the fact that his favourite place led Iwai right to even more Authors.

I don’t care what it’s real name is. I’m calling this thing the “Lynch Note”

…I feel like Ishida Akira gets type cast into these arrogant bishounen roles an awful lot. Er anyways, despite being an asshole, I can see Seiji actually being somewhat of an ally to Kiri since he’s not all that interested in killing Iwai. …Or at least I kind of think it’s possible, but at the same time, it seemed like he could also be Kiri’s perfect adversary or at least a plot device that would stop him from killing any of the people who go after Iwai. So in a way, it’s very lucky that Kiri hasn’t killed anyone yet (as far as we know, which I’m becoming more doubtful of since that would make Seiji’s job a bit too easy), since I’m pretty sure that murder would be a punishable crime for Seiji to kill him over. If Seiji would even want to kill him, since Kiri is the only one protecting Iwai and is pretty much the only reason why she’s still around. (Which, by extension, means that her being alive is convenient for Seiji to have an endless supply of people to judge.) Oh well, at least we have our explanation for the sledgehammer  hanging incident. I can’t see the culprit behind that being any one else other than Seiji.

His Killing Goods are pretty interesting as well. Since instead of killing random bystanders, it seems exclusively for killing criminals. With that though, I wonder what happens when Killing Goods lose their Author like what happened in the last episode. Do they magically find their way to the next person in the family? What happens if the dead Author was the last in their family line? Does the curse end then? Though seeing Kanae with the hammer last episode, I wouldn’t put it past Gossip to figure out who the next relative is and conveniently place it near them. Even though they are said to be information providers only.

This reaction, coming from a guy who enjoys cutting hair a little too much.

Kouzakura? Uh, I guess she makes an interesting Instead. What she says about Seiji eventually loosing it and trying to stop that from happening seems like noble enough cause (minus the part where she likes almost dying). I’m surprised that she doesn’t do more, considering that she knows about the Killing Goods. She knows that there are serial killers hidden in society listening to inanimate objects telling the to kill people just because, and yet, she’s spending her time chasing one guy. Maybe this is a case of, she knows that she can’t do a whole lot, so she’s trying to save the person (aka Seiji) who’s actually within reach. Plus with Gossip and possibly the most powerful people in the world behind this, there’s not a whole lot one can do. In any case, between the Byouinzaka twins, Kiri, and now this, I think I’ll just stop contemplating these people and their fetishes.

Finally, on to the last two. Hitomi and Houichi didn’t seem like that bad of people actually. During their random exposition conversation at the end of the episode, it sounds like they don’t necessarily want to kill Iwai at all. Hell, it sounds like Gossip is behind people wanting to kill Iwai in the first place (since the whole controlling information thing would include telling people that they could have their wishes granted). Anyways, I assume Hitomi’s Killing Goods is the piano (I’d like to know how her ancestor managed to murder people with it), and seeing how Houichi is deaf, it kills if people listen to something played all the way through. Which would also be a reason why she doesn’t play anything to it’s finish (which is a shame since that insert piece was rather nice). Like Kashiko though (if Kashiko does turn out to be an antagonist), I can see Iwai’s friendship with Hitomi turning tragic since, you know, the Author and Hair Queen thing.

This batch of characters is a bit different since their surnames are waaay more typical. Or at least Seiji’s (Nakajima) and Houichi’s (Koizumi) are what I’d consider to be normal, fairly common, names. …Following every other character though, their given names seem to be important (maybe). Houichi’s uses the characters for “sweet aroma” (or something similar to that) and “one”. …Hell if I know what that means for his character though. As for Seiji …This one kind of hurt to realize since his name literally means justice. I didn’t even have to look at the kanji to know exactly what his name meant. Karuko is kind of weird in that it’s comprised of the kanji “light” (as in, the opposite of heavy) and “child”. …I don’t know if that means anything. As for her first name, Hitomi was kind of like Seiji in that it was painfully obvious what the intentions behind the name was. Hitomi name uses the kanji for pupil (as in, the pupil of the eye. Ha ha, she’s blind.) Kouzakura’s name is pretty much “small cherry blossoms/sakura”. Nothing spectacularly revealing there. I assume the “Zenigata” part is a joke or something since she’s pretty incompetent and the name Zenigata is based on a popular fictional badass policeman. Though the Zenigata from Lupin was kind of incompetent too if you count that he never really could arrest the guy properly. On the other hand though, with Kozakura’s friendliness (or at least, she likes the thrill of being asphyxiated) with Seiji might be something along the lines of Zenigata and Lupin’s friends-yet-enemies relationship. …Though I admit to never making it very far through any Lupin series (minus watching all of Mine Fujiko), so I could be wrong.

So many seiyuu stereotypes everywhere! Not only do we have a Yusa Koji (probably) villain, but we have a mature older woman type, Hitomi played by Inoue Kikuko (who’s other roles include the main trio’s mother in Penguindrum, Touma’s mother in Index, Kotoura’s mother in Kotoura-san, Sumire (aka Felicita’s mother) in Arcana Famiglia, the list goes on. Oh, plus Belldandy in Ah! My Goddess, if anyone remembers that at all). Okay, so maybe not everywhere. But a lot of these people, I feel like I should know their general personality based on the seiyuu.

Dansai Bunri seemed to have slowed down a bit and these new Authors just don’t seem as entertaining as the first few were. Maybe this is to prove a point that not all Authors are insane, since Kiri isn’t. (Plus Gossip seems more suspicious now.) I guess a slow episode once in a while is okay, but I do hope that the overly long introduction of Hitomi and Seiji pays off for the plot other than just having them there in the background as side characters. The exposition of Kiri and Iwai in the first episode definitely paid off though, so I’m not too worried.

Because night time haircuts are just that much more romantic.

Just when you thought you could forget about this series…

Don’t get forget about Amnesia just yet! …Even though I completely forgot that I had written this post. I think I said this would be out, what, a month ago? I have the game summary here just so you can see how much they left out of the anime. …Or if you dropped the series early, this is why you should or shouldn’t go back to watch it since they followed the game pretty closely, but still left a ton of things that would have made it better out. …Or you could just substitute watching the anime for this review, you might get more out of it.

The heroine (who has no default name, nor was given one in the anime) suddenly  wakes up to find herself in between worlds and missing all of her memories. However, she’s not alone since a fairy named Orion is there with her profusely apologizing since it’s apparently his fault that she has no memories and that the two of them are now fused together. …I don’t know how that works either, but it happened. The heroine (who has no personality whatsoever) says it’s okay though and so she has to choose a world to exist in from now on and to get memories back from. However, she has to be careful about how she goes about it since she needs to proactively and constantly get them back or else she’ll loose them all and wind up an empty shell. …So in other terms, it’s a bad idea to let anyone know that she has amnesia since they wouldn’t be able to find a cause (since it was caused by a fairy and that isn’t exactly easy to explain that and sound sane) and sitting in a hospital wouldn’t help her at all.

You’re probably familiar with the characters due to the anime, but I’m going to explain them over again anyways. …This post turned out way more sarcastic than I intended it to be, but I think I got out the serious things I wanted to say while blogging the anime. Oh and another thing is that I skipped the normal endings. Only the ‘good’ ones are mentioned here because I was lazy and other games constantly distract me.

The heroine’s childhood friend #1 and …deadpan tsundere? I don’t know. I wonder if they told Kakihara to act with as little emotion as possible, because Shin had the most monotone voice I have ever heard. It worked out okay overall, but at the beginning, Shin was just a really boring character. Anyways, he’s younger than the heroine, doesn’t sugarcoat his words and he likes to call the heroine (and Toma) idiots (… though to be honest, they more often then not deserve it).

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Ikki’s the popular guy with more psychotic, possessive fangirls than you can count, but he doesn’t tell them to go away because them forming a fan club keeps them from straight out murdering each other. Isn’t this game wonderful? He’s not exactly a play boy though (he just looks like it and having girls clinging on to him practically 24/7 doesn’t exactly help this image) and he’s been dating the heroine for about 2 months before the game starts. The fangirls are due to his… uh, magic eyes which make any girl he sees instantly fall in love with him.

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Kent is the no nonsense glasses character who seems intimidating, but he’s actually just socially awkward. He’s all about logic and reason and I have to say that his route is the most adorable thing ever. He’s Ikki’s friend and the two spend their free time challenging one another to puzzles in a dramatic fashion. …Because that’s the only true way to display friendship. Hell, he even gave the heroine (grade school level) puzzles as presents, until Ikki told him that puzzles weren’t what he meant when he said that ‘guys should give their girlfriends homemade presents as signs of affection’.

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The older brother figure towards the heroine and childhood friend #2. Uhhh… what can I say? He’s really protective towards the heroine. Really, REALLY protective. I honestly don’t know what to make of his character since on one hand, there’s the cage thing, but on the other, his route was hilarious. His route is worth playing for the laugh value (man, I have a horrible personality xD).

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…You know, the game opening gives his name as ‘Ukyo’ but then gives him the ‘u’ character right at the end of his name where everyone else is just 2 kana. Why the ‘u’ at the end if they’re not going to use it? Did they really need to make every guy’s name 4 letters when romanised? …Perhaps this is the true mystery of the route. …Anyways, yeah. Ukyou has multiple personalities (one that wants to kill the heroine and one that doesn’t) and his route makes the entire game depressing. …But then doesn’t. I also apologize in advance for the text wall.

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Definitely not my favourite otome game out there (since the heroine is SO bland), but this was pretty much the perfect mix of dark, angst ridden romance that I like. Yeah, Ukyou’s route ruins the others for me (since he most definitely died in them and the heroine never even knows what he’s done for her), but that just makes his own ending feel like THE best one overall. There’s no doubt in my mind that Ukyou’s route is the OTP.

The music? Soundtrack wise, it was decent (I like it better than what was in the anime for sure). For the opening song though, it doesn’t even compare to the anime’s (though it did eventually grow on me). Nagi makes everything better. The art is obviously amazing and after a while, you don’t even notice that Shin is wearing mismatched thigh high boots or that Kent is in a trench coat. I liked the variety in the sprites too and while the lip synching wasn’t accurate whatsoever, the sprite placement was cool (if Shin and Toma were in a conversation, they would make it look like Shin was facing Toma and Toma would be placed slightly more in the background to make it look like there was room depth).

For me, Ukyou’s story the best (and I always love a good psychopathic love interest), but out of all of the characters though, I found myself liking Mine. Not only because I really love her outfit, but her petty shallowness was actually a mix of adorable and hilarious. One day she’d be ignoring the heroine for being Ikki’s girlfriend and the next she’d be supporting them because that meant that she could have Waka and Shin to herself (because obviously two good looking guys are better than one). And then of course, the initial impression of her would be proven wrong since she’d worry about the heroine when the fangirls (or any other accident) might have harmed her. Mine was just a great character. Screw the heroine, this game needed more Mine. Rika was actually pretty funny too when she was the heroine’s friend (…not when she was sending the heroine death threats in other routes) with her overly …sophisticated(?) (I don’t know how to describe it other than she used the ‘watakushi’ pronoun and other language like that) speech and “ohohohoho~” laugh. Waka was just awesome throughout. I didn’t mention it at all, but in Ukyou’s route, it’s like all of his other personalities are combined, so he’s this kind yet intimidating individual who is rumoured to have been part of a secret assassination squad in the army (and he does things like say he’ll ‘take care of’ anyone harming the heroine or threatens Sawa with death if she messes up again… with a smile). I dunno, the route choices were all interesting characters too, but I didn’t have a chance to talk about the side characters above.

The only other thing I have to say really is that Orion’s character was POORLY translated to the anime. He’s just so much more useful and funny in the game. He was like the ray of light for every terrible situation the heroine found herself in and basically her only source of moral support. His goodbyes actually meant something every route. It’s a shame that the anime ‘goodbye’ didn’t quite get that same emotional reaction for me.

Step 1 to hugging someone: Stand under a waterfall

It looks like the assumption that each guy is getting his own episode is correct. Also, the senpai seem to have all but disappeared. I really hope Shining isn’t paying them anything for this.

…For a class that’s supposed to be teaching the guys about being idols, there sure is little to no schooling going on. I mean, so far it’s just been the guys all doing their own thing (under the explanation of trying for the Uta Pri award) and the whole Master Class has just been an excuse to introduce the senpai and make the characters all still live under one roof. Hell, the senpai aren’t even doing much. Minus Camus, who appears to have taken on the role of being Cecil’s manager of sorts, in which case, good for him for doing his job. It was Cecil who fixed Masato’s problem, not Ranmaru, the guy who’s actually supposed to be helping him. You can’t even really use the excuse that he won’t help the guys because he thinks they’re amateurs because Ranmaru wasn’t even in the damn episode. I would have accepted an assholish remark about them not being good enough and left it at that, but this entire episode, it was like he didn’t even exist. What’s the point of putting the guys in a training course if they could have learned all of this in the industry on their own? Or maybe we’re just not seeing all of the idol homework or whatever the senpai are supposed to be giving STARISH. Plus they kind of proved themselves as terrible teachers all the way back at episode 1.

And who knows what Haruka’s doing other than being in convenient places at convenient times. She wrote a bunch of songs the first episode, almost fell off a bridge, and now I guess the plot doesn’t really need her there anymore other than being a love interest for all of the guys. Hell, I only noticed this episode that she doesn’t seem to be doing anything productive at all (I admit to being distracted the last couple episodes due to the romance). I’ve grown to like Haruka over the course of the anime and games despite her ineptness, so I really do hope that they give her a more active role in the plot. …Or at least a half assed explanation that she’s too busy writing STARISH the bestest song evar to be given screentime or something.

“Haruka exists?!”

“Oh, whoa! We’ve had an actual female with us the entire time! LOL!”…Yeah I’m not entirely sure why they couldn’t have just brought in Haruka from the start. I supposed seeing Tokiya in drag (for no reason whatsoever) is kind of an okay trade off, but it seems kind of silly that they apparently all forgot that the girl they were mutually pining over existed. Or maybe it was a smart move on their part since she probably would have screwed up the lines and/or made them all feel really awkward when she declared her love for Masato. At least if Masato pretends that it’s Haruka in his head, the other guys don’t have to sit and watch it.

“We share a bond… A bond of drug induced hallucinations”

Speaking of Masato, this was obviously his episode. I don’t think it was nearly as good as Syo’s was though, and not just because the romance department was lacking. Syo seemed to learn a valuable life lesson (ish) in his episode, meanwhile, Masato just kind of… remembers advice that he had forgotten. Or maybe I’m just giving more credit to Syo’s episode since I connected more with that message and Syo didn’t have any cryptic advice to blatantly ignore. Masato even knew that his grandfather had given him advice about performance art being a team effort and he still decided to try to accomplish things on his own for no explained reason whatsoever. At least that wasn’t the entire lesson though. That last bit about the filling the stage with the actor’s dreams seemed pretty reasonable. If only Masato could have remembered those words of wisdom sooner. …Or maybe it was more of a case of the advice going in one ear and out the other since Masato didn’t seem to be struggling to figure out what the advice actually meant.

Why Tokiya? How else were they going to incorporate Miyano’s awesome falsetto and Tokiya’s crossdressing tendencies? (screencap from one my particularly weird playthroughs of UtaPri Music)

By the way, the ending song was bugging me since that part with all of them saying their initials, the guys all used their first names and then Masato and Cecil used the letter from their last names. …And then I noticed that they were spelling out STARISH. OTL …Which admittedly, makes a better name than STCRISM (I mean, how would you even begin to pronounce that?). Just how intentional was this? They’ve been using the name for the entire run of the anime, so I assume it’s pretty intentional.  Even though Cecil isn’t an official member during the last season. I mean, there’s no way that their initials would (kind of sort of) spell out STARISH without intentions, right?

This episode just kind of felt off. Don’t get me wrong, it had good parts to it and classic UtaPri humour, but at the same time, it felt like a lot of points were missed. It seems kind of… sad that absolutely everyone had forgotten that Haruka existed and she doesn’t appear to be doing anything productive. Plus the senpai were nowhere to be found and Masato’s problem was ultimately solved by the advice from a magical eastern cat-boy prince (which, if there wasn’t the whole plot point about the senpai, would be a normal sentence in any other UtaPri plot description). At least the ending was entertaining. The conversation with Haruka (and then Cecil) felt a little tacked on, but it’s all good entertainment. Cecil seems to be getting constant development as well, so let’s see where this is going.

Or in translation: “The plot won’t let me”

Reason #529 why contracts are bad …Or good depending on your preferences.

Welcome to week three of middle school students acting like idiots. We’ve already seen Kasuga come to regret his decision, so let’s see Nakamura strip away any sense of dignity Kasuga has left. …Literally.

I was just waiting for that awkward moment for Kasuga’s parents to come into his room and see him straddling the uniform after he shouted like that. Hell, there are a lot of places where someone could have walked in and ruin the whole plot, but never did. This anime just has so many conveniently deserted places. Like that library. But at the same time, Kasuga had a hell of a time trying to find a place to get rid of the bag since he’s extremely paranoid. I seriously doubt any of the people he ran away from would have given a second thought about what he was doing, but his paranoia is turning absolutely everyone into an enemy. Even when they aren’t really. Plus he could totally get rid of it now without suspicion since the blame has been placed on a supposed perverted older man. You should be able to guess from his extremely well thought out actions from the previous episodes what Kasuga’s going to do though. Anyways, Nakamura, who technically an ‘enemy’ as well since she’s threatening to tell about his secret, is also his closest ally. Since if he complies with her weird demands, it looks like she won’t do anything. …Other than shoving his face into Saeki’s chest and telling him to write poetry about it or having him sniff her hands.

The story is not so subtly making both of the female leads sex objects. Saeki in her depiction as Kasuga’s “femme fatale” (also, the whole uniform thing) and then there’s Nakamura, who keeps getting close ups of her thighs or other body parts. All of this being from Kasuga’s point of view, so obviously he’s had sexual frustration even before the gym clothes thing (or in other words, he’s like every other teenager). However, where his attraction to Saeki is slightly less creepy, he obviously also sees Nakamura as female. Even after she humiliated him several times and proved that she’s batshit insane. Also a subtle change, but I swear her character design is getting more attractive. …Which is the exact opposite of what I was expecting, but maybe this is their way of trying to get the same gap as the manga between her appearance and actions. Or maybe I’m slowly going insane.

Contrary to popular belief, Aku no Hana is catering to anime moe fans. Look, cosplay! Also, it’s a trap!

On that note, now you should have a better idea of how messed up Nakamura is. She managed to strip and reclothe a struggling guy with ease and in no time flat. It’s kind of impressive, but at the same time, kind of terrifying. Just how much experience does she have with doing this? …Er, anyways, yeah. She’s also openly addressed herself as a pervert and through her shouting, a sociopath. At least she’s honest about wanting everyone to rot away like worms and as you can see, she’s not afraid of telling people to screw off if they piss her off. It looks like she’s reckless and destructive, but yet she’s still capable of doing things like blackmailing Kasuga if it will benefit herself in the long run. Nakamura is not actively going around breaking windows or attempting to murder her classmates. She just has a lot of er, energy and no outlet for it other than occasionally insulting the teachers, so her frustration is pent up and waiting to explode. You can kind of see why she’d be excited to see something like Kasuga stealing Saeki’s gym clothes though since everyone else seems content with the norms. The town is stifling and she’s going to do whatever she can to see Kasuga suffer/pull him over to “her side”.

And yet, despite him being extremely uncomfortable around her, Kasuga still hangs out with Nakamura. It could be that he just doesn’t have a spine, but then he does things like stand up for her. He had no obligation to (even despite the contract) to defend her.  He’s even facing problems at home because of her. However, Kasuga knew the truth and still said something, even with his social status at risk and the perfect chance for revenge. Though admittedly, revenge was probably the farthest thing from his mind as much as how do I do this without letting people know that I associate with her? In the end, this was a noble act. He regrets it now, but let’s see where this take him, since Saeki definitely notices him now.

-Insert the same argument of the show being slow here- But on the plus side, the pacing has seemed to pick up a bit. Or at least, this is the most eventful episode yet. So if the first episode was dedicated to establishing the kind of town they live in, the next would be Kasuga’s guilt and this would be… Nakamura I guess. Like I said before, they’ve begun to go into Nakamura a bit more and how she’s insane. Note the word ‘begun’ since she’s only just getting started with her uh, escapades. At least the next episode, Kasuga should start actually talking to Saeki as opposed to watching her from a distance and stealing her possessions.

Nothing to do with anything, but this was the most amazingly animated water I’ve ever seen.

He tried the front door first, but it was locked.

…This totally would have been out sooner if the Soul Sacrifice demo hadn’t been so amazing. So more crap for Kiri to deal with this week, but a lot of the episode was also spent on highlighting how Iwai is getting used to daily life.

Bitches love scissors.

Oho, Kiri might turn into a harem lead yet. Kashiko certainly seems to like him. …Or maybe she likes him because he likes her hair. She’s certainly not as psychotic as I had originally believed due to her reaction to Iwai. I guess she was just jealous of Iwai’s hair… or something. The explanation about Iwai’s hair having no age seemed kind of pointless other than giving a reason why she seemed to dislike Iwai at first, but maybe this will be important in the future. In any case, I’m glad that they’re on better terms now. One because Iwai really needs friends and two, if Kashiko does end up as one of the people trying to kill Iwai for some reason, it’s more interesting if the two of them are close.

Oooooof course Kiri is the descendant of the (fictional) worst murderer in the history of mankind. I feel like I should have seen this coming from far away. Pushing that aside though, it’s now even more curious as to why everyone else seems to be suffering more from being an Author than he is. Maybe it’s because he has a pretty steady Instead and he avoided losing it during childhood due to being able to cut his family’s hair, but still. He said the very first episode that he was holding back from cutting people’s hair for quite some time. Maybe he has some high level resistance to his Killing Goods due to Greyland or something. …Though I’d still like a reveal where he has a bunch of murder victims stuffed in a closet somewhere and it only looks like he’s been sane this entire time. Fun fact: Kiri’s last name translates to something similar to “grey land”. So Greyland probably changed his name after he was banished or whatever. I just thought that was an interesting carry over.

This was also interesting in a “what the hell kind of purpose did this scene serve?” way. 

I really hope I was just misinterpreting this. …Either they did this to show just now average and innocent Iwai is(/to show how terrifying the situation is), or this is homage to some kind of fetish. Maybe both.  Er, at least Kiri still accepts her and wants to protect her. I guess Iwai’s whole purpose is to humanize Kiri a bit. He makes killing (because it seems like he’ll kill someone in the future) okay I guess because he’s doing it for her sake as opposed to doing it for fun. Iwai certainly believes in him, even after watching him effortlessly take out a murderer, so she’ll be his saving grace I guess. It certainly seems like I was right on my assumption of the first episode being the foundation for Kiri protecting Iwai. Their relationship keeps growing too, which nicely keeps things from being too angst ridden. Overall, I think they’re doing well on showing daily life and incorporating the murder aspect into it without the transition being too jarring or weird.

HNNG he may not have done well the last fight, but seeing Kiri cut away at his opponent here was fun. Again, they used the monochromatic coloured animation for dramatic effect that works really well. It became clearer this episode that Kiri really is affected by his Killing Goods. Since the usual reaction to the scenario is fear (as kindly demonstrated by Iwai), but Kiri obviously wasn’t panicked at all. I was expecting more of a struggle really, since the hammer was waaay larger than Kiri’s Crime Edge, but I guess that also meant that it was a little on the slow side. It’s kind of boring that Kiri reverted back to his usual self afterwards since he was on a roll there with that fight, but I’m sure we’ll see more of that in the future.

Now, I know they said that the guy’s death here was suicide, but really now, there’s someone in the OP sequence who totally had a noose. Until they introduce said character, I’m going to be totally suspicious. Why would they kill the convict? Well, considering that absolutely every one is messed up in the head here, why not. If it is someone else’s doing, I assume they’ll give an explanation like “they failed/ was pathetic enough to leave their hammer behind, so there.” And if it was actually your regular suicide, I’m still blaming the whole serial killer thing since the guy was obviously long gone off the deep end. Funny how he left the hammer behind because the bond or whatever between them broke and Kanae totally said that the items couldn’t be left behind or thrown away last week. Now if only Yamane’s problems were that easy to solve. …Or maybe the suicide was repercussions for leaving the object behind. I don’t even know anymore. I’m also saddened by the fact that we didn’t get the Killing Goods’ background story, let alone a name for the guy. I hope this isn’t a trend, since I’m admittedly slightly more interested in the Killing Goods and murder part of the story as opposed to Kiri protecting Iwai.

As a last note, I was kind of expecting Kanae to have creepy cameras set up or something so he and the society could watch the action take place as opposed to sitting there going “kukuku I bet there’s murder going on right now”. You’d think that with a society that likes setting these things up, they’d actually watch them. Or maybe they just like seeing the after effects. In any case, Kanae is definitely still creepy. Unlike Yamane and Houko, who actually seem like okay people provided that they’re not out to kill you. Yamane actually even provided (unhelpful) help this episode and Houko made it quite clear that she doesn’t want Kiri to lose (I assume, until she can kill Iwai).

…Since Kiri’s name had a lot of obvious purpose behind it (and Iwai mentioned the first episode that her name was written like “celebration”), I looked into some of the other character’s names as well since a lot of them sound unusual. As expected, all of the other characters have, er, fitting names. The kanji used for Yamane’s name seriously translates to “ill child”, which is just a terrible thing to name your kid maybe her parents had it coming. Houko’s kind of translates to “ruling child” (which is rather fitting considering she keeps Yamane under control) and Byouinzaka in general something along the lines of “hospital hill”. Though that might have come from the fact that their ancestor was a nurse (since last names sometimes come from occupation. …Though I don’t know if the Japanese follow that tradition at all).

Anyways, it was both more and less of a battle this episode as compared to the last one. This time, Kiri definitely fought (since the last time was more about keeping Iwai from being killed as opposed to killing/hurting Yamane), but at the same time, the fight was really short. The build up to it seemed longer and more difficult than the actual fight itself. It wasn’t even quite as interesting as the one from episode 2 either, since there wasn’t any back story involved, the antagonist didn’t seem to have any deep reason for targeting Iwai, nor was there really any struggle from Kiri.  …Though that horror movie feeling from the chase scene was alright. Though Kiri kind of wasted effort there locking the doors, even though the sledgehammer knocked through them with ease. I just hope the opponents get more interesting from here on out, since this one was kind of a let down after Yamane.

This woman looks friendly enough.

ULTIMATE MANLINESS

I have my last final tomorrow and really should be studying, but honestly. Utapri is obviously more important. Don’t even try to convince me otherwise.

Well, Cecil seems to be fitting in there nicely. He obviously still has issues with the whole idea of being an idol (or at least, he doesn’t fully realize what the job entails), but I’m expecting that to be his conflict of the season. The guys seem to have accepted him as one of their own, and there don’t seem to be any massive conflicts between them now. …I guess all he needs now is to get serious about the job since he still seems to be avoiding his responsibilities and not doing his idol homework or whatever Camus gave him to do. I’m just waiting for the episode where ~he realizes in his heart that he wants to be an idol for real and officially joins STARISH~. …God this show is cheesy. (Though that’s a good thing).

…But now there’s an Uta Pri award? Really? Is this going to end up like Love Live, where they throw this out there and then don’t accomplish anything due to drama suddenly rearing it’s ugly head? Well, pushing aside how they’re just suddenly throwing this out there (and an Uta Pri committee exists too? lolol where have they been hidden the entire first season?), I guess we have our plot point for the season here now. While I’m not entirely sure what the Uta Pri award entails, I’ll hazard a guess and assume that it requires hard work, fabulousness and all of that other show biz nonsense that Utapri likes to emphasize.

“Let’s all sit around and act concerned/pretend that Syo isn’t totally within hearing distance.”

Syo certainly worked hard this episode. I don’t know about  a real life director being so lenient on having so many cuts and wasting film on having a guy fail to preform like Syo did, but you have to admire Syo for not giving up. Especially considering last season, where he had a problem with heights (nice subtle callback there, Utapri). Obviously, he’s over that now and I guess there was just an issue with himself this episode. But nothing that couldn’t be solved by helping Haruka in her incompetence.

Oh man, of course Haruka falls off the wide and perfectly level bridge when she was nowhere near to the edge. It kind of makes you wonder about the actors Syo was punching off a bridge of similar height in earlier scenes. …While completely unnecessary explosions were happening. Anyways, it was fairly typical to have Syo overcome his problems that way, but it certainly was effective. I guess helping Haruka helped him… relax or something? Plus she reminded him that he was also a fan I guess? I don’t even know where Syo’s problem came from since everyone seemed to think it was something different, but I guess saving someone is an effective way of solving… whatever psychological problem he had. The feeling of being a fan does seem important though. If your whole goal about being in the industry is because you felt passion watching it in the first place, it does seem like a good idea to keep that. You know, to help motivate you later on. So while I’m not entirely sure what the problem was, the lesson taught here was actually a pretty good one.

HNNNNG.

Ah, Haruka may have fallen off a bridge, but at least she was able to do her cheerleader duty and inspire Syo in his time of need. Let’s give her that at least. What Cecil said about having Muse in her soul certainly makes sense (maybe even more so than in the games) since she’s pretty much THE inspiration for every character in this. …Plus the scenes afterwards were adorable, all the way up until the end of the episode. I’m glad they’ve upped the romance (or at least, implied romance) since the last season.Between this and Haruka actually doing things, it looks like they’ve fixed the problems that made people unsatisfied with Debut. …Maybe the creators learned their lessons after the extremely poor reviews that Debut had. And maybe I’ll pick up All Star. …After I finally get through AA and SS, which have been sitting on my shelf gathering dust since the last season of the anime ended OTL.

Well, this was both more and less random than we’ve seen from Utapri for a while. Shining, Ryuuga’s fighting moves and the completely unnecessary action movie explosives were all entertaining. On the other hand though, it was a lot of Syo being moody on his own. …Which actually wasn’t that bad, considering that there were reprieves of comedy throughout his angst. I think I express how great I think this show is every week, but really. This just brightens my mood every episode. Shining gets better every week as well, as the attitude problems with the senpai are being brought down a level. Hell, they were actually helpful this episode! …I think I’ll have to do a review of Debut, just to get out how much of a disappointment it really was. Well, at least 2000% is successfully reminding me about what I liked in the series.

This level of amazingness just can’t be ignored.

…Those are some pretty manly side burns.

…Yes, the character above is supposed to be female. Well, here I am, attempting to blog Aku no Hana weekly. I honestly can’t say that I ‘like’ the manga, but I … admire it I guess? There was not a single thing about the plot that I wasn’t cringing at, but at the same time, I certainly couldn’t stop reading it until I caught up to the current scans and will definitely read it to it’s conclusion.

First things first, let’s talk about how big of an idiot Kasuga is. No, taking his crush’s gym clothes was not a smart thing to do. However, as you could tell from the first episode, the town they all live in is incredibly dull and really, finding Saeki’s gym clothes was probably the most interesting thing that Kasuga has had happen in a very, very long time, so I can see why he’d do it (oh yeah, and hormones). Though this is all my own speculation there. Anyways, this is definitely a turning point for Kasuga’s life. …Only, it’s not a very good one. Now he’s stuck with a huge feeling of guilt since his crush is feeling severely creeped out and insecure. Not only that, but he’s now on edge because obviously he would be a social pariah. Or at least he’s convinced himself that he would be one (and judging on everyone else’s reactions, he’s probably right), so he can’t really do anything and apologize. That scene with Kasuga fading into the abyss was nice imagery there.

…Which brings in the stupidity part. Now, Kasuga could do a number of things with the clothes. He was the one who stole them, but there are a ton of ways he could remove any and all association he had with them. He could burn them, throw them out, hide them in someone else’s desk, toss them in the river, or any number of other things. But no, this is the kind of show where he’s going to sit there in his regret and do nothing about it. Plus Nakamura pushing him into a corner doesn’t exactly help the situation. But really, if he did get rid of them and Nakamura called him out, who is the class more likely to believe? Everyone has labelled her as a freak. …Though to be honest, Kasuga is the quiet type with his nose always in a book, so him protesting might not be that believable. Plus he has no spine.

Anyways, I’m pretty damn sure that Kasuga had some kind of remorse in the manga and said things to himself like that he was going to return her clothes. He still took them of course since puberty got the better of him, but he kept trying to justify it to himself in his head by saying that it wasn’t a big deal and that he’d just return them the next day. He was still a huge creep about it, but the difference here was that Kasuga took the clothes, thought “hehehe, I’m a bad person” and the guilt didn’t fully bitchslap him in the face until later. Maybe they will skip over some of the other events in the story since they’re already going off script a bit and speeding up some things. If they don’t though, I have absolutely no idea where this is going to end on episode 13. Even this episode was kind of slow.

If you’re wondering why absolutely no one reacted to Kasuga carrying around a bag of Saeki’s gym clothes (which I know I was, until I actually examined the name on the bag), it’s because he hid them in his own bag. That’s his own name on there. The only thing suspicious about him right now is the way he’s acting. ….Though you might have picked up on the fact that Saeki’s bag was also pink and the one Kasuga was carrying around was blue. I didn’t.

As for Nakamura, she’s definitely… something. They haven’t quite gotten to her, uh, more interesting threats yet, but she’s definitely beyond the norm of the town at the moment. For one, she’s not telling anyone about Kasuga being a huge pervert and instead making Kasuga form a contract. I don’t think that this style of animation accurately expresses just how much of a freaking lunatic she is. There’s not really a big distortion to her features (unlike the manga), so it just looks like your average girl threatening someone. …Or maybe they’re doing it on purpose because we’re not supposed to see how much of a psychopath she is until later? I do hope they up the level of her facial expressions when she shows more of her personality though, since right now, it’s really lacking impact for me. Other than that, I don’t mind how choppy everything is. The realistic body movements are interesting to watch.

The intensity is there though, in a way one might not have felt from the manga. With a book, you can flip pages and skim through the parts where Kasuga is sitting there, wanting to tell people about the misunderstanding, but doesn’t. With the anime though, you have to sit there and watch him. …Or I guess you could skip that or fast forward too, but this is making me appreciate the amount of time they’re planning out for scenes. You read books at your own pace. You can’t really do that the same way when watching something. That scene with Kasuga wanting to tell people about the gym clothes, but doesn’t, you can pretty much FEEL the pressure he’s feeling (or at least I did). It was a really powerful scene of desperation.

So yeah, this is the kind of show you’ll watch and cringe at, since the characters are all slowly ruining their lives. But at the same time, there’s something really intriguing about it all. I’m definitely worrying about pacing, since episode 1 was soo sloooow and episode two was significantly faster, but at the same time, SLOOW. Though with this slowness, some of the scenes are being done really well. Not all of them, but there are a few places, like the part I mentioned above with Kasuga sitting in class feeling guilty. Hopefully things start picking up soon… There’s no point in telling people to get over the art and focus on the plot if the plot is moving so slowly that the story isn’t interesting anyways. In any case, Aku no Hana certainly isn’t for everyone.

Fun times with Yamane~

Out of the fluffy hair cutting (kind of) and into some psychotic high school girl trying to kill people with a syringe. I like where this is going. Kiri certainly seems to have his work cut out for him, but at least he doesn’t look like he minds too much. As for Iwai… wow, her life sucks.

More fluff with Iwai and Kiri~. Having Iwai finally have decent human interaction was good to see this episode (though she totally looked like she belonged in middle school or lower). Seeing Kiri get jealous over everyone touching her hair was cute too. …It’s stopped being creepy at this point for me. I’ve decided that as long as Iwai doesn’t mind, I shouldn’t look too deeply into it. Having Kiri cut her hair once and suddenly being expected to save her life seems like a big jump, but to be fair, he did defend her from Yamane’s psychopathic episode. That must have been enough for Kanae to make a decision to make Kiri her defender. Plus Kiri doesn’t seem to mind in the least. Anyways, the blonde girl is suspicious (probably because she looks a bit insane) and I totally think she’ll turn out to be an author, but everyone seems to like Iwai well enough. Plus, we found out the reasoning behind why the Bouinzaka’s dislike Iwai.

That being said, Yamane and Houko’s relationship is a bit odd. Houko made it quite clear that she didn’t like Yamane, but then it seems like the murder of their parents was what brought them closer together. …I’m just going to overlook the fact that their parents must have left a syringe lying around the house if Yamane picked it up (though I guess they said that you can’t get rid of them or break them). Maybe they’re closer now since Yamane is Houko’s only relative? Maybe it’s Houko’s guilt? Since if she had been paying attention, Yamane might not have ended up that way. I assume they like each other better now since Houko’s willing to have twincest-syringe time with Yamane on a frequent basis and she’s planning to kill Iwai to release Yamane from her Author duties.

I wonder what constitutes as a serial killer though, since Yamane’s ancestor wasn’t exactly out to kill people. As far as the story sounded, the ancestor never tried to kill anyone at all. Maybe they cut out part of the story due to time constraints? Maybe she was lying? (Though I don’t really believe that myself.) It’s funny how Yamane seems to be more far gone than Kiri, and he’s the one with the pair of scissors that were actively out to kill people. I like that they’re going into the history of the objects though. Maybe it feels a bit like obvious exposition, but it’s certainly more interesting to know the history of the objects considering that that’s what’s pulling the plot forward.

I’m glad they finally explained more about the Killing Goods, Authors and why everyone’s going to go after Iwai. …It seems like there’s more to the story since Iwai’s ancestor creating Killing Goods (or at least giving them some kind of power) and them turning on her seems just a tiny bit counterproductive. With that too, where on earth did the wishes part come in? Why is death the trigger? At the moment though, I guess that’s all we’re getting explanation-wise.

Well, I was wondering what Kiri was going to do since Iwai’s hair was cut, but they’re still proving to be a perfect pair since I guess it grows back every night. Even more so since he can fulfill his murderous urges daily by cutting Iwai’s hair. I guess Kiri flipped out because he couldn’t fulfill his murderous desires to cut hair anymore as a kid. …Which kind of makes you wonder how he’s managed to survive this long without killing someone. Though maybe he has and he’s just hiding the bodies in a closet somewhere (which admittedly, would be pretty cool). At least hair cutting is a slightly less creepy solution as opposed to injecting people with random fluids with a syringe. Asking someone if you can cut their hair is one thing. Asking if you can stick a needle in them is another. I’m kind of curious as to how Kiri survived (maybe Yamane’s Cold Sleep had saline solution in it?), but maybe Kanae had an antidote or something. …Ignoring the fact that they explicitly said that it could make the tiniest bit of poison absolutely lethal Yamane was clearly gunning to kill Iwai (so I assume she would have thought to put poison in there). Or maybe she was too out of it to notice.

…Which brings us back to how much of a jerk Kanae turned out to be (though considering that he’s voiced by Yusa Koji, I was expecting as much). He’s part of a society that just enjoys sitting around and watching people murder each other? …Er, actually, that sounds like a really interesting society. Where can I sign up? On the other hand though, Iwai totally never asked for this and the one person looking after her doesn’t even really care if she gets murdered or not. In fact, the only reason she wasn’t murdered before was that it wouldn’t have been interesting enough. That… really sucks. No wonder she didn’t mind dying, since nobody really cared about her in the first place. Call Kiri cold for telling her that he wants her around to cut her hair, but really, he’s pretty much the ONLY person who actually wants her around. Her crying over those words was actually really touching, and yet, really sad since it kind of looks like Kiri is using her, and she’s still so happy. I don’t think Kiri is THAT much of a jerk that he’s only using her for her hair, but seeing how even that much said to Iwai sets her off, it puts into perspective how she must have had a really terrible life before he came.

So next up is a fight between Kiri and an escaped convict. …Uhhh call me crazy, but I think the hammer has a slight advantage over a pair of scissors, even if they are unbreakable. Kiri already lost his first fight this episode, so let’s see how he fares this time.

I was a bit worried about pacing at the beginning, but it was for nothing since there was the fight before the halfway point, which led well into the exposition. They certainly leave a lot to assumption in explanation though. Maybe they’re cutting a few details and being vague on purpose, but for now, I guess we have to take everything they say at face value. Logic really doesn’t have a place here. I’m still enjoying this though, in all of it’s ridiculous seriousness and if this turns into a serial killer of the week vs. Kiri, that would be okay with me. For being helpless, Iwai doesn’t annoy me as much as I thought she would either. I don’t really find her as moe as I assume she’s supposed to be, but I can live with her character. …Kiri is just hilarious for all of the wrong reasons. Plus I like his relationship with Iwai, too. Even though they’re totally being forced together due to plot conveniences. I’m not expecting anything overly intelligent from this, but it’s good entertainment so far. …And if Dansai Bunri proves me wrong about the intelligence part, even better. Anyways, I quite like the OP song as well and while the animation style is a bit …for lack of a better word, ‘cute’, I took a look at the manga and I vastly prefer what the anime is doing. Plus I like some of the effects they did here like the monochrome when Yamane tried killing Iwai.

Man, these scissors get a lot of screentime.

Admittedly, Cecil is a much better name than ‘Blafluffy’/'Kuppuru’

…I tried to limit my use of the word ‘fabulous’ this episode as a self-challenge, but… Camus’ dramatic appearance made that really, really hard. That was like, Shining level ridiculousness.

So yeah! Aladdin Cecil is now officially part of the school. Not a clue how he went from being a cat to officially human, but whatever. …Or maybe he wasn’t Kuppuru to begin with (even though it clearly showed him turning from cat into a human…which was followed by random spinning). God, I don’t know what carried over from the game and what didn’t. Like Syo’s heart problem. That’s obviously not an issue in the anime, since he can climb a tree in 2 seconds flat, but it keeps throwing me off. Anyways, yeah, Cecil is prince of an eastern country and he obviously has an attitude problem due to a mix of bing overly self confident and a lack of common sense. Or at least he’s good at pushing the other guy’s buttons.

Oh no, he didn’t!

I can’t exactly blame them for being angry with Cecil since he came out of nowhere and got extremely close to Haruka. Plus he kind of undermined everything they stood for. But I guess he’s the whole reason why the guys are together, so they can’t exactly hate him. He’s certainly forward though towards Haruka. Maybe even more so than Ren at this point. Though Ren has kind of been in the background a lot this season. But really, joining the master class to be close to Haruka? Obviously he had no idea about the no romance rule (as proven later, when he appeared on Haruka’s balcony). Also, they carried over his kind of childishness, but I guess it still wasn’t as bad as it was in the original UtaPri game (…Cecil can be annoying at times). His insert song was nice though. It’s definitely not an ‘idol’ song (even Cecil admitted this himself), but it fits in with all of the other songs his character has.

…And then Cecil goes and proves that he’s a grade A stalker magical by reading all of the guys. Now, most of this he probably could have guessed from just watching them interact or if he was really stalking them, but I’m just going to assume that it’s magic due to the game. I guess this is just showing how insightful he is? Though it also served as a quick reminder as to what went down in the last season with all of the guys.

Actually, I didn’t mind him in here so much since the other character’s reactions to Cecil’s challenges and Haruka saying “lol, he gives me advice in dreams. I’m not crazy, I swear.” was pretty amusing. Maybe this wasn’t so good for Haruka since she pretty much admitted that it wasn’t exactly her  idea to get them all together to form STARISH (which may or may not have been a big blow to the guy’s egos, we’ll see). On the other hand though, she did stick up for Cecil, which is better than her sitting in the background and letting the situation sort itself out. Plus we got to hear some Sawashiro Karuta (kind of) reading.

Now for the senpai. …Camus is actually pretty hilarious. He’s just so… so… fabulous (even among the other characters) and it’s nice to see him knock Cecil down a few pegs. …While posing dramatically and sliding all over the floor. Which I thought was carpet (though it doesn’t really have texture, so it could be anything). However, apparently being an idol means you can do anything and screw physics. …I mean, just look at Shining. Anyways, I’m not entirely sure why Camus himself didn’t challenge Cecil, but oh well, we had a chance to see Syo climb trees and Masato put his calligraphy skills to the test. Hell, the other senpai actually weren’t that bad this episode either. Ranmaru was still his surly self, but it wasn’t overbearing or anything. If they can keep the senpai/kouhai angst to a minimum like this, that would be great. Yes, there was the issue with Cecil in this episode, but honestly, he needed Camus to teach him a lesson (which wasn’t even that harsh of a lesson). Meanwhile, Masato and Ren are seriously working towards their goals, so having Ranmaru belittle them at every opportunity would seem like unnecessary drama.

So there was drama, but it was lighthearted drama as opposed to the dark, angsty stuff that Debut threw at you at every possible opportunity (…I said I probably wouldn’t offer insight into the game, yet here I am). They’re even still continuing with the notion that everyone likes something more than Haruka’s music and I’m enjoying the hell out of it. Of course, it seems as though there might be drama on the horizon since Haruka is expected to write a new song and she has to do it without the help of foreigners who visit her in her dreams. …Though you know, I don’t think she should have been so shocked when Shining told her that she needed to write one considering that it’s kind of sort of her job and she just wrote like, 6 the last episode (though to be fair, Shining asking anyone to do anything is intimidating). Well, at least she hasn’t forgotten how to play a music instrument yet or anything quite as pathetic as that. Things are going really well!

When fruit attacks

Well, time to say goodbye to Zetsuen no Tempest. It was a fun ride. …I  wish I could honestly say that this was the best anime I’ve ever watched that revolved around magical fighting trees and Shakespeare references, but there’s Romeo X Juliet out there too. …I think I still liked Tempest better by a small margin though.

AHAHAHA IT WAS HIS ARM.

Man, I feel silly for worrying. Honestly. So in the end, nobody died! Yay! There were still some slightly worrying parts though, I guess. That last part with Hanemura losing and falling didn’t quite sink into the ‘depths of despair’ territory with me despite the obvious parallel situation with Megumu falling into the ocean. Sure the stakes were high, but it just didn’t feel like that desperate of a situation to me. Once Yoshino’s injury was revealed to be small and non fatal, the tension just kind of dropped from there. Since at that point, it was pretty obvious that everyone was going to make it through just fine. …And then lord knows where that giantass sword at the end appeared from. I guess it came from their hearts uniting as one as Aika put it? Or maybe it was the fact that the Kusaribe were supporting Exodus. …Though really, they’ve been doing that since the beginning with Samon trying to revive it.

Yeah, that didn’t really feel complete either. I assume those people in black were the Kusaribe or something. Everyone was obviously expecting something from Hanemura too, which I assume was what brought the sword out of nowhere. But… there was no moment where it felt like there hearts were ‘united’ or whatever. To be blunt, I don’t think it had as much impact as a scene as it was attempting. Aika’s words made sense and the scene certainly hinted towards that feeling, but where they all had a moment (or at least Megumu did), I wan’t emotionally invested.

I didn’t cry as much as I thought I would with Aika’s final words either. This is probably due to Mahiro and Yoshino’s ability to laugh in the end about it (…and also due to her joke at the end, but it was still a very Aika thing to do). Aika is dead now and despite it being a big issue before, it’s okay now. The characters had their moments of shock, but they’ve come over that now. Aika made her own decisions and there was nothing they really could have done to stop it. I’m not quite sure if what she did or if her way of thinking was ‘right’ (since I don’t think life can be quite compared to a play… as said by Mahiro), but it was right for the plot. Plus since everyone seems to be moving on, there’s no point in dwelling on it. I’m just glad she had the final word at the end of the episode.

So as a finale, it had it’s parts I didn’t quite click with, but overall it was satisfying. The problem with Genesis was solved, Mahiro and Yoshino got over Aika’s death pretty well, and everyone had plans for the future. Sure, crime rates were up again at the end and you just know that humanity is going to damage whatever Genesis fixed, but the future still seems to hold promise. Or at least the characters are satisfied and considering that they carried the plot, I’d consider this done for good. Mahiro said something about the dream being over, and since the Trees aren’t around, I guess it really is. They all had an adventure and they all seemed to have gained from it, but it’s time to move on. Sure, if their speculation is correct, Genesis and all of this will probably appear again in the future, but that’s waaaaay past what the characters are going to live to.

They mentioned a few times that this ending was a ‘beginning’ and really, I can’t deny that it wasn’t. Genesis has been defeated, but there are just so many new things that are happening. Like Hakaze dealing with being a normal teenager. …Or like Mahiro apparently meeting a girl. That was shocking for some reason, but admittedly, I still kind of think of him as the revenge crazed siscon sometimes. There were also the normal developments like Hakaze and Yoshino and the Kusaribe all helping Takumi in the end. It’s great that the alliances and relationships this built up didn’t disappear once the threat of Genesis was gone. I was also rather fond of the development with Megumu. He wasn’t even around half of the series, but he went from whimpy Yuki Kaji character into someone with a relatively larger amount of courage by the end of the series and it didn’t come off as rushed development at all. I’m glad he decided to try a relationship again with (the faceless) Yuu-chan. The story ended like the Tempest I guess in that absolutely everyone (or at least, the main characters) had some sort of happiness in the end.

So what do I feel about the series overall? Well, this wasn’t flawless storytelling quite like Shinsekai Yori was (well, it was in it’s own way, but still fell short in some aspects). It never made it quite to that level, but I can’t deny that it had it’s moments of brilliance.. I mean, this series made a 4 episode argument in front of a tree interesting. That’s an achievement on it’s own right there.

Despite the depiction of the world’s realistic reaction to things I can’t say that this was realistic though in either the characters or the storyline. Everything felt… scripted, I guess? Though that in itself is brilliant considering that this was like a tribute to Shakespeare and theatre. I mean, the main characters were based off of Shakespeare characters sure, but even then they all seemed like they had overbearing personalities that would be perfect for the stage. Of course, that’s an anime thing in general, but since they already drew the comparison in there with the constant Shakespeare references, let’s continue with this. Even more so in the fact that all of the characters (or at least Aika) kept saying things like how everyone was just acting to the scripts that the Trees had already written. A huge part of the show was that everything happened according to fate and that everything had a reason, so having the writing like that (intentionally or unintentionally) was a nice tie in. …Plus the dialogue was certainly long enough at times (again, I bring up that conversation that lasted 4 episodes).

The character interaction in the second half was undeniably fun (since everyone went from being enemies to practically living together). Where Yoshino and Mahiro felt like flat characters in the first half, the second half opened up sides that I wouldn’t have even guessed existed. The flashbacks we saw between the two of them and Aika suddenly felt so much more meaningful. And then let’s not forget when Aika showed up. Her thoughts and intentions were rather difficult to understand, but then a single episode was enough to change that completely. Actually, all of the characters had great moments to them and I wish that this had been longer, just to see more of how they acted when they got together. Because of that, I didn’t even mind the sudden genre change from some story about revenge and Aika’s death to the lighter comedy where everyone got along in the first to the second half. Plus it was a good switch over since nobody was ‘evil’ to begin with and it was more like they all had separate agendas.

Like I said above, this was a pretty good series and I’m glad I picked it up all the way back in Fall on a whim. Every issue I had with it either became less significant with time or lost in how great the characters were. The action of the first few episodes was kind of lost too, but that was okay. Especially since after Genesis revived, there really was no real reason to fight amongst themselves anymore. Overall, I think everything worked out well in the end.

So thanks for sticking with me these past two seasons and see you again in a couple of days for spring~

Evangeline’s pants… It’s like I’m in the 90′s again.

At last, a chance to write about this episode of Tempest. Yes, I’ve been stuck with a paper that I underestimated the past couple days. So yeah, another episode of preparation and the beginning of the final battle~. …I think I like this version better than the dream I had where Mahiro’s grand plan was for Hakaze to turn him back into a shota, have him wear a pink frilly dress with fairy wings as a distraction and this would somehow solve everything. …It made sense at the time (and this did have crossdressing in it regardless).

…I see the fanfics coming already.

 Er, besides that though, that conversation between Mahiro and Megumu was definitely something. I say this a lot, but WOW, Mahiro’s character is so different from how he was originally portrayed. It’s nice that he can sit down and have a heart to heart with Megumu like that. Even better, that conversation made me feel like having Megumu as the main player (even though he was completely absent from the first half of the plot) was more fitting in a sense. He might not be the most reliable person, but everyone can kind of relate to him in a sense (especially people like Samon who want to minimize the casualties). He’s the main protagonist for this final mission and while all of the other protagonists thus far have fallen back a bit (some more than others), they’re all supporting Megumu in this. …Now if only we knew who Yuu-chan was.

Samon line about “If things go wrong, this is where my past actions all catch up with me” (or something like that) was interesting too. I wish the anime had included some of the things I’ve heard about the manga since all of the characters sound so much deeper there. Apparently Samon sees himself as the villain due to his actions against Hakaze in the first arc (and yet a necessary villain). I wish the anime had highlighted that more since it sounds like an interesting character point and he obviously still thinks that way about himself (and Takumi too apparently). …Though no big deal since I’m probably going to read the manga around the summer or so (when I have time to read it all in one go). It just would have been interesting to see more character interaction and depth here and now.

I understand Hakaze’s frustration on Yoshino being on the mission but… who knew that Yoshino felt that way about everything. For someone who keeps pretty much everything to himself, I would have never expected a guy like him to openly confess that he’s grown attached to everyone. Hell, I wouldn’t have been able to tell if he hadn’t said something. I could have guessed about Mahiro, Hakaze, and maybe Evangeline but I don’t even think I’ve seen him meaningfully interact with anyone else. After watching the whole episode, it kind of felt like this was added for the benefit of the drama of the end if anything… Though given his character, that’s probably why we couldn’t tell if he felt that way or not. I mean, we couldn’t really feel his affection for Aika in the flashbacks and he was pining over her the entire series. Though it’s good news for Hakaze that Yoshino says that he’s come to terms with his death.

Aaaaand in the end, crossdressing saves the day. Funny how none of the ship captains noticed that the Mai Hime had a really masculine voice, but overall, I’d say that Mahiro’s plan is nothing short of brilliant. From having Megumu and Hakaze switch costumes to get one mage closer to the Tree to the switch with Tetsuma, it all seems like a really, really good plan. Hakaze’s displays with Megumu actually did serve a purpose! And now they can exploit that! Yaaay. But yeah, a good move overall and it solves pretty much all of the problems since it draws the ships away without them realizing. …The only problem is how Megumu is going to destroy the core after all of the ships have moved away and what comes after that. He’s pretty high up. I wonder if he’ll lose his powers too once Genesis is destroyed. I can see so many things going wrong (and things have already gone wrong), but at least Mahiro and Yoshino (oh wait, never mind) are there to make any last minute adjustments.

…This was made slightly harder to take seriously due to the mask.

“YOSHINOOOOOO“, indeed. I guess Tempest did throw a last minute plot twist in there. Who’s next? Mahiro too? Didn’t the first half already end like this? Well, Hakaze did say that they were going to leave them behind and with all of the other Kusaribe mages busy, so there’s not much they can do. …Unless they’re in range for talismans to work since Mahiro can use those. Provided that they have any. The thing is too that we can’t even blame the guy who shot Yoshino since he probably thought that he was protecting world peace. Sigh. Well, we’ll see if Yoshino dies or not (that looked like he was shot in the heart, but obviously not since he’s still alive in the preview). It would be a shame if he never read that letter from Aika though. …Not to mention Hakaze’s whole reason for wanting to save the world would be gone. Really, I expect both him and Mahiro to make it out alive though since they have the letters waiting. Or at least one of them. Either that or we just have Hakaze at the end all alone reading the letters, but I can’t see that being the ending since Tempest seems to all have been a build up for a good ending.

So we’re on to the last episode (which will be out sooner than this one was. No, really). Again, I can’t really see Yoshino actually dying since the letters have yet to be opened. Mahiro, Yoshino, Hakaze or Megumu dying just seems like it wouldn’t fit in with the overall tone the show has set so far. …Or maybe this is just denial on my part because I want everyone to get through this alive. Oh well. This has been a great series so far with plenty of twists and turns, so I’m looking forward to seeing how all of this ends up. Will Aika’s death become a tragedy, or will they find out a workable way to solve everything?

…At least we know that Aika will make a final appearance.

It’s Ukyou’s turn and he’s brought with him the gift of imminent death~

Congratulations for making it this far, because this is where things get interesting.

Because apparently she couldn’t have done this in the first episode of the arc

 …I think this is the most I’ve ever heard the heroine talk at once. On that note though, she was just about as devoted to Toma as he was to her. I don’t think we’ve ever seen her so expressive about her feelings and I guess it was that devotion that let her forgive Toma for his… uh… episode. I like the way they handled this here since I’m pretty sure the cage thing lasted longer because the heroine didn’t say anything to Toma about her feelings, so I’m glad things worked themselves out quickly here. But to think that this whole thing is allllllll because he thought she liked another guy. What a hilarious misunderstanding! Funny how he didn’t act like this in Ikki’s actual route. …Though if I remember correctly, he was actually her sibling (or more like step-sibling because his mother was the heroine’s father’s third wife or something) and he wasn’t around the heroine that often.

But yeah, other than being creeepily overprotective (…and ignoring that ‘I’m going to break you’ thing), Toma isn’t that bad of a person. He acts like a perfectly normal and nice guy in every other route, so I assume the pressure just kind of overwhelmed him in this one between the rather harsh fangirl bullying and the heroine having no memories. The game had Ukyou being ever creepier as well (though that was definitely downplayed until he threw her off the freaking roof). Though Toma definitely still has issues since the whole thing with taking her cellphone and hiding her away at his place was like him trying to shelter her from the world. I guess in a way he was being considerate since she was stressed enough with the no memories thing (and had apparently lost her personality in the process), but let the girl try to handle things herself.

Anyways, on to Ukyou’s route. …It only occurs to me now that I don’t think they’ve ever named him before. Oh well, so as you’ve probably pieced together before, he’s got two personalities. One of them wants to save the heroine and the other wants her dead. Obviously, you’re suppose to be getting mixed signals. There are reasons for all of this of course, but I can assure you that Ukyou is in fact human and …uh, not that bad of a guy. Though you probably saw that from his desperation of trying to save the heroine from one ridiculous situation after another.

Talking in the middle of train tracks really didn’t seem like a good idea

…As proven later.

But let’s not forget about his creepy side. I really was NOT expecting the heroine to be murdered by him at the end of Toma’s route. Orion’s nagging might have gotten annoying, but he definitely has the right idea. Personality #2 has seriously attempted to murder the heroine before. Though on that note, Orion. Seriously. You know about the heroine being thrown into different worlds. Ukyou has always talked like he knows exactly what’s going on. Why are you incapable of putting the fact together? Sure, in the game there is no being thrown into multiple worlds, so neither character would have a clue, but here it’s obvious that the pieces go together here. Hell, Ukyou even knows that the heroine has lost her memories.

Finally, an explanation to why the heroine dies every other episode. …Okay, maybe not a clear one. I’m not entirely sure how they’re going to explain why the heroine kept dying multiple worlds either since the heroine didn’t die after every route in the game, throwing one part of the explanation I know out the window. But yeah, as you saw with the ridiculousness of the train scenario, this world in particular has it out for the heroine. Though from this episode, you’d think that this city’s construction planning team is the worst ever after all of those incidents. Trains malfunctioning? Gas leaks? Explosions? Construction sites falling apart? Whoever is in charge of these things really needs to be fired since they’re obviously incompetent. These deaths aren’t really even the heroine’s fault (though I don’t quite understand why she couldn’t have just taken off her shoe with that one train incident. Though with her luck, the zipper or whatever would have gotten caught regardless). …So it’s not quite time travel, but by this point, you should be able to figure out the meaning of the Steins;Gate comparison I made earlier on in the series now.

We’re almost there! Things are getting more exciting now and the truth is almost revealed! So yeah, if this episode didn’t seem like a small pay off for all of the previous episodes… then I guess there’s just no redeeming the show for you. The truth has yet to be revealed in full, but really, this episode was like the beginning of the climax for the series. Luckily, if you did like it, then I’m pretty sure the excitement level remains consistent until the ending of the series. Plus I’m pretty sure that there will be an OTP (obviously between the heroine and Ukyou), not only because that was there in the game, but also because the build up has been there for one.