SEASONAL PRATTLE
Starting our Check-In off, Deca-Dence has done it again, delivering an episode that’s very satisfying in terms of its overt drama, and doing a fine job of involving all members of Donatello’s crew in productive ways. It would have been easy for this week to come off as too dramatically contrived, considering how Kaburagi inevitably ran into Hugin all while Turkey’s betrayal was still playing out, but the overall handling kept our events just climactic enough to ride to a smooth finish without feeling exaggerated.
At this point, my biggest concern for Deca-Dence is how it’s going to move forward with the story; This episode certainly succeeded in coming across similar to a finale, especially with Natsume learning the truth in the final minutes, but with three episodes remaining it’s going to be interesting to see what Tachikawa chooses to do as we proceed. Hopefully, whatever it is, he sticks the landing.
Oregairu 3 (9)
“A heap of wholesomeness”
Next, Oregairu continued to pleasantly march on, not particularly offering anything too elaborated or impactful for its story, but finding a few good reflective lines among a heap of wholesomeness to end up as enjoyable nonetheless. I figured nine would use a decent chunk of its running time solely centering on Hachiman fulfilling Yui’s wishes, and while that turned out to be the case, I didn’t expect it to be as long as it was. Thankful though, copious amounts of Gahamama kept that string of content fairly entertaining and adorable, even keeping some of the passive interactions from feeling stale. Normally, “easygoing” episodes like this can lose steam quickly, but the combination of charm and chemistry from our cast made this week fun from start to finish.
Kanojo Okarishimasu (9)
“Good serving of colorful character interactions and successful gags”
Steadily approaching its conclusion, Kanojo Okarishimasu rolls out an amusing episode – doing a good job of keeping its relationship complications growing in a silly way and eventually putting its story in a position to set the stage for shenanigans to come. On that note, episode nine finds itself primarily leaning on the familiar foundation of inherent misunderstandings that most romantic comedies work off of in order to both create drama and keep the audience invested. However, there’s a good serving of colorful character interactions and successful gags for it to remain lively and out of the tedious territory. Whether it’s goofy Chizuru reaction faces or longer segments that have Ruka bouncing off of Kazuya, this week keeps this foundation palpable down to the close.
The Misfit of Demon King Academy (10)
“What one would expect even if they missed this episode”
Beyond some adorable moments between Lay and Misa, The Misfit of Demon King Academy doesn’t actually offer anything inherently new in its lastest edition – displaying a standard fare core of writing that does little outside of plainly pushing how scummy and devious the heroes are during the exam, and to no surprise whatsoever, how great Anos is. So for that, ten is pretty much what one would expect even if they missed this episode and had to guess at what happened – in which an assumption in the ballpark of “the hero team not so discreetly cheats, Anos sees through it and then flexes on them” would pretty much be accurate. This show’s creation and resolution of drama remain far too easily anticipated for its own good.
The God of High School (9)
“A clown car of nonsense and very, very tired shounen plotting”
Lastly, as with most episodes of The God of High School, the only real praiseworthy attribute is the bailout MAPPA gives this series through particular production choices. As for the rest, it might as well just go in the toilet as it’s essentially the same odorous vomit that gets passed off as acceptable storytelling in this show that we’ve seen time and time again.
With that said, episode nine is just a clown car of nonsense and very, very tired shounen plotting – picking up speed every passing minute while hitting notable dumb highlights ranging from Mira not knowing that the sword she’s trained with all her life is a literal national treasure with god powers, to Jin getting caught in an explosion point blank that’s capable of blowing a warehouse up and surviving with little damage. The clown car crashes right around the time the episode lazily tosses out yet another highly convenient, unexplained power-up for Mira to pull through – making for an appropriate climax to this noticeably bad episode
