Finales!! Durarara!! Working!!

Though it’s the best show I’ve seen this year, Durarara!! had its down moments. The slashers story arc didn’t work particularly well, possibly because Anri is a fairly passive character. Then with the Yellow Scarves arc the series became more grim than fun. I’m generalizing; there were terrific moments in almost every episode, but my favorites, episodes 3, 6 and 11, were a long time ago. The question was, could it pull everything together in give us another genius episode for a finale? The answer: Damn close.

One thing I demanded from the finale is lots of action. The setup to this episode almost guaranteed that, and subsequent fighting did not disappoint. Neither did Horada’s attempted getaway. I also wanted to see every member contributing, and they do. Kuroda infiltrates the Yellow Scarves along with a bunch of Dollars members. Celty chases Horada’s car right towards an enraged Shizuo. Simon’s moment comes later. Even the cop Kuzuhara joins in. It’s as good as any of the previous action scenes … and then it’s over.

They had to stop and clear up gaps and reconcile characters. Unfortunately, rather than mixing it in, they devote the rest of the episode to it. Our three heroes talk and re-bond. Masaome and Saki make up. Everyone gets covered. Along the way we see how Izaya’s plans unraveled. Who told who what about whom. Apparently people that Izaya had depended upon to play certain roles got tired of being pawns and went against him. It seems everyone had a revelation of some sort, most of it, alas, just talk. The most interesting scene was the confrontation between Anri and Izaya. Izaya says he loves mankind and likes to mess with them, unlike Anri, who suppresses her love through her sword. He hates her for that, but whatever is going to happen will happen in another series, or in the novels (We must get those published over here). What’s mildly disappointing is that Izaya manages to laugh everything off, even the black eye Simon gives him. He’s more amused than angry that things didn’t turn out quite the way he wanted. For now I’ll have to be satisfied with Simon punching him into the “Love” sculpture. Thank you, Simon!

For once, Namie and I agree on something.

As for what it all means, I’m not sure there’s an overriding point to be made. After all, Durarara!! is based on a series of novels. I’m guessing that the creators simply wanted to lift a single mostly-coherent story out of them and tell it as an anime series. You could call it a love story, I suppose, or an examination of the different types of love, good and bad. Or you could call it a supernatural tale of every day Ikebukuro, or a coming-of-age story. It’s a little of all of that as well as things I’m forgetting. So, yeah, Durarara!! stumbled a bit after a red-hot start, but as I said, it’s still the best anime I’ve seen this year. I only hope it’s commercially successful and encourages others to tackle wild stories. We desperately need them.

One more of Shizuo.

While I don’t expect a sequel to Durarara!!, Working!! is certainly gearing up for one. They even introduce a new character, and this is the final episode. Kind of a dirty trick to play on Maya, who’s devotion to normality makes her come off as abnormal. That’s her schtick, and we won’t see it again unless there’s a new season.

Er, nice to meet you, Maya. Too bad this is the last episode.

So let’s move on to the main event: the big date. Yamada and Taneshima thwarts Souta’s attempt to risk his life dressed as a man by getting him wet, and, gee, what a coincidence, they just happen to have some woman’s clothing for him to wear. They also plan to tail the couple, but Satou manages to distract them. So what we get are Satou’s distractions and Maya’s weirdness adding punctuation to the date scenes, and we need them.

Because nothing much happens during the date. Each wonders if the other is doing all right. They visit places that have no men. They worry some more. Finally, Souta risks all by asking Inami to hold hands with him. We get THREE separate scenes of Inami trying, trying, reaching out, only to have to fight back the urge to slug him. The only thing that DOES happen is that Souta realizes he might actually have feelings for her, which unfortunately he speaks out loud using a dog metaphor that even I don’t understand. The next day it’s business as usual, except the couple are completely worn out.

Well, Working!! was hit-or-miss for its entire run, though I thought it had developed a good rhythm near the end. The problems were always the same. The random bits didn’t always work, which slowed episode momentum down, and Inami’s antics overshadowed everything else, even the final episode. If they do make a sequel I might give it a try. I don’t know if the characters’ two-dimensional quirks can sustain more episodes, but it was an amiable series and not like much else being broadcast.

Durarara!! 23, Arakawa 11

With only one episode to go after this, Durarara!! 23 has to assemble the pieces (Izaya-speak) for a big finale, and it does, with one of its best episodes.

The first half our three heroes are at a loss, wondering what’s up with the others, but they are unable to move on their own. But they find their motives for action. Celty urges Mikado to face up to the issues, even though Mikado doesn’t know what they are—just that Dollars members are getting beaten up. Anri, still at Celty and Shinra’s, encounters a wounded and very pissed-off Shizuo, who says he’s going to kill Masaome for putting on the hit. That’s enough for her to spring into action.

Masaome’s motivation comes from threats and danger. Horoda has fired him from the dollars and told him he’d be killed on sight, and that Mikado would die too. Mikado! It’s the most satisfactory of the three. We see him overcome not only the weakness that froze him last time, but also his fear of the past. When he confronts Horoda at the Yellow Scarves HQ he has become afraid of nothing, and displays Shizuo-like fighting skills (okay, not that extreme. No one flies twenty feet in the air) before force of numbers overcomes him.

The Yellow Scarves scene is terrific. Not only for Masaome’s fearlessness, but for the way he practically stares down Horoda, and then the ante is upped by the dramatic appearance of Anri (in “Mother” mode), followed by Celty and Mikado. Unfortunately the episode has to end there. But everything is in place for the big finish this show demands.

Arakawa under the Bridge has a finale to set up, too, and that means its usual random vignettes are mostly discarded in favor of sustained action.

Rec’s father’s company is proceeding with their plans to renovate, and it looks like the one way to stop them is for Rec to leave altogether. But Nino, in a lovely show of support, refuses to let him consider this. Suddenly, he has another plan. He’ll get the development rights himself. So Rec is allowed something to do besides react to the others’ antics. I think the show is always better when this happens. Off he goes to his own company, with his faithful servant Takai, to do the planning.

The others kill time waiting for things to happen. They manage to get some surveyors to go away. Nino forgets what Rec looks like (nice touch). There’s a good scene when he returns and shows them his own development plan, and everyone has issues with it. Meanwhile, I’m getting this “Something’s about to go wrong” feeling. There has to be some setback to lead to the finale, right?

And we get it. But we get something else as well. The show has hinted at the distance between Rec and his father. And in an earlier scene we see the father react to Rec saying (through a spy camera) how it’s impossible to deal with him. In other words next week will not just be about saving the odd lot who live under the bridge, but the two men’s reconciliation, that is, if Rec can actually get his phone number.

Durarara!! 22, Yumeiro 34

I said last week that for me Durarara!! was losing its sense of fun. Things had become too grim, and the humorous edge that had given the show such a lift was gone. Well, this week it gets pretty grim, too, but the first half is as much fun as I can remember.

Anri gets help from all sorts of people.

Anri is cornered by Yellow Scarves members. But Mikado, who was feeling helpless last episode, hears about it and launches into action. It’s sort of a reprise of ep11, where the Dollars all get a phone call and join together to help her. We get a marvelous chase scene where regulars help out and one-shot characters get a reprise. The lost-and-found girl, the guys in the van, Simon, the guy who was beaten up, Kaztano, the runny-nose kid, total strangers, they all come to the aid of the bewildered Anri, who’s never seen such a show of support before. Until it comes down to Celty, and Shizuo’s rage. Great stuff. The only people missing were Isaac and Miria, and I didn’t really expect them to actually take a role in the story.

And it does a couple things. Mikado realizes that the Dollars might be a viable group after all. Anri, safely resting at Celty and Shinra’s place, says she’s tired of running away. Of course, she’s more than capable of defending herself, but unleashing her Slasher-Mom schtick is the last thing she wants to do. She doesn’t want to hurt anybody, something Masaome doesn’t understand at one point when he confronts her during the chase.

But the grimness comes in again. Some Yellow Scarves are on the Dollars’ network. And so infuriated are they that they go out and double-up on their random beating of Dollars members, to the point where Mikado loses all hope again and actually shuts down the Dollars, saying they “… must disappear,” which is actually sort of cryptic. They were sort of invisible already, weren’t they? And Shizuo is gunned down in an alley, just as you thought they might not have hit their grim quota for the week. Interesting, though. He’s always been a trump card for the good guys. Maybe they just want him out of the picture for an episode …

What needs to happen next is that our three heroes must get together and work this out, meaning secrets will have to be revealed. But Mikado seems to want none of this, anymore. Two episodes to go. Can they fit everything in? Will it be fun?

Yumeiro Patissiere 34 is great fun. The main story is about sweets fairy Marron, who’s bored and has decided to go to Earth and partner up with someone (All the sweets fairies head to the Japan branch. Why is that?). She brings along the rebellious boys from early in the series, but happily they don’t contribute to the action at all. Marron’s story isn’t what makes this episode so fun; it’s what we find out about all our fairy friends and human partners.

Our fairy friends introduce Marron to Ojou Miya (They changed her name, dammit. Several episodes ago. I have no brain), but she’s depressed after losing in the Grand Prix and out of sorts, so she goes off on her own to look for more promising humans. What makes this fun is that Marron is headstrong and a little spoiled, in short a perfect match for Ojou Miya, so we’re biding our time waiting for the inevitable hookup to happen. Every one of the promising ones already have fairies, so she decides to get one to drop their fairy and choose her instead, leading to some hilarious moments.

The scene where Marron tries to get Kashino away from Chocolat is the best. In order to display the deep knowledge she has of him, Chocolat begins to reveal some rather … embarrassing things, which include his anatomy (no, not that part, perverts). In doing so Chocolat shows a sneaky, dirty side we haven’t seen before. But it’s not the only good bit.

She looks in on Satsuki and Cafe having a decadent rose water bath together. When they agree to let her partner with them it sounds like they’re arranging a threesome. While Andou and Caramel behave like young lovers. I can’t believe this show’s for children.

There ought to be a side series: “Untold Secrets of the Sweets Academy.” It’d be ratings gold!

But we need to get back to Ojou Miya, newly revived with the thought of just jetting Kashino to Paris himself, giving off her spoiled rich girl laugh every few seconds (Who invented that laugh, anyway? First instance I know of is Utena’s Nanami). Marron likes her style after all, so that’s settled. Now just about every character has a fairy. But Marron is actually helping Miya cook? I thought that wasn’t allowed. Doesn’t matter. Good episode. Fun to watch. Apart from missteps like the last episode this show’s on a roll.

Durarara!! 21, Daimaou 10

I sometimes (too often) use the metaphor of moving pieces around when taking about a particular episode’s story line. In Durarara!! 21 I get to have Izaya do it for me, as friction rises between the factions and he laughs with delight.

Anri, in spite of entreaties from Celty, blames herself for the escalating violence between the Yellow Scarves and the Dollars. She takes action, using her people to intervene when Dollars are attacked. Yellow Scarves members turning on each other during a fight naturally raises the ire of the rest of the group, not to mention Masaome, who puts two and two together and realizes Anri’s involved, somehow. Naturally this puts him in a funk. His two best friends are part of the conflict, and on the other side of it. On the other hand, Anri knows about Masaome, but acts anyway, though she’s doing it to stop the hurting of innocent people. Masaome seems frozen right now (ironic), and in spite of his orders not to start fights, his people are doing so freely.

The one who’s really out of the loop is Mikado. Ironic: his group depends on sophisticated communication technology yet he’s the one who knows the least. This cuts him off from his suddenly busy best friends, and makes him feel powerless and alone. Many Dollars members plan to quit or want him to act, but there’s nothing he can do. Since no one except Izaya and Celty know he’s the leader, he can’t turn to anyone. It’s sad to see him like this when ten episodes ago he used the Dollars to take bold action against Namie and her goons. The other characters make occasional appearances but mainly stand to the side, Kyohei listens to Mikado, Seiji, of all people, gives him love advice, but it looks like he’ll have to do something on his own.

Meanwhile I’m thinking that while the show is still fascinating, it’s lost some of its fun. The stakes are higher now, and no one is enjoying themselves anymore, except for Izaya, the last person on this show you want to see smiling.

At least Durarara!! makes some kind of sense. Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou 10 has weirdness piled upon weirdness. After a while I stopped trying to make sense of it and just decided to roll with it.

Here’s what I can figure out. Monster after monster is loose and are, er, monstering around the school, and everyone blames Akuto and wants to kill him, for various reasons. Some are doing it because he’s a demon lord, others because they want his power. Meanwhile, Akuto has unleashed these things because he’s trying to protect Keena, or so he says. He confronts various enemies (Yamato) and friends (Hiroshi/Brave, Junko) who can’t make out their mixed feelings about stopping someone who’s been their friend, especially Junko, who’s in love with him. They even throw in a spiritual/sociological discussion or two; the current systems battle believe in gods, and because of these gods they can’t free themselves. Akuto announces he’ll just kill God and free everybody. It was really strange to hear this kind of talk in a show like this.

But weirdness prevails. First there are the intrigues between factions going on. Eiko murders her father to take over and along with some guy codenamed 2-V, tries to manipulate the action. Junko receives some super-sword. Yamato is stopped at the demon’s lair by the school Headmaster, who has barely made an appearance before. The flying battleship is commanded by a Macross wanabee. Some characters named “rubbers” show up to fight. And lets not forget TWO ninja armies. The entire thing is being broadcast and shown on jumbotrons. All the little weird things that occurred earlier in the series have reappeared all at once! It feels like a finale, but there’s two episodes to go yet. I have a feeling anything after this is going to feel like an anticlimax, in terms of one damn thing after another.

Durarara!! 20, Daimaou 9

Durarara 20 goofs around with concepts of reality and fantasy, pushes chess pieces around some more, and then gets violent. The narrator this week is Erika, who, with Martin, have come up with their technique to make life bearable, though I couldn’t follow it. Separate the good things from the painful things and make the latter unreal. Something like that. Their use of it puts them in a world full of “moe, tsundere and boy’s love,” which may of may not be your idea of a good time, but it’s theirs.

Masaome probably wishes he could do such separating himself, but he’s too deep into it now. The past he has tried to ignore has come up again and he must confront it. So as he mulls just what is the truth and what isn’t, he talks to the guys in the van, who help him a little by pointing out what in his revenge plot might be true and what might not be, and give him not so subtle warnings. Then it’s off to talk with Izaya, always a bad idea.

But you won't like it!

Through it all we get a sense that Masaome doesn’t really know what to think, or what his motives are. There’s no evidence that the Dollars are an enemy, or in league with the Slashers. Izaya suggests that he’s going through this for Anri’s sake, because he failed to help Saki. And that he didn’t really love Saki after all (low blow). Then delivers the bombshell: Mikado is the boss of the Dollars.

So Masaome knows Mikado’s secret, and Anri knows Masaome’s. Poor Mikado is left out. Now Masaome is thoroughly confused, and he’s losing his control over the Yellow Scarves. Izaya has managed to blur reality to his purposes again.

Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou starts clumsily, then drops a whole lot of plot bombshells in about five minutes.

Korone has arranged a marriage interview for Akuto and Junko’s family, but Junko can’t get herself to tell him that’s what this innocent trip to her household is about. Akuto has his own reasons for going, to take responsibility for the monsters appearing everywhere, but why he has to go out to Junko’s home doesn’t enter his mind. And before you know it, they’re engaged. And he STILL doesn’t know. It takes a late-night confession from Junko, who herself is torn between duty and desire, to clear up the action. Then things get stupid.

There’s a mix-up and suddenly he’s on the run from ninjas (I recall a favorite Nanowrimo saying: “When stuck with the plot, throw in some ninjas.”), then Eiko shows up to tempt him to her side, then to kill him, and he learns that Keena back at school is going to be assassinated. Huh? But the mysterious blond guy named Yamato, I believe, stops the attack, because … well, it just gets stranger and stranger. And just when my head wasn’t spinning from yet another magical group showing up and more bizarre revelations …

Never thought I’d be glad to see Fujiko, but cripes, what a mess! An entertaining mess, but still … The upshot of all this is that everyone wants something out of Akuto, either to marry him, enslave him, or kill him. Like Masaome, Akuto wants it to all go away.

Durarara!! 19

Durarara 19, hmm, not much to say about it. Basically all that happens is they turn the screws a little, or maybe it’s Izaya doing the screwing.

Part of it is flashback. Lots of scenes of Mikado, Anri and Masaomi walking along, when the latter suddenly gets a call and runs off, claiming something’s come up. The other two are concerned, especially Anri, which is why she goes off to the meeting only to get spotted. As for Masaomi, he’s hating this whole thing, yet determined to get revenge on the slashers for hurting Anri. Meanwhile, his gang is getting out of control. We learn later (from Izaya) that members of the Blue Squares eventually joined the Gold Scarves, so that the people who badly injured his old girlfriend are now his comrades, a fact he doesn’t know, since he couldn’t bring himself to come to her rescue. So basically he’s a leader of an increasingly violent gang that he knows he can’t control.

The sad part is none of the groups have to fight. Anri has control of the slashers now. In fact, there are slashers among the Yellow Scarves. There are Dollars among the Scarves, too, or maybe it’s the other way around. The Dollars is essentially benign, and it’s interesting that the show’s independent forces for good (Celty, Simon, Shizuo, the guys in the van) are all Dollars members. The Yellow Scarves, know hardly any of this; right now they’re determined to lash out at something. They get a false clue when Celty rescues Anri, who has whipped out her slasher sword. Aha! A Dollars member with the Slasher! They must be in cahoots! You can almost hear Izaya chuckling.

This doesn’t bode well for anyone. Expect more violence next episode, and chances are Simon won’t be around to help.

Good to see you, Simon! Where you been?

Durarara!! 18, K-ON!! 7

So, several episodes ago in Durarara!! we had Mikado turning into a hero of sorts, and this episode we see Masaomi was once a coward. Nothing particularly interesting. They’re laying out the structure for the new story arc.

An Izaya speech hits too close to home, for once.

And we get speeches, weird ones. We start with another of Izaya’s as he plots his next move in the current day. Then we go flashbacking to Izaya and Masaomi, where the former gives another weird speech, this one about how guilt over Saki’s condition would turn her into a diety for Masaomi. Then we flashback from the flashback and see Masaomi meet Izaya for the first time, and then Saki. This time it’s Masaomi with the extravagant speech.

My reaction to many speeches on this show.

What it all boils down to is that the rival Blue Scarves abduct Saki and break her legs, and Masaomi, running there to save her, freezes in fear. Good thing for Saki the guys in the van find out, and we get the most entertaining scene of the episode, with another little speech. Martin’s so into it he even opens his eyes a little.

Martin's speech is perhaps the most abstract.

Kyohei gets one, too–okay, his is more of a straight conversation. All we really learn from all this is that Masaomi is filled with regret and guilt and wants nothing to do with gangs anymore, yet he’s been pulled in again, because of what happened to Anri (not knowing that she’s now the leader of the group that threatened her). Oh, and that Izaya is a manipulating bastard. There would be no story advancement at all if Anri hadn’t spied on a Gold Scarves meeting and seen him.

Oh, for those who want more action, you can catch a clip of Baccano! on a jumbo-tron.

K-ON!! 7 is the third good episode in a row. What’s gotten into them? This one is especially rewarding if you like to watch Mio squirm, not that I have a particular interest in that, but it IS fun, and they manage to sustain it with few drops.

Mio thinks she has a stalker. The rest of the HTT dismiss it, but it turns out it’s happened in the past, and that Mio actually has a fan club, with cards and everything. And we get a flashback to last year when Mio went to the student council president Sokuba, to tell her about the original stalker, only to learn it was Sokuba herself, and that she was the fan club president.

This is embarrassing enough for poor Mio, but then the band decide to hold a tea party for the club, with Mio as the star. This allows her to be humiliated in a number of ways. She enters like a bride coming to the altar (There’s even a giant wedding cake), there are souvenirs (Mio back-scratchers!), a humiliating Q/A, even a slideshow showing “the first half of Mio’s life.” Naturally, and to our delight, Mio becomes a wreck.

Mio looks up at the first half of her life.

On the other hand, it’s for her. And it isn’t just done for the fans; you get the sense that her bandmates are doing it because they love her themselves. And if they can’t resist a little teasing, well that’s HTT for you. The episode is almost completely successful. Like the best K-ON episodes, it’s fluid and funny, and injects the sweetness and sentimentality in consistent little doses.

Durarara!! 17, K-ON!! 6

It’s exclamation mark night on this blog!! Damn, I should have held off on the latest Working! until now. Well, that show only uses one, anyway.

Durarara!! 17 finishes one story arc in wild fashion and then drags a bit as they set up the next one. I’m frankly not sad that they’ve resolved for now the slasher story, as it was getting a little incomprehensible. But at least it went out with a bang.

Shizuo vs. the slashers was everything I had hoped for. But on the other side of the coin we had the confrontation between Anri and Haruna, a slasher against the mother of all slashers. I can see the point of interweaving these two sequences; you can’t have ten straight minutes of Shizuo beating people up, but Anri’s tale, seen through flashbacks, doesn’t explain enough about why she took up with Saika in the first place, or how Saika could “possess” Haruna in a different way than it does her. And Anri’s speeches about being unable to love sounded … fictional, not something I could relate to. Perhaps it’s what this adolescent girl with a tragic past thinks she knows about herself, or maybe it just isn’t written well (or beyond the skills of the translators?). Add to this Izaya’s manipulation of the whole situation (which parts did he manipulate?), the teacher’s odd motives, and you have me wishing they’d go back to Shizuo beating people up.

Then we get some aftermath scenes, followed by a tedious one where Izaya plans his next move. There are three forces out there now: the slashers, the Dollars, and the Yellow Scarves gang. We learn that Masaomi was the founder of the latter, and with a possible gang war coming up, they want him back. Why the Yellow Scarves are so pissed off at the slashers we don’t learn, or what they have against the dollars. We do know that Masaomi hates all this. I guess the gangland fun will start this week, and Masaomi will be the center character. No problem with that. He’s always been a cipher in this series. He deserves his episode or two in the limelight.

(Afterthought) So with the triangle of Mikado, Anri and Masaomi, we have the three gang leaders. I’m so thick sometimes …

K-ON!! 6 breaks the pattern of good ep/bad ep by delivering the second good one in a row. As usual, nothing much happens, but each little scene was entertaining enough. The episode could have been named “A Girl and her Gitah.”

It’s the rainy season, and the girls worry about their instruments. Especially Yui, who has taken on a fierce devotion to hers. She sleeps with it, talks to it, goes to extremes to keep it dry in the rain (while getting sopping wet herself) and is driven frantic when forced to leave it at school. Most of the scenes deal with this, with side glances at how the other characters worry about theirs. I suppose I could go on about how silly Yui is acting but it didn’t bother me this time, possibly because the other characters behave (mostly) sensibly. It’s when they’re all acting like nut jobs that I start gripping my chair in frustration. And, seeing that Yui’s behavior is devoted to keeping her beloved Gitah safe and dry, I can sympathize.

A happy Yui and Gitah.

And it shows a side of Yui that I often overlook amid all her silliness. She’s serious about playing. She practices every day, and it’s showing. She and not Azusa notices when a note is flat. She and Ui have a little sing-along, and nothing could make Ui happier. The others are often taken aback by her actions, such as changing the strings without loosening them first, but they also enjoy basking in her glow. It’s altogether a happy episode.

Durarara! 16, B Gata H Kei 5

Durarara! 16 certainly is an eventful one, at least in terms of its revelations. Unfortunately much of it is buried beneath the concept of a blade procreating with people.

This might take a while.

So let me get this straight: Saika, the blade, can only love by slashing people, the only concrete way for a knife to display anything. The slashed human then shares its love, gets a blade of its own, and goes off to slash more people. All for love! What I’m not getting is why are they spreading now? What’s the catalyst for it? No matter, they are, and soon there are people out there who are targeting certain people, like Shizuo. But how will slashing him in order to get his strength work? Will the slasher immediately become stronger? How does the gene-work, er, work? Does everyone share the genetic traits of each of the victims? Hey! What about if Isaac or Miria get slashed. What happens then? Ah, I’m not going to think about it for now. And along the way there’s a lot of talk about loving people. Anyway, Shinra hypothesizes that each Saika is a descendent of a single “mother” blade. Shizuo and Celty go off to lure it to them.

Just what Durarara needs--another weirdo character.

Meanwhile, Anri gets a visitor, Haruna, the girl who Takashi the teacher made out with before moving to someone else. Now it’s time to examine Anri’s role in all this, because it’s become clear that she has one. There’s more talk about love and murder, a complication arises, and now it’s Takashi’s turn to have a possessed nutball threatening him while talking about love. I’ve never seen a show where so many discussions about love happen at knifepoint. All I know is that Haruna’s knife must certainly be Saika, at least that’s the assumption until …

… Which explains a lot, sort of. We don’t know much about her parents’ death, though we get a couple of quick images while she explains it. She doesn’t quite explain why she can control the blade, unless it’s because, as she says, she’s afraid to love. That would make her quite the strongest person in the entire show. It’s always the quiet ones …

This episode was full of confrontations and threats, but in its heart it’s an exposition episode. Never mind Shizuo’s odd decision to start liking himself. Some of the stuff we learn is pushing the limits for even this show, not that I’m going to stop watching it now. I want to see Shizuo take on a hundred maniacs!

B Gata H Kei tells two stories, and fulfills yet another anime cliché, Valentine’s Day chocolate. To keep it short, both Yamada and Miharu make chocolates for Kosuda, but are too embarrassed to give them to him. The only nice part is that Kosuda has learned enough about Yamada to suspect the box of poorly-made chocolates left in the mailbox was her doing, and calls them “unique.” The second story gets raunchier.

This bit of self-referential humor was the only laugh in the episode.

Yamada decides to go to school without panties, and regrets it. Oh, I am so close to dropping this series. This episode dragged so much it seemed to take an hour. Yamada’s mood swings are beginning to bug me. She’s actually more interesting when she doesn’t obsess about sex. Kosuda does nothing, is just acted upon, and thus is not very interesting. The god of sex character is annoying. I don’t know if the rival character they’ll bring up next week will improve things. And I’m watching too many shows anyway. I’ll just have to make up my mind this week.

Durarara15, Angel Beats 4, Working 3

Ah! I THOUGHT the slasher who appeared at the end of last week’s Durarara!! looked a little different. It looked like he was wearing a trenchcoat. In ep15 my suspicions are comfirmed. That, however, doesn’t mean I was confused as all getout.

We meet (again) Niekawa, the reporter trying to find the strongest man in the city, who, when last seen, was flying in the air thanks to Shizuo. The first half is straightforward. He interviews Simon, a gangster, Izaya, Celty (who kindly shows off her lack of head), and countless others, and begins to demonstrate a strange fascination for Shizuo. He also ruminates about his daughter, Haruna, the same girl who transferred out of Anri’s high school the year before, possibly (or not) because of the creepy teacher hitting on her. So the relationships become even more convoluted. But again, the manner here is straightforward, and Durarara can’t behave like that for too long.

We also have some Anri, her sad happy dreams about her dead parents, her current life, she feels, leeching off of other people (the others don’t see it that way). And the two stories come together. And that’s what confuses me. Niekawa is stabbed, presumably by the slasher, so it seems clear the slasher moves from one body to another (so maybe it’s the knife, but the one we see says “Made in Japan,” but in English … or maybe that’s the fansubbers’ doing). His eyes turn red. He stalks Anri, who inexplicably is off alone again, gets clobbered by Togusa’s van, recovers, goes after Anri again, gets floored by Celty’s bike, recovers again … this time goes after Shizuo?!? Meanwhile the chatboard is flooded by more of Saiko’s weirdo messages. Maybe the Saiko thing brings up whatever dangerous thoughts that are churning, suppressed, in our psyches and tries to act them out. Maybe I have no idea. And what manifestation stabbed Niekawa in the first place? I’m betting on the daughter. Once again Durarara leaves me happily confused.

Angel Beats 4 has the silly overbalancing the poignant, which is okay with me. The last episode, where it was evenly balanced, felt heavy on the latter.

Much of the silly comes from Yui, the hyper, pink-haired girl who we met last episode and plays a surprise part in this week’s ending. She gets involved in another unfathomable Yurippe scheme, winning the school baseball tournament. The losing team gets Yurippe’s punishment match. Now, why are they doing this? What is the point? Just to disrupt a baseball tournament? What does that do, exactly? They don’t even get any meal tickets out of it. Otonashi and Hinata try to form a team, but all the good players are taken, but they manage to put together one anyway, and we’re off for some baseball hijinks!

Overshadowing this is what is obviously a flashback to another game, with a character trying to read a fly ball hit to him. It’s obviously another death memory (looks like they’ll have one a week), and we eventually learn it’s Hinata’s. This is the poignant part, and they make an interesting twist out of it. As you can guess, the last play of the current game is a fly ball to Hinata. Hinata welcomes the chance to redeem himself, and move on to the next world like Iwasawa did last week. But Otonashi doesn’t want Hinata to disappear from this world, whatever it is, and runs to interfere. An interesting twist in itself, and you have to wonder just how Hinata will accept that, and the responsibility Otonashi would bear … but it doesn’t come to that. I won’t say here what DOES happen; I’ll just say it goes back to being silly.

Most of the episode follows the “misfits fight for the championship” format, but the quick jabs of humor and silly situations make it work. The fact that they’re all in some kind of purgatory adds depth. I’m quite enjoying this series.

With Working!!, we’re still at a stage where we’re meeting characters and learning their eccentricities, and I’m not sure there’s going to be much beyond eccentricities in this show, but I’m liking it anyway. Since it looks like every episode is going to be a series of sketches which don’t add up to anything much, we’re probably going to get good and bad ones each week. The ones this week balance out.

We start with the mystery of Yachiyo’s katana. We learn why she has one, but not why she carries it around with her at all times. We also meet the real boss of the restaurant, Otou, and learn his quirks (business trips to look for his missing wife, devotion to Kyouko, a tendency to wear masks, and a general sense of haplessness). From there we watch the quirks bounce off each other. Some of it is good, such as Yachiyo’s jealousy of Otou, a mood swing so great you’d not think it possible for her. I only hope they don’t wear it out. Getting Kyouko to do some actual work was another good one. Souma’s sad tendency to always speak his mind always improves a scene.

It seems not all the character interactions have been explored yet.

But about two-thirds of the way through it began to wear down. Maybe it’s too much of the same, or maybe the last third wasn’t as effective. However, it’s not a bad drop, and it’s becoming clear that the show has more up its sleeve. As for me, I’m liking it more than I thought I would. Nothing much will come of it, but if nothing else, it’s nice to see a comedy with people in a working environment.