KonoSuba 8 … I don’t know what the hell happened. What were all those dolls? Why was Aqua behind the door? And you know, it didn’t matter much. Our heroes are sent to exorcise a bunch of spirits by Wiz, a nice but hapless servant of the demon king. There’s lots of running around in fear (those dolls WERE kind of scary) and jokes about peeing. It could have been dismal but once again the direction and voice-actor work kept it afloat. Also, I’m happy to see that Kazuma got another skill and they have a decent place to live now. Living in that cold barn all this time was depressing to watch.
Koyomimonogatari 8 has Ougi and Araragi going up a mountain to visit a ruined shrine, and the big question this week is: how was it moved there? It used to be somewhere else, and its current presence has stuck things out of balance (mostly corrected by Shinobu, I believe), but that’s not really important. The answer, or punch line, as Araragi likes to say, comes from Sengoku, pre-snake form. I was going to ask “why her?” but it just occurred to me that Ougi and Araragi had talked about snakes before. But this scene happens before Sengoku’s troubles … Oh, well, call it foreshadowing.
Episode 9 is livelier thanks to no creepy Ougi but rather Shinobu. Twelve minutes, more or less, on donuts, with hints of trust and love thrown in. Very sweet, and it made me hungry for donuts. What’s more, we had a Dagashi Kashi-type lesson about donut holes, and I learned what a torus is. The answer (possibly, because Araragi ate the evidence) comes to us again from Hanekawa, who’s on a beach with a suitcase and her two-tone hair, so late in the chronology.
Dagashi Kashi 8 brings us three stories and more things I didn’t know about. The first, where Tou tells scary stories taken from Super Scary Story Gum and Kokonotsu pokes holes in their logic, is pleasant enough, especially with Saya’s scared faces. Also, I like typhoon stories even if it’s just people sitting around telling scary stories. The second one … Kendama isn’t a dagashi, but it’s arguably the most successful story of the three, because Saya shows up and is cool. I think I’m developing a thing for Saya … No Saya in part three, so it’s the weakest, besides, I didn’t get the fortune telling concept. But it had the episode’s best weird moment, when a fantasy Tou as girl meets a handsome Hotaru as boy, with those same crazy eyes of hers. That and the crab.
Shoujo-tachi wa Kouya o Mezasu 9 gives Yuka another crisis, even though she had one earlier with the unrequited love business. Considering how confident and genki she is normally, I was happy that her crisis wasn’t that she fucked up all the time (just a little–rookie jitters in the audio booth) or outright sucked. No, she was good from the start, just not good enough by her standards, and everyone else has been trying so hard … After that it was just a matter of coaxing her back into the booth and set up the next crisis, either to do with Koruda’s brother, whoever he is, or Kai because being the organizer is not very interesting unless you get a show like Shirobako, which this isn’t.
Too Old for Anime 