Shiki 17 – Doom and Gloom and Doom and Gloom and …

Is it at all ironic that someone who doesn’t wear pants wears the pants in the Kirishiki relationship?

So, um, WE ARE ALL FUCKED. Muroi is . . . surrendering himself to Sunako, or something; Ozaki has become Mrs. Kirishiki’s vampire sex slave (with the snipetastic blessing of Mr. Kirishiki, as if he really has a choice); Tatsumi and Yuuki are on their way to do battle soon; and the precious few villagers remaining are still croaking left and right. Good times! Good, bleak times where every human is dumb and buries their heads in the sand. (Which I would probably be doing, too, considering that, um, I don’t believe in any of this stuff. But I probably wouldn’t bury my head in the sand for very long, because I would totally be among the first dumbasses to die.)

Kuragehime 6 – Didn’t Sublime Sing About This?

After Eden of the East, you can never be too careful about these things. Good on Shuu for checking to see if he’s still all there . . .

Oh, Evil Career Woman. Surely your plot would have borne fruit had you snagged any other budding politician. Unfortunately, you got the one with emotional trauma and a Yamato Nadeshiko fetish. See, Shuu’s pops is totally the kind of guy Evil Career Woman would have wrapped around her finger. (Side note: Has Shuu’s dad aged at all in two decades? We didn’t see his face, so maybe he had fewer wrinkles or something, I dunno . . . same hair, though!) Then again, I guess there’s the scandal of a politician banging someone who is looking for project support. Conflict of interests are Serious Business.

Star Driver 8 – Heavy Panting

Star Driver goes from zero to BL in one second. They don’t even need to rev up beforehand — just one punch, and ♥ KIRA-BL-SHI ♥

So yes, Sugata and Takuto spend the second half of the episode fisting each other, but not in the way one might expect. No, this is more the G Gundam-style COMMUNICATION THROUGH FISTS that resolves all animated conflicts (and some non-animated conflicts). And when two men engage in slashable battle, then their energy is far too much to handle, as evidenced by Benio’s Cybody going to pieces, unable to contain Sugata’s massive libido. The BL was too strong for that one.

Bakuman 8 – FUCK YEAH BEAM SABERS

The actual process of coming up with the story Mashiro and Takagi eventually submit for the Tezuka Award is my favorite part of this episode. So many little bits that remind the viewer of their age, even though Mashiro and Takagi have been relatively mature in how they have gone about making and submitting their manga. “Let’s throw in some robots! And swords! Not just swords — BEAM SABERS!!!!!” Haha.

Amid everything else, that is at least one thing Bakuman has excelled at thus far — balancing Mashiro and Takagi’s maturity (actually having a plan for becoming manga authors, being totally professional and hardworking with their craft, etc.) and their childishness (the stories they come up with). They’re not aiming for high art here; they’re writing fairly pulpy stuff that has some kick to it, and adding in whatever they think is cool and will appeal to other people. But that’s more realistic for them anyway. I couldn’t even write high art now, much less when I was in high school. (I’m pretty sure everything I wrote in high school was terrible.)

Shiki 16 – Tatsumi Is a Douche

It’s been simultaneously wonderful and horrible to watch Shiki recently: Wonderful because the show has so many well done scenes of legitimate horror, and horrible because it’s so damn good at twisting the knife that it’s uncomfortable. That scene at the end with poor Akira? I was squirming, and I’m no horror newbie. I’m hoping beyond hope that Akira somehow gets through it, but given how the series has progressed so far, the chance of that is roughly o.0000000001 percent.

And that Tatsumi. What a dastardly way to kill someone — I can’t help but think that Tatsumi is killing two birds with one stone here (so to speak). Not only is he offing someone who is a threat to the vampires (even if only a small threat), but he is also teaching Akira a lesson should he rise. If you screw with Tatsumi, then you’re going to pay. Even a hot-blooded little kid like Akira would probably cower before a bully like Tatsumi.

Kuragehime 5 – Dressing for Battle

Haha, I like that Mayaya instinctively knows all these fashionable poses after putting on those clothes. But Nicole Richie? Really? Kuranosuke couldn’t have chosen a better socialite model for Mayaya? I would feel insulted. Or maybe they have a different view of Nicole Richie in Japan than we do in America. In that case, I would feel bad for the Japanese.

Anyway, I approved of the Nuns actually going out and doing something in this episode after being so lazy and easygoing in the previous one. . . . Well, I guess I should say trying to do something, since they failed so miserably here, but trying and failing is better than doing nothing, since you can always learn from your mistakes if you try and fail. And the mistake here is a mistake of preparation. Not just in looks (although, looking at it realistically, Kuranosuke is of course correct — you have to make people stand up and notice you, and not give ’em a chance to discriminate based on appearance), but also in argument, I’d expect. (But maybe that’s just me discriminating based upon looks!)

Star Driver 7 – Don’t Abuse the Sugata

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that Sugata would not have been nearly as  pissed off if Takuto had smooched him instead of resorting to the Bright Slap? The Glittering Crux knows how to treat those it recruits. Step up your game, Galactic Pretty Boy!

So, hey, using that King’s Pillar is a totally huge deal — you’ll be in a coma forever if you use it! Except in the world of Star Driver, “forever” roughly equates to “three quarters of an episode”. Maybe they’re measuring in Zero Space time. Whatever the case, Sugata wakes up because he possesses the Power of the Main Character. Now I know why those other dudes stayed in their wussy comas forever: It’s because they were lame ass side characters. Don’t mess with the Main Character, King’s Pillar, or you’ll get the horns!

Bakuman 7 – A Romance in Three Images

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Shiki 15 – Vampire Cougar

It was only a matter of time before a vampire cougar showed up to run amok in a horror story, but I’m shocked Japan got to it before America. Isn’t that the perfect set-up to a trashy horror flick? Like people wouldn’t watch it, even if only out of morbid curiosity.

(That said, it probably has been done — given how sexual many vampire stories are, I can’t imagine that someone didn’t think of this idea at some time. It’s an impossibility, I say!)

Kuragehime 4 – V-V-V-Virgins?!

I don’t know about all of you, but I’m absolutely shocked — shocked! — that Shuu is a virgin. Almost as shocked as Louie was to find gambling at Rick’s in Casablanca.

Maybe he did realize that was Tsukimi in the last episode, though. He didn’t seem particularly shocked to see her with her glasses on (the Clark Kent Effect is not a go here), and there was of course his run-in with Tsukimi later in the episode. The guy’s come to terms with the fact that his crush is a big ol’ geek rather than a Yamato Nadeshiko extraordinaire . . . or, at least, that she lives with a bunch of geeks. Maybe he’s still holding out hope for her.