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A Futari-focused episode today. She was attacked by a hit squad sent from her previous gang. However, Peeps is able to fend them off while Sasaki came to an accord with the opposing leader. One thing I wasn’t clear on is how everybody here actually works for the Bureau. So, does this mean this guy is undercover as a gang leader leaking intel to the Bureau? Or, does he run the gang and uses his Bureau job as a way to gather intel about other psychics. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me yet.
I was expecting this danger Futari was in to be magical girl related. However, it seems that the magical girls are now after the Bureau itself. I am probably most glad that we are going to be involving Hoshizaki again. I think she is probably one of my favorite characters that has come out of this decidedly weird show.
Some other random observations:
- It seems like Futari wants in on the slave-themed anime trend:
- Peeps getting stabbed in the wing…was that intentional to test the effect of the weapon/psychic ability? It wasn’t very clear from the show
- It looked like there was a second magical girl at the end of the episode. I wonder what will happen with that.
While I’ve been overall enjoying Sasaki and Peeps, it’s definitely trying to do too much with the runtime it’s got. I’ve never read any of the source material so I don’t know what it could/should have been but I can feel that it’s fumbling some of the many balls it is juggling.
Yes, I completely agree. In the beginning of the season, it was kind of exciting, all the new genres and story hooks that were introduced. However a lot of them feel undercooked and like afterthoughts (at least in the anime) with the benefit of hindsight near the end of the season.
I feel that light novel sites like Kakuyomu / Narou (where Sasaki was serialized) do not incentivize authors to do revisions much. Readers want new chapters to read and probably rate them higher than revisions. So authors write and write but spend less time going back and make sure things are consistent or make sense in the long run. They may make one major revision when the work is collected and published (like Tensei Slime), but they’ll also be under time pressure of a deadline in those cases (also like Tensei Slime).
It is not all bad; it ensures readers will have a huge amount of content to read continuously, unlike, say, more serious novelists who spends years meticulously making plot right before coming out with a single volume. But overall each title might be less satisfying and more prone to flaws like those you described.
Just off a tangent, Murata just voided several recent web chapters of One Punch Man manga and will be drawing completely new ones before they are collected for publishing. That is serious dedication considering each chapter takes many days to draw.
This is a great point. This is likely why some WNs just get completely rewritten once they get published (Eminence in Shadow Vol. 4+ comes to mind).
Murata
That guy is just nuts. The art is incredible, but the constant revisions caused me to stop keeping up with the bleeding edge of the manga.
pretty sure she’s the same magical girl as we saw the previous time. You can tell because of her outfit: she’s still wearing the pelt of the fairy creature that infused her with power as a scarf, just as she described previously.
Yes, but there is a second one now too along the right edge of the screen. I don’t think we have seen her, unless I am just misremembering.
holy cow i didn’t even SEE her!
Again, the bad decision Sasaki made regarding Elsa came back to bite him in the ass. I’m sort of glad that Akutsu was not incompetent, he did find out about their secret warehouse.
The boss should have watched Frieren instead of drawing from video games, Pii-chan would have had a harder fight 🤣
If I were Sasaki I would feel no incentive to rescue the Bureau, they first tried to put cameras in his house, was monitoring him with drones, and had just now sold him out to Shizuka’s boss.
What did the Bureau want anyway? “This place is going to become a war zone and we are flying you right in?” He should just stop using his other abilities (he should be hiding them anyway) and just let the magical girls trash the place. With any luck, they would be too busy dealing with the aftermath to leave him alone with more time for his otherworldly enterprise.
One thing about Sasaki-san is that a defining part of his identity as a person consists of his traditional roots: he is humble, diligent, and loyal. He is loyal to his nation, Japan, and the Bureau is serving that nation. It is an extension of his homeland’s will, and he respects the service it performs for Japan. Their goal is, as stated, the regulation of psionic paranormal phenomena. Events have demonstrated the necessity of this mission. It is solely through his calm, rational professionalism that several potential conflicts have been de-escalated. Sasaki-san is the essential ideal agent of such an organization, at least in terms of his ethics and interpersonal skills. Everyone benefits from cooperation and he generates cooperation like it’s his actual superpower. I admire it quite a bit!
Akutsu might feel that Sasaki was not being completely honest with them, and I can see why he wanted him under surveillance. He might be “just” using Shizuka’s boss to test out Sasaki’s abilities but IMO that was going too far and was betrayal.
I agree with what you said though, and hope that Sasaki’s loyalty works out for him in the end.
I loved organization boss’ psychic power!
I’ve never seen a mind-creating-things power behave quite like that.
I wonder if his creations are autonomous after he creates them, or does he have to devote some concentration or part of his power to keep them from disappearing? Like does Shizuka-clone walk off and do Shizuka-like things on her own? That seemed to be the implication.
I am pleased that we’re staying in present-day world next episode.
I felt like the pacing was off in the battle. The plot was solved by the will of the writer. Sasaki made his high charisma carry him on, and smooth talked himself into pretty good deal. (Whatever that deal was)
Next week we will have the final episode. So nothing will be actually solved and story will be cut off. At least we will get a bit of magical girls world lore.
If their goal with this season was to sell LNs, I am not sure how effective this has been. The story and pacing has been all over the place and there are just so many instances of things happening just to happen instead of being motivated by the characters/story. I am curious to see how things end next season, but I am not expecting some tremendous reveal that will make me want to pick up the LN series.
