Hello folks, and welcome to… wait, week nine? Week NINE? When did that happen? THE SEASON’S ALMOST OVER!
I suppose it’s a good sign, actually, that the end of this season has so completely crept up on me. It’s probably just a reflection of how much I’m enjoying all these shows – basically nothing I’m watching has dragged at all, and shows like Mob Psycho and Run with the Wind are stacked with moments that remind me just how great anime can be. I’ll be sad to reach the end of this season, but I’ll be leaving it having gained a bunch of new favorites, and with Mob Psycho having taken a major leap up my all-time rankings. We once again find ourselves near the end of a winter of riches, and it’s time to assess the spoils. Let’s run this week in anime down!
We were finally introduced to the remaining members of Rin’s family in this week’s Kemurikusa, and given a variety of key hints regarding their overall nature. The episode’s final scene seemed to imply that the remnants of Rin’s various sisters are more or less sharing her body at this point, which feels like a neat wrinkle to add to this show’s already intriguing interpretations of selfhood. That choice also echoes the overall narrative’s contrasting of fatalism in the face of an apocalypse and the personal bonds we embrace to survive such ordeals, which… look, Kemurikusa’s plotting is clever. Its worldbuilding, character, and thematic choices all fit together in this neat little nested arrangement, and it’s perfectly aware of how its disarming visual aesthetic makes sequences like Rin’s sister encouraging Wakaba to kill himself for science that much funnier.
Beyond all that, I found myself most struck this episode by how much fun I was having with every thing this episode attempted – the evocative early journey across a poison sea, the funny interactions with Rin’s last sisters, and the clear mutual love of these characters, exemplified through moments like Rin saying “you don’t have to do this,” and Ritsu smiling in response because she knows it’s not true. Basically the only thing that fell flat for me was the execution of that bug’s destruction, but I had a wonderful time with this episode. Kemurikusa has turned out to be a real treasure.
This week’s Run with the Wind offered some of the show’s most bracing dramatic highs yet, as we watched Shindo nearly destroy himself in his efforts to finish section five. I found myself genuinely misting up as his brutal run went on, with the production’s wobbly interpretation of Shindo’s fever-run feeling almost painful to watch. And of course, that deftly executed sequence was further buoyed by Run with the Wind’s most reliable strength, the richness of its characters and the clarity of their mutual concern. Though Shindo was initially assigned this segment because he’s accustomed to living in mountains, his journey through this sickness demonstrated exactly what we’ve come to know about him – that he truly loves this team, has discovered a genuine passion for running, and feels uniquely responsible among his teammates for making sure they all succeed. Shindo didn’t have to be tricked into joining this team – he loved it from the start, and couldn’t possibly quit halfway. Though sequences like this always run the risk of glamorizing athletic overexertion, this episode’s choices felt perfect for Shindo’s character, and beautiful in their execution. Run with the Wind continues to soar towards the finish line.
The Magnificent Kotobuki had an unusually muted episode this time, and I felt the first half genuinely dragged. While Kylie herself is a very entertaining character who can generally carry a scene single-handedly, her teammates’ various discussions with other aviating professionals just felt aimless to me, while the more worldbuilding-oriented sequences seemed to accidentally highlight the overall smallness of this world. Kotobuki is one of those fantasies where the world feels more like a firmly edged sandbox than a living place – in spite of the show’s intriguing gesturing towards this link between worlds, I always get the impression that like four or five towns total exist here. Fortunately, things picked up as they always do when Kylie took flight, and her conversations with Kate’s brother, along with their shared dogfight, were both a ton of fun. Kotobuki’s world feels kinda unreal basically by design, so I tend to feel that its episodes basically require a certain ratio of spectacle to balance their worldbuilding appeal, and this one didn’t quite get there.
Finally, Mob Psycho recovered from last week’s relative lull with another visual stunner, full of unexpected highlights like the Self-Improvement Club’s heroic alley stand, along with Reigen actually settling into his role of heroic mastermind. The thing about Reigen is, it’s not really much of a con at this point – even if his lack of powers were revealed, he’d still be far and away the most competent leader among this crew of miscreants. Seeing him assume the hero’s mantle was an inherent thrill, but the episode absolutely belonged to the Self-Improvement Club. Basically no one is ever stuck as a gag character in Mob – hell, Dimple has essentially risen from being a fart joke to being an indispensable, loving mentor for Mob. Seeing our rowdy boys make a passionate, personal defense of their smallest member was a wonderful thing, and greatly improved by the sequence’s extremely raw, Kaneda-style animation, which perfectly matched the sequence’s muscle-bound spectacle. All that, and this wasn’t actually a highlight episode for the season – this is just how good Mob is now, all the time. Damn.
