A nice return to form this week for this series. The show has suffered from lazy writing from time to time, but in the last two episodes it’s seemed especially apparent. Well, this week was focused, on-point and had a nice mix of (mostly) serious stuff and comedy.
We have a little time skip to deal with – a “few months” have passed since Yuu’s departure and the snows are falling. All of our heroes have been searching for her, to no avail, and Sera has been attacked by her fellow Republican Ninjas as a traitor. Not surprisingly there’s an air of melancholy that seems to impact everybody except Haruna. But then, one day, Ayumu runs into the King of Night walking his… What, guinea pig? Whatever it is, he says he doesn’t know where Yuu is either – and drops the interesting tidbit that he wants to die. Apparently this is his motivation – as a zombie he’s immortal, but he’s been one a lot longer than Ayumu – and he’s tired of it. The guess here is obviously that Yuu is the only one who can grant his wish for death, thus his obsession. But for reasons that are less clear, she seems reluctant to fulfill his request.
This whole turn in the plot works quite well – it makes sense, and carries enough dramatic weight to sustain the story for the final three episodes. KotN seems like a very polite fellow, but clearly he has no qualms about disposing of whoever gets in his way. The sequence with the “parasitic bomb” was a nice combination of comedy and drama, and it certainly left things in a dramatic place – Ayumu blowing himself up to save the others after Haruna impetuously cuts the wrong wire (I was worried when I saw that old saw about to be trotted out, but they didn’t milk it too hard). I knew he was pretty indestructible but I wouldn’t have thought even Ayumu could recover after being vaporized – I guess we’re about to find out. Meanwhile Yuu has gone off with KotN and left our heroes sad (and vaporized) and the Republican Ninjas pissed off.
That’s a good spot to leave things. For the first time in a few weeks I’m actually curious about where the story will go from here, and that’s always a good sign.
