Listen, I know full well what’s going on here.

I’m not operating under any illusions about what sort of series Inuyashiki is.  It’s pulp at best – trashy, manipulative, often illogical.  This is not high art by any means, but for me at least it is more than a little entertaining.  It’s fun, as terrible as that sounds when applied to a show where men, women and children are (often graphically) murdered by the dozen.  Inuyashiki is so ludicrous that it’s impossible to truly be unsettled by what takes place in it.  While there may have been feints towards a elementary-school version of Kiseijuu’s musing on the nature of humanity, it’s become clear that Inuyashiki is really only interested in the lurid plot.

And you know, that’s perfectly fine – the world needs shows like this, too.  And clearly that this one is rapidly progressing towards a flat-out super-villain melodrama, with Hiro only to happy to fill the role.  He’s off to a flying start, having taken out 85 during his police station massacre.  In spite of that fan clubs have popped up across the interwebs, especially popular with young women who go on pilgrimages to the site where he and his mother lived (yeah, there is a bit of wry social commentary here in addition to the spectacle).  Hiro fever is sweeping Japan – and if the sheep are willingly going to the slaughter, that makes things that much easier for the wolf.

As promised, Hiro has declared war on Japan – using the capital’s innumerable jumbotrons to tell the public that he plans to kill all “120-something million of them”.  You’d think people would start taking Hiro seriously by now, but they aren’t – they still laugh at him right up until the moment their brain matter hits the pavement.  It’s smartphones again to start with, which goes swimmingly until Naoyuki-kun figures out what Hiro is up to and has Inuyashiki-san hijack the wireless networks so he can broadcast a message to drop smartphones (which I think people were rather too willing to do, under the circumstances).

The most important thing that happens here, I think (remember that asteroid? For now, the only mention is “the Americans will take care of it”) is that Hiro decides Naoyuki is now officially an enemy – which means Naoyuki probably shouldn’t buy any green bananas.  Naoyuki is indeed probably the only real threat to Hiro, since Inuyashiki-san doesn’t understand his enemy well enough to truly combat him unaided.  I hope Andou is smart enough to realize that Hiro’s decision to start using other means to fill his initial quote of 100 killed means that he’s onto him, and takes some additional precautions.

The final act here, the plane crash, was kind of the best and worst of Inuyashiki summed up in one development.  I mean, as soon as we saw the young woman at the airport it was pretty clear what was going to happen – and it only makes sense for Hiro to switch from retail to wholesale if he plans to reach his stated goal of 1000 killed per day (I wonder – does he know it’ll take him almost 329 years to finish off Japan at that pace?).  Not a trick is missed – right down to the baby on board.  “Shameless” isn’t normally a compliment and I don’t know if it is here, but I’d certainly apply it to Inuyashiki.  The thing is, though, if you’re going to succeed as an anime by being shameless you have to sell out completely and never back down.  And that part, Inuyashiki definitely has down…