Please forgive the relative lack of screenshots here.  This is where the rubber meets the road as far as making some accommodations for this season.  Any time I can save, I’m going to have to…

Ao no Orchestra – 02

I liked the premiere of Ao no Orchestra quite a lot. I’d go so far as to say it might have been one of the two or three overperformers of the season’s batch of first episodes.  I’m right in the sweet spot for the premise despite some Shigatsu PTSD, and it seems as if the anime is doing quite a diligent job trying to get the music side right (I mean, John Williams doesn’t come cheap, surely?).

Cue the second episode, and while it was pretty good I couldn’t say it was on the same level.  I kind of feared Akine wouldn’t be one of the series’ stronger elements, and the early returns aren’t positive.  She’s meant to be annoying, I get that, but her interactions with Aono were really a Frankenstein’s monster of tropes.  It’s also a pretty grating performance by Kakuma Ai, though again, I get that she’s performing the part as it’s written, more or less.

I also thought that Aono’s return to the violin via Akine played out in pretty predictable fashion.  The one element that rang truest for me was when he scolded her that she was intruding in affairs where she wasn’t welcome.  What does she know about his life?  No more than he does about hers, and maybe less – the difference being that he’s aware of his ignorance and she acts like she isn’t.  I certainly buy that it’s healthier for Aono to wade back into the violin, and that he needs to divorce it from the father he’s come to hate in order to do that.  I just thought it all happened a little too simplistically and quickly.

Nevertheless, we needed to get here one way or the other so I suppose what matters is where things go next.  And I assume that’s high school, where Aono now more or less has license to join the orchestra club.  And his playing (it’s Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” this week) is certainly a delight to listen to.  It would be a shame if Takeda-sensei drops out of the narrative with his pupils moving on, as I felt like he was one of the stronger elements of the first two eps (and as I speculated, he had first-hand experience of Aono’s talent as a violinist).

My Home Hero – 03

At this point I’ve more or less moved past the subpar production values on My Home Hero.  I mean, it’s not as though they’re going to get any better, for starters.  So at this point it mostly comes down to two questions: are the visuals and music so bad that nothing else matters?  And if not, is the writing strong enough to carry the show in spite of not getting any help?  If the answer to the first question is “yes”, well- there’s not much point in sticking around anyway.

I’m pretty sure that first answer is no, however, so that at least gets us onto the playing field.  That’s where it starts to get more complicated, though.  I see a few things that ring false here (I talked about a couple of them last week).  And it’s not as though the series has really built up the Tosu family as anyone particularly likable.  But in spite of that, I’m definitely still interested.  The situations depicted are inherently suspenseful, and however much of it comes from the source material and how much the adaptation, the anime does manage to get that across.  It’s a tense watch, this show, and for the sort of series My Home Hero is, that’s an absolute must.

The most interesting development this week (that reverse timesekip at the beginning had me a bit confused) is the cracks in the armor of the yakuza.  First of all, it’s clear nobody liked Nobuto, who was obviously a lot more trouble than he was worth.  Matori is the man in charge and it seems like if he wigs out the whole organization could collapse, so locating the kid is something that has to be done.  But there’s no enthusiasm for it, not least from Kubo-san.  Effectively Kyouichi is overstepping his bounds by abducting the couple, and in doing so he puts himself in a truly desperate position.

Tosu is obviously a clever guy, and he certainly realizes (as does Kasen) that this is a vulnerability he could theoretically exploit.  But he’s not holding any cards here.  Basically his priority is to keep himself alive, and the prep work he did with his wife does come in useful.  But there is no right answer he can give Kyouchi, and he knows it – he can’t produce a live hoodlum, and Kyouichi can’t come back empty-handed.  This working together gambit it a Hail, Mary pass to be sure, and it’s going to take all of Tosu’s bullshitting skills to keep it from collapsing of its own weight at any moment.