My Home Hero – 05

I’m enjoying My Home Hero enough that I’d probably keep covering it in a normal season, but this isn’t a normal season.  As such I’m kind of on the fence, which is a silly place to be with the show almost half over.  I imagine I’ll give it one more week and make a call after that (along with Ao no Orchestra, probably).

I’ve got that train wreck, can’t look away thing going on here, really.  As Tetsuo digs himself in deeper and deeper over his head, I have a real curiosity to see how this is all ends (I can’t imagine well).  The reason this series sort of works, I think, is because Tetsuo is no angel – he’s kind of a dirtbag, to be honest.  I mean, now he’s drawn his old kouhai Tabata into his mess – name dropping him to Matori-san (seriously, I could listen to Miki Shinichirou all day) at the bar.  The yakuza as depicted here aren’t exactly infallible, but they’re still way more than a mystery buff salaryman should be able to handle.

Now that Kubo-san is involved, there’s blackmail added to the mix – which, ironically, was Nobuto’s original plan.  Kubo strikes me as a lot less rash and error-prone than Kyouichi, and thus harder to manipulate.  Tetsuo talks a good game, I don’t deny – “a lifetime in sales”, as he’s fond of saying.  But that only gets you so far against people who do this sort of thing for a living.  He doesn’t have a lot of options at this point – maybe fabricating evidence that Nobuto is alive is his only shot.  But it’s hard to see it fooling Nobuto’s organization for long.

The best part of this ep for me was that conversation with Matori-san at the bar, listening to two really good seiyuu ply their trade. Matori is obviously out where the buses don’t run at this point, which makes him a wild card. And when you’re holding two-seven off suit like Tetsuo is, the more wild cards in the deck the better.  Tetsuo’s got to try and use Matori and his unhinged desperation to his advantage one way or the other to have any chance at all.

Kimetsu no Yaiba Katanakaji no Sato-hen – 04

A straight-up action Kimetsu episode this time.  That’s normally a pretty good thing and it is here, mostly.  But it does highlight the fact that the budget seems down a fair bit this season.  The CGI is neither as visually impressive or as well-integrated, and the battle choreography doesn’t seem quite as intricate.  We’re starting from a pretty high level here so that doesn’t mean the series looks bad, but it definitely isn’t spreading the shock and awe quite as much.

Tokitou bats leadoff, taking the time to save Kotetsu with Tanjirou’s admonition in mind.  Hell, he even accepts the boy’s entreaties to save his fellow swordsmith Kanamori-san despite the fact that the logic doesn’t hold up (incoming flashback-driven character development for him).  Meanwhile Hangetsu’s CGI fish demons (which sort of put me in mind of Hoozuki no Reitetsu – o gyah!) are running rampant through the village, though it’s Gyokko’s shavings which grab most of the headlines here as they’re doing battle with Tanjirou, Nezuko, and Genya.  Genya (I know he’s recurring but honestly I remember almost nothing about him, so he couldn’t have been that important unless it was in the episodes I skipped) stands out because by human standards he seems pretty much unkillable.

Neither of the Upper Ranks have quite made a big impression yet, but Gyokko’s constituent parts being split up by emotion is sort of interesting.  One of them (“Sad” I assume) is actually sort of compassionate (which makes Genya’s refusal to die quickly an annoyance to him).  I’m going to assume we haven’t seen this pair’s A-game yet, because nothing they’ve done so far screams “top boss” with much authority.

Ao no Orchestra – 04

If I were to try and crystallize the appeal of this series for me, it would be “I’m a sucker for this sort of thing”.  Horses for courses, that’s one of my fandom maxims.  I love performing arts anime in the sports anime mold, and that’s exactly what we have here.  They still have to prove it to me on an individual basis, but they begin the race with a head start.

Obviously it’s been uneven for Ao no Orchestra to this point.  This episode was definitely progress – mainly just because we’re starting to get to the good stuff, but also because it was generally better.  It started with a nice Takeda-sensei scene (the close of the ramen shop convo), and segued directly from there into school life.  Akine was more tolerable simply because there was a lot more people around to dilute her impact.  And all the new characters seemed fine – I didn’t reflexively dislike any of them.  I was annoyed by the ponderous exposition – like, this is not stuff you’re going to have to explain to kids trying out for an orchestra.  But apart from that it was all pretty good (with one caveat).

Aono struggling socially is no surprise.  He’s also struggling financially, because his mom is apparently getting no financial support from his dad (so he has every right to be pissed).  Giving in to the orchestra club was inevitable though, so I’m glad we didn’t dither around with that any longer.  In addition to the shy girl from last week (Haru), there are other old rivals here – Yamada-kun, a cellist, who fills the extrovert role and appoints himself as Aono’s friend.  And then Saeki Nao, a violinist of much renown –  Takeda-sensei talked about him, Yamada talked about him, and the two lead violinists in the orchestra-bu recognized him immediately at the tryouts.

I confess, I was pretty juiced to see Aono play alongside Saeki there – nice cliffhanger.  Though that made the fact that it was CGI again even more of a thud moment.  That really sucks if all the performances are going to look like that, maybe to a deal-breaker level – we’ll see.  I don’t get a hostile vibe off Saeki – he seems more like the type who’d welcome a real rival to push him to improve.  He remembered Aono, clearly – and the club VP who picked him to play may just know him too, though she’s playing dumb if she does.