Tokyo Revengers: Tenjiku-hen – 06

I’ve liked the even-numbered episodes of Tenjiku-hen better than the odd ones, though whether that represents a real trend 5 episodes in I don’t know.  This wasn’t awful or anything (none of them have been, truthfully) but it was another of those Groundhog Day eps this series is so prone to.  Truthfully, we’ve been down this road so many times – Takermitchy bemoaning his failure but vowing to fight on, a rousing speech on the eve of yet another hopeless and brainless gang brawl – that there’s not much tread left on these tires.

So I find myself stuck on this same TMR treadmill – cover it or not?  Digest posts maybe (but nothing else fits with it schedule-wise unless I wait three days, as I did here), or I could save up a few eps and do anthology posts, though I’ve very rarely employed that practice.  Or just post whenever an ep seems good enough, which feels like the path of least resistance at this point.  So whether there’ll be a post next week and if so what form it will take, at this point I’m not sure.

After  that long preamble (which is almost always a sign of an ep that didn’t interest me much), as for the episode itself…  I think we’ve pretty much seen this rodeo before.  Of course Mikey is practically catatonic after what happened, though he has no right to be surprised.  Doraken blames Mikey, even as Takemitchy tries to blame himself.  What Doraken said about Toman was painfully on-point, though as ever with TMR I’m not sure if the irony is intentional.  Of course it can’t protect anybody, because all it does it put people in danger.  So of course the logical answer is another gang war, right?

The best scene of the episode was the first, in fact.  Kisaki and Izana are nip and tuck for the sickest bastards in the cast.  Each is using each other for their own demented reasons, and I feel like the main reason they’re here is to help prop up the case that Mikey and Toman are actually forces for good.  Of course one will have noticed that Kisaki evaded Izana’s question about why he dirtied his own hands killing Emma (who Izana declares is not his sister), a very un-Kisaki move.  There’s also no direct inference that Kisaki has figured out Takemitchy’s secret, but I felt a twinge of it in the air when he was rhapsodizing, just the same.

Mahoutsukai no Yome Season 2 – 18

That was better for sure.  That little pre-open sequence hit like a B-12 shot (or a Red Bull for you kids out there).  Just seeing the series’ true home felt nostalgic in a good way, even if it was only Silky and Joseph we got to see.  And that (literal) raven-haired beauty who was looking for Chise.  If we know who that is I confess I’ve forgotten her, but she seems very likely to be connected to the grimoire storyline in some way.

Unfortunately it was back to Hogwarts for the rest of the episode, but it was an episode with a lot more punch than most of them lately.  We start with Chise taking another deep dive into Lucy’s memories – as an invited guest, mind you.  We see the werewolf couple doing their thing, arguing about whether to kill the child present (Lucy).  There’s another child in the frame this time, and I think we can pretty well assume it’s Philomela.  I still don’t really care about this storyline, but time moves faster when there’s something actually happening with it.

Was it eating Chise’s thorn amulet (she really is the ultimate caregiver) that caused Philomela to go full Cthulhu?  It seems very likely she was the one working with the grimoire all along, though how much of that was voluntarily is hard to say.  Veronica’s sinister moment last week was a misdirect as I surmised – she’s just bitchy, not actively villainous.  Based on how this arc is going I’m assuming Phil is likely going to end up portrayed as a victim as well, with the entity which fused with her as the one pulling the strings.