I’ll say this for The Fable – I’ve liked every episode better than the one before it. And since I liked the premiere just fine, that’s a good trend. I’ve seen a lot of commentary along the lines of “well, the anime is nothing special so I’ll just read the manga”. Which is fine, personal choice and all. But you know, if you love anime, I really don’t get it. We watch anime for different things than we get from manga. Acting, and music, and dynamism among others. It reminds me of the non-anime film friend of mine who, whenever he watched an animated film that wasn’t fantasy or SF would say “they could just have made a real movie of that”.

Fable is definitely one weird guy, there’s no question about it. Sleeping in the bathtub after making the bed look like he’s in it, okay, I can see that – he obviously has a lot of enemies. But he never seems to have a stitch of clothing on anytime he’s in the house. But that said, for the most part he seems to be doing his best to lay low on this Osaka trip. and Ebihara’s flunky Takahashi just isn’t having any of it. I don’t blame him so much for that, as he’s riffing off what his boss is saying (but there is other stuff with Takahashi that does creep me out).

The boss back home (who Fable genuinely does seem to respect) is obviously still thinking about him in Osaka. He LINE’s Fable (and Youko too) to get a pet to help blend in and adjust (though Youko somewhat romantically speculates that he’s trying to get them to appreciate life). They go to the home center to shop for one – and her for curtains, which she can’t find to her satisfaction. But even here Takashi is still noodging them, sending his kickboxing friend-of-friend to “beat him up” again. Akira leads him on a merry chase he enjoys way too much, complete with some overacting and a stage leap from an overpass.

As for pets, Fable winds up choosing a ¥190,000 African black-headed parrot – because it looks like the logo on his revolver – and Youko a hamster. Watching Fable and “Captain” as he’s eventually named (I look forward to Ebihara finding that out) bond is highly amusing, especially when Captain goes on the attack after Fable teases him for pooping on his head. Meanwhile Ebihara tells Takahashi to take Youko out to dinner and find out as much as he can about Fable that way. He’s seriously underestimating her, I think.

The whole Youko storyline is rather distasteful in that Takahashi has been peeping on her all this time, which is especially gross with this new development. Fable really ought to have cleared out her cameras, too. Ebihara asks (demands) Fable out on a date of his own, after walking in on him working out naked in the garage when he comes to turn over the engine in his Hakosuka. He obviously has something more in mind than the man to man talk he promises, but Fable is smart enough to realize it’d be more trouble for him to refuse than to accept.

Youko’s date is kind of a non-starter. as she’s singularly unimpressed with all of Takahashi’s loser choices and his smelly car besides. The idea that he could outsmart her into giving up intel is laughable – she got paired up with Fable for a reason. Much more eventful is the other thread, which finds Ebihara taking Fable out for a job. Is he sincere when he says he’s not fully convinced Fable is who he says he is? I’m not sure – he seems like the type who’d do this simply to make sure Fable knows who’s boss. But in effectively asking Fable to kill the dude he’s been set up to fight, he’s telling him to disobey his own boss’s orders. That seems like a breach of code to me, and it’ll be interesting to see how Fable finesses this encounter.