I’m in sort of a weird spot with Firefly Wedding. Partly due to my feelings about the series itself, and partly due to the weird mechanics of this season. If this show were airing on a weekday other than Monday, I’d probably cover it – and that’s in spite of decidedly mixed feelings. But the trend in anime now is for most of the schedule to air on the weekend. That’s always a pain but the impact is much more obvious in a crummy season like this one, where it leaves me with nothing to cover for four days in a row.

But not, alas, the day when Hotaru no Yomeiri airs. As such I need more from it than I’m getting, frankly. I will say that in some respects this was the best episode since the premiere, but I still don’t get much sense of why I’m supposed to really care about any of this. Satoko is nice enough given the limitations the demographic places on her role, but Shinpei is just a bloodthirsty lunatic and it stretches credulity that she would feel anything for him. I sort of vibe that the little bits we’re told about him – his mother was killed by a client, he acts as a guard for the brothels on the island – are supposed to make him sympathetic. But they don’t change what he is.

Satoko telling Shinpei he “absolutely mustn’t kill anyone” is pretty funny, given that a short while later she resignedly accepts that he’s always going to be an assassin. Is she going to try and change him – is that a direction this is headed? If so that would be so on the money as a shoujo cliche that you wonder if it’s intended as satire. There are quite a few moments when I wonder about that, actually, but I generally come down on the side that this is being played more or less straight – overtly ridiculous yes, but not intended to be ironic.

So the new thing is, Shinpei says he bribed a boat captain and the pair of them can leave the island in 10 days. If he’s not playing sort of mind game here, a change of venue might make things better. Might make them worse, too, but the status quo isn’t really working for me so that’s a wager I’d happily take on. In the meantime Satoko – once she sleeps three days to get over an understandable flare-up of her illness – decides to get trained on working at the brothel since she’s getting free room and board. And of course, the three cartoon villains who slipped sake to the other cartoon villain show up again. It would be fun to see Shinpei figure out what they did and do his thing, but he seems to reserve that for men.

I’ve got one more week in me, but probably in “read-only” mode unless something happens to really move the needle. Even this season I’m not going to spend my time on a show that isn’t giving me enjoyment, and right now Hotaru no Yomeiri isn’t giving me much. Enough for one last trial, probably, but I certainly won’t be going into it with a lot of optimism.