Mercuri

Okay, real talk: is Bleach still good? I used to absolutely LOVE the non-filler arcs but I gave up on it after they did the whole "Final Bankai" thing and then were like "JUST KIDDING! It's not over! We need to milk this cash-cow for all its worth!"

Overall a good episode thanks to some nice character development. I mean, the fighting was better from last episode but still pretty silly. Mercenary commander guy just picking people up by their heads and stabbing them and then one-shotting the enemy commander. Rietz's duel was descent, even if the finishing blow was just a slash across the armor that drew no blood.

@rikka@ani.social

"Hey, I know you were like, on death's door and everything and it's a miracle you're even alive and you're probably weak from blood loss and DEFINITELY shouldn't be standing up right now but... here's a baby still covered in vernix to hold!"

But the character development was really good. I especially loved how Ars is remembering all the fallen soldiers at the end. He knows all their stories and is genuinely sad about their deaths. They're not just a statistic to him. They're faces and memories.

Right? He's literally on death's door. Stands up. "Hey, hold this baby."

I started watching it but still need to finish it. It's pretty funny, as it parodies harem tropes. And one of the redeeming aspects is that the MC genuinely seems to want to make every girl in the harem happy.

I will say you probably don't need to use the 3 episode rule for this one. The first episode by itself is a good litmus test, IMHO.

I need to go back and finish season 1. It's a ridiculous premise but I like the fact that the MC is actually trying to love all the girls.

Seems universally agreed that the animation this episode was tragic. Like, forget the dragon mouth flapping like it's a wind-up toy, they didn't even bother to spend more than 10 minutes drawing it here:

Almost all the Dragon's movements were super janky. The special effects helped bandage the situation but definitely were not enough. Still I imagine it's an issue with the medium moving from LN to animation and the studio just not being able to handle anything more grandiose with the time and budget they had.

Marcus's last words were appreciably pathetic. "You're going to do the same evil thing you got mad at me for?" "Duh, I'm the Demon Lord." The moments of reflection with Machina at the end were descent enough. The love confession didn't even feel forced!

One thing I did really enjoy this episode though was the audio production. The music is great. And the epilogue during the credits felt REALLY good all-around. Makes me interested to see where they go now that Marcus is defeated.

Oh fun, we get to see the race's conclusion! All the racing finishes up after about 8-1/2 minutes. It feels a little quick given the pacing of the last few episodes but it was still very satisfying.

I expected Kanata to get 4th. There wasn't much plot about which girl he was going to pick and without that you knew it wouldn't come up. Still with all the drama they added you really didn't know which way his battle with the Ferrari would go until the very end.

Aiba's battle with Yudai reminded me of an old episode of Initial D where a racer drops behind Takahashi's RX7 because he chickened out from racing side-by-side.

The race "epilogue" was fun to watch as well. All the girls clamoring for Kanata was great. So there's Ren, Mami, and Nozomi all vying for Kanata. And that's just the ones in the immediate MFG sphere. Here's Mami not-so-subtlety showing her butt to Kanata.

@rikka@ani.social

Too bad Kanata's pockets are near useless for keeping girl's socials. Aiba getting mad that #7 kissed Sawatori was very in-character. Sawatori's aloof nature handled that exchange expertly. Aiba's expression was priceless. "What do you mean she's a highschooler?!"

I knew Ogata was going to suggest switching cars after he talked about wanting to see Kanata in a better car in an earlier episode. But I also know the whole premise of the show is "underpowered car goes fast!" so Kanata was not going to have it. Sounds like they're going to Turbo it up to 300HP so it'll still be "underpowered", which makes sense. To get to 400-500HP you'd need a very large turbo with a long spool-up time and that's not optimal for MFG races. Huh, this sounds almost exactly like a plot-line from Initial D!

We finally get to see the GR Supra rival now! It's going to be a clash of Toyotas.

Oh man, what a cool action episode. It's explodes right off the bat with Sunraku vs Rust which has the entire Nephilim Hollow community going wild.

@rikka@ani.social

Sunraku understandably loses. After all, he hasn't played this game in months and was fighting the #1 undefeated ranker! Rust is pissed at Sunraku for losing and we get some more of Rust's backstory. Seems she's on a quest for someone to reach her level. She wants a real rival, and I get the impression she was thinking of quitting the game right before Sunraku came back. Sunraku, the only person ever to come close to beating her. Rust really becomes a full-fledged character instead of some background NPC. Who knows, maybe Rust will end up playing SLF too!

Anyway, Sunraku tells Rust to give him a day to shake off the cobwebs and build a new Crimson Twinblade killing mecha. And of course Sunraku builds something completely ridiculous by the standards of the current meta. And it seems to work!

We were kind of spoiled this episode. We got two good fights, although the second one hasn't quite reached its conclusion. Twinblade seems like it's still capable of fighting and Rust doesn't seem like the type of person that would give up just because they lost an arm. Also, we've yet to figure out the full secret to Sunraku's sneak attack, and that one scissor claw can't be the only weapon Crab mecha has!

On a side note, I was really impressed with the animation this episode. The mecha movements felt very fluid, the background city was detailed enough to feel like background without being distracting, and the overall feel resonated "This is a video game" in my mind. I could even imagine it running on a different game engine than SLF. Just a lot of great nuances and artistic direction to really nail the look and feel of a video game.

During that whole planning sequence, everyone seems to have forgotten about Gluttony.

Gluttony eating his own name so they forget he exists.... clearly XD

Wow, you REALLY have to turn your brain off for this episode and just enjoy the mayhem.

"We won't fail" "Oh no, we failed!"

The fact that Jun's Brother seems to expect Ordela to go out of control makes me a LITTLE bit hopefully for some semblance of plot forming in the next episodes.

Some of the jokes were silly but enjoyable. Hikaru basically asking the bad guy to wait. Doc Glasses being slightly less useless. We even get more of the Chunibyo with a Chaingun! But the fights are the real reason this show exists at all.

How nice of Ordela to stop rampaging for all this other stuff to happen though, right?

I don't know what you're talking about. I'm still a super young and fresh 90s kid... cries in middle-aged

Oh yeah, Sasaki and Peeps was good. Definitely enjoyed that series.