Episodes 10
A-Cup Alchemist 10
In which everything happens all at once: Our Klutzy Gather Girl turns out to be the daughter of an impoverished noble house served by the family of Our Busty Gather Elf, and they’re so deep in debt their best offer is an arranged wedding, but the prospective groom is the son of the SoB that Team Alchemy just bankrupted so clearly there’s some kind of scam involved, and then Our A-Team sets out to solve The Mystery Of Giant Flaming Rage Bear Mountain while quickly making a bundle to help with the family debt(s), which leads to a nearly-fatal encounter with Tougher Monsters, and when Our Overpowered Alchemigal chops them into stew meat, there’s a sudden volcanic eruption that releases An Even Tougher Monster.
It’s like they took a look at the episode count and suddenly rushed to cram it all in before the end of the series.
Flatcat & Sword 10
In which excessive exposition and physical comedy lead Our Dysfunctional Dungeon Delvers to drop their guard, only to be caught in a trap. Suddenly deprived of The Power Of Sword-Dad, Our Curry-Mad Catgirl is forced to fight… The Cliffhanger!
(unrelated, I’d be happy to see a naughty spinoff series about the girl who appears in the how-to-learn-water-magic portion of the exposition…)
Hoe Harem 10
In which it’s like the previous episode never happened and we’re back to the wacky harem hijinks, with Our Happy Hoemonger picking up a new girl in the woods and carrying her off to his bed, leading Best Girl Ruri to assume the worst (but still come to the rescue anyway). The actual wacky plot is the worst yet, resolved with the power of… asparagus.
On the bright side, Our New Girl cleans up nicely, but her promise to steal Al away from his harem as soon as she’s old enough is doomed to failure, since she has no idea just who she’s up against. I mean, she works in a pendant shop, and the opposition includes a magical princess, a half-dragon adventurer, and a hero-with-a-capital-H. Her only chance is if it’s a naked mud-wrestling match, in which case the winners will be everyone watching.
(unrelated Tsundere Elf is here to remind Netflix that they haven’t resumed running Uncle yet after its production woes)
Beast Tamer 10
In which Asshat #1 (Teh Hero) meets Asshat #2 (Loli Collector And FoxLoli Kicker), and joins forces to kill Our Taming Hero. Next episode. Also, we finally find out what special power he gets from Our Twin Fairy Loli Waifus, after they wondered why there didn’t seem to be one last week.
The Last Good Knight finally shows up and hires Team Harem to clean up the corrupt knights who enable Asshat #2 to get away with his crimes. Given the relative power levels, this takes about two minutes, and mostly happens offscreen. Our Good Lady Knight gets to take down her boss in a classic samurai-movie face-off, which ought to count for something.
IMHO, A#2’s villainy was a bit gratuitous. Seriously, he demands that Our Twin Fairy Loli Waifus be handed over to him as sex toys, orders his guards to kill Rein to get his way, orders his surviving guards to murder the innocent townsfolk if Rein doesn’t surrender them, and then pays the knights off to cover up their failure, and the rescued townies then reveal that he does this all the time, openly kidnapping women to abuse in his mansion. But that wasn’t enough for the writers, who then show him keeping an N-tailed loli foxgirl in chains and battering her with his boots to make himself feel better. Twice.
Seriously, just give him a mustache and have him twirl it. We get it, he’s a villain. And so is Teh Hero, who does his own clean-shaven mustache-twirling.
The mistake shared with Hoe Harem is someone thinking that light-hearted harem hijinks isn’t enough, and there has to be A Serious Subplot somewhere, which is like a rap break in a bouncy bubblegum k-pop tune.
Unrelated,
My sister and I both ordered yen from our banks before the trip, taking advantage of the excellent exchange rate, which the Japanese government has managed to reduce a bit since then.
Unexpectedly, both of our banks split the money into equal numbers of ¥10000, ¥5000, ¥2000, and ¥1000 bills. ¥2000 bills are a recent innovation that are actually quite rare in Japan, and sometimes difficult to use. Most machines accept them, but human clerks are usually surprised, and often briefly confused. They were, however, a huge hit at flea and craft markets, where vendors were excited to see them, and treated them as collectibles.
I’d still have preferred to have most of the money in ¥10000 bills, just to reduce bulk, so next time I may ask for maybe 20 ¥2000 bills with the rest in ¥10000, and just break a few right away. (we both had credit cards with no foreign-transaction fees, but it’s still not unusual to run into cash-only stores, even for fairly expensive items; and of course the flea markets and craft markets run on cash)
Speaking of which, the best place I found to get change was the capsule-toy change machine in Akihabara Station, which would take a ¥10000 bill and give you 8 ¥1000 bills and 20 ¥100 coins. Other large banks of capsule-toy machines probably have similar machines, but the ones in Nakano Broadway looked kind of dubious, so I didn’t try them.
(bubble wrap wasn’t the only padding available at Don Quijote…)
In home-improvement news,
I’m kind of wondering about the progress of all the outdoor work, with the weather promising to drop by 30°F this weekend. They’re here with two crews every weekday, simultaneously doing the stonework and putting in the new plants, but none of it looks like they’re actually finishing. Particularly the steps leading to the front and back doors, although they made enough progress at it today that I at least know what they’ll look like. I’d kind of like to have a place for delivery drivers to drop off packages without keeping the garage door open.
Side note:
I found Musk’s “should I stop running Twitter” poll to be a hilarious bit of trolling. Obviously he has new executive candidates in mind, and the poll didn’t have a date on it, so he wins no matter how many bots stuff the ballot box. And also gets a nice list of active bots.
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