The Apothecary Diaries, episode 17

They really lean into the comedy side this week, taking advantage of all that character-building they’ve been doing. Plenty of serious plot crumbs being dropped, though, with Maomao learning some things about Jinshi that don’t match his public face, and Jinshi getting a few puzzle pieces that are sure to lead to future revelations.

Verdict: …possibly as early as next week, when the secrets of Creepy Monocle Guy come to light. Secrets he was strangely anxious to hint at.

Slo-Mo Leveling, episode 5

I can’t figure out how they’re planning to end this season, given the pacing. This week is basically an advanced intro to dungeon crawling, with Our Leveling Hero and His First Friend joining a pick-up raid that goes wrong. This week also debuts the real post-upgrade Jinwoo, obliviously putting pretty young nurses into heat.

Verdict: it’s a solid adaptation so far, but if they don’t announce a second cour, it’s not going to be very satisfying. They need 4+ to do it justice, even with some trimming.

McPharmacist, Waifu, & Sister 2, episode 5

FYI, while you can use filters to emulate depth of field, using it to make your cheesecake fuzzy is a bad idea; fortunately they compensate for this mistake with bath scenes. The big news this week is that Ruti’s bust stays at a consistent size in and out of her clothing. The bad news is that the point of the episode is a sparring match between Red and Danan, consisting mostly of panned stills with speedlines, with the climax offscreen. And it ended with more time spent building up Our Psychotic New Hero; this is sure to take time away from the cheesecake.

Verdict: if it weren’t for all the cleavage shots, this episode would have been wasted. Bonus points for Mr. Crawly-Wawly getting a bath scene.

Today I Learned

The pon-pon girls refer to their electronic mahjong table as Janta-kun. This is one of the many in-jokes, because the word for mahjong table is jan-taku. This also explains why the talking bird is a sparrow: the kanji used for the “jan” in “maajan” means sparrow: 雀.

(not a pon-pon girl, but qualified to sit at their table)

Dear Erika Ikuta,

Are you sure you’re from Nogizaka46 and not Hello!Project? Because I have some fashion questions…

(source NSFW; disable Javascript…)

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