Strike the Blood Episode 2: Flamethrower Karcher

This episode of Strike the Blood gave us a bit of background for Yukina and why she was tasked with watching over Kojou. Vampires and humans live in some sort of harmony because of a treaty between the humans and the First, Second and Third Progenitors. The Fourth Progenitor has the potential to disrupt the balance of the world and invalidate this treaty, throwing everything into chaos. Thus, Yukina is to watch over Kojou and make sure nothing like this happens, and were he to threaten the treaty, she is to eliminate him.

In order to keep an eye on Kojou, Yukina has moved in to the apartment next to him (surprise, surprise; didn’t see that one coming). She wants to observe him every waking moment of the day, to the point that she runs out of the bathroom, completely drenched, to follow him to the convenience store. On their way, they see a massive blaze in the distance, which Yukina goes to investigate. There, she sees two familiars duelling. One belongs to an exorcist, the other a demon. The demon appears to be defeated, and about to be killed, so Yukina steps in. The exorcist then turns his attention to her, and it looks like she’s about to take a mortal blow before Kojou charges in. He’s then attacked, and appears to unleash some sort of power before the episode ends.

Overall, I thought this episode was an improvement over last week. It was less exposition heavy, and focused a lot more on dialogue and building the relationship between Yukina and Kojou. I’m not entirely sold on it, with Yukina seemingly already developing feelings for Kojou. Of course, we can also look at it as Yukina being a very socially awkward girl with no real knowledge of the modern world, and she’s just getting a crush on a guy giving her attention. Her and Kojou going shopping was actually a pretty great scene. Watching Yukina mistake everything for a weapon and generally be excited by simple things like detergent was quite cute and endearing. To her credit, though, a Karcher would actually be a pretty effective weapon in close range combat because those things have some serious pressure. Just not as a flamethrower.

I digress. We also got to meet Kojou’s younger sister, Nagisa, and his teacher-slash-attack mage Minamiya Natsuki. His teacher also revealed that the Lion King organisation Yukina works for may not be the most reputable group, raising orphaned children for the sole intention of making them into attack mages. To me, that screams “sinister organisation masquerading as an organisation working for the greater good”. Yukina is going to end up torn between Kojou and her duty to Lion King, which will be an interesting turn. It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume her training involved some form of conditioning so that in the event of a betrayal, they’d be easily able to win their attack mages back. Either way, I think some form of existential crisis is on its way for Yukina.

We once again got to see Yukina in action. She wields that spear very well, but her opponent’s Familiar proved to be a little much, and she needed to be saved by Kojou. Which made me groan, not going to lie. As someone said in the comments last week, this show reminded them of Campione!, and I gotta say, this kinda stuff does. We’ve got a super capable woman who needs to be saved by the super-powered dude who doesn’t want his powers. Yawn. If Strike the Blood insists on going in this direction, along with surrounding Kojou with girls fawning over him (which is sort of implied by the OP…), I will drop this like hotcakes.

Silver Link did do a great job animating the fight scene at the end of the episode, though. Yukina’s movements twirling her spear were great to watch. This scene was probably my second favourite scene to watch after the shopping scene.

While this episode was a definite improvement over last week’s, I can’t say I’m sold on Strike the Blood. It looks to be heading in a direction I’m not really comfortable with (heroine needing constant saving and a possible harem), but I’m willing to keep watching for that action. As for blogging, well, we’ll see what Chris has to say. I don’t think I’m interested enough to be the sole blogger, but I think I can defs go for sharing.