IT’S HAPPENING
Impression
I’m so happy. I think we’ve just experienced the best episode of this adaptation thus far. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted. Did they change the director or something? I’m not quite ready to forgive Silver Link just yet, especially when two episodes still remain, but they’ve proven that they aren’t just eternally retarded and are actually capable of making something of themselves. I mean, I can still nitpick if I’m asked to. I’m very jealous of the Shizuku match in Rakudai, for one. But all the important scenes were there – there was sufficient foreshadowing with Kyouya and Kiseki, and not everything was revealed. There was a good balance between fanservice and plot development. And it was the first episode that didn’t feel rushed. All hail our adorable cthulhu semen demon, the Kiseki-chan who does her best!
I’m not claiming any credit for that stitch, even though I usually do produce them myself – with all her tears flying around it’s way beyond my capabilities to stitch that together. I think Silver Link did pretty well with this full-frontal shot, especially as it had a similar light novel illustration as a reference – it’s a faithful depiction, so I was happy with this. As you might have guessed by now, I’m a big Kiseki fan. For those who have read the novels, I still like her even after the events of Volume 9. I think she’s just super adorable and cuddly. It’s good that they’ve retained the cute Xs in her eyes, but they could have been a lot bigger than they are, as I could only see them in close-ups. And Anzai Chika, whose most famous role is probably Chaika, was a wonderful choice for Kiseki. Shocking truth! I could hear hints of her Chaika voice creeping in to some of her lines, and I was internally screaming. I actually have a feeling that someone at Silver Link also likes Kiseki, because they put a hell of a lot of effort into her date outfits. Whoever they are, they have patrician taste.
Not all of the shocking truth has been revealed yet, but if you’re thinking that this series got fucking dark all of a sudden, you can blame the useless filler episode from last week. And by extension, those faggots at Silver Link. Kiseki has the body of an all-consuming demon, Hyakki Yakou. As Sougetsu said, anything the mass of meat touches becomes a part of her body she can control, and like that she’s at risk of devouring the entire world. So what Inquisition have done is to use her as an experimental guinea pig – because she can’t die, they kill her over and over on a daily basis in different ways. It’s basically extended torture, and Takeru has no idea.
Sougetsu claims it’s to reduce the chance that Hyakki will go berserk, but really, to him she also represents an easy platform for all sorts of unethical experiments. He looks like he’s enjoying the fuck out of himself, at least. In the episode, she was injected with poison many times the lethal dosage, but she’s also been crushed to death and beheaded before. The issue is that Hyakki Yakou responds to Kiseki’s deepest wishes. For now, her mind and body are still separate, but this still remains a problem. A great example is how Kiseki ended up breaking out from the contraindicated prison in the first place. If you hadn’t already realized, she loves onii-chan a little too much. It’s not completely her fault – Takeru was the only person she’s ever really spoken to in her entire life, and during all her torture sessions she’s used him as a method of enduring the pain and keeping her sanity. Now, her rational mind knows that Takeru does not love Ouka, and Takeru said so himself. But somewhere in her heart, deep down, she was scared that he’d be taken away by her. Hyakki responded to her fear that onii-chan might be taken away, and went berserk as a result.
Kiseki is an actual demon, a proper eldritch abomination – all that stuff about Overflow Complex that Ikaruga mentioned was a lie so that the newer members of the platoon wouldn’t be surprised by the truth. Kiseki has nothing to do with magic. We’ve got a lot of airing time for a nice long backstory next week, but remember that the Kusanagi clan is a demon-slaying one – Haunted said so himself in his parting words to Takeru. There were actually a lot of subtle touches that I liked about the episode, one of them being how the prison visit scene wasn’t what it seemed. It’s not a glass wall that separates Kiseki and Takeru – it’s just an electronic screen. It’s supposed to be a meeting (which Takeru paid valuable consideration for) but it’s really more like a video call – Kiseki is far too dangerous to be allowed to have a mere glass wall separating her from freedom. Another was the alleyway scene, in which with some plot-relevant lighting in which Kiseki symbolically walked out of the darkness, into (what she thinks is) salvation. Takeru is terrified here, and with good reason. He knows that Ouka follows the letter of the law, and so his first thought was ‘Ootori will arrest her, and the Dullahans will take her back to prison forever’. It’s not surprising he draws his sword on them.
I want to mention two more characters. The first is Kyouya. At long last, we finally see him appear in his final form – desiring with supreme hatred, and more than willing to bring the hammer down on all the heretics who dare to stand in his way. I could feel the anger emanating off him, and the rage in his voice. Such a lust for revenge. He’s a ticking time bomb, of course – not least of all because he’s been sent to pursue Kiseki. He knows Kiseki is Takeru’s precious imouto, but he couldn’t give a fuck about that fact – he wants to kill every last heretic, no matter who they are. He wants to kill them all. So what do you think will happen when Kyouya finds Kiseki, who’s being protected by Takeru?
The second is that sexy bastard, Kurogane Hayato. I have been waiting for all this time to hear his smooth voice chant the Witch Hunter form incantation while summoning Caligula, and it has finally happened.
“KAGIRI NAKI NEGAI OMOTTE.”
“MAJO NI ATAERU TETSUI WO.”
We even had that line from Sougetsu, ‘Heeeey Kurogane-kun, you still alive?’ Of course he’s still alive you scheming fuck, he wouldn’t die from something trivial like this. He will uphold his law. His law won’t be shaken! For too long he’s just been Sougetsu’s personal secretary, and this arc will display him in his true capacity – as the strongest witch-hunter and the captain of the EXE, the Zeroth Extermination Riot Police. You know, this episode could have been completely shit except for that scene where he confronts Kiseki for the first time in five years, and I might still have been okay with that. I have the biggest metaphorical boner right now for this guy. My knees are getting all weak. I JUST CAN’T. I CAN’T. WHY IS HE SO PERFECT?! please marry me
tl;dr Silver Link did everything right, I should go buy the lottery
I couldn’t tell you how happy I was with this episode.
I want to stay hopeful but I’m scared for what’s to come.
This episode was clear evidence that three episodes per volume would have improved both the pacing and the episodes themselves. Volume 5 is now off to a better start than anyone could have expected, but yeah there’s still a lot to fuck up. I’m hoping certain Witch Hunter transformations and designs will be good (you know which ones I mean) and that the fights won’t be too badly animated. Rakudai makes me so jealous.
There’s also the question of what scenes they’ll include. I expected them to get up to the alleyway scene, so surprisingly they’re a bit ahead of where I thought they would be. It gives me hope for new characters like ‘them’ to get lots of screen time.
Just judging from what you’ve said, I have the bad feeling that everything is going to go bad for the poor adorable demon-girl. Another reason why I refuse to watch this, or let myself get emotionally invested in the characters. I won’t let them trap me! shakes fist
To an extent, everything goes bad for everyone (this author must have gone to the same Writing School for Heartless Bastards attended by Urobuchi, each new volume has the guy try to outdo himself by shitting all over his characters even more) but Kiseki has it particularly bad. All she wants to do at this point in time is to be killed by onii-chan. To her broken mind, that’s what salvation is. And then it gets worse:
[spoiler] Takeru promises to double-suicide with her, and she’s enthused by the idea. But when he actually gets a chance he chickens out, and Kiseki is horrified. Long story short, the demon body makes her succumb to her deepest, darkest desires and she goes full yandere, deciding that the only way to make onii-chan keep his promise is to kill everyone in the world and then kill his harem members one by one in front of him (she lists the order and method of death for each girl in surprising detail). By doing so, Takeru will get angry enough at her to kill her and then himself. As of the latest volume… she’s done with that first part.
I can’t hate her though. She’s too cute. Every time she reassures herself of her grand plan she adorably states ‘Kiseki will do her best!’
[/spoiler]
It’s the kind of series which doesn’t have a high death count, purely because it would rather keep its characters alive while developing them so as they suffer more, you suffer with them as well. It’s captivating and painful at the same time ;_;
I guess we could say that for once, SL is doing their best too.
This episode was just good, really good, and I think you summed up how I felt about it in your review. Kiseki was very cute, and I feel that SL went out of their way to make her cute and likable, I guess they really understand that for this to work the viewers have to like Kiseki. That line at the end was just perfect, really feeling the suffering that is to come in this volume. Plus Kiseki even has the Xs in her eyes, it’s just great.
Besides that Kyouya is here, it’s time for the fallen husbando to shine, honestly, I can’t wait to see Nero appear, I really want to see her design as a gun. Finally, Onii-sama’s scene was really perfect, his voice is just so good, and the only way SL could have topped it was by also showing his Witch-Hunter design in it too. Makes me sad they skipped his other scenes before this volume.
I always felt that if SL did Vol 5 right, it would save the adaptation and right now I feel that they might be able to do this right, and that scares me. The more hope I have about this arc the worse the suffering and despair will be when the anime fails to deliver. Truly I am starting to wonder if Haunted is the director, and he is suddenly making the anime good to make us suffer later.
If Kiseki wasn’t likeable, then no-one would care about her suffering! And readers (or watchers in this case) wouldn’t react as divisively to the stuff she does in the future. You either stick with her, flaws and all, or condemn her actions. It’s like with that certain scene in Volume 7.
I really want to hear Nero and her sadistic laughter. I’ve been waiting all season for her. If there’s one thing Silver Link have gotten correct across the board for this anime, it’s their voice work. I know it’s a newbie who did Yoshimizu (presumably it’ll be the same VA) but I’m sure she’ll do a wonderful Nero.
Less certain is their plans for the remainder of this arc. I am particularly worried for the fights, because they’ve ruined all the other fights so far. My second worry is the Witch Hunter designs. I really don’t want a bunch of Kamen Riders, especially not all with helmets like Takeru (not least because he never should have had a helmet to begin with). How are we going to see the hatred and revenge on Kyouya’s face if it’s covered up?
It’s the exact sort of thing Haunted would do, yes. If there’s no hope, there can be no despair. I haven’t forgotten what he did to the poor loli and her mother in the latest volume.
First off for all the talk of death and risk of dying, this episode felt like it had the most life and soul of all of them! It was greatness. More importantly… Can we get some renai circulation for Kiseki?!
[1]–I thought that she CAN’T stay dead though, so that leads me to think…
a) Well, you know… “let the good times last”. I guess they can’t “end” if she dies in the middle of them… before going back to an existence of trying not to kill and being stopped from killing ;_; (except Takeru onii-chan can’t possibly bring himself to kill her yet nor ensure she stays dead?!)
b) If she keeps reviving upon dying, then is this her way of having Takeru “carve his love” into her?
I mean if she’s going to be locked up again (presumably) and continue a life-death cycle… perhaps she just wants the memories of “the best death she could ever have” with her throughout all of that, especially if she’s afraid that one day Takeru won’t be there anymore – be it due to Inquisitor work or naturally dying eventually.
If that’s her thinking sigh …I don’t know what’s right.
[2]–Speaking of being killed, I’m guessing that this is leading up to the reason why you don’t feel TOO sorry for Kyouya?
At least it sounds like he’s not being very sympathetic and is going to have a gruesome encounter with Takeru, likely “long before” Hayato gets to them to bring order and reason to the situation (although it would be pretty cool to see him pull a Kakashi and all of them in Witch Hunter form too!)
I, too, could see the rage spilling out from all the cracks in him. Currently it’s almost as potent as Hyakki Yakou’s ability to be all-consuming. Yikes! I mean, to be fair it is a ‘heretic’, but I’m hoping he comes to realize how similar his situation is to Takeru. Kyouya, too, is caring for someone who is not entirely who they are…
Hopefully he doesn’t have to learn the lesson Sougetsu tried to teach him about living for revenge the hard way.
[3]–Speaking of Sougetsu… did I misinterpret what he said about “killing” (removing) her “peculiarities” (demonic traits) little by little every time Kiseki is killed?!
I mean my interpretations sounds risky as well since she eventually might not revive before enough of the traits are gone to allow her to safely exist in society, but at least there was a chance she could be saved. She might even up a little weaker than a normal human (which would be similar to Yoshimizu’s situation) or even a little stronger.
I’ll assume we’ll get backstory eventually on how she came to have this body and why no one from their family could do anything to save her previously. If any of my other questions are better off being answered as I watch, feel free to tell me!
P.S. I don’t know if it’s too much to hope that someone will make a TM35 version of Renai Circulation, but I can dream! 😀
Oh, oh, oh! I forgot about this earlier. Pardon me, but…
[4]–So Demons are officially an entity in this world and is it just Kiseki’s or are all of them an even greater threat than Witches?
I started reading the LN once more than just Lapis scenes were being missed out on, though, I intend to double back once I’ve exhausted what’s left of the LN so I get the world building bits. Did I miss out on talk about these Demons in the earlier volumes?
That’s a difficult question to answer, primarily because I’m not entirely sure, and also because the answer changes depending on how you interpret ‘officially’ and ‘this world’. To the public, demons do not exist (but then again, to the public Valhalla doesn’t exist either). In reality, demons are a thing in that they are a fantastical entity like elves or dragons (I think) but are largely extinct – Kusanagi were a clan that hunted them a long time ago. So in the end, they’re not a general threat because Kiseki is pretty much unique, but that one Kiseki is a threat enough as a singularity. A third question then pops up, which is whether demons ‘should’ be an official entity in this world, but you don’t want to hear about that until you’ve read Volume 8 or 9 at least.
No talk was missed on demons, not anything that I remember at least. The earliest reference was Haunted’s parting remark to Takeru in Volume 2. But the world-building stuff is definitely valuable – details on the Akashic Hazard disaster and the first Witch-Hunt War really help to define the setting properly.
Nah, you will get more details about the demons in the next anime episode, when they go in detail over Takeru’s backstory and how Kiseki ended like she did.
FUWA FUWARI
FUWA FUWARU
I can see the resemblance. Anzai Chika has a similar voice to Hanazawa Kana, and Kiseki is eerily similar to Nadeko. She’s probably a little more open to negotiation than post-second season Smoke Weed Everyday though. As for her immortality, Takeru is an exception. It’s explained further later on, but remember that Hyakki Yakou manifests her deepest desires. Her current desire is to be killed by the hands of her onii-chan, so the demon will accept death if and only if it’s Takeru who kills her.
Sougetsu is enacting a temporary measure. By killing bits of Kiseki over and over, it just makes Hyakki Yakou quieten down. It doesn’t remove the demon at all, because she IS the demon – or at least, her physical body is. It’s not something possessing her, she literally has the body of a demon and not that of a human. Sadly, he’s not doing it to help her at all in the end. You’ll see when you read the novels, but like every other character in this series regardless of their faction, his agenda is his own. A lot will be explained in next episode’s lengthy backstory, which will hopefully include the Kusanagi family history. If not, you have the novels – but for now, imagine what losing control is like. If Kiseki goes completely berserk, do you think she can differentiate between who she wants to kill and who she doesn’t?
As for Takeru and Kyouya, the two are ironically similar. It’s something which becomes really clear as the novels progress beyond the turning point this volume. One is presented as ‘good’ and the other as ‘bad’, but like with the whole Inquisition-Valhalla divide it’s all really various shades of grey instead. You eventually realize that both are doing what they’re doing for their own selfish desires and nothing else. Amidst all the heated clashes and name screaming, they realize that they’re not so different from each other after all. And yet, their opposite ideologies mean that they have to fight, and continue their rivalry to the bitter end. They’re two sides of the same coin, and one could have easily been the other had their situations been slightly different (there’s one more set of parallels like that, but it’s a massive spoiler) but… it has to be this way.
It’s one of the really great bits of character development in the novels that the anime has sadly paid little attention to because it’s outside the bounds of the adaptation. Just like Lapis.
What I’m more interested in is Sougetsu’s true agenda. The manipulations, the experiments, the trollish confidence; is it all leading up to a greater goal, or is he just doing it because he can?
He is most definitely not just doing it because he can. He has a very specific endgame, and almost all of his movements revolve around it – from giving Lapis to Takeru or driving Kyouya towards the darkness to conducting experiments on Kiseki. Not unlike the power of his Relic Eater, he’s manipulating all the characters like pawns and his true agenda is a massive reveal that forms the central point of conflict in Volume 10.
What is his endgame? The classic “make a brand new world”, etc?
Something of interest: There was a blog post I found where its writer was criticizing the writing of the Antimagic source novels (not anime-related). The blogger’s an aspiring author who took writing lessons in uni (and self-published his 1st book), and he felt there was thematic failure of the initial defining premise:
“Taimadou’s premise says that guns, as embodied by the Inquisition, have supplanted magic as the most powerful weapons in the world, which is a great theme. It would be fascinating to see a bunch of gun-wielding (normals) go up against a smaller number of wizards, and for the advances in ballistics technology to lead to the (normals) winning. It could be a magical WWI in anime-form, where the killing power of man’s machines supplants that of man himself.”
He felt that by giving the characters magic weapons, armour and powers, it makes the series fail to tread potential new ground and instead go back into the typical “magic-vs-magic” fights of every other magical-fantasy-action-harem (school) series out there. He doesn’t think the series is bad for that, just he feels there was a missed opportunity to create an interesting magic vs technology dynamic.
Understandably the series’ main focus is now on creating situations which are as dark and hopeless as possible for the cast, but what do you think of the above argument?
Personally, I think that while making this an “magic vs technology” could have been an interesting idea, I feel that it wouldn’t fit with the tone the novels ended up taking, in a way the flashy magic and cool fights is an important part of what makes AntiMagic fun, and I feel that taking it away to say go with a realistic premise about a military squad using guns to defeat mages would hurt the story more than it helps it.
True, the author would’ve to rewrite the story in a totally different way if he did a realistic premise. Maybe it would’ve been like the GATE anime, where Japanese military firepower trumps the fantasy army (but without the Japanese ultranationalism elements).
I presume you’ve read the novels (see what I mentioned below) – ‘magic vs technology’ arguably does become the setting post Volume 5-6, it’s just that the novels decided to focus on individual conflicts with ‘magic vs technology’ as [art of the wider backdrop, instead of making it primarily a war story.
Haha! Making a brand new world is actually the goal of another faction. Sougetsu’s is a very heavy spoiler, but if you really want to know:
[spoiler] All worlds have to have a god, and the world-god relationship is a symbiotic one. If the god dies, the world is destroyed, and vice versa. Sougetsu is the god of their current world, and seeks the destruction of that world – in other words, he seeks his own death. [/spoiler]
As for that blog post, it’s interesting that he criticizes the novels and not the anime, because if he was as acquainted with the source novels as he implies, he should know that the issues he pointed out are either resolved or justified. I can think of two responses:
1) His envisaged premise (of magical WWI) WAS indeed the plot before the start of the first volume, and it DOES BECOME the plot again after Volume 5 (where the anime will end). This is unclear to anime-only viewers as the adaptation skipped out all world-building – there was a Witch-Hunt War where witches were initially overwhelming, but the frightening evolution of technology led to the normals almost completely exterminating all witches. It ended with a catastrophe that made the majority of the world uninhabitable due to what’s essentially a magical nuclear fallout (that’s why I was complaining about how they were able to go to the beach last week, because their sky and sea shouldn’t even be that blue).
I’ve said that the current adapted volume is a turning point in many ways, and one of the reasons is because after this Kiseki arc (although some people draw the line at Volume 6) the story discards the ‘school’ setting and becomes total warfare. It’s a bit like the Deathly Hallows book in Harry Potter. You’re supposed to know by Volume 3 that Sougetsu is planning a second Witch-Hunt War, but of course the anime skipped that out for more ecchi fanservice.
So we DO have gun-wielding normals go up against a smaller number of wizards. It’s not the main focus of the story as the protagonists are on neither side by that point, but such scenes are there, especially in Volume 7 (which has some characters experience combat on the front-lines). And we have various factions in Valhalla (which is actually an entire society with social stratification, ‘pureblood’ superiority and territorial divides – not just one crazy priest by himself) arguing over how to respond to the threat of Inquisition, all while fuelled by their own secret motives. Giving the main characters magic weapons is the only way they can stand up to the truly powerful witches that can overcome the strength of technological firepower – for example, there’s a character in the later novels who has a ‘rust’ magic affinity. Or even Mari, with her destructive ‘aurora’ affinity magic. What use are guns against them?
2) The author, Yanagimi Touki, is actually quite chatty in his afterwords. Most of them involve him talking about boobs of various sizes, but the one in Volume 11 sheds quite a bit of light on the blueprints for the story. It’s worth a read. Your critic complains about the ‘school battle harem’ aspect of the novels and anime, but the truth is that the author’s original vision for his work had no school or platoons. He says it was supposed to be about a protagonist and two ‘clerk heroines’ of a ‘Treasured Sword Management Station’, something like a ‘police drama’. But the publishers rejected that, and he ended up having to use a school setting.
He even implies that the current setting is only as chaotic as it is (with three unified plots of what are now each of an immense scale) because he had to grapple with what he wanted his story to be about and the demands of his publishers. And interestingly, the protagonist was originally supposed to be a teenage Kurogane Hayato! How cool is it that he stayed in the story as an overpowered adult and even later gets a volume focusing on him?
http://krytykal.org/antimagic/volume-11/afterword/
Makes me wish we could have seen a sidestory about Kurogane in highschool, I bet it would have been fun to see Onii-sama in his youth alongside Red Glare.