Things ramp up in these two episodes of Dimension High School. After the loss of Momoya-sensei, the students start looking into his past to find clues about this friend and perhaps uncover their sensei’s true motives.
A little bit of asking around and digging leads them to learning that Momoya-sensei’s friend died, not due to his illness like I thought. In a car accident, as they were meeting up to take the draft of their manga to the publisher and Momoya yelled out for his friend to slow down and not run, because of his health. However, if he had just not called out and let things progress his friend wouldn’t of been hit by a car.
It’s a sad occurrence and I can certainly see why he would blame himself for this.
Still something feels off to me, and to Shiroyama as well. The talk that they had on the stairs is weighing on his mind and he can’t stop thinking that there is something deeper going on. Along with the continued idea that if his friend was so precious, why did Momoya not lose something related to him?
The group is fairly split on what they should do, Midorigaoka wants to go save Momoya [for the most selfish reasons], Kikawada has a bad feeling about all of this and wants to avoid going to the 2D world at all costs. The other two are on the fence, but it doesn’t matter because if they want to go or not, Spudio is awake and ready to whisk them away.
They plan to meet up with the Red Sphinx from the last episode and get Momoya-sensei back. However, that’s not how it ends up working out. Instead of the Red Sphinx, a large black Sphinx appears before them. He says he is the Grandfather of the young Sphinx’s that were defeated previous and the father of the Red Sphinx. Who is busy with Momoya-sensei, so he could not appear today.
The riddles begin and it does not look good. They are complicated, confusing and downright hard and he doesn’t give them any more then a minute for each of them. As they lose, the first one taken is the groups ace in the hole. Shiroyama is the first one taken out, and honestly i’m immensely interested in what he lost. That’s something i’ll get to covering a little bit more when we talk about episode nine though.
The next one taken is Midorigoka and they are down two members of the team and things are looking pretty grim.
This is where episode eight ends and episode nine picks up. As Kikawada and Mizukami are freaking out about the loss of two of their friends, a third puzzle is presented to them and it is just too hard and it takes out Kikawada. This only leaves Mizukami, who is fairly emotionally broken up by the loss of everyone around him. Including his best friend, however, he has to try and as the Sphinx puts up the final puzzle for the group. Mizukami is given two minutes to solve it in. Lucky for Mikukami, the Sphinx didn’t know who he was dealing with and gave a question related to anime.
Mizukami solves it quickly and the boys return to the 3-D world once again. Each missing the thing most important to him.
Once again, Midorigaoka is without his pride.
Kikawada loses the metal plating that was placed inside of him when he had his surgeries after his accident. A little weird, but I get wanting a reminder that you survived. Just as someone with metal in her arm from when I broke it this past winter, I can’t help but think “Why?” because boy under certain conditions that kind of thing can hurt.
Shiroyama lost…what did he lose? We honestly don’t find out this episode and it seems to be really bothering him. He can’t pin-point what the most important thing to him is and honestly that is really sad.
I’ve thought about it a few times throughout this show. What’s the most important thing to me? What would I lose if I was eaten by the Sphinx? My memory of anime? My parents? My friends? My loved ones? I honestly don’t know and I feel like perhaps Shiroyama doesn’t know either.
I thought perhaps his parents farm, or his parents since both have been mentioned to be very important to him. Perhaps it could be his perception, since he misses something fairly obvious in this episode. I suppose the next episode will give us a better idea of what we’re looking at.
At the very end of the episode we cut away to Mizukami standing on the beach. Trying to dispose of Spudio for like, what the sixth or seventh time this series. I get his reasoning behind it, he wants to have a world and a Kikawada that is whole and healthy again and isn’t injured because of Mikukami’s past actions. Still, it’s really selfish because there are two other people who have lost the most important thing to them and really. We can’t leave Midorigaoka like this, it’s insane and having someone without any pride or shame should be outlawed all over the world.
A few thoughts in this episode are as follows. The poor Gardening club, first they get Kikawada trying to be tough and scare them but totally failing. Then they get Shiroyama bugging them to see if there is anything strange or off about him and they can’t find any. Then they have to face the shameless Midorigaoka and that is just a fate I don’t wish on anyone. I felt really bad for them all around.
Last, my continued guess that Spudio is a Sphinx that forgot he was a Sphinx. The way that the other Sphinx’s talk to him is just flat out suspicious and I am pretty sure he’s going to end up being the final boss for these boys.
Speaking of Final Boss, in the preview they are in the 2.9 dimension and I can’t help but wonder if the Sphinx’s will break through to the 3D world and how janky the Sphinx animation will look in a realistic backdrop. Well, we’ll see where things go from here.