Anime Discussion Thread - Page 295

Episode was kinda odd. After everything that happened last episode, Naoi just joins them? Even if death is cheap in their world, it still seems kinda weird to me. Also, we finally learn about Otonashi's past, but apparently it's of no importance to the story (Imouto? More like im-moe-to). I mean, he spends all of like five seconds lamenting his past, and that's it. I was expecting some sort of huge revelation after all the fuss they've made about his amnesia.

Weird game. Looks expensive to play.

Saki is kinda unnerving. Kadota, however, is pure awesome.

So Anri now knows that Kida's part of the yellow scarves. I'm not sure where this is all headed, seeing that we still have six episodes left in the series. Looking forward to further developments.

But the ending is so messed up.... lol hopefully it makes it interesting again...Also Otonashi's past is pretty weak as they don't explain everything but I guess they don't really want to get into it as its not very important...

Angel Beats. It felt like a filler episode. Even with the entire Otonashi + Imouto thing. Naoi randomly joins. Creators try their best to make him a closet gay. Otonashi's past felt far too contrived. Creators keep us in the dark for 7 episodes to give us this backstory? There better be something else at work here in terms of Otonashi's background. You don't start out a story with something that vital missing and just have it become a non-issue later on.

Last part in the episode about the giant fish just felt far too silly. It felt very fillery. It made no sense and pretty much had no relevance to the main story. Tenshi apparently has super strength, even though there's no mention of this at any time prior to this point. Going back to the previous episode, was it really infeasible for her to just have busted through the door with super strength? The only potential reason for its inclusion would be the fact that Tachibana used Harmonics, which could have caused the entire cliff hanger at the end of the episode. Possibly. I hope that isn't the reason though. Would be FAR too bland.

And the reason why I'm writing like this is because 1) I'm tired, 2) I don't feel that the show deserves any effort in terms of what I write about it anymore.

About Durarara:

There are just huge chunks of information just missing from the episode that kind of made me blanch. We still have no idea as to how a middle school kid started the Yellow Scarves in the first place, or how the Blue Squares got started. We just have to accept that they exist. Just great. There's also a really weird disparity between the fact that Saki only got one leg broken but both her legs were in casts in that shot of her in the hospital. I also don't know how you can fall into a coma because of that. But ok, we'll believe it for now.

Meanwhile, I felt that the character development on Kida was a bit too... off key? I don't know the term I want to use. We got to see a good breadth of emotions from him, but we still lack any fundamental understanding of how Kida came to be who he is today. Anri had her family problems, Masaomi had his seclusion + countryside living stuff, Shizuo had his entire past spelled out to us, Izaya's a big question mark and should remain that way, Celty has her entire quest to find her head as a background, etc, etc. Kida is the last big question mark and I still don't know anything about him. I also didn't really get why he suddenly stopped running. The shot immediately prior to Kida stopping himself is Dotachin + Co driving off. I fail to see how that connects into Kida losing all motivation.

I did like some things about this episode though. Izumii's entire phone monologue was brilliantly done. The voice actor really had his stuff down, and I could feel the shivers running up my spine during that monologue. Just incredible. Most of everything concerning Izaya was well done as well. The symbolism of Izaya setting literally everything in his "game" on fire was worked into the story really smoothly and it felt pretty natural to me. Izaya's speech in the hospital on the Past was another high of this episode. I mean the way that the series has played out as always been an episode per character, giving us an in depth look as to the circumstances surrounding a character's current state. And that speech by Izaya kind of serves as a synthesis so to speak. It evoked, at least for me, the entire Celty's head and memories subplot earlier in the series, and how there was this eternal struggle for Celty to live in the Present or the Past. That tension was brought up again with Dotachin's lecture to Kida, which I really liked. Final Izaya thing was how he basically appeared in this episode. You really got the feeling: "Is there anything this guy CAN'T do?" He was the answer to literally every problem. And yet during the entire Izumii + Saki incident, I couldn't shake the feeling that Izaya told Izumii to kidnap Saki and break a leg. There's no evidence concerning the matter, but it just felt really appropriate.

I thought I wanted to talk about something else at length, but I can't remember it now, so I'll just revert to my superficial side. Walker is awesome. TK is awesome, needs more lines.

although ep 7 changed that a bit