And we’re starting the final stretch!  As we approach the season finales, the ranking start to… pretty much shift closer to where they were in the beginning of the season.

1. Ushio to Tora

Easily one of the best episodes of the series and the season.  It had everything you could want in an episode: excellent action scenes, character development, character realization, plot development, callbacks…. and FEEEEEEEEEEEEEELS!

The first half of the episode is about every faction joining forces to push Hakumen back while Ushio reforms the Beast Spear and fights off each of Hakumen’s tails, then going for the kill.  Hakumen calls for Guren, and everyone collectively prepares to shit their pants.  Meanwhile, Guren is busy with Hyou.

The Guren vs. Hyou fight might not have been as drawn out as great shonen fights usually are, but dramatically it is one of the best.  It got a little cheesy with the obvious parallel to Hyou’s family and the actress and her daughter, but overall it was executed perfectly.  I was legit crying by the end, and that’s something I haven’t done since I watched Grave of the Fireflies the first time.  The cherry on top was the final scene where Hakumen is panicking when it realizes Guren isn’t coming, highlighting the effect Hyou had on the final battle.

2. Boku no Hero Academia

The series is back to form in this episode as we have students vs. villains and a dynamic shift with the Deku/Tsuyu/Mineta team.

The episode starts out with great action with Eraserhead just wrecking shit left and right, but Team Villain manages to sneak through and scatter the students.  This results in the unlikely team-up of Deku, Tsuyu, and Mineta.  The action unfortunately lulls for a bit too long while Deku analyzes the situation and comes up with a plan to combine their three quirks to escape.  It’s a brilliant moment for Deku that also showcases his two allies – I just wish the path to it was better.  We fill up a lot of time with the other students trying to figure out a way to escape, and to be fair, we get another scene showing how everyone has started to respect and trust Iida.  There’s also a scene with All Might and the principal that’s less interesting.

3. Sailor Moon Crystal Infinity

This week, we delve into the backstory of Professor Tomoe.  Which naturally means he gets killed by the end.  Most interesting is the fact that he’s a total fucking monster.  He willingly took in an alien seed and possessed his daughter’s body with another.  He created the Witches 5 in his lab, I assume, to use as sex slaves initially, then turned them on to the whole alien soldier thing.  I mean, that’s the subtext I got from the 90’s anime, anyway.

Yeah, my brain’s in the gutter this week, but can you blame me with scenes like this?

Yeah… that Kaolinite scene was suspiciously sexual… I’m certain there was some off-screen probing going on.  I mean, that’s pretty much how the demons recruited a similar character in Twin Dolls.

The anime was a little… hot and cold this week.  I liked that they decided to go with Sailor Moon showing off some agility what with the flips and shit, but the scene felt a little slow.  It also seemed like they went cheap when it came to transitions, especially when transformations were involved.

The episode ends with the Inners getting completely rekt… because Inners.  Next week we may get Saturn, so… HYPE!

4. Ace Attorney

It seems all the care for the series went entirely into the final case.  Doesn’t exactly have me excited for potential adaptations of other games.  And even then, the animation quality was all over the place.

The biggest moment of the episode was when Larry charged in and offered his testimony after the guilty verdict was passed down.  I felt that the director was too invested into setting up the fact that he was in the audience and neglected to emphasize why his contribution was so important.  Aside from the truth of the shooting location, there was also the fact that Von Karma had zero time to prep him, revealing a blind spot in his “perfection.”

Also, the fact that he’s fucking LARRY.

Sousei no Onmyouji

Wow, the animation quality really tanked here…

If you think that’s bad…

I could go on and on and on about how horrible the animation is this episode, but I’m trying not to take up too much space.

Anyway, Benio’s old teacher comes and basically tries to make the duo closer as a couple.  That’s pretty much it.  It’s shipping hijinks galore for a vast majority of the episode.  Then at the end there’s a Kegare attack, there’s some shit about Rokuro not being able to use his fist properly, and… Benio’s teacher has a fucking firearms talisman.

As badass as that should have been… it was quite honestly the most boring gunplay I’d ever seen in an anime.  Like it was being tryhard while at the same time not trying very hard.

Kuma Miko

Times like these I wonder why I keep watching Kuma Miko.  At least the first half of the episode was a decent enough reversal of sorts.  Basically it’s the old schtick of Machi being behind the times and getting excited when Yoshio decides to give her a brand new flip phone.  The unexpected twist is when she shows it off at school and… successfully is the cool kid on campus for now.  It’s repeatedly said that the village gets absolutely zero reception, so the only thing people use their phones for is playing ringtones.  It was pretty amusing.

The second half is Machi being tricked into becoming a village representative idol.  She performs at a small gathering, and a local village starts trash talking for no discernible reason.  The idol performance is in front of a small grocery and barely anyone shows up.  It’s… sad.  The best part of this half was the very beginning when they try to goad Hibiki into being Machi’s manager.  Also, Yoshio’s sexual harassment.