Togawa Sakiko Mental Problems Stan Account

Admittedly a slow start to this episode, but when we get to the classic "training exercise gone wrong" bit in the middle it really starts clicking. Admittedly! While the magic used here is very fluidly-rendered and snappy in presentation, I do wish it was a bit more varied in form (everything is basically just colored lights). But beyond that, it's a very fun scene, and then of course, ah, the moment where Sheena gets her arm blown off.

I really hope everyone who's always complaining about how there's not enough kissing in yuri anime hops on this, because we're two episodes in and three kisses have happened already, two of them directly on-screen, and one of them so magically juiced up that it REGREW SHEENA'S ARM WHICH WAS SICK AS HELL.

I....went through a *lot* of emotions while watching this, and I'd need to go through it a second time to properly "review" it or whatever, but the way it expands on and plays with the TV series' main idea ("idea" rather than "theme", note) that violence is what these girls know and is therefore how they find fulfillment---it's really fucking something, man. I already felt so hard for Yuki in the main series and this really amplified that feeling considerably. This is simultaneously very bleak and about the closest thing this series has ever felt to hopeful. So much of it is just absolutely gorgeous beyond words, I felt something in my soul shift around during the constellation scene. And that ending, "the thing that had been Essei burned and burned," my god. But then again, the *postscript*...I'm not articulating anything here well and that's partly because I deliberately didn't let myself take notes (I wanted to just absorb the movie as a purely emotional experience before trying to Say Anything about it), but you are going to have to trust me here, a genuine work of art. It moved me.

Yeah, the second episode of Goodbye Lara fucking cooks. It's even better than the first which was already *astonishingly* good for being essentially a big montage. And this is where we really establish some character beats and such. On the face of it nothing super crazy happens here; Lara spends most of the episode pinballing around the modern human world, being freaked the fuck out by everything from dogs to crosswalks to offers for free points cards, and it's awesome. It is a complete joy to watch. There is such an immense amount of just sheer joie de vivre in this that it makes me want to smack the me of a couple months ago who was worried that this show might not live up to its prerelease hype.

Also, I have to give it up for Hishikawa Hana, who brings a jittery, manic, almost Precure-protagonist energy to large parts of her performance here. (This only makes sense, given Hishikawa's past as Cure Precious from Delicious Party Precure, but it's immensely funny to hear her do basically that voice in such a wildly different context.)

I love the detail of the great sea witch Grace being reduced to Mari's pet fish, Gon-chan, but still leading Lara around and pushing her to her quest. The bit where Grace appears in body, but only as a reflection in Gon's fish tank, is a really brilliant bit of directing. Similarly, the end of the episode, after Maria rescues Lara from almost drowning and they genuinely connect for the first time over two cans of hot chocolate, that entire scene was just genuinely beautiful in a way I'm struggling to articulate a little bit.

Narratively we're planting some interesting seeds here, as well. The flashback to Lara and two of her sisters talking sort of implies that the others were mainly searching for love out of obligation, to keep the light of the castle lit. This might explain why none of them were able to do much of anything when the light started fading---if Lara was the only one who really was in love, even if she lost it, it doesn't seem like there's much the other girls could've done. You can't force these things, after all. (I suspect this will be a main concern of the series.)

One of those sisters is Lisa (the blue one), who's also somehow found her way to the human world and seems like she's going to be VERY important going forward. I'm not hinging much of my opinion of this show on shipping stuff, but the way she talks about Lara at the end takes my mind to toxic yuri dynamics, which I will continue to ponder regardless of if the show goes there or not. Also she and her own human oomfie are in charge of the seashells, somehow? I wonder how that happened.

Ah, and lastly I did want to say both the opening and ending? Songs and visuals alike? Fantastic. I love them both and they both fit the show perfectly, I also have to say that I'm really happy to hear Hana Hope on an ED again so soon after Awajima ended last season.

I'm going to call now that I do genuinely think this show just Has It, this is going to be a consensus classic by the time it's over. People will reminisce about having watched Goodbye Lara while it aired, I'm convinced.

I'm being silly of course but, seriously, the tone on this thing is awful. Something that's convinced it's very funny while being about as funny as child death is bad on its own, something that thinks it's being dramatic and isn't is even worse, and something that's *both* is just a truly bad time tonally. So much obnoxiously loud screamed dialogue and vague gesturing at plot points. Most of this episode was just Yousuke chasing after our protagonists again but, aha, surprise, the copy of the Catalogue that Kihachi has is either not the real one or Yousuke doesn't really understand what it is. Either way he dismisses it as a child's scribbles which sure does make the entire preceding 20 minutes of the episode feel fairly irrelevant.

I'm being mean, there are some OK sequences in there. But there's also a lot of stuff that's just boring or irritating. Like, whoever storyboarded the sequences where we kept emphasizing Yousuke's ass really thought they were a master of comedy, huh? Mostly it gives the impression that the people working on this would rather be doing something else. Given how surprisingly bland the plot has been so far I can't really say I blame them, even if I don't like the result at all. The pull faces mixed with KyoAni's house style is just like, it's a 12 year old's idea of comedy, I don't know. "We took something generically pretty and made it ugly for a joke!" It's not like this show looks particularly great even when it's not deliberately shooting itself in the foot; yeah the technical proficiency is all there and I'll give the backgrounds credit for making the setting feel believable visually, but honestly this is one of the least impressive KyoAni shows I've ever seen. And if I think if this series was being done by basically anyone else, no one would be talking about it.

In the months and years to come you will hear people build up a defense for this show as an under-sung oddball of KyoAni's catalog. Those people will be either wrong or lying, and you shouldn't listen to them.

Also, I am not looking forward to seeing this everywhere as the next Epic Meme Anime Face