Weekly Roundup Fall 2018 Week 11

We're in the home stretch now, everybody. Five shows have made their way to the 11th episode of the season, and now with finales being set up, things are going nuts. So without wasting anymore time, let's dive right in.

Run With the Wind

Musa is my spirit animal.

 First up, we have episode 11 of Jogging in Place. Musa and the twins have now qualified for the Hakone Ekiden qualifying race. This leaves Shindo, Yuki, and Prince left to try to make it to the qualifier with the rest of the team. But the stress of keeping up with training, academics, and helping to manage the team is getting to Shindo, and his girlfriend leaves him due to the realization that being a female character in an anime about a male sports team means that she will never have a chance at screen-time. Shindo is understandably bummed about all this, but thanks to coaching from Kakeru and Yuki, his form improves, and he is ready for the next race. But his efforts at creating a team website to help raise funds for the team have gained the attention of a mysterious stranger who has some sort of interest in Kakeru...

Run With the Wind is a hard show to talk about every week. The story moves at a pretty slow pace, and it breaks the sports anime tradition and ignores the competitions in favor of focusing on the characters and their relationships with each other. Shindo had always been one of the less interesting characters to me before this week, but having the one who had been the most consistently enthusiastic about running in the Ekiden after Haiji himself suddenly suffer a crisis of faith was a good way to endear him to me. I especially appreciate his assertion that he is not strong, he just focuses on what needs to be done. That attitude is very similar to what I felt like in school, where I used to resent being called smart just because I got good grades. Being praised when you don't feel like you deserve it can put a great deal of pressure on you, and that pressure can result in a collapse just like how it was affecting Shindo. It got to the point where his time was starting to regress in practice, and he just keeps running anyway. That's so real, it hurts. Well done, Run With the Wind. Now, how am I going to make it through the three week break between this episode and the next one?

Oh, yeah, spoilers, Run With the Wind is going on a break for three weeks, so this is the last episode of 2018. We'll be revisiting Run With the Wind (part 2?) in the winter 2019 roundup! This first half has been very good, but my biggest hope for part 2 is that the pace picks up just a little bit and we get to see the team get to the actual Ekiden itself soon. If nothing else, it'll give me more to talk about in the roundup.

Hinomaru Sumo

They exist to refute complaints that there are no female characters in shounen sports anime.

Coming up next is Shokugeki no Sumo. In episode 11, with the preliminaries over, the Dachi High Sumo Club have become famous at their school thanks to a viral video posted by Hinomaru's secret admirer Chizuko Hori. She and Reina officially join the club as managers, and the team has an amusing victory party/weight gain training session. Later, Yuma confesses to Ozeki his conflicting feelings of enjoying sumo while still feeling guilt over his past bullying behavior. When Ozeki and Hinomaru reaffirm that he is in fact welcome in the club, Yuma throws himself back into training with renewed enthusiasm. Finally, Master Shibakiyama invites the club to train with the professionals as they prepare for their next tournament in Nagoya. 

This series really needed a cooldown episode after the exciting preliminaries, and we got a pretty good one this week. The fact that we finally have a name for Chizuko after seeing her constantly pop up in the background for the last ten weeks is satisfying, but her actual personality leaves a bit to be desired. Then again, it's not like any of these characters have been particularly deep throughout this whole show. I mean, it's cool that Yuma is genuinely remorseful, since his actions in the first episode weren't acceptable in the slightest, but he really does seem like a completely different person now, and less in the "well-written character growth" kind of way, and more in the "I didn't intend for this character to be a member of the main cast so I need to make him less antagonistic in a hurry" kind of way. Still, the episode was good at striking a balance between funny and serious as we transition from one arc to the next, and Ozeki and Yuma's moment was really nice to see, regardless of how obvious or cliche it felt to a sports anime veteran like myself.

Bunny Girl

Up next we have My Little Sister Can't Possibly Be this Agoraphobic. Did I use that joke already? Oh, well. In episode 11, Mai is able to spin the publicization of her relationship with Sakuta in a positive enough way to save her role in an upcoming film and protect Sakuta's privacy. Sakuta receives a mysterious letter from the older Shoko asking to meet, but she never arrives. Kaede is finally able to leave the house after weeks of training with the support of Mai and Sakuta, but Sakuta reveals that in addition to suffering from multiple cuts on her body, she had also lost her memories of life before Adolescent Syndrome.

This episode made me cry. Seeing Kaede take her first step outside was so powerful that I couldn't help myself. It was staged really well, too, never leaving her perspective and using clever camera angles to hide the fact that she was already outside and Sakuta was lying to her right up until she was about to give up once and for all. I am extremely worried about the mark that appeared on her neck, though. I really hope that nothing comes of that, though since this is Bunny Girl, I know that it will and probably result in something truly dramatic. My only question is: if she doesn't remember her old friend from school, and she only remembers Sakuta and the others because of their now constant presence in her home life, does that mean that she has forgotten her parents, too? That would be poetic justice, since they both just left their children alone, but going by this show's track record, I'll probably end up feeling bad for the parents as well. There were a lot of great things about this episode, but most of all was the fact that it actually made me care about Kaede, who was a character I had found mildly annoying up until this point. How is she supposed to go back to school by the end of the year at this rate?

Zombie Land Saga

Up next we have episode 11 of Fist of the Zombie Idol. God, that joke was terrible. Anyway, Sakura has lost all of her memories of being a member of Franchouchou, but she has regained all of her memories of her past life instead. Ai tries to ease her back into her life as a zombie idol, but Sakura refuses to try, since everything she ever attempted in life ended in failure and misery. Her attempt to audition for Iron Frill in episode 1 was her last ditch effort to feel something again, and it ended in her death. Sakura runs away from the rest of the group, but Kotaro finds her and loudly proclaims that he will never abandon her. 

This was pretty good. It's weird that Zombie Land Saga is abandoning the absurdist comedy that it had been rolling with this whole time and is trying to have a serious dramatic storyline, but since the next episode is the series finale, I suppose that only makes sense. Sakura's flashbacks were still funny, but in a more tragic sort of way this time. I've experienced that sort of depression before in the past, and while I cannot say that I've ever been inspired to put myself back out there by a zombie idol before, One Piece has encouraged me to pick myself back up before so I really have no leg to stand on if I call Sakura weird for that, do I? What I'm really more interested in, is the bartender Kotaro was talking to earlier. You never see his face, he seems to be aware of the existence of zombies, and the way he talks about Yugiri implies that he knows her. My gut tells me that this character is in some way related to the existence of zombies in this universe in the first place, but considering what kind of show this is, it is entirely possible for this question to never be addressed again next week. Either way, we've got the final episode next week, and I, for one, am excited to see how this meandering mess of a series I can't help but enjoy ends up.

SSSS.Gridman

Finally, we have Patrick Was Right: Tokusatsu Edition. In episode 11, Akane has stabbed Yuta and destroyed Junk, thus neutralizing Gridman. As such, she has refused to create new kaiju, even though Anti is now her enemy. Because of this, Alexis creates copies of all of the kaiju she has ever made, and sets them loose on a city that can no longer reset. Anti holds them off as Gridknight while the Neon Genesis Junior High students repair Junk, correctly reasoning that Yuta and Gridman are connected and thus Yuta will awaken once Junk is repaired. This is because, as it turns out, Yuta's actual soul has been dormant this whole time, and Gridman has been using him as an avatar. Thus, Yuta has no memories because we were never following the real Yuta; Gridman doesn't know Yuta's memories, after all. As Gridman and Gridknight fight against the kaiju, Rikka tries to reason with Akane one last time. But they are interrupted by Alexis, who demands Akane creates another kaiju. When Akane refuses, Alexis decides to transform her into a kaiju instead...

First of all, I CALLED IT! Well, sort of, anyway. Way back in week 6, when the truth that the city was an artificial simulation created by Akane was revealed, I had theorized that Yuta was an avatar created by Gridman to infiltrate the simulation and counteract her and Alexis's plans, and that this had something to do with Yuta's amnesia. And I was mostly right: the only difference is that instead of creating a new person out of nowhere, Gridman just hijacked the code for the real Yuta instead. 

But enough patting myself on the back. A new episode of Gridman has dropped, and that means it's time for me to freak out. Ahem: HOLY CRAP!! This episode was awesome! Seeing Gridknight take on every single kaiju from the series history singlehandedly and holding his own was amazing enough, but then seeing him wield Calibur like that? That was just so COOL!!! And that ending? Wow!

On a slightly calmer note, Akane has clearly lost her will to fight ever since she stabbed Yuta, and I'm wondering why that is. My gut says that Yuta was somebody important to her before he lost his memories, but then again, she has ordered Anti to kill Yuta before. So, what's the difference this time? Was she upset that she had to get her hands dirty? Was she feeling powerless after her failure to dissuade the Gridman Alliance in her dream attack last week, thus feeling alone and rejected, even when she created them? Or is she simply tired of fighting and just wants to stop? Any combination of these explanations can be true, and it really speaks to what a great character she is that each of her actions in the whole series has so much ambiguity to it. She's an excellent mysterious antagonist that is simultaneously sympathetic and despicable, and is absolutely the best part of this incredible series. Please don't let her die as a kaiju in the finale next week, Trigger. I don't want to cry at anime again this year.

And that will do it for this week's roundup. Zombie Land Saga and Gridman each have their series finale next week, and Bunny Girl will be wrapping up the week after. Run With the Wind is also going on a brief hiatus, which means that depending on when the winter shows start, it's possible that we may have a roundup that is only Hinomaru Sumo. I mean, that probably won't happen, but wouldn't that be something else?

Not that I'd mind, of course.