Mercuri

What a freaking cool episode. We got more insight into the test and it seems that I was correct in that Noel was pulling the strings for the test requirements behind the scenes. That also explains the penalty of having to disband the party if they fail the challenge, which would be overly harsh and seemingly not in line with the guild's values. I suspect Noel is planning to recruit Leon afterwards to be Blue Beyond's tank.

I predicted Blue Beyond would hang back at the start of the test, but this was pretty well executed:

@rikka@ani.social

We KNOW that Noel is going to be devious and sneaky, so of course he's not going to race in to fight the boss. But the way Noel handled things was absolutely brilliant. I kept expecting some kind of trick or shady business to be revealed, but nothing of the sort happened. Instead, Noel predicted that the Winged Knights would not be able to beat the monster on their own and that Leon would betray his party by trying to do the "right" thing.

Then Blue Beyond shows up an hour later and basically starts wiping the floor with the monster. Leveled up Alma is ready to slaughter a monkey

I spent WAAAAAY too much time on MyAnimeList narrowing down my choices. I felt like there wasn't a whole lot of suspense anime to pick from, and Adventure wasn't a category. I also thought Isekai/Reincarnation would get its own category but I guess we can just lump that in with Fantasy for the most part.

Seriously though, in some categories I had a really hard time narrowing it down to just 3, and in others I left spots blank simply because there wasn't much I had seen in that category at all. I guess that's normal though.

A relatively silly episode with no insight into Akitsuakane, but still good.

Bilac makes some AWESOME gauntlets for Sunraku with the crystal scorpion parts.

How dare Sunraku blow off my girl Bilac like that though! Seriously, Bilac is like my favorite character. And you KNOW something silly is going to happen because Sunraku didn't bother to RTFM with his gauntlets.

A huge part of the episode is a joke about who Sunraku is going to ask for help getting to Fiftica. We all knew it was going to be Rei/Psyger-0 but they tried to do the silly misdirect anyway.

The last bit of the episode is basically just a rundown of all the new skills Sunraku has as he fights the area boss.

@rikka@ani.social

One curious thing is that Sunraku's level is "99 EXTEND" IIRC, 99 is the level cap and I don't believe anyone else had "Extend" in their level. This is definitely setting up for some way for Sunraku to surpass the level cap so I'm interested in seeing how that plays out.

They're still making this? Talk about trying to squeeze water from a stone. The original anime ended with finality (and lined up with the plot of the Manga) but they were like "oh no, we can't let this cash cow die" and now we have a FOURTH extra season.

Oh boy, what a fantastic episode. Loved the pacing and the excitement.

First, Ren tells Kyoko about her crush on Kanata

Then Mami gets sad that Kanata never messaged her (because he lost her socials)

And finally completing the love triangle, Nozomi gives Kanata a shrine charm.

Oh, and racing qualifiers happen too. I love how they just briefly touched on the other racers and then show us what we really want to see: the reborn Turbo 86.

@rikka@ani.social

Oh, I love 86, but it is very emotionally intense. You're in for one wild ride. But don't worry, it's not all downers. Hedgehog dilemma is definitely an appropriate metaphor.

I mean... only in the same sense that Beastars is all about furry porn.

Popular girl ends up liking nerdy guy but is terrible at expressing her feelings so she ends up bullying him, but it's not like he gets off on the mistreatment or anything. Still, not surprising that it draws in that sort of crowd.

I'm getting Hi-Score Girl vibes. Definitely going to watch this.

Okay, I really liked this episode. Noel plotting and basically being a villain is great. And the dichotomy between Blue Beyond and the Winged Knights is fun to watch.

One minor gripe is that Wilheim from Re:Zero basically pulled the test out of his butt. Even if he's gunning for Noel to be the commander, setting it up as a competition between two B-ranks seems far-fetched. Then again it's just for clan admittance and Noel might be pulling strings behind the scenes.

Another gripe is the Puppeteer guy. We're introduced to him at the start of the episode and then never see him again. Feels like they forced his scene in there because they didn't know where to put it. I'm sure he'll become relevant later but by the end of the episode I had all but forgotten about him.

Episode 9 was a ton of fun, but this one…wasn’t. It had its moments, but it weirdly felt like a bad imitation of episode 9.

Full agree. This episode didn't really bring too much to the table. We got a brief rundown of what happened with Will Seeker and then a whole lot of nothing. Not even very many cool villainess moments. And seriously, ANOTHER rumor of name calling and ANOTHER brainwashing reveal? Felt like a filler episode.

Like, this is Grade A creeper stuff Alicia!

And Creepy Prince does creepy things, surprising no one.

Are you wearing LAST year's Sonic bag? Gross! Only the latest corpo merch is acceptable.

Oh yeah, nothing against him working at the gas station. He wasn't really even a racer in Initial D. But we see all these other Initial D characters doing different things and there he still working the same job he had in high school. I wouldnt be surprised to find out it's the same station. Anyway he's got a wife and kids now so he's definitely happy there and making ends meet no problem.