NineSwords

It’s a slow burn for sure.

The track list made me chuckle. But the Walkman Fu was using was from 1979, so the production team get a bonk for not using songs from the right year. Or maybe it took 1-2 years for the songs to reach Japanse shores. In which case I haven't said anything.

No, definitely wouldn't have made it better. But I still feel unsatisfied with such an important point just omitted. Aya died in her mid 60s so there could have been a lot of possible explanations given for her passing, but at the same time it's young enough that I am left wondering what the reason was.

They could have made it even worse. They didn't say why Aya passed away at such a young age. Let me spin you a story:

Since she obviously didn't make it big time and only played a single concert in a shady club in NY, she got disillusioned when hear dream didn't come true. She found solace in drugs and an abusive boyfriend who pimped her out. One of those customers beat her to death in a drug induced rage when she tried to steal some of his drugs for her own addiction. The club owner only has her guitar because she pawned it off early on. As to why it was special to him... he was the boyfriend how pimped her out and he's remorseful for indirectly causing her death. 3 days after Fu brought back those memories a he gets found by those band members we saw in the episode with an overdose and a suicide note saying just "sorry". And it could all have taken a different turn if only Fu had confided in Aya back then.

I loved the first episode. It felt so fresh for the isekai genre. But now by episode 3 I'm over the gimmick and bored. The introduction of those cliche villains at the end there wasn't helping either. The demon daughter (I assume) was the only thing I found interesting this episode.

I really like that Aqua got humanized. So far he only came across as this calculating revenge machine without any human emotion. To me he's always been an unlikeable character. But showing him now actually suffering from losing his mom, makes him more likable to me. It's not nice to say "hey, I like you better with PTSD" but it is what it is.

Akane seems like a genuinely good person to me and I hope her love will be returned at some point.

I will never understand how anyone can see that kind of CGi and then say “okay, let’s go with that”. I mean, it’s still too good for that trash of a series but damn it’s bad.

I had hoped that they would get rid of the vtuber model in real life thing they had going and would explore more about the world of vtubing with all the positives and negatives that entails. As it stands it’s just the setting as a background for cheap alcohol jokes and feels incredible disingenuous to the vtuber fandom. I actually feel kinda pissed off by it, so it’s a hard drop for me.

As a self entitles source reader snob I often shit about anime adaptations of titles that I love. This whole arc with Abiko is so relatable, especially her hate for deviations from the source. But I will try to be less harsh in the future now that I understand better how those changes come to be.

Hopefully we’ll get a taste in the next episode.

I suppose we have to wait for episode 4 for that. I like the slow pace though. As a source reader it’s nice to see an adaptation that isn’t rushed to hell and back for once.

Some unsorted notes:

• Penkin’s gonna Penkin
• I’m intriegued by the world building
• Daughter is in the living room on a discord call with her friends playing Elden Ring and I’ve passed throught he room on the way to the kitchen screaming “CURSE YOU BAYLE!!!” at the top of my lungs. Has absolutely nothign to do with the episode but I thought I was funny and wanted to tell someone.
• Was the teacher real? Why the memory erasure. I didn’t quite get the reason.
• What’s wrong with her pants? That’s bothering me more than it should.
• I like the visuals/art style.

This is a lo tmore entertaining than I thought it would be. I can see this becoming one of the few shows that I’kll keep watching all through the end.

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