We here at oprainfall don’t just love video games: we’re big fans of anime, too. So in celebration of the medium, we’re here to give you our thoughts on what we’ve been watching each week as we watch it. Old, new – anything goes.
Currently Airing:
SPY x Family
Anya needs to write a report about a professional in her life, so she turns to her “parents” as possible interviewees. Yor stresses over which job she should let Anya shadow her on, with a fun sequence where she imagines taking her daughter on an assassination. I love the noir style the sequence is animated in, especially with the bright splashes of red to accentuate the blood and the absolutely pointless pixelation to “hide” the violence. Anya’s expressions are fantastic. In the end, Yor agrees shadowing her at her day job would be too boring for a child when Anya decides she wants to write about Loid instead. Father and daughter head to the hospital the next day where she meets a bunch of his colleagues and scribbles his thoughts about being a spy. I adored his reactions to her note-taking. Actually, I just enjoyed this entire sequence. Loid is honestly a good dad, no matter how he came about being one, as well as a good doctor. Anya is eventually left alone and sneaks off into a secret passage she learned about from Loid’s thoughts, where she creeps out some doctors discussing ghosts. Their reactions are also gold. The expressions game in this episode is seriously second to none. The episode caps off with a short skit about Anya making a cipher. It doesn’t overstay its welcome and plays into her love of spies. It was just cute. I’m hoping next week we’re getting back into more of the main plot, but I thoroughly enjoyed this episode. – Leah
– You can watch SPY x Family on Crunchyroll.
Mob Psycho 100 III
It’s been a month since the events of the last episode, and Mob seems to be doing well. The members of the Telepathy Club come asking for his help after their president quits when she realizes no one else in the club actually cared about telepathy or finding UFOs the way she did. They want to find a telepathist in order to help Kurata make memories with them before she graduates middle school in three months. Ritsu suggests employing the Shiratori brothers to use their telepathy to find others. Turns out one of the former Telepathy Club members, Takenaka, is a telepathist, and he agrees to help find a UFO for Kurata. After the last few episodes, it was nice to have a quiet, character-centric one. Not only is it a chance to decompress from the events with the Divine Tree, but spending time with this cast is always a joy, and Mob could definitely use something silly and light-hearted to focus on. I somehow doubt it will remain that way, but one can hope. – Leah
– You can watch Mob Psycho 100 on Crunchyroll.
Akiba Maid War
Things have gone to a tense calm with the gang war not yet started. Nagomi left the café and maid life until Ranko sees a ninja out on the street who seems familiar. Seeing the ninja café was kind of funny, especially with how Nagomi says it’s much safer than being a maid. While she knows she doesn’t care for it much, she has a meeting with some of Nerula’s regular customers who give her some encouragement. While she didn’t get as much time as I feel she should have for the whole set-up, behind the scenes we get the details that she spoke quite a lot about Nagomi. From there Nagomi also has a talk with the ramen shop owner, who has played an interesting supporting character. She begins to feel a new resolve just as Manami brings her supporters to wipe out the Oinky Doink café. The fight was very in their favor even with some the tricks the maids put up against them. We see how ruthless Manami is as she foils the manager’s plan of taking a hostage. As things turn bad, Nagomi shows up and ends up using some of her new skills from the ninja café to turn the fight around. I got a chuckle out of the couple times they bring up the ninja stuff, during the episode. Not to mention the repeated lines from Nagomi about how she’s a maid and not a ninja, while wearing a ninja outfit. The fight wasn’t extravagant like the one from the first episode, but it still was stylish and looked good. Besides the two obvious killing machines in the café, I like how Yumechi is probably the next most blood thirsty member. Nagomi ends up confronting Manami and tells her that she is going to be a different kind of maid and how she won’t kill her, thought she does beat her quickly. Manami then faces her group and they end up being absorbed by the Creatureland group. While things seem to have ended well, we see that the café now faces trouble from their own side. I was thinking that Manami would have been around longer as a rival, but I do think it worked for this episode. I do want to see what the next battle will be like. Plus I loved seeing the panda get in the fight too, though off screen. – Walter
– You can watch Akiba Maid War on HIDIVE.
Bocchi The Rock!
Coming off of their band audition and selling tickets, the members minus Ryo go to Bocchi’s house to design some shirts. With this being the first time she had friends over she of course doesn’t know what to do and goes overboard. Setting up banners, party decorations, and dressing up with glasses and mustache are Bocchi’s idea of celebrating. There were a lot of funny moments in the episode. Such as all the misunderstanding they get from Bocchi’s room and more specifically when they meet her family. I had to say how much I liked the fact it seems the family’s dog is named after Jimmy Hendrix. Some of the fantasies were really out there this episode, like the stop motion one. It was pretty rough seeing how much Bocchi’s parents went at her when meeting her friends, between thinking that they were imaginary or that they were from a rental friend company. Not much progress is made on the shirt as they keep getting distracted such as getting Bocchi to dress up in something other than a tracksuit. We do get an ending which doesn’t look great, at least for the moment, for their concert. – Walter
– You can watch Bocchi The Rock! on Crunchyroll.
What anime are you watching? Let us know in the comments!
You can read previous Week in Anime entries here!
