FoleyisGood149

Dragon Ball v2 & 3, started on v. 4. Lunch is a cutie, and Goku was lucky she didn't wake in the night when she sneezed. I think everyone missed a big clue to Goku's toughness when the same bullets that put shallow holes in Krillin and Master Roshi only gave Goku scrapes. Lulz, Goku was wrong about his age, since he didn't really know how to count when he told Bulma he was 14. This makes the Toonami episodes of Super somewhat more shocking, since he's a grandfather at 4 years younger than Bulma, and she only has a gradeschool-aged son.

Whoa! Whoa. I don't like her either, but even I think she's not earned such murderous rage yet. Agreed. Poke: Serano was ready to testify regarding TLM incident and the subsequent corporate blackmail, the kickbacks, and the MHWL's involvement, especially that of Yakushima. When he touched the door handle of his car, he made contact with a device that, either electrically or via injected micromachines, attacked his cyberbrain, which would make any of his testimony inadmissible, if he would even survive the attack. The device was planted by a remaining at-large member of the crooked Narc Squad. DBS - I'm with Goku both in liking the WMA Tournament rules and being interested in learning who this other past opponent of Beerus is who is stronger than Goku. I can appreciate Champa choosing a planet that was uninhabited so the matches won't disturb any local populations, but he would more likely consider it as avoiding the hassle of having to deal with any locals. Vados made a pretty good atmospheric shell and ring. I'm sure Beerus and Goku will both appreciate the inclusion of concession stands. It's sensible that Shenron would be unable to detect the remaining Super Dragon Ball in Universe 6. Shame on you, Goku, for forgetting to revive King Kai again. I don't recall Bulma or Dr. Briefs ever mentioning that Bulma has a sister before now, but she's pretty. She's not as pretty as Bulma, but is still nice to watch. Her having access to a really fast ship sure is convenient for Bulma's quest for the Super Dragon Balls of Universe 7. I'm curious who Goku and Vegeta will pick for the two remaining slots on their team. DBZK - Well, crap. Babidi survived Piccolo's attack. I had forgotten about that. It's a shame Piccolo didn't finish the job when he came back to the crater, but I can understand that he was too preoccupied with the unreal spectacle of the re-forming Buu. Still, Piccolo's reflection on Vegeta's sacrifice was nice. Yes, to the Lookout with the boys, Krillin! When the craft carrying our heroes' friends and families became disabled, I saw another solution than 18 helping the craft to land. We know that she, Videl and Yamcha can fly. Given their years of training and energy manipulation, it should be possible for Chi Chi, Gyumaoh and Master Roshi to fly as well. If those three can't, it's simply because they never bothered to learn how to do it. This would leave only Bulma, Oolong (was he there? I think he was), and Marron who would need one of the flying characters to carry them. They could've abandoned the craft, or some of the other fliers could've tried to help 18 with easing the craft down. Oh well. JoJo: SC - Just to get this out of the way, I feel like Joseph being able to fit into Jotaro's pants (inseam considerations aside) says more about how fit Joseph still is than how beefy Jotaro is. When I saw Dio's flesh bud on Kakyoin's forehead for mind control, my first thought was "ew. that looks gross." I'm not so sure about Dio's mind control being via charisma, though. Sure, Dio's always been a charming cad, but I'm more willing to attribute the mind control to there being a foreign object in Kakyoin's head where it can manipulate electrical activity or neurotransmitter levels. Sure, Dio would need telepathic communication with the bud in real time to directly control someone, but he can simply make the person chemically or electrically susceptible to his suggestions. Thankfully for Kakyoin, Jotaro was able to use Star Platinum to remove the bud. I was also glad to see that Dio's flesh in this form is still vulnerable to hamon. With that in mind, it might be a good idea to teach Jotaro how to use hamon, even if he does already have a Stand. Thankfully, Avdol was forewarned about Dio before the proper start of this arc and escaped, so he didn't need to be rescued. Holly was kind to treat the wounds of someone who attacked her son, but she understands that Kakyoin was under mind control at the time. However, I can't say I liked her statement to Joseph that she wouldn't respond unless he called her Seiko, which was a shortening of the Japanese name for the holly plant. Hm, Holly has a Stand, and it looks similar to Joseph's, which makes sense. However, she doesn't have the fighting spirit to dominate her Stand, so it's making her sick. I want to fault Joseph for that. He saw the threats of the Pillar Men, the stone masks, and the vampires for himself. He couldn't be certain that all the vampires and stone masks were destroyed. By not teaching Holly to use hamon, he deprived her of a useful self-defense tool. He knows that women can be proficient hamon-users, since he saw what his own mother could do and heard the tale of how she avenged George II's murder by a vampire. I can understand Joseph wanting to keep his precious baby girl out of harm's way, but he knows that vampire trouble has a way of finding the Joestars, so it would've been prudent to teach her in case he wasn't nearby to protect her. Given that she spent years on another continent, he clearly wouldn't have been able to respond to an immediate threat, so yeah. Bad choice there, Joseph. At least now they have a goodly amount of time (fifty days) to find and defeat Dio, and presumably to teach Holly how to control her Stand. Star Platinum being able to detect a tsetse fly in the darkness of a photograph and Avdol recognizing it in the sketch are both a little far-fetched, but eh. Now, off to Egypt! I'm fine with Kakyoin joining them out of gratitude, but I feel like he should be informed that allying with the Joestars in situations like this has a tendency not to turn out well for the ally. I think it's a little weird for a teenage guy like Kakyoin to say he would like to marry a woman like Holly, but I can't blame him. Holly has a very pleasant disposition and is a darn good looking woman. Well, crap. Dio can use the Stand powers of Jonathan's body to spy on the Joestars, but at least they can feel it when he does. More crap, he has at least one Stand-user ally. Also, what is up with Avdol's hair? It looks like pegs sticking out of his head? It's a weird thing to have as part of his character design. Oh, and I'm with Joseph. I also wouldn't be keen on sleeping on a futon instead of a Western bed. TG: Root A - Poor Sado, being called back while drunk to complete some reports. As for drunken Akira blaming Amon for Mado's death, Amon was occupied with fighting a different ghoul at the time, and that ghoul was determined not to let him get to Mado. Plus, Mado was a sadistic jerk who had it coming. Wait. If Akira was passed out drunk, how did Amon get her apartment keys? I'm not sure whether the medicine he went to get was to reduce nausea or for her upcoming hangover effects. As for when she drunkenly mistook him for Mado, that should've been his cue to correct her, say he'd see her on whatever the next work day was and leave, not go out on the balcony to do thousands of push-ups. Plus, even for a hoss like Amon, I have trouble believing he could do even 5% of that as a single set. Hm, Ken's kagune was acting up. That's not looking like a good thing. It is interesting that kagune can change through cannibalism. Juzo being raised by ghouls explains his psychopathy. Regarding his "good boy score," I would guess that the more slowly he could make his human victims die, thus prolonging the carnage spectacle for the ghoul audience, the higher his score would be, and so he wouldn't be injured/tortured as much afterward. I say that the CCG deciding not to commit him, but rather to employ him, showed questionable judgment. Sure, he had promising skills, but it could be considered that he's simply being deployed to engage in willful violence by another set of masters. I don't think much consideration was paid to his physical and mental welfare when weighed against how his skills could contribute to the safety of society, Hinami is a good and helpful kid. It appears Touka's studies aren't going so well. As for the other students' conversation, she could've simply said, "hey! No talking in the library/study hall." HxH - Of course the P.T. would take cards from players and kill them. I am intrigued regarding the way they worked out that Greed Island is somewhere in the physical world. The game teleports players there (somehow?). However, this raises a new set of questions. How do spell cards, the books, the items, and the monster defeats work as part of the gameplay if it's all actually real? This seems like real magic versus the nen stuff that we were asked to accept as part of the show's universe. We even saw that Koltopi's copy ability wouldn't make a functional card, or even populate all the appropriate numbers on the card. That means it works in a way that nen (at least the nen of people other than the ones who made the "game" ), can't duplicate, which, to me, strengthens the claim of this being non-nen magic. It now makes sense that, since Greed Island is in the physical world, dying in the "game" means actual death. Early in show, I think it was said that there are places on Earth where only Hunters are allowed to travel. I'm going to guess that the actual location of Greed Island is in one of those regions. However, since this is in the physical world, we don't truly have NPCs. These would be real people who are essentially trapped in the world of the "game," because this is where they happened to live when Ging and Company "made" the "game." I'm curious as to how the creation of the "game" changed the residents' lives. Think about that. Some group of people showed up and decided to turn their home into a game setting which would not only draw potentially hundreds of strangers with pseudo-magical powers, but, if the outright magical stuff didn't already exist, then they introduced that too. Ging and Co. completely disrupted these people's lives. Ging and Co. even forced a new economy on the locals, because these cards, which are ostensibly worthless to them, can now, by game-creator fiat, be turned in for money. As far as I can tell, the only reason(s) Ging and Co. even did this was either 1. because they could, and/or 2. potentially to remove other Hunters from the field of competition in the rest of the world, which would make Ging and Co.'s hunts easier. With this, which could be considered a massive and ongoing crime against the island's native populace, in mind, two things occur to me. The first is just an iteration of a point I've raised previously, which is that the world of HxH is an awful place to live if you happen to run afoul of a Hunter or their plans. The second is that I'm fine if we never get to meet any of the jerkwads who made the game, unless either Gon or Killua immediately land a face-breaking punch to the person(s) upon learning their identity. I respect Gon and Killua for playing the game the proper way. Unfortunately, that makes them prime targets to get robbed and swindled. The brat girl, Biscuit, has no room to call Killua a brat. Plus, since she's way older than she looks, I can call her a bitch now. I'm not terribly excited that it looks like she's poised to be the boys' new nen coach. Lupin - Hm, two consecutive episodes have touched on human trafficking and forced prostitution. If this is leading to an overarching story intended to highlight these problems, I'm cool with it. I wouldn't expect an agent of MI6 to have his family in the same foreign country where he's on an operation. Still, Nyx's family seems nice, but the voice of the youngest daughter seems too young for her appearance. I'll attribute that to the dub cast and direction, though. The middle daughter is a fangirl of Rebecca. Sure. Why not? I can buy Rebecca being in a hurry to ditch an autograph-seeker and forgetting to take her purse (with disguises) as she left. Hey, middle daughter? When two grown men approach a teenage girl like you in a foreign country, it's probably a bad idea to go with them. Sure, the jewel heist itself went well, but Lupin and Jigen couldn't reach their own car, because of Zenigata being just good enough to be a problem. I'll consider it the traffickers' error that they left a key in the car which held their abductee. Lupin and Jigen removing the tape and rope were good gestures of their honorable intentions. However, their presence with the abducted daughter and Nyx's ski mask made for one big misunderstanding on both sides. Lupin took a risk when he figured out who Nyx was, but it worked out for the best on both sides. It was nice of Rebecca and her attendant to help smooth things out with the middle daughter. I like that B-squad was not there for the mission, but rather to keep Nyx from causing too much trouble. At least his superior was understanding that he would move on the information that his daughter had been abducted, even if it did flush all the work they'd done on building a case against this group. Shippuden - Good, the Rasengan at the end of the previous episode worked. Following the defeat of Yahiko!Pain, it was prudent to remove the chakra receiver rods to neutralize that body. Regarding Naruto wanting to confront Nagato alone and Shikaku consenting, I like that it wasn't portrayed as him trusting Naruto. Instead, Shikaku trusted Shikamaru's judgment regarding Naruto. Yay, Hinata recovered enough to be out of immediate danger from her injuries! Good work, Sakura. It was wise (no pun intended) for Naurto to go back into Sage Mode to confront Nagato. I really liked the look of Naruto's eyes after he was hit by a chakra receiver rod. Still, I'm a little curious as to how the nature energy of Sage Mode could coexist with the Nine Tails' chakra. Fukasaku couldn't synchronize with Naruto because of the Nine Tails' chakra, so I would think that it could also disrupt Naruto's Sage Mode. Still, I like the look, so oh well. Naruto agreeing to listen to Nagato's story says to me that we have a tragic background flashback coming up soon. Sure, it'll tell Naruto how fellow students of Jiraiya ended up like this, but coupling that with Nagato's apparent declining health and the strain on his chakra of this battle indicates that he's not long for this show. GitS - I enjoyed the exchange of looks between Aramaki and Yakushima, but it's made better by Aramaki not changing his expression in the slightest. I think this is the first time I've recognized the mark on the face of the guy walking in the opposite direction to Serano and his security detail. The guy was a member of the Narc squad who evidently was still at-large. AoT: Second Course - Levi was acutely aware that Eren is a little rageball. Why else would Levi have cautioned Eren not to give in to rage and risk making his comrades' efforts worthless? While we know that Luna emits no light of its own, rather reflecting the sunlight that shines upon it, we can't be sure that Humanity in the AoT-verse knows this. Still, if there are any nighttime conditions which might permit titans, which are solar-powered, to move at night, then a bright full moon would fit the bill. Jack - I'm torn on my sentiments regarding the mountain goats. Yes, yes. Jack, in his anger and frustration, struck mortal blows to innocent animals which had been transformed into dangerous beasts by Aku's magic. Once they were dead, part of me thinks that Jack should've processed their bodies for meat and wool/pelts, which would at least be making use of their deaths. However, had he done that, then it's possible he would've moved their dressed bodies elsewhere, which would've denied Ashi the horn that she needed to block her mother's dagger and protect Jack. Thus, I can't really decide which would've been the better option. I think Horus, Odin and Vishnu did Jack a disservice in removing his awesome beard when they restored his old look. Maybe they could've done just a trim? Oh well.

Having finally read through both the locked thread and this one, I am saddened to learn that Luuv is no longer with us. Most everything I could say about the man has already been said, but I do want to repeat the points that he was enthusiastic, creative, patient, fair, considerate and intellectually thorough. He genuinely cared about making a better experience for us on the old ASMB and kindly let us take shelter in his vision at UE when [as] shut us out. For his gently guiding hand and passion for the community he helped build, I thank him. May even greater peace be his now than he had in life. I will check back for more details regarding his arrangements, even though I would be unable to attend, being several states away. Also, there was enough interest between other entries and Mr. Crow to make Pending Arrangements the top trending page on the newspaper site when I first checked it.

I can fully believe that Dio went ego-crazy while in his coffin for around a century. His all-caps name is perfectly fitting with that. Wait. What am I saying? Dio was always ego-crazy. DBS - A multiverse is fine with me, but I have no idea why it would be limited to 12 habitable ones. Vados, Whis' sister, is pretty. I'm almost certain I've mentioned it before, but I'm mentioning it again. Yes, yes. Instant ramen tastes good, but I don't think it's worth gambling for a whole planet to get or keep it. Dragonballs the size of planets would be incredibly difficult to gather. DBZK - Even under the Majin enchantment, Vegeta was still decent enough to keep Goten and Trunks out of the fight. Good on Piccolo for taking them to safety, and I think we have Gohan to thank for that change in him. The Piccolo that started the show wouldn't have hesitated to get himself to safety and leave the boys behind. It's no wonder Saiyans have such tremendous appetites. The energy that Vegeta released was akin to a nuclear detonation, and that all came from his body, meaning from the energy of his cells, meaning from the food he ate. Wow. Even knowing the devastation to come, I still stand by Piccolo's decision to slay Babidi on the grounds of Babidi being obnoxious and a cowardly dick. JoJo: SC - Wow. This show made Ang so thirsty that it looped back into the show and took over all those female classmates of Jotaro. Noriaki attacking Jotaro seemed like it came out of nowhere, and I don't remember much about his powers other than him using them to possess the hot school nurse. Evidently Jotaro isn't the only hooligan at his school. It sure sucked to be the guy that the possessed hot school nurse stabbed. TG: Root A - I'm going to side with Ang here on it being a much more sensible security measure to have the anti-ghoul gas release automatically when the unauthorized opening of multiple cells happens (I would have no more than two ghouls out of their cells at once for any reason. Yes, it would be logistically bothersome. Yes, it could be considered a violation of their "human" rights not to allow them yard time or to leave their cells for meals. However, we are dealing with superpowered entities who have killed people, so screw that noise - I'm erring on the side of caution, and People for the Ethical Treatment Ghouls can blow it out their ears) than the utter disaster of a response that we saw. Ken going bonkers after getting whupped by Kamishiro was unexpected, but I'm fine with his wanton destruction spree. At least he was doing something until the Owl showed up to get him out of there. Oh, boooo, show! Quinques are made from parts of ghouls, presumably freshly dead ones. How would Shinohara's quinque armor even be able to detect that he was fighting Ayato, let alone decide that it didn't want to fight him and thus resist Shinohara? It makes no sense. Hm, I wasn't expecting the hybrid girls to be converted ghouls who chose that. I am a little curious now as to why Investigator candidates would switch sides like that. Were I to guess, I would say it had something to do with Mado's sadism. I mostly enjoyed Juzo's parts, but his curiosity over whether one twin dying would be fatal to the other (I'm going to guess it has something to do with a the metaphysical idea of twins being linked) was a little too crazily creepy. Maybe I'm too close to it, since I have relatives who are twins. HxH - It sure was a nice hint from the one guy to the boys about what they should do when they meet someone and that person calls for their book. Even if they have no spell cards, they can use it as a bluff. Of course, the other alternative is to attack the player directly. I'm presuming that "physical" violence will still work in the game, since it is possible for the players to die. Judging by the way the guy talked about it, logging out of the game is possible. I wonder if it's possible to do that during a losing fight and return to a previous save point on the data card. I doubt that there are no spell cards in the game capable of harming someone directly. It would be nice if it were true, but I feel like there are some undiscovered cards which might have that potential. Also, spell cards to remove the effect of another spell card sure seem like handy items to have. I'm fine with a group of players banding together to beat the game and split the reward. I'm also fine with Gon deciding he doesn't want to do that. He's here to get insight into the kind of person Ging is (a jerk, Gon. That's the kind of person Ging is, and you should already know enough about him to determine that by now). While clearing the game would be an acceptable turn of events for Gon, it isn't his main concern. Of course the blond girl is a complete brat with bad intentions. Leave the boys alone, jerk girl. Lupin - Did Goemon skip this episode, too? I'm getting really curious as to where he is and how he's occupying his time. Fujiko is much more buxom than Elena. Fujiko would've needed to bind her chest to pass for having Elena's general body shape. The rumor of a secret fortune was a very spiteful thing for Roberto to do to Elena. Yes, he couldn't get past her cheating on him that time, but condemning her to be hounded by guys who are as bad or worse than the guy from that time is really vicious. Maybe it's not as vicious as branding her, but it's still cruel to rob her of any sense of peace. I can believe that Lupin would agree to the publicity stunt wherein he claimed to have stolen the secret fortune. It would add to his reputation and, as Fujiko said, Elena would feel safe enough to access the treasure if it did exist, which would give them the chance to take some of it. That much gold would weigh many tons. It might be approaching the static load limit of the concrete or cement floor. I'm cool with Elena seeking public office with the campaign of fighting forced prostitution. Shippuden - Now Naruto knows why his father sealed the Nine-Tails in him (or at least part of the reason). Minato using the last of his chakra to repair the seal is fine, and it did serve to stop the Nine-Tails' current rampage. However, it sounded like Minato said that he only sealed some of the Nine-Tails' chakra in Naruto. What did Minato do with the rest of it? I'm not sure what kept the "Planetary Destruction" earthen prison from crashing to the ground. Also, I forget if Nagato mentioned it in this episode or the previous one, but he said that the Sage of Six Paths used this technique to create the Moon. I prefer the Theia/Giant Impact/First Impact idea, but if this was intended to contain the Nine Tails (which it failed to do, but eh), it begs the question of what could be so powerful that it would take a body the size of Luna (not Mrs. Luna ) to contain it. Naruto literally throwing himself, with Rasengan in hand, at Yahiko!Pain looks like it might work. We'll see. Plus, if Nagato enjoyed better health, then I feel like he and his Six Paths corpse puppets would beat Naruto handily and have him captive to charge up the Gedo statue. GitS - I never tire of the Major's lingerie drawer having weapons stored on the underside of the drawer. I'm torn on Section 9 members using lethal force. The Umibozus did attack their headquarters and had weapons at the ready when some of the Section 9 members walked into ambushes, which did prompt those members to surrender. However, if they fled, then the Umibozus fired on them. Particularly, the Umibozus that Batou killed were armed, but Ishikawa used an explosion to keep them from getting his equipment when he was already clear of the building. Maybe the case could be made for Batou's actions being justified, but Ishikawa... not so much. AoT: Second Course - If titans have been (mostly?) people all along, then I can understand the Walls being made of them. Either there were people who were involuntarily titan-shifted by the king and his forces who rebelled against him in this way, by making a sanctuary for the others oppressed by his rule, or the area inside the Walls was where the king lived, and the Walls were made by those loyal to him to protect him from enemies. As for the town Sasha didn't expect to be there, the refugees had to live somewhere, and they have had years to build. As long as there were people with the construction skills, it would be a simple matter of procuring enough building supplies. Jack - The three brother archers aged astoundingly well. The MC Hammer-esque samurai did not. I'm not sure why Ashi's hair changed after this washing when it kept the previous style after other submersions. Hey! Bouncer-type crew member. What about service dogs? What about the three dog-headed guys that ended up tossing Scaramouche overboard? Your "no dogs" policy seems flawed and/or inconsistently implemented. I feel like the spectral samurai who haunted Jack may have been an agent of Aku, since it seemed determined to talk him into dying.

Reply out-of-sequence, because I need a nap before tonight's shows. DBS - I guess it's my fault for not checking the [as] website for the schedule or looking in on the Toonami Tumblr (oh, wait. No. No, it's not. I should not be responsible for seeking information on whether the broadcast schedule is going to change. That should be told to me in advance during the programming block in question of the week prior to the change), but I missed the episode of Super, because I was expecting the shows to start at 11:30, like the dvr said they would (read: "not even the cable company was given the new schedule information in a timely manner" ). Thankfully, the sub was available on c-roll. This means I'll need to change my Saturday night alarm. As for the episode itself, Earth didn't hold out nearly as long as Namek did. I'm willing to attribute that to Frieza being more powerful now due to his training. Still, it shouldn't surprise anyone that Frieza would destroy the planet to kill his opponents who couldn't survive in space when faced with defeat. He did exactly that on Namek. I fault Goku and Vegeta both for not ending Frieza quickly when they had the power to do so. I like that Whis used this as a teaching moment for Goku. Gohan going back into training is a good thing. I wasn't expecting Whis to have time-altering powers, but it sure was convenient for everyone on Earth. DBZK - Thankfully for Videl and yet-to-be-Pan, Gohan's not dead. He's just unconscious. Yeah, Buu apparently having no bones to break certainly makes him harder to kill. I can respect Vegeta recognizing this won't be as easy as he thought, or maybe even impossible, but he knows that he must put his all into it. JoJo: SC - This judgment may be premature, but it seems to me that the Joestars keep getting more powerful but less savory. Jonathan was a proper gentleman. Joseph was more crude and occasionally rude, but still likeable overall. My first impression of Jotaro is that he is somewhat responsible, but he has a bit of a temper and was very rude to his mom, Holly. As for the "more powerful" part, his "evil spirit" being a visible form of his lifeforce, which could be considered an improvement on hamon, called a Stand would qualify, since it was able to stop a bullet at point-blank range. However, it would seem that this development isn't unique to the Joestars, since Avdol has one as well. Regarding the Joestars' hereditary birthmark, I think it would be really hard to see that part of one's own back without a mirror. It's too close to the spine. Parents might notice it on their children and tell them about it, though. Since it was on Dio's body in the distance picture Joseph took with his Stand (there surely are other uses for it. Surely), then evidently Dio's head was able to decapitate the unconscious or dead Jonathan, wriggle out of his grasp, and take over his body. Curses! Now Dio is back to kill people and make trouble for the Joestars again. I can dig grandpa Joseph's amazing man-voice. It's too bad that he was lying to Suzie in order to see their daughter and help her with Jotaro and his predicament. TG: Root A - The raid on the Ghoul prison, Cochlea, was to spring one guy. I don't know why this dude, Kamishiro, didn't like Rize, but it was entertaining to see him whup Ken. I'm not sure why Eto asked Kamishiro if he wanted to see Rize, though, since she's dead. Hm, Juzo knows the hybrid twins. That's odd. I wasn't expecting Shinohara's quinque armor to be made from someone Ayato knew, maybe even his dad. Akira goofed. Yes, she was dealing with a moving target, but it looked like she stabbed Naki twice in the same spot. When I took a self-defense shooting course, I overheard one of the instructors mention to someone else who was dismayed that their rounds weren't grouped closely on center mass the difference between target shooting for sport and defensive shooting. In a sport, the objective is a tight group of rounds on or near the bull’s-eye. Defensive shooting is almost the opposite. Yes, the rounds must still strike the attacker, but a wider spread with multiple wound channels is more likely to damage multiple organs, muscles, and bones so as to stop the attack more quickly. Akira may have slightly widened the wound channel in Naki, but it clearly wasn't enough damage to stop him. Stabbing higher in the chest may have been more effective for the second strike. After Naki bit Akira's leg, she clearly underestimated Amon when she told him to leave her and get himself out alive. Amon is a hoss. He could easily escape with her as long as he didn't need to occupy an arm with carrying her, so as long as she can hold herself onto him without choking him, they'll make it. Amon's childhood sucked. For one, he was an orphan. Whether he ever knew his parents or not, I didn't catch, but he was raised in orphanage by a priest, Donato, who was actually a ghoul. I guess Amon should consider himself lucky that he discovered Donato eating one of the other orphans before he selected Amon to eat. I'm not sure why Cochlea exists. Why would they keep a group of superpowered individuals who are known to be killers alive? The only practical reason I can see is that there is limited viability of ghoul bodies after they die to make quinques. If we couple that with a limited qualified staff and specialized equipment for quinque development, then maybe it is necessary to keep the ghouls alive until the staff is ready to process their biological material (read: kill them and remove their kagune and possibly part of their nervous system, with other parts possible as well). HxH - Melody is a pleasant person, and I like that she enjoys the soothing rhythm of Leorio's heartbeat. They're both good people who recognize the goodness in each other. I want them to be friends, and it looks like that could happen. In Gon's shoes, I would be inclined to give up on finding Ging, simply because Ging sounds like a jerk who doesn't want to be found and has no interest in being a part of his son's life. Were I to speculate, I'd say that Ging never intended to have a child with Gon's mom and didn't want Gon after he was born. Ging was decent enough to leave Gon with Mito, meaning he didn't abandon a baby/toddler for whom he was responsible to die unattended, but the only interactions we've seen so far were in the form of what was necessary to show Gon a project that Ging considered more important than raising his son... making a game for Hunters. As for the testing process, I say Killua's inner monologue was the story trying to make things more complicated than they were in an effort to sound clever, and it struck me as contrived. When they boys didn't see anyone return, I thought of two possibilities for that. First, there could've been stage access from other hallways, which there was. Second, the people who failed could've been dying, either as a result of whatever they did or as a consequence for failure (we did just get through an arc focusing on organized criminals and murder for fun and profit, so I might be holding on to that too much), but I'm glad it was the first option. I liked the simplicity of Gon's idea; they were going to test everyone, so it didn't matter when they got in line. Gon getting to log into the game first was fine. In the game orientation, I want to know whether the Guide was an N.P.C. or a trapped person. In light of my poor estimation of Ging, I can't say that I'm surprised that the gameplay of Greed Island, a game made by Ging and some friends (he has friends? I'm not sure I would want to meet anyone who would get along with him), would have such dickish restrictions regarding items. In the Guide's presentation, the example of a limit of three for the number of times an item can be converted was given. We know that many more than three copies of the game were made, so even excluding the add-on device which lets several players use one built-in memory card slot, each console would let two people play. While the simultaneous conversion limit may be higher than the example given, I fully expect there to be items where the limit is lower than the number of people who can play with standard console equipment, and I wouldn't be surprised if, for at least one item, the limit was lower than the number of game copies produced. Oh, but that's not all the dickery. There's even a time limit on making the decision of whether to put an item in storage or not, and then there's the malarkey rule about not being able to re-convert an item to put it back in storage after use. Hey! Guess what? A knife doesn't lose all its sharpness after cutting one piece of meat. A gun, even if all the ammunition is used, doesn't become mechanically non-functional when the magazine is emptied (though it would need to be reloaded, and bullets may be separate items that would need to be taken out of storage, and those are done after they're fired, but unspent rounds can stay in the magazine or be loaded into a different magazine, if the person so chooses). Unless you have the worst batteries ever made, a flashlight doesn't stop working after five minutes. My point is that several things which could be used repeatedly (yes, I'll admit that things will eventually wear out, but not likely in as few uses as the game sets) would, by the game design, need to be abandoned after one use, unless the player wanted to keep holding it or carry it on their person for the rest of the game. To me, that is a dick move by Ging and his friends, but I'll have more on that later. I'm fine with the general objective of the game being to collect all of the numbered items. Having free spaces to keep extra copies of useful items is sensible, especially when we consider the nonsense restriction of not being able to return used items that are still fully functional to storage. I would like to know some other things, though. If a player abandons an item after using it, does it reset the conversion limit for other players who may find it? Do items periodically re-spawn in their original locations? Those would be useful pieces of information, Guide. I have sneaking suspicion that Ging and his friends designed Greed Island with an ulterior motive. I think that it's a way to eliminate competition from other Hunters. Given the conversion restrictions, it's possible for people to block each other from clearing the game if there are sufficiently few of some items. It gives meaning to the name of the game, Greed Island. If my suspicion is correct, then the Hunters playing will eventually need to make a decision between cooperation and selfishness. If they choose cooperation, they'll be free, but lose out on the reward. If they choose selfishness, they could be trapped forever, but they also have a "chance" at earning the reward (but not really, if the rarity of some items does have players blocking one another from acquiring all of the numbered items). Someone may even need to convert one or more of their numbered items to let someone else use it/them in conjunction with one or more of their numbered items to get another, rarer numbered item. If the players can't move past their own greed, then they may be stuck on the island forever. Now, if that cooperation does happen, I would expect it to involve the boys and this new blonde girl from the OP. I would also expect that one of them clearing the game will trigger a previously unknown/undisclosed quirk of the game that releases all of the current players as well. We'll see. Lupin - I was thoroughly disappointed that this didn't turn out to be an actual zombie episode. Early in the episode, part of the music reminded me of some background music from SC, but I don't remember which episode had it or the name of the track. Wait. That doesn't make sense. Lupin would carry a firearm with presumably live ammunition. Rebecca used his gun on the "zombie." Unless she was able to swap the magazine for one filled with blanks without me noticing, she would've actually shot that guy. Even if he was wearing body armor under his costume, the force of those impacts should've knocked that extra down. If Lupin doesn't get his divorce, I hope he at least gets to bang his wife. Shippuden - I wasn't expecting an OP, but I'm fine with having it. Just to get it out of the way, hooray! Hinata's still alive. I already knew this from other spoilers, but it's still nice to see it confirmed. I'll agree that the art quality was a significant step down from the previous episode. It was still a sweet fight, but the art detail and crispness just wasn't there. I must establish a difference between Naruto and Yahiko!Pain. Naruto is a jinchuriki, meaning he has the protective power of the Nine-Tails' chakra to shield him from attacks. We literally saw it pouring out of him and manifesting as pseudo-flesh. It would thus protect Naruto's actual body. Yahiko!Pain only has the chakra that Nagato sends into it, and he sends that for two primary purposes: 1. to make the body move, and 2. to execute jutsu. That chakra doesn't protect Yahiko!Pain from impacts unless it is used in Almighty Push as a shield. Thus, those massive stone blocks hitting him in rapid succession should've damaged his body, because there were impacts at intervals of less than five seconds, meaning he wouldn't have had time to recharge and execute Almighty Push again to protect his body. Even if we allow other instances of him using it to protect his body, there's still the time that his head was imbedded in a rock face. With his head in there, he couldn't see that other rocks were about to come down vertically on his body, and thus he wouldn't know that he needed to use Almighty Push to protect his body. The point is that the various impacts should've pulverized his body, rendering it mechanically incapable of motion. Oh well. That said, I loved the nature of the action. Naruto rampaging in mini-Nine-Tails form (or not-so-mini toward the end of the episode) was every bit as satisfying as I hoped it would be. Not even what is ostensibly Nagato's most powerful use of the Tendo Path was enough to contain the rampaging Naruto. I will say that I was surprised that he reached all nine tails, though. I thought that the skinless form would be the manifestation of eight tails, but okay. Inside Naruto's inner mind theater for the Nine-Tails' cell, I was torn between him retaining his separate humanity and surrendering to the power of the Nine-Tails. It's interesting that a vision of Minato, Naruto's dad, stepped in to stop him from removing the seal. It's easy to forget that we know Naruto's parentage, but he doesn't. GitS - This showed a problem with bureaucracy. Someone in power under investigation for corruption can use the power of their office to mobilize agencies against the agency investigating them, and even though compelling evidence was brought to the attention of pertinent parties, the process for calling off the mobilized agencies takes so long that their work is done by the time the recall is issued. At the very least in Togusa's case, there should still be some paper documents pertaining to his time as a regular policeman to corroborate his lack of involvement in TLM's abduction of Mr. Serano. While I know that it will be disastrous for the Tachikomas, I must admire the Umibozu Commander's craftiness in retaining two of the armored suits, citing he wasn't ordered to send back all of them. AoT: Second Course - I still dig Hange's interrogation method, even if it didn't work exactly as planned. Oh, booze-loving pompadour guy. How wrong you were about Mike returning alive. Why did you have to be a jerk and hurt the horse, Squatchy? Also, its enormous fingers shouldn't have been able to trigger the release mechanism for the ODM rig by virtue of them being too big to fit into the space to reach it. That is, unless the release is on the face of the back of the rig, which would be a bad design, since a crash could easily trigger the release if it were positioned there. Jack - "Cover yerself! Ye'll catch yer death o' cold!" Also, the trash talking to Aku was great. Bless, you, Scotsman. Since Jack succeeds in returning to the past and killing Aku there, the future we saw in the show doesn't happen. While it's possible that means that the Scotsman won't exist, I would like to believe that he would be born and have a long life, even teaching at least some of his many, many eventual grandchildren how to be boisterous and thoroughly entertaining badasses. I like that they used the science of hearing loss. Simply by repeated exposure to sounds, especially loud ones, over time, people lose the hearing acuity to detect high-end frequencies. Ashi and the abducted children, by virtue of being several decades younger than Jack and likely exposed to far, far fewer explosions at near distances, likely have much better hearing than Jack does in this regard. His ears simply can't detect those frequencies anymore. In that case, it's a very good thing for him that Ashi accompanied him. Ashi escaping the robotic clamps is a no. I find it very hard to believe that the motors controlling the closing action were attuned to clamp onto flesh without crushing it. The shape of the clamps would indicate to me that they were designed to secure large, round objects, since Ashi's body was able to slip through the center area of closed clamps several times. Since the children were no larger in the torso than Ashi's shoulders, the clamps wouldn't have been designed to hold them either. Thus, being industrial equipment, they would close fully, which would've smashed her hands and feet. Even if there were feedback sensors to detect resistance, those would be calibrated to steel or other sturdy metal components, which means that the tissues of her appendages would likely be too soft to trip the sensors before the clamps inflicted significant, and likely catastrophic, damage.

Dragon Ball v. 1 Boundaries, Goku. "No pat-pat!" Also, I wasn't expecting topless Bulma, but there she was.

I would say that it's because his mask completely covers his right eye, like an eyepatch. I'm not sure I'm ready for Dio to return and crap all over everything good in the Joestars' lives again, but here it comes. DBS - Yes, yes. We know Goku is tough enough to outlast his opponents. The key to winning being as simple as Frieza using power faster than he could generate it seems a little cheap, though. It's not that Goku was able to endure more punishment than Frieza could dish out while battering Frieza more than he could endure. It was a simple matter of fatigue, and that's a bit anti-climactic. I wasn't expecting Sorbet's part to be as simple as shooting Goku from behind, but it was effective. I think it's a shame that Vegeta didn't simply fast-dodge in next to Frieza and blast a hole through his head, but he did intervene. I started reading the Dragon Ball manga Saturday, and I liked the callback in the form of Frieza calling Goku a god-monkey when the first chapter title called him the Monkey god, an obvious reference (one of many in the story) to Journey to the West. Also from those early chapters, Goku said he was fourteen. I didn't expect him to be that old, and I don't recall hearing him say how old he was (I think he said he didn't know) in the corresponding episode of DB back on the first Toonami. This makes Goku around two years younger than Bulma, but in the time of Super, he's already a grandfather, and Trunks would be no more than a third-grader. Still, Bulma didn't even meet her husband until Gohan was at least as old as Trunks is now (I'm not sure exactly how old Gohan was during the events on Namek). In the new ED, it looks like Gohan is actually taller than Goku, minus hair spikes. DBZK - When Bibidi was designing Buu's powers, I feel like he would've made it so that those turned into treats would maintain their consciousness until Buu devoured them, so that at least he, if not Buu as well, could revel in the knowledge that the victims would know they were about to be eaten as Buu lifted them to his mouth. Shin can take a beating better than one might expect when looking at him. At least between Buu's attack and Shin detonating it, he was able to get Gohan clear of the battle. One of the problems with fighting Buu is that he doesn't seem to have bones to break or blood to lose. Magic is some crazy stuff, yos. Krillin and Piccolo were lucky that Dabura's power wore off when he was eaten. Trunks was also lucky that Piccolo can regenerate. AoT: 2nd Course - I can't say I'm surprised that Hannes died, but I was hoping he might survive. When Eren had his moment of being mentally broken, I was fearful for Mikasa. I found myself thinking, "no, show. Please don't. Please don't kill Mikasa, too." Thankfully, Eren did recover in time to act in her defense. I forget what Reiner called it, but Eren's intentions controlling the ordinary titans to attack on his behalf was unexpected. Thankfully for the other Scouts, it drew the titans away from them. We can only hope for humanity's sake that he can figure out how to do that on command. Armin, you tried to warn Jean, but inadvertently distracted him so he certainly was thrown from his horse. There simply wasn't enough time for him to avoid getting caught up in that thrown titan impact. Thankfully, his injuries weren't severe. Connie and Hange briefing Erwin, Levi, and Pixis on their working hypothesis was fine. However, I feel like not all the titans are shifted humans. The OP wouldn't have included the glowing points in wildlife if that were the case. Anyway, I feel like that is actually a ray of hope for the people in the Walls, since it means that their enemy is simply other people, and warfare is something at which humanity has much practice. Still, I now want to know more about this opposing society. Maybe I'll need to pick up the manga after all. Squatchy is a deliberate Shifter. That's not surprising. The underground shelter was a good idea, but I think this was a teaching moment for the leaders of those living in the territory that the Walls enclose. They now know that much more must be set aside for provisions in case W. Rose ever is breached. However, the discovery of what Eren can do is also a game-changer, since using him to reclaim the territory between W.s Maria and Rose is now, at least in theory, a much more easily attainable goal. More than that, even, the idea of striking out into the world outside the Walls is now a real possibility. Still, sealing the breach at Shiganshina remains a key element to this reclamation effort. Once they do that, maybe they'll find more valuable intel in the Yeager cellar. I'm not sure that leaving with Bertolt and Reiner was the best choice Ymir could've made. At the least, it will strain her relationship with Krista. I'm a little disappointed we never saw the dinosaurs from the OP this season. TG: Root A - It's a shame that Touka didn't step in to help Hinami with the words she didn't know. However, it was nice that Touka was willing to take Hinami to the book signing. Hinami is a good kid, opting to go alone, even though Koma followed her without her knowledge, so Touka could focus on her own to-do list. Hinami even used her spot to get the book signed for Ken, holding out the hope that he will return. Show, stop that. I don't want to think well of Nishiki, but you had him do Touka the good turn of showing her around her intended school for a bit before having to get back to class. I did like her happening to run across Hide and getting some nice backstory details on Ken from him. Hide was also busy getting some official information out of Takizawa. As for Houji and Takizawa's investigation into old case files, it looks like they're spot-on regarding the incident at the construction site that injured Ken and killed Rize. We know why Ken disappeared, but it is strange that the surgeon who transplanted Rize's organs into Ken has disappeared as well. That subordinate of Jason/Yamori who Ayato and Ken busted out of custody is a weird one. Frankly, he strikes me as mentally unbalanced. When we consider the multiple writing systems available to the Japanese, it's somewhat understandable that the guy might not know how to write Yamoi's name. While I'm able to read things that are upside-down, I have substantial doubts that I'd even be able to print upside-down, unless I did it very slowly, so bravo to Ken on that. I get the impression that Ken will eventually need to fight and kill this guy. Heh, Juzo got a new quinque based off Jason's kagune. I liked the way Juzo called taking Jason down as finishing what someone else started. The quinque looks overly complicated in the blade design, but it is powerful. Now Ken is aware of the other two hybrids, but what is their angle? I know we have most of the season to go, but give us something, show. HxH - It was no surprise that the boys were outbid in a hurry. I've been to a few auctions, but none so fancy that the form of the hand gestures were used to indicate the amount of the bid increase. Instead, the auctioneer named the new price, and waited to see if anyone would agree to it. Also, thanks, show, for giving us a cute auctioneer lady with a great rack. It was a nice consolation gesture for losing Pakunoda's rack last week. I agree with Leorio keeping the full details of how long Kurapika was asleep from him. There was no need to distress him over it. I was pleasantly surprised that Neon put more concern into Eliza's sorrow over her boyfriend dying than recovering her "stolen" item. It says good things about the kind of person Neon is. Since this means that the Nostrade party will be leaving soon, I'm cool with that making Kurapika unavailable to teach Gon and Killua. Killua using his nen to make an electric attack is neat and somewhat terrifying. While the joke of Gon "overheating" his brain trying to think of what he wanted to do and how to do it was fun, they did take the running gag a little too far. At least Wing was able to give Gon some helpful advice. The P.T. stealing the Greed Island unit was no surprise, but yeah, them disappearing into the game so soon was a bit unexpected, even after what the cute auctioneer lady said. Also, SAO ripped off dying in the game killing the player. Just saying. Lupin - I don't blame Luca at all for being smitten with Fujiko. What I saw about Tony's death is that the mechanism was improperly maintained or sabotaged, since the lever which would've enabled his escape was stuck. While Luca may have been tasked with that, I feel like it's the kind of thing that Tony should've checked for himself prior to the show. If that is the case, then sabotage is the only real explanation left. Tony's son sabotaging the mechanism out of jealousy and greed was bad and all, but I must wonder why his father would cut him out like that. Maybe it had something to do with the son's character. Maybe he had no talent for magic. An explanation would've been nice, show. I would like to think that Fujiko saved Luca not only from a life of toiling in obscurity, but also from becoming a murderer. That's what I prefer. That she got paid to do so is simply a bonus. Shippuden - I knew exactly what was going to happen, because I've watched spoiler amvs, and one in particular, several times, but I think it heightened my anticipation for what was going to happen and made Hinata's confession more satisfying and her valiant struggle all the more admirable. Yes, I do ship her with Naruto instead of Sakura for him, but I think the flashbacks did well to show us how much influence he's had on her and her outlook on life over the years. One of the things the amvs left out was that Hinata's opportunity to strike the rods restraining Naruto after initiating Twin Lions was based in Nagato being distracted momentarily by coughing up blood. I do agree with Nagato that people (on the whole and especially as groups) are dumb or, as he more kindly put it, aren't the most intelligent creatures. I have no idea where Yahiko!Pain keeps getting those receiver rods. Oh, yessssss. Time for some Nine-Tails Cloak action. Sweet. :) GitS - The real-time hacking of several individuals' eyes and a surveillance system is still an impressive feat, as is finding the memory of TLM's "voice" in Serano's head and using that to "speak" to him. Still, good on Batou to try accessing Interceptor feeds to maintain appearances on his end. I am mildly curious as to where TLM acquired his pistol and ammunition. Yes, yes. Conspiracy between corrupt government elements and corporate interests resulted in the public suffering. We know. Jack - Jack does have some great lines to Ashi about how wrong she is. I am aware that the human body contains billions, if not trillions of bacteria, and some of what we consume goes to them. However, I find it difficult to believe that this giant creature could consume so much that so many creatures of substantial size would be able to live inside it, even if we grant there being enough air and water for them. Maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way, though. Maybe all these creatures are things it has consumed, but has yet to digest, but that calls into question the adequacy of its digestive process. I'm probably overthinking this.

Yesterday was a super-haul day. Not only did my pre-order of Spice & Wolf v. 13 show up, but a large order I made last week on a RightStuf 30th birthday weekly special came as well to the tune of all 14 of the 3-in-1 volumes of Dragonball (meaning I now have all the DB manga except the new Super series) and v. 1 - 8 of Nichijou. It came in three boxes. o.0

in order, oh phooey, sounds promising, and I'm not sure I'm ready to see this unfold in non-amv form, but here it is.

I might watch this, but I'm not sure. The fight music sounded okay to me. Of course, since this is supposed to focus on the Substitute Shinigami Arc, that means no Shirosaki or Hichigo to enjoy.

I don't think everyone is unlikeable. I like Hide, Hinami, Juzo, and Yoriko, and I find no reason for active dislike of Amon, Shinohara, or Yoshimura. Plus, I partly disagree. My first impression of Akira is that she's weird and irritating, but not creepy. Yes, they do. CAC: I'm not watching any anime outside Toonami, so yeah. I could throw in some comments occasionally for manga I'm reading, if you'd like. DBS - Yep, Golden Frieza sure is shiny. My subbie co-worker spoils me whenever we talk about this show (I don't mind), so Champa and his attendant being from a different universe was no surprise to me. DBZK - Yeah, Buu's demeanor and initial clumsiness were misleading. Still, I'm disappointed that Gohan was caught off-guard like that. Knowing what happens, I must say that Vegeta was wrong not to team with Goku against Buu. Still, Vegeta did put on a convincing act. AoT: 2nd Course - Hardcore, Erwin. I know it's beyond the technological capabilities of your society, but if anyone deserves a badass robotic arm to replace one lost in the line of duty, it's you. So yes, massive respect for Commander Erwin. The man had one arm caught in a titan's mouth, and he still issued orders. He even rejoined the effort after getting free from the titan when he was minus an arm. That's excessively badass, but I'm not sure which would be more impressive - doing that after the titan finished biting off his arm or cutting off his own arm so he could continue the mission. However, should he survive, he'll be a desk jockey after this, because 1. the controls for ODM gear require two hands and 2. the standard killing strike for a titan requires two cuts. However, I'm not sure I fully agree with his decision to lure the ordinary titans to Reiner. Sure, the enemy of my enemy can at least run useful interference, but then again, arm. After seeing the Ymir backstory portion of last week's show, I decided to look a bit more closely at the ED this week. In light of those past events, it looks like the ED has been hinting/spoiling some history of the AoT universe all season. We have what looks like a demon or monster approaching a person and making a pact with them, perhaps even giving them some object in the person's right hand. Then we have a giant emerging amidst flashes of lightning (a titan-shift) who is facing down armed humans. Next is someone in fancy, perhaps even regal, attire in center with other similarly-sized people (perhaps a royal court) behind him, and in front of him are smaller people, possibly children, who look like they are eating something with a lot of blood, and the central figure's posture and hand gestures look like he's bidding the smaller people to eat. Then we have a procession of people moving through the countryside, like fleeing refugees. Up next is what looks like people emerging out of the ground. Last is a group of people of increasing size, such that there are obvious giants in the group, all bowing to a central person with her left hand raised above her head, and it looks like something is almost glowing in that hand, but that carving bears two marring slashes in an x-shape centered on her. With the context of Ymir's history, we can speculate as to what happened. It looks like some force or figure in the past, depicted as a demon by posterity because of the horrors that would follow, offered a human an artifact or knowledge which would enable titan-shifting. That person used that power for military conquest and established her-/himself as a queen/king. They shared this power with others who would be their allies, and they ruled for a long time - so long that they even indoctrinated their progeny into the method of their power. Eventually, the humans rebelled and cast out their rulers. Some may have been cast out in human form, but others were expelled like Ymir and the cult that worshipped her. They were forcibly titan-shifted as they were thrown from the Wall and sought refuge where they could find it, even to the point of hiding in holes in the ground. I'm not sure why, but the hiders eventually arose together, presumably for a unified purpose. Oh, and the humans who rebelled also sought to erase records of their past subjugation by the titan-shifters. Now, the obvious flaw is that if someone is old enough, then they would remember that time as young children, but they may have bought into the narrative to keep that part of their history secret from the successive generations. I don't know why they would, though, since, as we saw, it left society vulnerable to infiltration by titan-shifters. Maybe those who exiled the titan-shifters and their loyalists thought in their arrogance that it would be impossible for the Exiled to survive for long, much less for multiple decades, outside the Walls where ordinary titans roamed, and thus successive generations wouldn't need to know about titan-shifters, but they were wrong. Now, this is all speculation on my part. To really know, I'd need to start reading the manga. I try to keep my language clean, but damn, Mikasa was not fucking around. She was not a soldier on a mission. She was ready to straight up murder some assholes for abducting her man. I was scared for them. That's how scary her eyes were. I'm torn about what Armin did. While I admire his cunning use of a tactic to get into Bertolt's head, the tactic struck me as underhanded and slimy. Maybe part of it was Mr. Grelle's delivery, which would be a credit to the quality of his performance, but I cringed a little when Armin (presumably) lied about what was happening to Annie. Oh, nooooo. It's the titan that killed Carla. There's no way Eren won't stay to kill that one. Until that happens, he'd say "to Hell with your orders!" Also, this must bring back a painful memory for Mikasa. Carla was like a second mother to her, and Mikasa had to see her die, too. It's like a double-dose of traumatic flashback for her. TG: Root A - I don't think I mentioned it last week, but I consider our new OP and ED to be downgrades from the previous season. In addition to Hinami, I want nothing bad to happen to either Hide or Yoriko, but I fear most for Hide, because it looks like he's snooping into ghoul matters. At least Hinami has kagune to use in her defense. Hide only has his bike and as fast as he can pedal. Eto looks older without her wrapping than I thought she would be. I presume she's the girl in the ED that looks like she's trying to get with Ken. I didn't think Touka was old enough to be concerned with entrance exams, but okay. Yoriko is a total sis, backing Touka trying to get into Ken's school. While I can agree that the (excessive) politeness built into the way Japanese co-workers are expected to address one another does use a lot of time and energy, something about Akira's speech and manners strikes me as irritating. When Amon tried to follow Shinohara's advice about unwinding over drinks, I expected Akira to say that seeing co-workers is against some rule or policy, either of the CCG or her own. I'm curious as to who the two hybrids with one red eye on opposite sides are. I was under the impression from the first season that those are super-rare, and now we have three of them. What gives, show? HxH - First and foremost, I feel bad for Hisoka. While his still shot of having his hopes dashed was funny, Kurapika cockblocked Hisoka's fight boner in a major way. Kurapika set up some harsh conditions, but I feel like Chrollo will find a way to remove Kurapika's nen from his body. They wouldn't have mentioned it in the episode if the story wasn't going to do something with it. Plus, if Chrollo fully stole Neon's automatic writing power and sealed it in his book, then she's out of luck for getting it back, because he must use nen to summon the book, and he won't do that while under the threat of death. That means her power is trapped in there unless he can talk someone through summoning it. Pakunoda chose to die so the others could know what happened and galvanize against Kurapika. At least we got to keep her rack around until the end of the arc, unlike Baise, who died maybe as many as three episodes after we met her. Maybe. Given that the narrator said the next thing will be the Greed Island Arc, I'm going to presume Gon will acquire a copy. Whether by buying it at auction or stealing it remains to be seen. Lupin - Malarkey, show. Shooting to wound is, as the gang leader said, much more difficult than shooting to kill. For this gang leader's M.O. to work, he would need an entire crew of expert marksmen, especially when we consider that each one fired more than once. That means that the target would move in an unpredictable fashion multiple times during the shooting, which would change the point of impact for subsequent shots if the shooters were even a fraction of a second late, and that could be the difference between hitting a vital organ or major blood vessel and only hitting muscle. Also, there's still the blood loss consideration regarding lethality, and multiple wound channels increase that. So, this guy and his crew would need not only to be extremely accurate, but also extremely lucky that none of their victims died. Oh, and Jigen demonstrated that he knew the glaring strategic flaw to this set-up; all the intended victim needs to do is use the countdown to know when to duck out of the lines of fire. If they are successful, then the shooters could very well hit their compatriots standing opposite them. I liked the cantankerous old man. Jigen could've avoided all this hassle if he had exercised proper oral hygiene. The doctor lady was pretty, but when she let her hair down, she was outright beautiful. It's a shame Jigen didn't manage to get with her. Shippuden - Yahiko!Pain, you jerk! Injuring Gamabunta, Gamahiro and Gamaken and stabbing Fukasaku is animal cruelty. It's tactically sound, but it's still animal cruelty. It sure was convenient that Nature energy will run amok in excess, transforming and petrifying the person absorbing it. Blah, blah, one person's just retribution is another's oppression, yadda, yadda. It stinks for the inhabitants of the Rain Village region that they lived in an area between the warring parties, but life's not fair. Oowwww, Naruto's hands. GitS - That's the problem with running afoul of corrupt narc squad members; they have plenty of drugs at their disposal to use in their scheme against you. Whether Niimi dosed himself or not, it sucks that any testimony obtained after the attempt would be inadmissible. Sana (Lez Doc) sure had some great giggle. Also, the procedure for transferring a brain from one fully prosthetic body to another surely isn't simple enough that she would be able to do all the terminal inputs while under TLM's control using just the information he was able to find online in real time. He must have done prior research on the subject. Jack - Lil' Jack with his ninja and samurai dolls was such a cute kid. Jack was impressively resilient to survive the infection he likely got through his open wound being exposed for several days.

Sasha isn't. I realy hope Sasha isn't. Please, don't let Sasha be one, show. Pretty please. Also, it was absolutely hilarious, especially when Eren tried to bite his stump in order to trigger a titan-shift to no avail. :D Regarding the Rime game that T.O.M. reviewed, my attention was caught by the phrase "magic fox." In myths, foxes, especially ones with magic powers, are usually tricksters, so I would anticipate a twist in the story regarding the fox, like maybe the whole thing being just a dream or hallucination the fox created for the kid. DBS - Yes, Goku, it was arrogant to assume you could take Fourth Form Frieza in your baseline Saiyan state, but it is a testament to how strong Goku is now that he was able to fight Frieza evenly with no kaioh-ken, even if Frieza isn't at full power just yet. Vegeta intervening to make Frieza and Goku go to full power seems like a holdover from the movie for this part in that he chastised them for wasting limited time to get to the big slugfest. I don't see a resemblance between Frieza and Jaco. DBZK - I'm not sure that Vegeta truly would want to be the person he was when he first faced Goku. That would mean him being willing to kill or enslave his wife as a matter of principle when subjugating the Earth, and I'd like to believe that he wouldn't do that to Bulma. I find it strange that Gohan was the only one who could tell that Buu was unharmed. Also, I didn't hear Gohan say the words, and I find it peculiar that he did a left-side version of the kamehame-ha. Granted, his left arm was busted when he fought Cell, but it was still a right-side attack. Haaa, potty break time. Plus, boys, you're both Super Saiyans. Either of you could've swatted that dinosaur away with a flick of the wrist. AoT: 2nd Course - Haaa, of course Eren would still try to attack Reiner, even though Eren still hadn't finished regenerating and couldn't titan-shift yet. I'm not surprised that Reiner was able to subdue Eren. I'm still not sure why Krista is so important. Yes, she's the illegitimate child of a noble with ties to the church (presumably the Wall-worshipers), but I don't see why that association is important. Okay, I was wrong. It was Ymir's titan form that attacked Bertolt and Reiner's group. However, I don't understand why her teeth would've changed from normal to pointed between then and now. If it's not an artistic error, then something would've needed to happen between then and now to cause that change. Perhaps it's like Annie's selective hardening, changing one part of her body intentionally, but I feel like that would take training in her titan-shifting powers which it didn't look like she had time to get between the attack and when she entered the Academy. Regarding more of Ymir's past, I'm not sure I fully understand what happened. Was she, or was she not, a descendant of this "king" that was mentioned? Yes, I can see why a street urchin would agree to play the role for the better life it gave her, but there are so many questions that the situation we saw raised. Why would a descendant of a king, even an illegitimate one, be rounded up by authorities? Why would a group worship her in secret? Why would the authorities move against this group? What happened to them? It looked like they were on top of a Wall, were stabbed or slashed deeply, and thrown off the Wall. The light we saw emanating from below could've been one of two things. First, it could've been a large bonfire into which the mortally wounded were thrown to dispose of their bodies. Second, and more likely, is that at least one of the group other than Ymir titan-shifted. That raises the question of what was the common factor between Ymir and the group member(s) which enabled them to titan-shift. Is it a genetic thing, some kind of bloodline trait actually shared by them? If so, who was/were the common ancestor(s), and what was the source of this power? If they were all ancestors of some king who could titan-shift and that king was forcibly deposed, then I can understand why the group would be persecuted and expelled, but that raises the question of where that king got that power. If I heard what Ymir said as Eren passed out correctly, she was outside the Walls in titan form for sixty years. How could she maintain her titan form for that long? Why would her human body not age in that time? Also how would she have been able to lie in one spot long enough for her body to be mostly buried? Titans go after titan-shifters like they would for any normal human, so titans outside the Walls should've discovered her in that much time. You answered a few questions about Ymir's past, but raised several more than that about the history of this world and brought our attention back to the nature of titan-shifting in the process, show. I guess it's one way to keep the manga going. More questions from this episode: 1. what happened to the other children with Ymir who weren't selected, 2. is Eren similarly descended from this king, 3. who is the other person beyond Eren, Krista and Ymir that Annie, Bertolt, and Reiner meant to recover, 4. what is their destination, 5. who is waiting for them to return, and 6. will that person or group be willing and able to answer all these questions? Ouch. It looked like one of Krista's legs was still sticking out of Ymir's mouth when she tried to swallow Krista whole. If Krista isn't also a titan-shifter with the accompanying regenerative powers, then that is a serious wound which will need prompt treatment. Dammit, Hannes! Why did you say that?! Now you're practically guaranteed to die! TG: Root A - The ghoul that Renji and Gourmet fought was frightening in its ability to recover from damage that should've been rapidly, if not instantly, fatal. The fight between Owl and Investigators Kuroiwa and Shinohara was intense, but I'm not sure about that quinque-based experimental armor they wore. Sure, it protected them from Owl's attacks, but when they tried to boost the output, the armor used them as fuel for the power-up. I guess they thought the situation was dire enough to risk everything to win. Also, dang, Owl is powerful. Amon's quinque was damaged when he was the attacking party. That is to say that even Owl's blocking moves have enough power to injure or kill a human. You're a bad brother, Ayato. You tried to bite off your sister's fire-wings. At least Ken was able to save Touka from you. I have no idea why Ken would join Aogiri. This is a group that is unapologetically ghoul. That means they won't shy away from killing humans for food. Are you ready for that, Ken? One of the members, when she heard how many Aogiri members died in this battle, even said they would need to kill a lot of people in response. Are you sure you want to be part of that, Ken? I have no idea what happened to the buildings. It looked like there was an earthquake, but it seemed to be linked to a timer. To me, that says that one or more ghouls did that with their powers, but to shake that many buildings apart is astonishing. The alternative is that they used planted charges to damage or demolish the buildings, but didn't know exactly where to place the charges to get that full, rapid collapse. That, or the charges weren't powerful enough for the task. However, I neither saw nor heard any explosions, so I doubt that was the case. Investigator casualties were high, but I don't think quite as high as Aogiri's. At least Juzo made it out, and it looked like he was hauling a ghoul, presumably for the new quinque it would give him. I hope Hide didn't see all the stuff Ken did. Plus, Hinami succeeded in staying out of harm's way, and that's probably the best thing to come out of all this. HxH - This episode felt like it was trying to stretch the story by attempting to be unnecessarily complex. Good on Leorio for acting like an obnoxious fool in order to clue Gon and Killua to the plan. It may not have been as successful as it could've been, but at least Kurapika managed to snag Chrollo. Kurapika makes a convincing trap with the right hairstyle. Poor Melody. Stop making her be around these dangerous and scary people, Kurapkia. Just follow the standing instructions, Nobunaga, Pakunoda, and Shizuku. You know that Kurapika is out for blood vengeance (due to Neon's fortunes of death and doom), so he's highly unlikely to release Chrollo alive regardless of what you do. Regrouping and planning your next move would be a much better strategy than following the instructions of someone who intends to kill all of you. Hisoka contacting Illumi for backup can't be a good thing. Lupin - Good on you, Lupin. You figured out the obvious way to evade the spy. However, I find it very difficult to believe that anyone's hearing could be that acute at such great distances. Lupin was also lucky that the spy didn't simply shoot him at any of various points when he could've done so easily. Spy dude is an unsavory guy. He used electrocution as an interrogation technique. Granted, the device likely would be calibrated to deliver shocks which would merely be painful due to the force and duration of muscular contractions, like with a stun gun, but it's still nasty. Also, I got sick of his probability spouting very quickly. Prince Charles or either of his sons could only wish they were as handsome as the British Prince in this episode. Since Rebecca has yet to sign the divorce papers, maybe there's a chance Lupin could hit that before the end of the show. I doubt it, but I can hold out hope for him. Shippuden - Good. Naruto can throw the Rasen-shuriken now, but I'm unclear why he would need to be in Sage Mode to do it. I'll admit that beheading the jutsu-absorbing Pain body when I first thought of it would've been pointless with the restoration Pain body still being in the picture. However, once Naruto took out the second one, that would've been the moment kill the first one, and Naruto waited too long. Now he has the much trickier task of taking the first one out in a five-second window of opportunity while Yahiko!Pain recharges. Also, the part of Katsuyu on Naruto should've told him about that sooner. Naruto's work-around for prolonging his Sage Mode is clever, but I'm not sure why he limited himself to only two clones staying behind to recharge him. I like that Shikamaru's dad, Shikaku, was familiar with Sage jutsu, and assured Shikamaru that the best way they could help was to stay out of the way so Naruto wouldn't need to use some of his limited time in Sage Mode either maneuvering around allies or waiting for them to do whatever they would try to do. GitS - At least someone finally called an ambulance for the wounded Togusa. Maybe it was his broadcast to his team, but I'd like to believe that someone intervened on his behalf. I like how Aramaki went to the head of the MHLW and essentially said that he knew the guy was lying to him and that he was about to lie to the public in the press conference. I have trouble believing that Saito's rifle would've held that many anti-vehicle rounds. I didn't see a magazine under it, but there are some weapons with a top-feed design or tubular magazines, and with a bolt action weapon, that isn't an issue as long as the sighting is unobstructed. It's possible it would hold that many rounds, but I would like to know more about the weapon to be sure. However, with no name mentioned or model number visible, I can't seek that information. Jack - It looks like they jumped back a few episodes with this timeslot change. I watched what would've been the next episode of Jack off the dvr during commercial breaks of the other shows, but that's not what we had here. In that case, I'll just say that Aku in his therapy session with himself was still funny, especially the part with both of him saying that they just assumed Jack would eventually DIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEE. I'll save my couple comments from the episode I watched during commercials for when it actually comes around.

Dimension W v. 6. Da-yum, Lasithi. I think that "Bolts," a shortened form of "bucket of bolts," is a much better slightly derogatory nickname from Kyoma for Mira than "piece of junk." After the story, there's an ad page for watching Dimension W on the Funi site. I wouldn't recommend it, because, so far, the anime has left out sooo much content from the manga. Regarding the Easter Island story, we have two characters that I don't recall seeing in the anime at all. Also, we have confirmation in this volume that the crew of the Q.I. 4 ship which brought most of the Collectors to the island survived the crash. I don't think the anime ever addressed the crew after the crash.

I'm cool with Stardust Crusaders, but I'm concerned about what looks like Dio in that still screen to start the promo. Season 2 of MSG: IBO seems like it's been a long time in coming. I decided to go with the episodes off the dvr, but it turned out I forgot to record the first episode of the season, so I did have to record that one. Since I already had most of them watched and most of this written by the time I went to sleep this evening, I slept in past the start of the block. It was nice. AoT: 2nd Course - I decided to count up how many bad things (B.T.) happen to people or are referenced in each episode, but I'm not going to list them. Historical things, like W. Maria being breached and the displacement of the people who lived between W.s Maria and Rose, were only counted once, even if they were referenced multiple times. B.T.s: 6. I can't believe it took me this long to notice that the broken statue on the ground at the start of the O.P. and at the end of the O.P. looks different. At the start, it looks like it was recently broken, but at the end, it looks like it has lain there for several years, enough time even for the details of the faces to be worn down and the soil to be built up on the stone street/floor around it. To me, that's a telltale sign that the location of that statue has been abandoned by humans for a very long time. Whether it would be the ~100 years since Humanity has sought refuge in the Walls, and thus represents a location lost to them outside W. Maria, or is intended to be a future depiction of a location lost during or since the fall of W. Maria, meaning Humanity won't regain that territory any time soon (if at all), I can't be sure, but if a sneaking suspicion I have based on something else we see in the O.P. is true, then it'll be the latter with parenthetical conditions. Additionally, the titan discovered in the Wall was another skinless titan, so that means that the skinless titans would've come long before anything Dr. Yeager did. I think that means he would've discovered documents/research pertaining to titan-shifting, which I suspect is in the cellar in Shiganshina. We can only hope that those materials are still intact after three years (or is it longer? I'm not sure) of the house above it being demolished, which would allow the weather to work on what remains of the sole protecting layer of floor. Oh, and I still feel like Mikasa would much rather repair the scarf Eren gave her after helping rescue her from slavers than have a replacement one from him, due to its sentimental value. B.T.s: 8. I liked the combination of bravery and frantic desperation to survive that Sasha showed in taking on a titan with a relatively dull axe, a bow, and four arrows, but she was able to save the soon-to-be-orphaned girl and escape the titan through a combination of learned fighting skills and instinctual defensive actions. I was happy for her when her dad said he was proud of her. Also, way to stand up to Ymir's bitchiness, Krista. B.T.s: 3. The first time I saw this episode, I could've sworn that the immobile titan lying on Connie's house said his name, but listening to it this time, I didn't hear it. Still, its eyes were remarkably like his. I'm torn regarding Krista ships. I want to keep my original ship of her and Armin, and I like the Krista x Ymir ship as well, but I really don't think Ymir would be the kind to share Krista, nor would Krista be the kind to two-time her partner. Plus, Levi's order to Eren not to screw this up is so simple, yet so hard for Eren to accomplish, given the skill of those aligned against him. B.T.s: 7. I'm uncertain how they would know when to be ready to leave four hours before daybreak. That's hours of dark sky from horizon to horizon before the slightest hint that the sun would give on the eastern sky. I don't recall seeing a single clock, let alone a watch, in the show yet. Without timepieces, there would be no way to differentiate the dark of four hours before daybreak from six, or even eight hours before daybreak, unless it was summer and there were still traces of sunlight on the western sky in the last instance. Maybe, just maybe, they were taught how to read the constellations not only to navigate, but also to tell what time of night it would be for the time of year. If they weren't taught that at the Academy, then I have no clue how they would know. Additionally, the pretty blonde lady must've had a bad childhood, since as she was dying, she cried out for her father, saying she'd be good from then on. That implies that she may have been forced out of her home and had to choose between the military, being a criminal and stealing to survive, or prostitution. We know that there are human traffickers, so presumably ordinary prostitution also exists in the show. Between those options, I'm not sure which would offer the longest lifespan for her, but death by titans, even with the impending and growing sense of doom, is still probably a faster, albeit more gruesome, death than she would be likely to find with the other options. B.T.s: 4. Krista was probably in real trouble while hauling Daz. That would've taken a lot of effort, meaning strenuous physical exertion in a cold environment. As long as she didn't break a sweat, she would be fine, but if she did, then that would be the problem. The sweat would eventually get her inner clothing wet, and she would be unlikely to be able to produce enough heat to keep that sweat warm, meaning it would cool, and she'd have a layer of damp chill next to her body, which would cause her temperature to drop and drop and drop trying futilely to warm it. As Mr. Stroud has said numerous times on his show, in a cold environment, you sweat, you die. Also, I'm not sure that Ymir was the titan that ate part of Bertolt and Reiner's group. That titan had normal teeth, and I think its fingernails were ordinary as well. Ymir's titan form has pointy teeth and nails that are like claws. Yes, the overall size and the head are similar, but I think the eyes might be different as well. Whether she and that titan are the same or not, perhaps that titan saved our group in the present from having to face another skinless titan. B.T.s: 1. I can think of two ways that titans could be inside W. Rose without a breach. One is that Squatchy did something to Connie's village to transform everyone there into titan-shifters and triggered the shift, but none of them had the single-minded determination to stay focused on an objective like the other five titan-shifters had, and thus started acting like the ordinary titans. The other is that Squatchy unleashed some titans from inside W. Rose and instructed them to repair the damage like the humans wanted Eren to try doing. Plus, I liked the flash during the transformations for Bertolt and Reiner where for a split-second we saw their normal faces give way to their titan faces while still human-sized. Oh, and Bertolt was lucky Mikasa struck Reiner first, because otherwise she would likely have decapitated Bertolt. B.T.s: 2. Don't be such a tease, show. I want to know who prevailed between Annie and Mikasa. Additionally, I don't remember who the second person Bertolt popped into his Colossal mouth was, but they didn't take that person with them. B.T.s: 4, although two of them were less dire than the others. That was a great pep talk, Hannes. Now I'm starting to get worried for your survival. Also, unless they're concerned about the horses tripping on the rail ties or falling off the wall due to a random gust of wind while on horseback, I don't understand why they wouldn't use the nice, smooth, level top of the Walls to move between districts regularly. B.T.s: 3, but one is intangible. I can understand Hange wanting to study the immobile titan in Connie's village, and I can understand her being too injured right then to ride a horse, but I don't understand how the guy who went in her place would know what to do when he got there without explicit orders from her. Plus, now I'm even more curious regarding the "side" for which Bertolt and Reiner were working when they attacked at Shiganshina, what Ymir knows about that group and how she knows it, and how Krista, presumably simply a noble's love child, factors into this beyond being leverage to exploit over Ymir.

While that's a fun name, I'll stick with Squatchy. I haven't decided between watching the marathon live or watching the episodes off the dvr. I'm fine with calling the second season of TG Root A instead of √A, since it's tedious to look up the "√" symbol and I don't readily recall the alt+keypad code for it. No reason for me to tune in to the new lineup until 11:30, then.

Are we sure you aren't Lupin? I disagree. When we consider the timing and other circumstances of those three deaths, I'm not sure Ken had the time or opportunity to intervene. Recall that Jason did dose Ken at least once with a compound that suppressed his offensive ghoul powers. It's entirely possible that his exchanges with Rize here coincided with the effects of his most recent dose wearing off, thus coupling the will and ability to defend himself. Since his offensive powers were suppressed when Jason tried to make him choose between Banjo's two cohorts, Ken didn't truly have the opportunity to intervene on their behalf. In the case of Ryoko, I think that she would've agreed with Ken trying to keep Hinami from being discovered by Mado, since intervening would've clued him to Hinami and Ken's presence, thus putting her in danger as well. I address this a little more in the TG section below. Dude, I've been calling it Squatchy from the start of the season. Where were you? I'm not sure, but I lean toward stolen. Maybe Neon will try to use it before the end of the arc so we can find out, but I doubt it will happen. Whereas I'd just stare at Machi's butt because she's cute and has a nice one. I ship it. This didn't really fit anywhere with the rest of the TG stuff, so I'm putting it here. We could consider Ken going over reading homework with Hinami to be similar for him to reading with his mom, but with him in the opposite role. It's almost like reliving one of his fondest memories of his mother. Now, I'm not sure whether to consider that touching or weird, but I'm inclined to lean toward touching since he started doing that (if memory serves) when Ryoko was still alive, so it's not like he was trying to fill a void for Hinami left by Ryoko's death. Jack - Shut up, jerk crows. It's called "self-defense," not "murder." The Septuplets were armed with deadly weapons and had attacked him, even inflicting a grievous wound with one of the weapons. He fled that scene, and they pursued him. When he offered them the chance to leave without harm, they stayed and voiced their intention to inflict deadly injury on him. He did everything reasonable to escape the dangerous situation, but the threat followed him. He was justified in using his considerable martial prowess to defend his life. I still don't understand how the skeletal fish-monster was able to fly with no muscles. Also, how could it eat with no organs to digest what it consumed? DBS - Good work, Gohan. You raised your energy enough for Goku to sense it in order to use Instant Transmission. Also, Krillin was wise to conserve Senzu Beans for later. I liked Vegeta one-shotting Ginyu. It was interesting to see the effect of Frieza powering-up on his men compared to that of Gohan going Super Saiyan on Babidi's minions in DBZ. Poor gluttonous Beerus. Goku and Vegeta had already eaten the other pizzas while in the Hyperbolic Time Dimension. In their defense, they were there for the equivalent of weeks. It surely took Beerus over an hour to eat the dozen or more pizzas he ate, so if we use the dilation factor of one day on the outside of the Hyperbolic Time Dimension being a year inside it, then they were in there for at least fifteen days. Surely they would get hungry in that time, and they were training intensely, so they would need a lot of food, and Goku is a renowned glutton himself. It should come as no surprise that they ate what was available to them. DBZK - Goku v. Vegeta was fun fighting. I still don't understand why neither Gohan nor Shin tried to score a headshot on Babibi with an energy blast when they had the chance. Babidi strikes me as weak enough physically that even a weak blast formed and fired in an instant would slay him. The transmission of energy from Goku to Majin Buu's cocoon would have to be magical in nature, so there's the chance that killing the spell-caster would stop the transmission. Sure, then Gohan and Shin would be faced with an enraged Dabura, but they intended to fight him anyway, and he would have no magical back-up. He might even lose his strengthening Majin enchantment. AoT: 2nd Course - Yeah, Reiner was cracking up there. It's a danger of deep-cover assignments - becoming lost in the assumed identity. At least Bertolt was still holding it together. I get the impression that Eren will set the objective for himself to kill Bertolt before the end of this season, regardless of any orders or mission which might conflict with that goal. He rightfully puts some of the blame for Carla's death on Bertolt, the Colossal titan, because his breaching action, admittedly by sheer chance, created the circumstances which prevented Carla from fleeing. I forget whether it was Eren or Ymir, but they were aware of the new, dangerous development we had at that old castle in the form of titans being active at night. I'd like to know more about that, show, but I don't expect it. I'm slightly disappointed that neither Bertolt nor Reiner know anything (or are at liberty to say anything) about Squatchy. Hey, Mikasa? Go easy on your horse. Pushing it harder to creep up through the formation will wear it out faster compared to the rest of the group, and you might need it to beat a hasty retreat later. I find it interesting that we have two varieties of titan-shifters; Eren and Ymir's titans have skin, while Annie, Bertolt and Reiner's don't. I speculate that it has to do with the origin of their shifting abilities. I think that Dr. Yeager did something to his son, and possibly other children as well, which enabled titan-shifting. I would like to know whether this was based off the process that made the skinless titans or vice versa, show. Please don't leave me hanging. TG - I'm almost certain that in the previous episode, Ken said a number in the 230s. That means Jason cut on him either 109 or 110 times at that point. It's impressive that Ken was able to stay focused through all that. Yes, Jason meant it as a way to keep Ken focused on the horror of his situation rather than being lost in the physical agony, but it still showed tremendous mental fortitude. However, I see three related physiological problems with this situation. First, in this episode, Jason said he wanted Ken to fill that bucket, presumably with blood. That was at least a gallon bucket. That would take all or almost all the blood Ken had in him. Even if ghoul regeneration would replenish the lost cells at dozens or hundreds of times the rate that a human could replace them, he would still be losing fluid volume with the cells. I saw no i.v. system to keep his fluid volume up. Not only should he have died from there being inadequate blood in his body to perform gaseous exchange at the cellular level, but he also should've died from dehydration. Just because ghouls have superpowers doesn't mean they're exempt from the need for water. Without enough of it, their bodies should simply stop functioning, meaning they would die. Unless the hydration happened off-screen, Ken should be dead from a lack of fluid alone. Second, there's the fact that regenerating not only his blood cells, but also his severed toes and fingers, would take materials from his bloodstream, since that would be the delivery mechanism for proteins and minerals to the areas where the tissue regeneration was happening. Even if Jason only severed Ken's fifth toe 109 times, which we know wasn't the case, that would still be a substantial amount of tissue to regenerate. I'm probably larger than Ken, so my fifth toes are probably larger as well. To cut my fifth toes in the first metatarsal like it looked like we saw on Ken would be removing a piece of tissue that was 1" x 5/16"^2 x π, or 33.44 cubic inches for that many cuts. Yes, toes aren't perfectly cylindrical, but the pad portion for the last metatarsals is thicker than the bony portion that I measured where the cut would occur, so if anything this would be underestimating the volume of tissue. 33.44 cubic inches, for comparison, would be 18.53 fluid ounces, or more than a half-liter bottle of tissue. Hold one of those bottles up to your forearm. For me, that would be like losing my forearm, hand excluded, from my wrist to a few inches shy of my elbow. That's a lot of tissue volume to replace, even for ghoul super-healing powers. That material would need to come from somewhere. Unless Ken was also fed off-screen, it would be coming from the other tissues of his body, making his muscles weaker, his tendons thinner and his bones more brittle. While he may be able to survive that, much like severely malnourished people have survived, he would be a diminished physical specimen and unlikely, even with ghoul powers, to overcome a larger, uninjured, more physically powerful ghoul like Jason. Third, building all those cells again and again and again would take energy. Again, unless Ken was fed off-screen, that energy would come from his body tissues. Ken strikes me as trim, so he wouldn't have much in the way of fat reserves to metabolize, meaning his body would metabolize muscle mass, making him even weaker still. While information on how much energy building that much tissue would take may be able to be found and/or calculated, I don't feel like doing so, but I would guess that Ken would have extremely low energy, as in far less than we saw him expend in the fight against Jason. Thus, unless Ken was fed and hydrated regularly off-screen, not only should he have been extremely diminished physically, i.e. he would've been physically incapable of putting up that kind of fight, but also he should've been dead from blood loss long before we saw him this episode. Super-healing powers I can buy as a fantastical premise of the show. Doing so extensively without being supplied the necessary inputs is a no. Jason was full of malarkey. Ken caused no harm to those cohorts of Banjo. Regardless of who Ken might've picked, I suspect Jason would've killed both of them anyway, just to deliver that added kick of mental cruelty. Thus, all Ken, who was bound and had been brutalized repeatedly at Jason's hands, was guilty of here was failing to use force to stop a psychopath, fatally or otherwise (kind of like when he couldn't stop Mado, who was on the swing of the strike that ended Ryoko's life by the time Ken processed what was happening, leaving him no time to do anything but hide Hinami and block her line-of-sight to prevent her from seeing her mother die). Blaming himself for Jason's wanton violence is irrational. The portions in Ken's Inner Mind Theater, especially the part about Mrs. Kaneki's advice to her son about enduring suffering versus causing it, made me think of a line from the first FMA series. It went something like, "the man who inflicts suffering cannot rest; his guilty mind won't allow it." If we think about it being better for the psychological well-being of a person to endure hardship than to cause it, to know that one has wronged others, we can take that as being a widespread sentiment in civilized societies. In essence, Ken having to act against his ingrained inclination to endure suffering rather than strike out in self-defense is, to him, a denial of his humanity. It is embracing the animalistic, natural right to harm an entity that seeks to harm him. However, that's not quite so in his situation, because this entity has already harmed him repeatedly for no just cause and was now threatening to end his life. Even if Ken knew that injuries which would be at least disfiguring or maiming, if not fatal, to a normal human would be within his body's capability to heal completely, there was still the aspect of Jason harming Ken for no wrong committed or threat posed by Ken to him. The harm was still unjust and severe, and I would argue sufficiently severe that Ken would've been justified from the outset to use maiming or deadly violence to prevent it from happening to him, and especially so when we consider the level of violence Jason used in Ken's abduction. Ken or any of his friends in Anteiku would've been justified at least naturally, but also likely legally, to cut Jason in two during the abduction, if they were able to do so. As for the rest of Ken's exchanges with Rize, 1. I can fully support him not letting her have control ever, 2. I guess him eating her was accepting the ghoul aspect of his new nature, 3. her rejection of that aforementioned sentiment of civilized society was likely intended to show that many ghouls aren't like the ones at Anteiku, simply people who have a unique and unfortunate dietary requirement, but rather have embraced their baser desires and are thus harmful to society and anyone around them (read: there are some ghouls whom it is okay to fight and kill) and 4. she and he reached the right conclusion that Mrs. Kaneki should've cut off her sister. It was already difficult for Mrs. Kaneki, a single parent, to provide for her child and herself. Working herself to the point that it was detrimental to her health for someone who was using her was foolish, and she could've and should've said "no" years before she died. I'm not sure about Ken's hair going white like that. Supposedly it's something that shock or trauma can do, but that should only be to the hair in the root, the only living part of the hair. The color of the hair beyond the root should be fixed, as it is composed of dead cells. Regarding Ken saying that Jason tasted like rotten meat, it could be taken as a commentary on cannibalistic Jason's corruption. Jason was a predator that ate other predators. In nature, predators do kill one another, but it's usually as a way to remove competition. It's more rare that a predator will eat the competing predator, especially when it's a member of the same species, but that's exactly what Jason eating other ghouls was. It's as though cannibalism is avoided, even by "dumb" animals, when possible. Jason choosing to do so can be considered to be polluting himself, thus "spoiling" his mind, soul, and even body. This is probably looking too deeply into a line that was merely intended to throw him off-balance, but eh. HxH - Wow, Melody has really great hearing, but even with that, she could barely hear Killua when he was running. That's skill and/or talent on both of their parts. I wonder when Neon will learn that her fortune telling power has been stolen. Also, I wonder if it's possible for her to get it back. Maybe the various stolen powers return to their original owners (provided that person is still alive) if Chrollo's book is burned. Gon is a good friend, and probably better than Kurapika deserves, to give himself up so Kurapika could escape. Nice way to play dumb, Killua. I think they bought it. Poor Squalla and his now-single girlfriend. Lupin - I feel like this whole escapade could've been avoided if the soccer star would've been honest with his coach and the team management about his deteriorating eyesight. Then they could reveal to any regulatory body for soccer in Italy that he was taking a treatment for this diagnosed condition which would trigger a false positive for performance-enhancing drugs. As for him being benched by his coach or the team manager, I feel like they wouldn't do it as long as they felt he could still perform and wasn't getting hit repeatedly from his blind side, meaning he was in no enhanced danger to himself. Fujiko looked even better this episode than last time. Maybe it's that she didn't have competition from another hottie having substantial screentime. Shippuden - I don't understand how chakra-infused giant slugs could protect people from physical trauma, but oh well. Let's just count the citizens of Konoha lucky not to have been crushed to smears and buried in rubble. It's interesting that the Yahiko Pain had to use almost all the chakra from whoever is controlling the Pain bodies to use Almighty Push on that scale. Good work, Gamabunta, Gamahiro and Gamaken, on handling the summoned giant beasts so adeptly. Things have been going almost as well for Naruto, between breaking the cyborg Pain body and knocking out the jutsu-absorbing Pain body. Naruto should've cut that one's head off while he had the chance, but attacking the others with the Rasen-shuriken was another option. At least he's able to throw it now, meaning he probably is out of its damage zone. That was impressive leg strength, Kiba. Also, I still don't believe that Kakashi is really dead. He's probably just having an N.D.E. GitS - I read The Catcher in the Rye years and years ago. There's no way I would be able to remember a line from it well enough to tell if it had been altered like Togusa did. Unless he was inspired by the incident earlier in the series to read it since then, I will certainly credit him with a better memory than I have. If I understand the situation correctly, the basis for the scandal regarding the Murai Vaccine is that it was rightfully denied approval for general treatment because the mechanism for its success couldn't be identified, but it was made available to the wealthy and powerful after Dr. Murai's death on a secretive basis. The MHLW raid was murder to cover corruption in the form of those in power using and making an effective treatment which was denied to the public available to cohorts and those able to bribe it out of them.

Bleach v. 70 I didn't expect this to focus so heavily on Mayuri. Also, that's some freaky power Pernida has going there.

Renji strikes me as the proud papa type.

Genshiken: Second Season v. 10. If memory serves, the first Genshiken manga was only 9 volumes. I don't think the numbering in Japan is the same though, since I think they're both considered one manga series there. Keiko sure did weaponize what she learned. I liked the way they broke the fourth wall when referencing the shrine gate renovations.

In last Thursday, Bleach v. 70 and Dimension W v. 6.

We can hope for the best, but I expect to be thoroughly disappointed. Annie, Bertolt, Eren, Reiner and Ymir make five that I recall at this point. And yes, it was an unexpectedly funny line. As long as they keep Hinami out of sight, she should be okay. However, yes, keeping her far from the battle would've been a better option. Tsume is voiced by Mary McGlynn, so she certainly has that working for her. Jack - I still think that it would've been possible for two of Ashi's sisters to be alive. Since she and Jack survived the fall, so could those other two of the Septuplets. I don't know why Jack didn't remove the dagger long before he did. He was on the run, and thus he would've used his abdominal muscles when moving. That would be muscles moving around the blade, keeping the wound fresh and exacerbating his blood loss. Back when I took a First Aid course, the recommended course of action for an imbedded object like that was 1. to keep the person from moving (unless it was necessary to evacuate them from a dangerous environment before beginning treatment), 2. to use the dressing to attempt to immobilize the object so it doesn't move around in the wound cavity, and 3. to leave the removal to skilled medical professionals. Since Jack was highly unlikely to find such help in the wilderness and ultimately removed the blade himself, I don't know why he didn't simply do it sooner. Yes, he only did it once he found a place to shelter, but it remained in him, constantly working sharp edges against flesh, for a long time, making him be in much worse shape by the time he did remove it (even to the point of passing out) than he otherwise would've been had he removed it as soon as the left the river. DBS - I know that we're supposed to focus on how strong Goku and Vegeta are, and Gohan has done little in the way of training since before the Tournament we had in DBZK, but I don't like him jobbing to baseline Frieza. Sure, Gohan was shot with piercing, not explosive, energy blasts, and those would inflict deep tissue damage, but his Super Saiyan form being overcome so effortlessly doesn't seem consistent with how Goku fought on even footing with Fourth Form Frieza back on Namek. Sure, Frieza trained for four months, but I doubt that he would be able to gain that much strength in that little time. I'll admit that back when I saw DBZ, I didn't notice Ginyu Frog being transported with everyone else. (Sidebar: if Ginyu Frog was transported onto land and Porunga similarly relocated all the other animals along with the Namekians, our humans, and Gohan, then there would've been a lot of fish and other aquatic life from Namek that would've died by being stranded out of water.) I did spot it in DBZK, though, but I really, really hoped I was wrong in thinking it meant that Ginyu survived. At least Ginyu taking over Tagoma's body has spared us that nozzle's attitude and grating personality. Heh, Frieza thought Trunks was his own father. The air-conditioning in Bulma's ship must be great - that ice cream didn't look like it had even started to melt. Goku and Vegeta being trapped in a more extreme version of the Hyperbolic Time Chamber is fine for training. I liked that Vegeta figured out how to contain his energy in order to move first. Judging by the preview, though, they won't have much more time to train in there, so they had better make the most of it. DBZK - Don't worry, Chi Chi. Goten and Trunks are far away from the danger of the arena. The blast intentionally fired into the stands showed how dedicated Vegeta was to fighting Goku. Bulma was mere yards away from the area he destroyed with that shot, and he didn't even bother to look to see whether she was in that direction or not before firing it. I'm not sure whether Goku would've blasted Shin, but he did get Shin to end his opposition to the fight and focus on stopping Babidi before Majin Buu's awakening. Babidi does strike me as a punk who would die easily if Gohan and/or Shin can get past Dabura. AoT: 2nd Course - Maybe I simply missed it, but when did Bertolt put on ODM gear? I don't remember him wearing a rig when Reiner revealed their secret to Eren. Oh well. Pixis seems like he'd be a fun drunk most of the time. Yes, yes. Eren has always been a scrappy hothead. We already knew that. At least Mikasa was understanding regarding Armin's perfectly logical explanation for why they hadn't yet given chase. You watch your mouth, Hannes. Eren may be inconsiderate of his friends, but Carla was a nice lady, so don't call him what you did. Even injured, Hange could think up the most likely course of action that the traitors took. Good on her. Atta girl, Krista! Now go save your girlfriend (if I can't have my Armin x Krista ship, then I guess the Krista x Ymir ship isn't a bad alternative)! Judging by the steam rolling off both Eren and Ymir and that her arm is re-growing, it shouldn't be a long-term problem for Eren that he's missing both arms right now. TG - I can agree with Yoshimura's decision to use the distraction of the attacking CCG forces to cover their raid to rescue Ken. Still, I fear for Yoshimura's safety above everyone else's. It seems like taking the unifying element of Anteiku's leadership from our group is the kind of thing the show would do. Well, that sucks for everyone else. Jason wasn't always the way he is, but he was captured by the CCG and tortured by an evil Inspector until he (Jason) suffered a psychotic break that enabled him to escape, and he's been a sadist ever since, visiting his traumas on others for the pleasure of it. I want to know not only what the compound Jason injected into Ken (INSIDE his eyelid! OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OW OWWWWW!!!) to neutralize his ghoul powers is (I know it was named, but I don't remember what it was), but also whether it is synthetic or natural, who developed/discovered it, and how they learned it was effective. Okay, so Banjo suspected Rize was dead, but appreciated Ken not bluntly telling him so out of respect for his feelings. That's fine. What I don't think is fine is this sneaking suspicion I have about what Banjo and his flunkies are saying to Ken when they clean him up during recovery lulls in the torture. I think that the talk about them wanting to free Ken and get him away from Jason is part of the torture. Jason wants them to say those kinds of things so Ken will keep the hope of external rescue alive. That way, not only does Ken not give up on living, but he's also set up for greater psychological damage when these people who pretended to be on his side don't follow through and help him like they said is their intention. Additionally, as long as Ken has his mind fixed on the idea of external rescue, then he won't be thinking about and planning a way to free himself. It's the kind of evil twist that I think Jason would savor. Some things didn't make sense to me about the CCG raid on the ghoul stronghold in the mall. First, if the area has been evacuated and they know there are hundreds of ghouls inside, why not call in an airstrike on the building from the SDF or the American Air Force? Yes, it would destroy the building and greatly damage others around it, but those are all just things. Things can be rebuilt or repaired. Yes, it would be expensive, but why risk the lives of your people unnecessarily? Second, since they did go with a manned assault, how are firearms effective against ghouls? If ghoul skin can break a steel blade, how is it not impervious to bullets, which are all likely lead or copper-encased lead? Sure, there are more exotic rounds available, but I doubt they would want to risk contaminating the structure with radioactivity if they were unwilling to blow it up with bombs. The only thing impacts from standard ammunition should do is impart the force of the impacts to the ghouls, which shouldn't be deadly without penetration of their bodies by the bullets. Third, how did the ghouls get their hands on so many firearms in a country where private ownership is illegal? Maybe they got them from the 11th Ward's CCG branch armory. Maybe Jason really is in with the yakuza and used that connection to acquire them. We don't know, but I would like an explanation there, even though I doubt I'll get it. Fourth, regarding Touka's brother specifically and the other ghouls in general, why didn't those Inspectors go for a headshot, if we're presuming firearms work when they shouldn't? He obviously used his kagune to defelect the rounds, so why not start aiming for his head rather than sticking with center-mass shots? Oh yes, Juzo. I had a feeling you'd be the entertaining kind of crazy, and you're living up to that impression so far. Poor commander guy and his trashed motorcycle. Still, when Juzo said that one of the ghouls "broke," that was a little disturbing, even in the context of this being an extermination mission. Amon heeding Mado's advice about needing to be sneaky to defeat more powerful and more numerous opponents is serving him well, as is the quinque Mado recommended. I'm also curious as to where Team Anteiku got the robes that match this militant ghoul group. Maybe Uta made them. If he makes masks, maybe he also has more traditional wardrobe-making skills. HxH - Bravo, Squalla. Eliza, the attendant with whom it looked like he had mental communication as she left, is a pretty lady. Get it, dude! Oh, you're a crafty one, Hisoka, forging fortunes to mislead the P.T. for your own purpose. Dagnabbit, Kurapika! Why do you need to target Pakunoda first? Her power only works if she can touch you, so as long as you can evade capture, she's no real threat. Let her and her great rack stick around for as long as you can. Blah, blah, Kurapika can set power-raising conditions for others as well. As if he needed more hax. Koltopi using his copy power to make decoy buildings was clever. Now Killua will need to get closer to conduct his surveillance. Plus, Killua was smart to try talking Gon out of going after the P.T. after the reward had been withdrawn. Killua quite sensibly tried to shift Gon's focus back to their plan to obtain a copy of Greed Island. It's too bad Gon is stubborn and won't let this go. Lupin - I like Rebecca. She's hot (great legs, nice rack) and has a fun attitude. I hope we get to see her again. It might be the more reserved dress Fujiko wore, but she looked a little less curvaceous than she did in the last Lupin series we had. Still, the change in the shade of her hair really works for me. Zenigata would probably have less trouble with local authorities if he or his superiors would call ahead of his arrival to brief them on their suspicions regarding Lupin's activities. I liked Jigen's explanation for leaving Goemon out of the loop being that Goemon is a terrible liar and wouldn't be able to help but give away the plan with his expression and glances around. Shippuden - Yes, Shizune let the others know how Pain was controlling the bodies, but it put her in a position to die from one of the Pain bodies sucking out her soul. That stinks. She was pretty. The roster of toads updating itself when one of those listed dies is a handy feature, but either it takes a while to work (didn't Danzo kill that messenger toad four or more episodes ago?), or the toad in question fought hard to stay alive. At least now Fukasaku, Naruto and Shima knew that something was amiss in Konoha, and they were lucky enough that she was near Konoha to summon them there. Sure, it was too late to stop Yahiko's body from leveling the city, which I knew would be the case from spoilers, but now they're there with reinforcements from Gamabunta, Gamahiro and Gamaken. GitS - Like with Fem, I'm curious as to how Curzkowa was able to pack so much weaponry into her arm, including the deployment mechanisms, and still have the arm be functional. Maybe that's why she wasn't able to overpower Togusa instantly; there's so much else in the arm that she has minimal volume available for the ordinary range of motion actuators, meaning she lacks the typical strength of a full-prosthetic cyborg. I'm curious as to how the former P.M. became an Assemblyman. Maybe in the show's universe, the P.M. is elected to the position from amongst the Assembly(wo)men, like with our Speaker of the House.

I feel like Rize wouldn't have been inclined to protect the 20th Ward anyway. She struck me as the kind that wouldn't care about outbursts of violence as long as she could still hunt and/or got to pick off some of the wounded for easy meals. I feel like she'd have no interest in serving as a deterrent. Presumably the ghouls from the other Wards would know her better than we do at this point due to having much more experience with her than we got in our one episode with her. If she left that kind of impression on me, I'd be surprised if the other ghouls had a different perception of her. Ang: It looked like Grandpa Joseph trimmed his beard, and it made him look more hard core to me.

I forget when it arrived, but Genshiken: Second Season v. 10.

Soul Eater v. 23 - 25. It's hard to believe that I'm done with it. I've alreary read SE NOT!, so I don't even have that side story to seek. It's been a while in coming, but especially in v. 25 Star was amazing. I think it was a better ending than Courage Punch, but poor cracked-out Moon. Also, poor Kim... butt-letter writing.

Agreed. Agreed again. Yes, it's worth repeating. The point is that good. Also, I only saw that one scene with Grandpa Joseph at the end of Battle Tendency. I'll admit he's still buff and now has rugged good looks. Jack - It's a shame Jack lost his sweet ride and armor in fighting the Septuplets. I still don't understand how the Septuplets were able to zero in on which sarcophagus held Jack. DBS - Yep, training through fighting is how Saiyans tend to learn best. I'm curious as to where Whis sent Goku and Vegeta. At first, I thought that Gohan fired an energy blast through the red guy rather than the opportunistic gray-blue dude shooting through the red guy to hit Gohan. At least Piccolo and Tien were able to combine efforts to save Gohan. Gray-blue dude is a dick. No wonder Frieza likes his attitude. I enjoyed seeing Roshi bulk up to whup some scrubs. Krillin's friends and teacher had a point. He might not be able to beat the Big Bads, but he's fought and trained for most of his life with people who can. He should trust in his training and just take action. DBZK - Dabura v. Gohan was pretty good. It's a shame Vegeta couldn't keep his mouth shut and gave Dabura the idea to have Babidi turn our Saiyan prince. It's probably not a good thing that Babidi transported our group back to a populated area. AoT: 2nd Course - I'm ashamed of Mikasa for trying to cut through the plates on the Armored titan for as long as she did, even to the point that she needed to take all of Armin's spare blades, before she remembered their instruction in military history regarding the advantages of armor and its weak points. She should've known to target the gaps long before she did. It also took Eren too long to remember that technique can frequently, but not always, overcome a difference in power in hand-to-hand combat. I did like his internal monologue that the next time they invade, they shouldn't teach him how to beat them before making their move. Thanks for that help, Annie. Now I'm curious as to whether Annie and Mikasa ever did spar and who won, if there was a clear winner. When Eren's Rogue acknowledged that he heard, understood and agreed with Hange's assessment of the situation, I think she started to get "excited." Aw, crap. Even with Reiner's Armored in a hold that was going to cripple or kill his titan form, he still managed to power his way into a position where Bertolt's Colossal could help. This is the "not always" part of technique winning out over power. If the more powerful fighter has enough strength, then they can either break the hold or still move to the disadvantage of the technique fighter. Some power gaps are too large to be overcome by technique alone. The Colossal's steam shell of defense was effective against people. Maybe cannons would be able to punch through, but it would take a lot of very controlled hits in rapid succession to take the head off from the nape of the neck upward. TG - I'm not sure why people are seeking Rize now, but my guess is they want her to join this group fighting the Inpectors, Aogiri Tree, which I'll simply call Aogiri (unless that turns out to be the name of a character we have yet to meet). It sure is inconvenient for Ken that he carries her scent because of her organs inside him. I know Mado was a psychopath with a license, but Jason is every bit the psychopath Mado was, if not worse. At least part of Mado's cruelty was in denying the legitimacy of ghoul emotions and relationships, considering their emotional pain to be fraudulent from a philosophical perspective (that only humans are truly capable of such depth and bonds), making such displays mocking imitations of humanity. Jason, a pure sadist, simply enjoys inflicting pain and suffering. We saw that in how brutally he thrashed Ken before abducting him. Yoshimura had a point that they needed to go about rescuing Ken intelligently. Rushing off without information or a plan like the others wanted would only get them captured or killed. Plus, they knew that Aogiri wanted Ken alive; if not, they wouldn't have bothered to take him. I didn't expect Tsukiyama to help, but there he was. Also, I want Hinami to stay far away from anything related to this. She's suffered enough and been in more than enough danger for a child her age. Even if all she were to try would be to lure some Investigators toward where Ken was being held to use them as a diversion, that would still be too much danger for her. Yes, I would expect Anteiku to be closed for a while. Cleaning up all that blood so they would pass a health inspection could take a couple days, and the repairs would take days, if not weeks, as well, depending upon contractor availability. Oh, so Juzo, the person who pickpocketed Ken, is a third-class Investigator. He seems like the fun kind of crazy, but I am curious as to why he has all those stitches. I'm not sure evacuating the 11th Ward is a good idea. A mass-movement of humans guided by Inspectors seems like a prime target for this coalition that took out that Ward's CCG branch. While such a move might be successful in luring out these ghouls, it would also put a large number of civilians in the combat area. Doubtlessly these ghouls wouldn't hesitate to attack the crowd to cause panic and confusion in an attempt to throw the Inspectors off-guard, but even if they didn't and targeted the Inspectors directly, there would still be a panicked, stampeding mob, and surely there would be numerous people injured in that rush, if not trampled to death. Mado left all of his quinques to Amon. That was surprisingly decent of him, to assure his partner was well-armed. HxH - Kurapikia was right that his secret to a powerful nen technique wouldn't work for the others. Killua was right in reasoning that they should try their best to avoid Nobunaga and Pakunoda now that they know Kurapika is the Chain User and the secret to why he's so powerful. I liked Gon trying to cheer up Kurapika by getting him to focus on his other objective of recovering his slain family members' remains. It's a shame Hisoka had to burst that happy bubble by texting Kurapika with, "yo, the P.T.'s totally still alive. Lawl." Crap, Chrollo did steal Neon's power. I'm curious as to what the creature we saw above his hand was. I don't recall seeing any such thing when she wrote fortunes. Maybe I looked away from the screen at the wrong time. Regarding the fortunes Chrollo wrote for the other P.T. members, of course the two most stacked women are slated to die. At least it looks like Machi will survive. Soooo... Meteor City is like where Radical Edward grew up, but without a kindly nun to try to guide the children into not being criminals and/or horrible people. MSG: U - Two recaps, show? That's excessive. So, if I understand it correctly, Links and Riddhe combined efforts to make a three-stage energy shield to protect Megalonica. They didn't truly block the beam, but they did delay it long enough for the firing solution to be inaccurate due to Megalonica's orbital path. I'm cool with Audrey using the transmission capabilities of Megalonica to announce the secret of the Box to all of Earth and the Colonies. Let the citizens decide what they want to do about it. I liked Bright taking the Vist woman into custody for formal questioning after the transmission. I'm not sure why Marida's Force Ghost told Links that she could see and understand more now than she did before, but between her questioning and Audrey and Riddhe's beckoning, Links decided to go back to being a physical form. Sure. Why not? Yes, Riddhe, you helped save the M.C. and the day, but you didn't die in the process, so I still don't consider you to have atoned for killing Marida. The fuuuuuudge, show? Marida had to die, but the bag of dicks that was Angelo got to live. Blargh. Once the original charter is examined and deemed to be authentic, I feel like more people in power other than the Vist woman will be questioned, charged and convicted for their roles in keeping the secret of the Box. In all, the show was okay, but nothing great. Marida was the best part of the series for me, and it killed her. The action was fine, though frequently excessively brutal and deadly. In that regard, it was realistic. Shippuden - I doubt Naruto would be able to do something which the toads and other practitioners of the Sage jutsu have been unable to do in decades or centuries. However, it did look like Fukasaku gave him an idea there at the end. It showed maturity that Naruto taught Konohamaru the Rasengan rather than some new variation on the Sexy Jutsu. The Pain body we spent time watching this episode had a rather severe lie-detecting technique. That giant face, which only people in his grasp could see, would kill someone who lied to him. It's an interesting wrinkle that it wouldn't work on clones. It showed impressive resolve, camaraderie and sense of duty that no one was willing to tell the Pain body Naruto's whereabouts. If they knew, that is. GitS - Togusa had better learn to knock before entering a female's room. Before he'd believe it, such privacy will be important to his daughter. Batou played his part as the visible security, which is to say a decoy, well, since it allowed the therm-optically camouflaged Major to sneak up behind Yu. However, I feel like it showed a danger to cyberization - kidnapping. The device the Major used to immobilize Yu likely is only legally available to law enforcement, but enterprising criminals likely can get their hands on one. If all it takes to drop a person with as cyberbrain is to plug this thing into some ports on the back of their neck, then that strikes me as something which would make people very vulnerable to opportunistic criminals seeking to get ransoms or chop people up for parts to sell on the black market.