Hi friends! Big things afoot this week! The Promised Neverland is getting an anime adaptation! Notice on the cover the TPN main characters are climbing out of your television? 😀 More locally, Curiously Dead Cat now has 31 WordPress followers! Thank you all, especially those of you who take the time to like and comment, and to our newest followers:

The Luminous Mongoose

WeeaBroDerek

Chaotic Lass

A Nerdy Perspective

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Now, on to WSJ!

Jump Starts

Momiji no Kisetsu 3

MnK is back with the third installment of its pervy shogi weirdness! Let’s see if it manages to up its game any, pun intended…

Well… the first page centers on our hero squatting on the toilet, pants down. He notes, “My stomach is singing its heart out.” You know, I really didn’t need that image or this metaphor. -1 points, +1 bottle of bleach. (For the eyes.)

Once again, we get a flashback which, surprisingly, so far doesn’t seem to involve any nudity. A couple hours before his date with Madame Toilette, our hero has made it to the second round of the shogi qualifiers. Now he has to play games against the Uruk-Hai.

Whoops! Sorry, I meant the Shorei-Kai. What are those? I honestly don’t remember from last week. There’s a detailed schematic here detailing who they are and the different levels among them, and you know what? If I wanted to read schematics, I’d crack open my van’s car manual. -1

… Aaaaand we’re back in the restroom—I mean, the present, as our protag turns out to be having a case of the runs in the middle of his written test. Yes, he’s going to fail the test if he doesn’t finish “singing his stomach’s heart out” quickly because he’ll run out of time. The suspense would be killing me if… well, if I cared, I suppose. And if I didn’t know 100,000,000% for certain that he’s going to pass. I mean, that’s how these things work, right? -1 points—Ye gods, as he’s washing his hands, he looks over and sees someone puking on the floor!!!! Please tell me that those are all the bodily emissions we’re going to have in this episode, all right? -1 point, +1 bleach. (For the floor.)

The Expectorator turns out to know the HFSC (“hot female shogi champion”), who if you’ll remember is our protag’s teacher (and literally, that’s all you need to remember to understand this series so far). They meet and she whips the fudgesicle out of her mouth and thrusts it into his. It’s, um, well, pretty obviously, um, yeah. And makes no plot sense at all. -1 point, +1 bleach. (Gotta clean that fudgesicle somehow.)

Apparently the HFSC and the Expectorator have a “promise” that they made in the distant past. Clearly we’re meant to suspect it was romantic in nature, and, knowing how these things go, I’m almost certain it’s not. What it is we don’t find out because they have to go back to the test. And really, shouldn’t they have been running back there anyway? It’s like everyone suddenly forgot for a couple minutes that their professional shogi futures are on the line. -1 point

Our hero starts his game with the Uruk-hai Shore-Kai member, and this actually works. Nothing spectacular or ground-breaking, just an effective immersion in the excitement of a semi-pro shogi match, and it works. I found myself drawn into the story for a brief time. +1

He wins his game, and walks in on the Expectorator reminding the girl of their promise again. This time, we find out that it was… drum roll to take him on as her student! Called it! And then she says, “What are you talking about?” The Expectorator needs to do a 1-year study because reasons, and he’s decided to do it under the girl’s direction because hormones reasons. Then he challenges the protag to see which of them is most worthy to be her student. So… that whole promise thing is just left unexplained? As in, why did he think she had promised him something so significant? -1

That’s the end of the jump start, and not a moment too soon! Final score:

-5 points, 3 bottles of Bleach

(Look, you knew I had to make an Ichigo joke, right? Disclaimer: I could not find an original source or rights-holder for this image; here is the location I ran across it. If it’s your creation, let me know and I’ll add a credit line.)

Kimi wo Shinryakuseyo (Invade You) 2

Chapter 2 of this ET comedy with a wretchedly-contrived backstory is here! I’ll give a pass on the opening shots of the protag faux-assaulting the heroine, as well as the poorly-designed cover page, since they’re not technically part of the story.

Our protag, the alien-in-human-form, wakes up and stretches. He’s wearing an “I’m a Human” t-shirt and, after a brief moment of hating it, now I want one too. +1 point

He can stretch his arm across the room and turn off his alarm clock. That seems way too convenient and also not quite in keeping with the limits of his power we explored last week—although to be fair, they didn’t really spell out the limits very well. Plus, I’m jealous of the power to turn off my alarm without getting out of bed. -1

Kid walks into the backyard and meets a little alien dog playing with what I presume is a little alien ball. (Reading that line back, to myself it sounds a bit weird.) When the dog barks, it sounds like “Niii!” Since this totally reminds me of the Knights Who Say Nee, I like it. +1

The dog sneezes and sets the yard on fire. I should criticize the obvious problematic mechanics of a fire hound running loose in your backyard—apparently in plain sight, too—but it’s funny. +1

Boy hugs dog. Dog coughs up flaming hairball and ruins his t-shirt. Hahahaha! +1

Boy takes fire hound for a walk in the park. What could go wrong? I’m looking forward to seeing what will happen, but can’t overlook how ridiculously terrible this idea is. -1

The girl who suspects he’s an alien shows up. (She’s been stalking him, apparently carrying a frisbee around with her the whole time.) After she bugs him for a bit, he turns away to focus his attention on his dog. This scene is well-executed, as she points out that it can’t possibly be a dog, because “regular dogs catch frisbees with their mouths. They don’t catch them with their tails.” The look on the boy’s face is priceless! +1

Boy tries to roll with it, insisting that there are no aliens, and the ‘dog’ breaks the frisbee. With its tail. +1

Girl dresses up in a dog ‘costume’ that is, ahem, on the skimpy side, and declares that she will infiltrate the boy’s household pretending to be the dog. But, you wouldn’t, like, just announce it, would you? -1

Girl pretends to be dog and the fire hound falls for it. He jumps on her, licks her, and wraps his slobbery tongue all over her body. His tongue is like a long skinny roll of tape, and so it ends up basically tying her up. It’s like BDSM with soggy duct tape. Is… is this really the right magazine for borderline hentai? I’m doubtful, so… -1

Dog decides to cough fire, boy pushes girl out of the way so she won’t see or get hurt, and falls on her in a compromising position again. Seriously, they already tried this one last week. -1

Episode wraps up pretty uneventfully here. Final score:

0 points even

Strong Continuing Series

Promised Neverland

Promised Neverland is getting an anime!!! WOOHOO!

Ahem. This chapter continues the mental and physical game of wits between Emma and her companions on the one hand, and alien Clint Eastwood Leuvis on the other. Leuvis makes for a chilling antagonist. He’s a quick reasoner, and it’s all the more frightening because he’s not sitting back in his comfy chair doing long-range planning like the main characters of Death Note. He’s figuring out what should be fairly obvious things that aren’t (at least to me), and doing it all under pressure in the moment. The ease with which he unravels Emma’s plan and undermines it puts him on an altogether different level than the previous antagonists in the series. It looks like the jig is up for our friends…

My Hero Academia

So after last week’s anime episode, there was some speculation on Anitwitter as to whether Kamui Woods and Mt. Lady were an item. This week’s manga seems to confirm this in a back-handed sort of way:

The big news this week is the announcement of the annual rankings of the top pro heroes. It’s the first year in a very long time that All Might hasn’t been #1, and it’s not really a surprise, so I’ll give one spoiler by saying that the new #1 is Endeavor (and let’s face it, the guy deserves it).

What was neat about this episode, as they introduced the top heroes, is that we got to see a nice view into the larger world beyond UA and the main plot. Of the top ten heroes, I’m pretty sure we haven’t seen at least six of them before, and a seventh just barely made a cameo at some point, I think. None of them have any direct affiliation with UA, except that Endeavor has a kid going there (which you knew if you’ve spent more than five seconds on the series) and Kamui Woods helped with security at the stadium during the tournament arc. Oh, and Best Jeanist was one of the heroes the UA students could intern with. A lesser series would have had the top ten stocked with Eraserhead, Present Mic, and the like. Glad to see MHA doing something different here.

Black Clover

Sister Lily gets a moment to shine! As the “converted” magic knights continue slaughtering the Clover Kingdom’s residents, one of them attacks the town of Hage, where Asta and Yuno are from. Sister Lily’s “Holy Fist of Love” gives the villagers and orphans a moment of respite. Even her enemy acknowledges her: “Are you what they call a royal?” Then the cavalry in the form of You-Know-Who show up.

Dr. Stone

The villagers finish their Stone Age cell phone, only to have Senku tell them that… they need another cell phone to talk to each other! After a moment of griping, they get back to work. Meanwhile, Senku learns about one of their old myths that turns out to actually be a coded message from his father! It leads him to a time capsule, inside of which is something vaguely resembling a CD…

We Never Learn

The pretty standard romantic hijinks continue. Two things make this chapter stand out: the gag of Ogata’s father misreading “100” as “1,000” and making way too many bowls of udon for the festival; and the promise of some upcoming actual plot development.

I feel like we’re possibly straying back towards Nisekoi-like levels here, which would be great.

Robot x Laserbeam

Ginro and Robo continue their golf duel! (It’s more exciting than it sounds.) Man, I am not a fan of golf, but watching this series weave easily between not-quite-realistic (Robo’s super-concentration that allows him to copy golf swings he’s seen once, basically like a golf Sharingan) and realistic (approaching the last hole, Robo’s hands are sweaty and the club slips, messing up his swing) is fun. Plus it’s exciting to watch Robo and Ginro each top the other’s previous swing as the stakes of the game get higher and higher. Every week, I’m like, “Do I really want to read about golf again?” and then I start reading and can’t stop.

Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Review

One Piece

Food Wars

Final Thoughts

Thank you for reading! Please tell me what you thought in the comments! 🙂 I always enjoy getting feedback from all of you.