fate/zero 24 and hyouka 9
Categories: episodic review, fate/zero, hyouka
Tagged: fate/zero, hyouka
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Happy Father’s Day?
There’s just something abut this series and women being strangled. This is Irisveil-like substance’s second strangling. She just can’t catch a break. More importantly, Kiritsugu should have shot her and strangled Ilya to avoid being cursed. He needs to use his ammo on those who can fight back– this should be common sense to him at this point in his life.
This whole riddle thing was silly in that Kiritsugu had enough time to kill 200 people all across the boat, but he didn’t have time to repair it? What? We need to get detective Houtarou involved.
(Reminds me of The Dark Knight… wait, Joker managed to corrupt the police department, hire an army of 100% loyal footmen that outnumber the police force, and he managed to plant these bombs in these two ferries? Yet, he burns all the money he has stolen and ruthlessly killed his underlings for questioning why they weren’t getting paid? Who the fuck would work for him? Surely not 5,000 people, because that’s what The Dark Knight more or less implied with this huge minion army. Just not believable. Not even Starbucks can hire and train 5,000 people in Manhattan overnight let alone turn them into a killing machine feared by the NYPD.)
Kind of an anti-climatic battle with Zerky since (a) it’s just two people swinging swords at each other badly (b) the Kirei vs. Kiritsugu battle was a lot more interesting. Felt weird neither pulled out a deus ex machina noble phantasm either. And having Zerky speak at the very end when he hasn’t spoken the entire series… well… he shouldn’t. Lancelot shouldn’t have to explain himself to Arthur. Makes it more fun this way.
How come no one can animate a sword fight anymore? Jubei-chan was over eight years ago, and it’s still my go-to example for anime sword fights:
We need Akitaro Daichi back in our lives. Bottom line.
“Double accel!”
The fact the fight was held in a room with those white lights really brought home that this is just a poor man’s Yu-Gi-Oh! card battle. The internal monologues of Kirei and Kiritsugu trying to out do and out think each other made it even more Yu-Gi-Oh!-like… not that I’m complaining since I enjoyed Yu-Gi-Oh!. I felt like Kirei should have gone, “Haha! I know your ‘Double Accel’ magic card, but I can use my ‘Command Spell’ and steal your card!” with Kiritsugu replying, “Oh yeah? You activated my trap card, which lets me double my ‘Double Accel’ into ‘Square Accel’! And then I’ll place this card face down…”
Between this show, Space Bros, and Jazz Bros, this season is ending with a bang. I’m in active disbelief when each episode ends because I just want to see the next one. It’s been a great season. Too bad next one looks terrible, except for Sword Art Online and Bacteria Bros.
Loved Gilgy’s method of proposing to Saber. What a romantic. The whole series came down to Gilgy wanting to bonk Saber, and Kirei wanting to anal rape everyone else. I think Gilgy should have just roofied Saber’s drink. Also, Gilgy manages to toss a sword at Saber the moment she twitches, but he can’t toss out at Kiritsugu as he’s limping around giving orders? Mmm…
Kiritsugu is pretty good at causing emo facial distortions. Gotta give him that. While anime is tropetastically misogynistic, I wonder how Fate/Zero fares. It’s not as bad as Rizelmine, which advocated spousal abuse, nor is it as neutral as SlayerS, which did both good and bad things with female depictation. But it is interesting that in this show, women are the desired prizes for men. Saber was nothing more than a prize to Iskandar (minion), Zerky (hate sex?), and Gilgy (kinky sex?). Irisviel is both a woman and the Holy Grail prize. While men die from gunshot wounds or stabbings, women die by being strangled by men. Seems like an odd pattern to me. And then you examine Kiritsugu’s history, and he just uses and discards women… Shirley, Natalia… Maiya… and now Irisviel and Saber. But he never uses and discards men in similar fashion. Maybe he learned this from his dad who used and discard poor Shirley.
(But… but… that’s anime! Haven’t you seen Guilty Crown? Well, I have. I just find it interesting that the end prizes of Fate/Zero are women.)
This episode almost put me to sleep. The best part of it, bar none, is when Chitanda gets wasted on chocolate liquor. The funny thing about this is that I have two boxes of this stuff sitting in my house from when I was in Europe, and I’m terrified of trying it. Chocolate and hard liquor? Seems like a bad combo… for my health. But good for Chitanda– she’ll go far with that iron liver of hers.
And that face… so cute.
Hey, is this the plot for some Lupin? When Kamisama no Memochou dragged out mysteries to two episodes, I groaned. When Hyouka drags out a mystery to three or four episodes, I’m like, “Kyoto! Haven’t you tortured us enough with Endless Eight!” There’s no reason why this arc needed to be more than two episodes. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. This episode where three people come in just to provide three pieces of information? Pure filler. Surely, they could have provided Houtarou the script and log last episode, for one.
(Also, who shoots a movie, besides Michael Bay and Gainax, without having a script for the ending? Just seems like a bad idea. And wouldn’t the writer have notes? I don’t write a lot of screenplays, but, when I do, I tend to write down notes.)
I just like this screenshot. Though comparing Hyouka‘s mysteries to Sherlock Holmes is like comparing a Razer scooter to a BMW. It’s not the same. Houtarou and gang do zero investigation. They sit around, eat snacks, get drunk, and have evidence tossed at them. It’s like K-On! but even lazier… and the light music club had Yui and Ritsu… tough to beat on laziness, but, somehow, Classics Club is blowing them out of the water right now.
Three MVPs…
1. Chitanda.
2. Holy Grail.
3. Satoshi.
8 Responses to “fate/zero 24 and hyouka 9”
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I don’t really care about Hyouka’s plot or mysteries. A drunk moe Chitanda in ponytails wearing meido outfit is enough for me.
I’m disappointed. Not because the three interviewees were a waste of time and this arc should have been wrapped up in 2 episodes, but because drunk Chitanda wasn’t all over Hotarou.
I second the mention of Jubei-chan. The sword fight scenes were outstanding and the two series are one of my all-time favorites.
A second, more realistic set of fight depictions , and absolutely one of the best was in Seirei no Moribito.
Drunk Chitanda was super-cute. I was disappointed when Houtaro didn’t walk her home and molest her along the way. I’m going to start looking for the inevitable hentai with this theme that is sure to come .
I’d like to say it’s filler, but I really don’t think so………………
Strangely enough though I’m really enjoying this show, it’s got this cliffhanger feeling to it even though the plot is so lighthearted, maybe I just REALLY REALLY like mysteries.
While not a sword fight, the fist fight that was in this week’s Hunter x Hunter (ep.35) was absolutely, stunningly awesome – easily the best I’ve seen in a long time.
As a resident of the state of Kentucky, I have to say we have bourbon/whiskey chocolates in the water. You can still be up-side-the-head-ed by those little beasts.
What is endearing to me: Anyone would look at this and so, “Oh, how cute! Chitanda accidentally got drunk on whiskey chocolates. So moe.” They was she was after them? Oh, that was no accident folks. My thinking is that she kinda regrets being involved in such a lame mystery, so took the opportunity to get plonked. I mean, who wouldn’t at that point……well, the rest of the cast, but yeah.
That Jubei fight is overrated. It’s mostly flash and tricks. You see very little actually choreographed. I’d say Seirei no Moribito (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdKiPOkh0K8) was considerably better and as bad as Blood-C was, the fights were better in that series too (for a more recent and more sword-specific example).
Sola was a woman and she died without being strangled, so was Maiya (really) and then there was that honorable female Assassin who fell to Rider’s sword. Most pathetic death goes for Tokiomi, though. Although I agree that in general the portrayal of women in F/Z isn’t strong, likely because women are vastly powerful in the sequels.
Berserker’s and Saber’s battle was cut short because of timeslot. They promised to put everything in the blurays, the novel came with a lengthy emo flashback and a lot of dialogue and more of Berserker beating the everliving crap of Saber until Kariya malfunctions. She was going to die if wasn’t for that. But Lancelot is unrivalled in melee.