[DreadBringer]

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Well, things get off to a really good start for me with the opening scene. It establishes how hard Sakurako is pushing herself by opening at night, gradually moving the camera over to a nearly full pot of coffee, at which point we fade to the morning, with the pot empty, and only then does the usual timestamp appear.

I thought the bottle was something... it's coffee? It looks like a medicine bottle. So Sakurako and Jean's banter is attacked by a bear (let's replace bear with Grongi later on)? Dunno if that has actually happened that it ascended into a banter.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

After a moderately amusing, but even less purposeful, check in on Pole Pole, the episode starts to inch closer to its actual point by showing what the cops are up to at the moment.

Oh, so the gas was meant to paralyze and capture them. I wonder how they can restrain the superpowered beings though before they effortlessly escaped again in the police's clutches.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

See, this is why it's so easy to get behind the police in this show. Who wouldn't want to see the Grongi taken out? Well, as it turns out, there is one such person, and he watches the vicious slaughter of an entire boat full of human lives with surprising indifference. This is Junichi Chouno. He thinks what the Unidentified Lifeforms do is great, because humanity is worthless anyway. He's so into the way they're tearing up our good for nothing society, he's even gotten himself a tattoo similar to the ones all Grongi have that show their animal motif. Chouno has got some serious problems, and it probably shouldn't be a surprise that he ends up in police custody, where the main cast start getting tangled up with him.

Chouno, the edgelord, the misantrophe, the straw nihilist. The persona some internet people based off on. Ferry ship is the worst place to get attacked, with all the crowd and that you are trapped in the middle of body of water. Not that you are able to escape from Grongi but in ferry it's much worse, especially with that ferry seemingly not having safety boats (probably won't work either).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

An interrogation with Ichijou and Sugita reveals, well, most of what I've already said, and also that he's been spending his life drifting from part-time job to part-time job with little purpose, which might start to give us a hint as to what his motivations are. Tsubaki also shows up, having had to ditch a promising day of cruising around in his sports car with a hot date just to make sure Chouno isn't actually a Grongi. Things get a little more complicated when it turns out Chouno, while not a monster, does in fact have a bad case of... something.

Of course! Chouno woud've likely escaped so easily if he's an actual Grongi. The way the police restraining him seems to be only good-ol handcuffs. Grongis (and Yusuke) still possess superhuman strength in human form. Why wouldn't Tsubaki admit about his girl anyway? Having a girlfriend is something many men use for boast.

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

The conclusion of Kuuga's initial fight with Biran has a few neat things to talk about.

All the form changes before happened after Kuuga transformed.... off-screen wise. So Kuuga Titan didn't protect any part of his body, what if Giiga previously hit the unarmored part too of Titan?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

The concept here is very much in line with Kuuga's themes. It's a show about, among other things, the value of optimism, cooperation, and perseverance, so having a character that's a cynical loner who's given up on his life, and humanity as a whole, it's a solid way to explore those concepts.

He may be irritating but yeah it's an appropriate choice to make Chouno react like that to Yusuke, and I want Yusuke to devolve deeper into other's actual suffering. Guy like that really have to be teached the hard way.

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Tsubaki, a coroner, a man surrounded by death every day, does not have the patience for Chouno's attitude that Yuusuke does, and simply takes him to see the corpse of one of Biran's victims, to see if he can still romanticize dying afterwards.

Knock some hard sense to him Tsubaki!

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

It's honestly a great scene, and I wish I could say all this makes the story worth the trouble it took getting here, but I can't deny the issues here, either. Most pressingly, the episodes don't go into Chouno's backstory very thoroughly, and that can make it easy to misinterpret his character.

Be careful what you wish for. Most likely Chouno bounching job after job was filled with him being constantly mistreated by others, treated unfairly, so that he sees all humans as despicable.