Are you ready, kids?
Aye, aye, E Minor!
I can’t hear you!
Aye, aye, E Minor!
Ohh…
What’s the worst pain a man can feel!
NE-TO-RA-RE!
What will make his heart turn to steel?
NE-TO-RA-RE!
If making him blubber is your wish
NE-TO-RA-RE!
Then take the girl and kiss her like this!
NE-TO-RA-RE!
Yeah, I had a feeling this would be the case. What’s the greatest tragedy here? That Sasame “dies?” That she becomes a LIM module? No, what’s most tragic is that some other guy gets her! But this isn’t even the first time Okada dipped her pen into this well of pure originality. First, Heito stole Emiru, but it was okay; Akashi didn’t really want her anyway. But now, he did want Sasame! And he still lost her.
– The title of the episode is “Vacant Heart of Morning Gray.” Like really?
– With two girls down, now what? Who’s left for poor ol’ Akashi? Well, there’s still that Sasame-lookalike from the Lightless Ream–… y’know, the one we’ve repeatedly seen riding the Corpse? Well, somehow, she’s now taking care of our hero:
Not only that, she can only communicate with him telepathically. Shrug, don’t look at me. You think I know what’s going on? I just watch this shit and react.
– “Your emotional wounds are far more greater than your physical wounds.” C’mon, that’s just tacky writing.
– “That’s right. This wench was with the Corpse.” Dude, really? Wench? Maybe that’s why people keep stealing your women away.
– Apparently, Akashi has been so traumatized by all the netorare that he can no longer speak. His heart has turned to steel: “If you can let me into your heart, your voice should return.” But really, it’s kind of sad what this series has become. The primary focus this entire time has been Akashi’s half-baked love life. Investigate the Lightless Realm? Puh-leeze. More like Days of Akashi’s Life. As Akashi’s Heart Turns. All Akashi’s Girls. The Young and the Netorare.
– Elsewhere, Iwato whines that his and Raika’s thoughts are not really connected, because if they were, she’d know how he truly feels. See? It’s a fucking sappy soap opera. Okada made us think we’d be watching a show about some bizarre Lightless Realm. She even made us think there’d be mecha action and shit. But bam, nothing but episodes after episodes of the characters whining about love and their feelings. Even Heito’s main goal was to find love albeit in his own twisted way.
– And don’t get me wrong; I can appreciate a good romance. This just isn’t it. Okada’s using the romance to emotionally torture her characters. Yeah, sometimes love hurts, but we’re not really seeing both the positives and the negatives in any of these romances. It’s just one relentless assault on the characters’ feelings — mostly Akashi’s feelings — one after the other.
– Speaking of Heito, he’s now 40% Necrometal, if anyone cares. I doubt anyone does.
– At one point, even Suzaki gets fed up with these characters, especially Kasane. Suzaki tells Kasane that they have got to focus on the true enemy, a.k.a. the Lightless Ream, but seeing as how this is just the fifteenth episode of a 2-cour series… hah, good luck with that.
– So this Arbornine thing will protect you from the Lightless Realm… but here, have some metal birds that can still somehow fly. The Sasame-lookalike is trying to tell Akashi all these important things, but something she says manages to trigger him. As a result, he starts emotionally falling apart again. Great. Not only that, he wants to get rid of the Arbornine charm she had given him. It’s just stupid. No, really, it’s just stupid. Like I don’t even know what he’s whining about. Uguu, I wanted to be the one to protect you, Sasame! So let me rip off the one thing that’s protecting me!
– As you might’ve guessed, the Necrometal birds are now attacking the shit out of Akashi because he’s no longer under the protection of the Arbonine charm. I dunno, though… it sure looks to me like he’s having the time of his life:
– Man, what’s up with his legs?
– So Akashi gets up and starts beating the crap out of the birds with a metal crowbar. He’s had enough, you guys… Thanks to this incident, however, he can finally speak again. That was hilariously fast.
– Now it’s raining in the Lightless Realm. I’m surprised it’s not metal rain.
– So what do the characters do? Try and figure out what’s going on? Try and see if they can grow more of this Arbornine shit to prevent the Lightless Ream from spreading? Try and just escape the Lightless Realm to begin with? Naw, let’s ride the merry-go-round!
– It’s like Akashi’s mentally become a child. Duh… I saved you? I saved you! YAY ME!
– Naturally, this calls for a lame flashback where he had once protected Sasame from the rain when they were children.
– For some reason, the Sasame-lookalike tries to playfully run off even though Akashi is injured. So when he chases after her, they both trip and fall:
Go on, try falling on your back ten times and see if your arms will ever naturally be the way the girl has them.
– Eventually, the Sasame-lookalike takes him to see some neophyte version of the Corpse. It’s even writhing like a baby in pain. The girl then asks him to apologize to the Corpse, because it’s frightened and scared of him.
– For a brief second, Akashi thinks that Sasame hasn’t become a LIM because she’s right here in front of him. After yet another flashback from his childhood, however, he flip-flops again. In fact, this spirit is a childhood friend they’ve all forgotten somehow.
– And her name is Tsugumi. Despite that, she and Sasame have the same voice actress so… twins? More importantly, why did they forget her in the first place? And what has she been doing here in the Lightless Realm this entire time? Was she the one kid that was never rescued back then? And somehow, she’s been harboring her love for the main character? Sounds like a creepy stalker if you ask me.
– Unfortunately, Minashi and Mahmu crash the party with their mechas, so we won’t get an answers just yet.
– Not that I’m complaining, but it’s nice to see Tsugumi’s previously-torn nightgown has magically sewn itself back to perfect condition.
– Anyway, it turns out they haven’t all forgotten her. Minashi has no problems recognizing Tsugumi, and there appears to be some bad blood between them. Whatever this means, we’ll just have to wait and see. But meh, it’s still the same ol’ M3 as always.
Filed under: Anime, M3 - Sono Kuroki Hagane, Series Tagged: Anime, M3 - Sono Kuroki Hagane
