We’re just pacing ourselves, y’hear?!

Yep Yep, it’s not like we’re doing horrible at all… haha.. ha……

*e-ehem* Welcome back to Week 4 (woot!) of the 2018 Anime Seasonals, The Winter Games! That’s right, the Winter Games: where predictions are made up and the points only slightly matter xD

We managed to keep a steady pace from our run last week, and our (Leap250‘s Blog’s) standing is now at a modest lead, alongside TPAB who made quite the comeback giving us a nice little two-way tie for first. The proprietor of the Zodiac Room hit a minor stumble this time around as AstralGemini finds himself in second place. Irina rounds up the tail end of our lineup. However, we’re actually in the middle of restructuring our points system so do continue keep an eye out on where everyone ends up (as a reminder our weekly tall is over yonder at Irina’s place).

I do believe that underneath her drunken stupor lies a sharp and sober mind, and I have no qualms with believing that Irina can easily bounce back and give us a run for our money in the weeks to come.

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Being more “specific” with our predictions gave us mixed results, but it did make it althemore interesting so we’ll try to keep that up this time as well.

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Laid-Back Camp
(Yuru Camp)
Episode 04
tl;dr: “Just your weekly fluff. Nothing new to see here — move along.”

‘Cept maybe Rin’s mom but that’s about it. Yuru Camp continues to be true to its name of being rather laid-back in its progression (which does grant me my point for the week sankyuu~) but this show has really dampened its pace considerably this past two episodes. Well, not that it had been fast by any stretch before, but, I dunno — maybe it’s my decision to watch this over lunch break that made this episode feel really slow; which I suppose isn’t really a bad thing for this kind of show in particular, but I digress.

We do get to know a bit more about Rin so that was nice. I didn’t think that her having a part-time job would actually be brought up here after I’d theorized about it last week. If I had thrown that out there as a prediction it would’ve been a swing and a miss because I was mostly banking on her to be rich xD I also really liked how showed Rin thinking about buying a souvenir for Nadeshiko (aaahh the bonds of having spent the night together lol). Subtle show of character/blob development in my eyes. Can’t complain.

I took to saying the show was slow but I honestly didn’t expect them to go camping right away. At best I thought it was just gonna be a planning episode. Technically they haven’t started “camping” yet, but still (!!), you gotta wonder about these girls’ academics right?? I’m half-joking. Obviously, the show is not called Laid-Back School Life for a reason. As such we get not one, but two different camping sites to look forward to seeing next episode. Seriously, these spots are getting mad promotion from this show. I wonder how they’re doing sales wise? (first snow just dropped in Japan not too long ago too).

All in all, didn’t really like nor dislike this episode (though I suppose, me looking forward to Grancrest more, says something about how I view this show now). I expect some scenic postcard-worthy frames and some camp setup montages next episode as we finally get to see the OutClub (sweet name) in action.

>> Predictions
~ Rin does her stretches before setting up her camp (action)
‘Cause she always does. Maybe we’ll get like a comparison sequence of how the camps are setup with the trio doing their own stretches too.
~ Nadeshiko sends a group photo of herself, Aoi, and Chiaki, to Rin just as they’re about to eat Nadeshiko’s curry rice. Rin, on the other hand, realizes she just can’t send a selfie of just herself in reply (plot)
For the first time in her solo camping life, Rin feels a little bit lonely — which could maybe trigger her wanting to camp with others.

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Record of Grancrest War
(Grancrest Senki)
Episode 04
tl;dr: “It’s like a soap opera now xD“

Which isn’t really bad, but it gives me a clearer image now of what Grancrest Senki’s narrative is looking to be in the long run — …not that I can say for certain yet what the end game is, but my impression from this episode was that it’s looking to put a good amount of emphasis on the drama/romance side of things in so far as character progression is concerned (which had been my fear coming off of last week’s episode). The clear divide that we can surmise from the events that transpired lay with Theo’s allegiance to Siluca, and how it affects the decisions he makes.

I’ll get back to that in a bit. Episode four opens up right away with Siluca’s adoptive father outright putting her under the bus and right in the crosshairs of Marrine Kreische (who looks absolutely gorgeous in her battle attire whut) by suggesting that they not bring Theo’s company into their ranks — and what do we do in Grancrest Senki when we don’t agree to terms? We go to war of course! I wonder how long they can keep this up, with every episode so far having these large-scale battles. We’re bound to get an animation dip at some point, though I suppose it helps that the following episodes are looking to slow things down finally.

To that I mean the pace of this episode was hella fast! Way faster than the previous ones! Siluca teleporting from castle to castle, bodies and castles falling down left and right, even Aishela went from being at the brink of death to being relatively fine towards the end of the episode (lol). It’s like they’re rushing real hard (which doesn’t make sense since we recently found out that this is gonna be a two-cour anyways). I guess it’s commendable in a sense that they’re pushing out as much action as they can in the span of twenty-plus minutes. Not gonna lie though, that one scene where Lassic and the King of Savis went one-on-one and a grain filter suddenly dropped got a good laugh out of me (it was so amazingly cheesy, I love it xD)

Back to Theo; I wholeheartedly believed that Grancrest Senki’s story was gonna be one about him slowly climbing the ranks of lords and knights, leveraging the politics of the present order, and ultimately subverting the status quo of the two great factions to get them to fight the real evil that is Chaos. I mean, it could still be the case (inb4 remember this post once we find that this is what actually happens), but you have to agree that there’s an eerie dissonance of thought when Theo goes “I will fulfill my dream” and “Siluca will make my dreams come true” almost in the same beat. For all his steely resolve, Theo might really be just a generic male MC at the end of the day. *sigh* Please prove me wrong, O Wandering Lord.

>> Predictions
~ Siluca is distracted during a fight because of her feelings for Theo (action)
Theo then swoops in to save her in classic “knight in shining armor” fashion. Our girl is a gonner. Blush stickers everywhere.
~ Villar starts to take a liking to Siluca, as he comes to realize that she bares a certain similarity to his mother (plot)
Margaret becomes jealous as a result. Part of me wants to think they’re gonna take a while before reaching Villar’s estate (hence the episode title being about a forest or sth), but there’s also the fact that Siluca has already been there in what seemed to be no time at all, so….

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Sanrio Boys
(Sanrio Danshi)
Episode 04
tl;dr: “The troubled ace has the hedgehog’s dilemma??“

I suppose the two can go hand-in-hand sometimes but that came way out of left field for me (goes to show how much I know about sports anime tropes). In hindsight, I should’ve recognize the charm that Shunsuke always brings with him in relation to his being a soccer player. Charms like that are usually meant as a show of good luck in whatever endeavor one is about to go through, and as we found out in the last episode the characters’ attachments to Sanrio stem not from the mascot themselves but from what they represent in their respective pasts. A loud “duh” reverberated in my head when the opening minutes of the episode addressed that very fact. I fail.

The episode continues directly from the events of the last episode, with Shunsuke getting into “trouble” with his soccer club teammates. Things heat up a bit when it seemed that Shunsuke wasn’t really getting the message, until the team captain breaks it up (however not without a few choice words of his own). I misconstrued the whole kerfuffle as an act of bullying when in fact it was almost quite the opposite. It’s revealed to us that Shunsuke wasn’t being a team player at all, largely in part of his blind pursuit for victory — or so we’re made to believe.

We find out that his issues actually run deeper still; in that Shunsuke admits to being afraid of forging new relationships (Shunsuke, get in the Eva! …wait), after a girl from his childhood went and left without saying a word, only leaving behind a good luck charm she’d given to Shunsuke prior. “Kitty-san was the only one that stayed”. On the whole it was a better narrative than I imagined it being so I do give it props for that. BUT, I really am not a fan of these one episode arcs at all. It makes the resolution of their issues thus far fairly shallow and superficial (in my opinion at least)

My favorite scene from the opposite comes at the very end where we see Kouta’s old friends again (xD). That scene had me rolling so hard (lol), the way they reference the exact thing I joked about last week (!!) I’m kicking myself for not throwing that out there as a prediction — it would’ve been epic. All this about Kouta being a good friend, he’s actually pretty heartless now that it’s actually true that he doesn’t hang out let alone talk with his old friends now. I’m joking of course, but still, it’s pretty funny to point out.

>> Predictions
~ Yuu teases Kouta for being too caring of a friend (action)
Because he is, almost to a fault, and Shunsuke’s not the “teasing” type
~ Shota!Blondie gets into it with Yuu because he thinks Sanrio is unbecoming of a “proper” high school student, unlike the Student Council Prez who he actually thinks of as kind-of a perfect role model (plot)
Until he finds out the Prez is into Sanrio too and he caves

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That concludes our run for this week!
Who’s your favorite to win? Do root for them in the comments section below!

And if you haven’t yet, check out these guys’ posts for this well as well.
Happy Weekend!

AstralGemini — Week 4

Irina — Laid-Back Camp (4), Record of Grancrest War (4), Sanrio Boys (4)

TPAB — Week 4