Yu Yu Hakusho (Dub) Status:
INTERESTED
Episodes: 52-53
In Episode 52, Genkai dies following a brief showdown with Toguro and it's appropriately given a lot of weight. Lighting changes, animation changes, sound changes, and all of the major characters become aware of her death simultaneously. This is the death of the single best female character in the entire show, so she ****in' deserves it.
Even more so, as flashback reveals to us that she used to be partners with Toguro, who used to be human, and they were the winners of the last Dark Tournament. Considering the power level it's taken to get this far, it's probably safe to say that if Toguro is the most powerful character in the entire show, then Genkai is second, or at least used to be second.
Apparently as victor of the last Dark Tournament, as his prize, Toguro traded his human body for the highest possible level of demon body which confers an immunity to age and incredible regenerative powers. We're also told that while humans use spirit energy, demons use a separate power called demon energy, which Toguro prefers.
Yusuke shows up just in time to see her die of course, and Genkai warns him not to become like Toguro, in essence, criticizing him for his arrogance. I really wasn't expecting this, and the anime doesn't really spend any time trying to ram it home, but it really manages to attack Yusuke's biggest flaw, his pride. Since the very beginning of the series, Urameshi's positive aspects have outweighed his negative aspects, but his negative aspects are still there. He's still an arrogant character. I'm glad that her final words were something relevant to the series as a whole.
Yusuke obviously retaliates against Toguro and while we're shown that he still manages to cripple one of his hands even at 80% of his full power, he still gets punched through half a forest. 2 days left to the final round, and I suppose I'm just not supposed to question his ability to heal what should be a pulverized skull at this point. Anime physics, right?
Episode 53 resumes with Urameshi meditating and we see Hiei discover one of the craters Toguro made with a punch at 80%. Hiei, in the simple and logical fashion I still appreciate from him, attempts to recreate the crater and discovers he can't even accomplish one a third of the size.
Meanwhile, Kurama is puzzling over the Toguro team member who could cause explosions on contact and it becomes brutally apparent at this point that while Urameshi has absorbed Genkai's spirit ball and Hiei is performing demon rituals, there isn't any way to rationalize Kurama tapping into his demon fox form or Kuwabara becoming more powerful in a matter of two days.
Surprisingly, the answer to that question arrives in the form of the clown from earlier who's somehow managing to just walk-off a fractured spine. He was previously revealed to be the creator of the exceptionally powerful demon tools his team possessed, and in turn offers them new versions of the age-reversal toxin and Double-Ahoge's demon sword.
That works for me, but why's he doing it? He explains he hates them, but hates Toguro more. Apparently Toguro emasculated him with only 3% of his power, so now he's trying to strike back as a bright neon colored flamboyant clown. Okay. That works for me. I suppose since Toguro is the go-to example of steroid-level testosterone, it makes sense for him to... hate old people? ****, whatever. It's a much better excuse than I was expecting at this point.
Anyway the evil executive guy who Toguro's working for reveals we wants to create a bridge between the demon world and human world. I guess that's suitably evil as grandmaster villain schemes go, but there's no apparent motivation behind it. I don't see what he has to gain by any of it. He says it will cost him an ungodly amount of money, so what's in it for him?
Koenma gives some "message" to Yusuke from Genkai which seems pretty unremarkable and Yusuke just... gets over his grief. That... really sucks. The message could have been something other than a casual insult and it seems blatantly obvious to me to be the kind of thing that Koenma would simply lie about just to motivate Yusuke. Who's to say he's not lying?
The last episode took great pains to emphasize Genkai's death, but the message here seems to simply be, "Get over it."
That's pretty ******. I understand the point of keeping the series fast paced, but you wouldn't have had to extend this episode to give Yusuke a better message than that or make it tougher for him to get over her death.
At least in the Japanese dub, Koenma doesn't sound like a total ass when he delivers Genkai's message.
In the English dub he says,
"-In other words, dimwit, go win that battle. Sounds just like her, doesn't it?"
AMIRITE????
In the Japanese dub he says,
"-There was one final thing. 'Win', she says."
I think Koenma's English voice actor just has a habit of making all of Koenma's dialog seem irritable. I'm not a fan of it, and while the Japanese dub may not have been ideal, it frankly ruins this scene for me.
Honestly, save a couple very small scenes, this episode was pretty crummy. And I'm still annoyed that they never explained why Genkai went out to go get killed by Toguro. It's suggested multiple times that the moment she passed her power to Urameshi, it was her "destiny" to be killed by Toguro. WTFWHY. SERIOUSLY. WHY.
Next episode teases the missing 5th person issue (now that Genkai's dead it's even 4v4, see? It's perfect! That's why Toguro's team only had 4 members. DYUHGETITYET).
Kimi ni Todoke (Sub) Status:
LOSING INTEREST
Episodes: 17
This episode was pretty good for the most part, it gave me a few laughs, but apparently the whole Sawako and Kazehaya being on the same page thing has just been handwaved with an "it's not official unless they say 'I love you'", which... is pretty crap.
We get a REALLY awkward ending in which Sawako takes some skeevy advice from Pin where she grabs him and then closes her eyes for 5 seconds. Pin accurately concludes that this would provoke Kazehaya to try and kiss her, but he takes too long and Kazehaya blurts out some unintentionally horrible dialog:
Originally Posted by Kazehaya the Rapist
"Don't blame me.
Seriously... if you do it again, you can't blame me if I do something.
There's no knowing what I'll do!"
That's...
porn dialog. Like that's literally the same **** you'd see in rape manga.
...
How about NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
That's legitimately the worst exchange in this entire series so far. What the hell were they thinking with that crap? Well, obviously they thought it was friggen' romantic because the soft piano kicks in and the credits roll.
Dirty Pair: Flash (Dub) Status:
LOST INTEREST
Episodes: 1
I'm... impressed.
I'm not sure I've ever seen a stupid character cause so much trouble in so short a time.
The whole episode opens on the Dirty Pair running into a man who's bleeding and begs them to take a swipe card and run before he keels over. A large group of uniformed men show up, approach them, and politely ask for the card.
What would you do in this situation?
A. Hand over the card.
B. Ask them why it's so important.
C. Ask them what happened to the man.
D. CONFIRM THE MAN IS STILL ALIVE?
If you selected any of these answers, you are a terrible trouble consultant. Tho REAL answer is:
E. Immediately trust the man was a good guy and the card is worth the trillions of dollars of collateral damage you will cause immediately after attacking the group and running away.
Literally what ensures is a messy, difficult to follow, catastrophic snowball effect of vehicle chases, shooting, explosions, robots, bazookas, property damage, both intentional and unintentional, all centered around the Dirty Pair.
It might sound funny and ironic, but the voice acting is annoying, the two main characters refuse to get along for no perceivable reason, and despite some very brief moments of self-awareness it's honestly just difficult to follow what's going on.
Prior to the title drop we literally just sit through over 3 minutes of one guy sitting at a desk and babbling out boring-as-hell exposition at us.
The best part about the whole episode is the totally 80s future visual aesthetic and backing music, unfortunately I feel like this whole episode would have worked better in the original Dirty Pair when we still had Rumiko Takahashi character designs and a more mature sense for characters, pacing, and story.
In the original Dirty Pair all we had were these two characters who simply had a reputation for causing a lot of destruction in their work, and we see from their exploits that they just get embroiled in massive conflicts. I like the idea of an opening episode presenting us with a spectacular mess that they caused or were in some way a part of, but in the original series I wasn't annoyed by the characters or lost in the action, even if I wasn't necessarily impressed by it.
I think I'll just check out Project Eden and see if that does the concept any better.