Impression:
Let’s go over what happened in the episode quickly so that I can get into my general opinion. It doesn’t take Iwai very long to find Kiri. Luckily, we got to avoid the rape moment on Kiri’s end. While under the spell, he tried to strangle Iwai. Although, the tears still gave it that very intense feel. Even after she tried her best to reason with him, Iwai could not get through to Kiri. Although, she did slow him down. Then, we get a pretty interesting twist. Remember how I said that Romeo was the author? Well, I was wrong. It seems that the president and vice president have swapped roles. Ruka is the author and Romeo is the instead. They turned this into femdom and I am not reading too much into things. I know that they didn’t actually spend that much time on it, but it felt like half of the episode was dedicated to Ruka talking about how she wants to dominate men.Things got kind of graphic when Romeo was licking her feet. Gross stuff. The fight that ensued falls under three parts. The first part was mental torture. Ruka tried to breakdown Iwai from a mental standpoint by calling her a monster, but that didn’t work. She had to resort to making Kiri cut her hair which actually got to Iwai. That didn’t really go well for Ruka because Kiri snaps out of the hypnotism to start part two of the fight. The next part shall be called cutting shit up. The few guys that are still under Ruka’s control fight Kiri, but mindless drones can’t fight an author. Kiri takes them down and gets into an interesting fight with Romeo. Nothing big. Mostly a fight where Kiri has to resort to cutting the guy’s cheek because minor cuts don’t affect a masochist. The third stage is all about judgement. I want to take wild guess here and say that we will be seeing a lot of Seigi. The guy showed up and tried to put Kiri in the noose, but he was interrupted by his instead and the younger Byouinzaka. The fight and the stargazing at the very end have got me thinking.
It is difficult to concentrate when you have someone screaming at you.
Current Opinion of the Show:
I am still not happy. I actually think that they really toned down the sexual aspect of the series in this episode. Having said that, I just want to point out that the femdom speech is about as tame as this series will probably get. The bad thing is that the nonsexual stuff really pissed me off in this episode. I am not the biggest fan of turning a series like this into a pity party. After the fight, they tried to play the sympathy card. Not only did Iwai extend a hand to Ruka and Romeo, but we got a back story that did a bad job of being sad. “I didn’t get to be the princess in the play back in elementary school” That is the worst super villain origin story that I have heard in a while. I just couldn’t take that seriously. You want to be dominant because you couldn’t be the princess? That is stupid. I am not demanding a ruthless environment, but could we not look at the murderers with rose-colored glasses? Romeo still genuinely loves Ruka. Congratulations on the happy ending. Also, could we not have the judge and jury stopped so easily? You don’t have to kill off Kiri, but your instead yelling at you through two electronic devices is a crappy weakness. Next, I would like to make a law against having a character call out to their loved one. Snapping someone out of something through your voice or tears is so cliché that quality writing can’t save it. The last thing that I had a problem with was the starlit dancing. I know that they are supposed to be building a romance, but I thought the dancing was completely out-of-place. Unless I am missing some sort of context for it. In which case, I would like it if someone told me about it. Did I like anything about this episode? Sure I did. They toned down the sex and amplified the action. Well, we got some action at least. You can’t have a murder game unless people actually die. We missed out on a murder, but got a pretty gruesome cutting of the cheek. That made me cringe. Overall, I just think that this series needs to find its identity. Be a sympathetic tale, be a romantic comedy, be a sexual murder game. Pick one because the odd mix that we are getting isn’t really doing it for me. Oh well, I just hope that we don’t jump back into hentai.
Mahou Tofu 
My thoughts exactly. When Ruka’s sob story came up, I was expecting something else like a background of either being abused or something along that line. But when it was about her not being the princess, I was just saying to myself how petty does one get.
I thought the licking business was over with. I don’t get this anime and its fascination with tonguing things.
And that cliched part too where Iwai’s voice got through to Kiri when she screamed she hated him. There’s only one anime where I ever accepted that type of cliche and it was in Inuyasha.
The dancing felt out of place for me too, when that started I just closed the tab because I’d had enough.
This anime is just too all over the pace. They don’t mind getting really graphic with sex and murder at times, but the childhood story had to be really tame for some reason. On the cliched screaming, it is just rarely done well in anime and it felt stupid this time around. I don’t know what they plan on doing with this series and I don’t think that writers know what they plan on doing with it either.
The fact that the childhood story was so tame felt ironic to the way Dansai set itself up. And like you said, it’s as if the anime is clueless on its identity. Maybe the writers were trying to find that perfect balance of offering a lot of content but then confused themselves along the way.
It is like they had a bunch of people in a room for a brainstorming session and the people were too stubborn to let their ideas get cut out. They eventual gave up and said: “FUCK IT! We are doing everything.”
Haha, exactly that! So far, I’m thinking it can’t get any worst, but I’m pretty sure more weirdness will pop up again somewhere along the way. I just hope this tongue business stops because it really needs to.
The tongue stuff is gross because anime saliva has that over the top style and everyone does it unless it is in a comedy. The “realistic” stuff is just ridiculous. Someone needs to tell the animators that they can tone it down.
God yes, because it just comes off as disgustingly creepy, I lost count of how many eye twitch moments I had during those scenes.
WordPress is not designed to handle long conversations. These reply boxes will only allow single letters at some point.
D: ahh, right. Talk to you again soon o/
No worries. If it gets like this, you can always start a new comment. Being able to talk to people is my main goal when writing.
That’s one of my goals too :) I love discussion. I can go on and on, so you can tell me when you’ve had enough xD
It’s fine. I can go on and on as well. Is there anything in this anime that you still like?
Well for one, I like the fighting style. That’s probably the only thing I think is being done right with Dansai. I really like the action, especially the way Kiri uses his scissors. But when he talks during that time, it kind of takes away from it :/
Yeah, the fights are pretty short too. I am wondering how they will handle them because some of the Killing Goods are really odd. Like, how will they fight he pianist? I know that we have already met them, but I can’t imagine them making a bunch of the authors pacifists.
Well they can just pluck the keys from her piano, or something but that’s too tedious a way. I think Kiri has a conscience so he wouldn’t do anything as extreme as slicing the pianist’s fingers, unless of course she really tried to hurt Iwai. It’s always the quiet ones though >.> I think she’ll probably turn out to be really evil.
I hope that the pianist does indeed turn out to be really evil because I think that they will have to strategize in order to beat her. If that happens, then they might actually spend some time on the fight.
That would be great, I think that’s what I’m waiting for. The epic fight. I also like Seigi, I don’t know if it’s because he brings back memories of Death Note xD
It may also be because Seigi really fits the whole murder game theme. They guy is out there to kill and with a very twisted justification. I am also a Seigi fan, but his instead needs to calm down.
He really does and I think so too but she’s female, so she’s prone to exaggerating her concern I guess. Maybe Kiri will need his help if the pianist turns out to be some mastermind. I see you’re reviewing Hataraku too :D but I’ll leave talking about that for another day xD