#man why did they give aria only one eyecatch

[talaofthevalley]

Aikatsu Stars! Eyecatches: Season 2 - Venus Ark

✰ Four Star Academy ✰

✰ S1 ✰ S2 ✰

[fictionerd]

Good to see you, friends!

Please merciful gods... if any are listening, let me get caught up today. The sooner I can get on a proper schedule the better off I’ll be. Having a single show per day to write about would be great. Pretty please.

If you want it so badly quit praying and get synopsizing already I have some frustrations to vent. 

Full agreement. Less invoking higher powers and more talking about the show. Last time we had a god-thing visit the library it did NOT go well.

Don’t you have the thing suspended in a giant tube full of glowy green liquid powering something in your workshop?

Yes, but the damn thing nearly tore a hole in the library and all but ripped off one of your wings in the process. Remember that?

Yeah... yeah point taken. No more invocations. Time to talk about Kimetsu no Yaiba.

Synopsis: Our hero is the kid who looks horrified in the eyecatch. His name is Tanjiro, and his life is about to be fucked sideways by Murphy’s law.

Tanjiro lives alone on a mountain with his mother and FIVE siblings. Their dad apparently passed away sometime before the series began. One thing I can tell about Tanjiro is that he’s apparently spec’d into every Charisma skill he can. Dude’s a people magnet and seems to be an all-around nice guy. 

One day Tanjiro takes a load of Charcoal into town to sell. There he’s shown to be rather well liked and trusted, as stated above. On his way home, however, he’s stopped by some old dude and told not to go all the way home because it’s dangerous. He’s all like, “Nah, it’s cool my passive perception is BEAST”

“Get your ass in my shack, kid. There’s demons about what’ll use you for bubblegum and the last thing I need in my nightmares is the image of your face stretched over three feet of bubble yum.”

So Tanjiro, being the people person he is, obliges the old man. He wrangles a free meal out of the deal and quietly goes to sleep. He is rewarded for this by getting home the next day to find his entire family torn apart like a bunch of poorly-guarded pinatas at a five-year-old’s birthday party. He, naturally, fails his will save and freaks the FUCK out. However, it seems that not all the eldest of his younger siblings (That was a sentence) is still alive! 

Our hero does what any good TTRPG hero would do in his situation: Grabs his sister and starts booking it in the direction of town looking for a doctor. All’s going well until his GM rolls some dice behind the screen and winces.

So his sister has gone demon. Show of hands who’s suprised? Ah, no one it seems. You must have read the series synopsis same as I. That’d be why I’m leaning into the D&D metaphor so hard here. I need to do SOMETHING to differentiate this bit.

So Tanjiro is keeping it cool. He’s just barely making the strength checks he needs to keep his now demonic sister from using his intestines as sausage casings when the GM does another hidden luck roll and sends in a demon hunter to save his ass. 

Of course Tanjiro is kinda partial to keeping his sister alive, demon or not.. TJ is absolutely no match for the big-dick demon hunter, so he leans into his Persuasion checks and manages to sway the demon hunter just enough to piss him off. Hunts McGee tries to give TJ the “Hard Truths” of the whole demon biz, and taking cues from the NPC TJ goes for complicated set of bluffing tactics to try and catch the guy off guard and save his sister. These ALMOST succeed in decapitating the Demon hunter and ACTUALLY succeed at getting Demon-Sis free. The GM decides to offer one last out and rolls a final luck check... Which resolves OVERWHELMINGLY in TJ’s favor. Demon-Sis, instead of chowing on his face, Turns and starts protecting him from Hunts McGee. 

The GM decides to roll with this as the plotline and tells TJ to go seek out a new NPC who might have a lead on how to heal his sister’s demonitis.

Aria’s Thoughts: I REALLY didn’t like the demon hunter’s “Only the mighty have a chance at success” schtick. He might be right to one degree or another, but COME ON, dude. The kid’s just had the worst day of his life. He’s seen his entire family turned into hamburger helper. He nearly got eaten by his sister. YOU showed up and threatened to kill her. If I were “TJ” as Fic has named him I’m pretty sure I’d be fucked up to the point of begging too. That or so pissed I tore his throat out myself before using the knowledge he just gave me to join my sister in Demon-hood. Could go either way personally.

Do we need to talk about some shit, Aria?

I’m being realistic here. It’s not like the Demons are particularly evil. At the very least Nezuko (Whose name you never said btw) just seemed to be hungry. Also, before Justine can bring it up: Yeah I know that the Demon Hunter was just testing TJ. They did a decent job making it clear that was the case, but still fuck the whole “Only the strong survive” bullshit.

Justine’s Thoughts: This was a fantastic show. Despite hand-drawn characters being placed in at least partially CG backgrounds nothing seemed too out of place. I do have questions what time period this is supposed to be taking place in since the town they showed in this episode appeared to have power lines. As far as atmosphere goes, however, the episode did a great job delivering. They telegraph the shift in tone hard, but it doesn’t feel forced. The way the music shifts when Tanjiro discovers what’s left of his family struck some mainline of emotional resonance and really sold the moment. Personally I’m looking forward to more. Can we just go watch some more? Like right now?

Actually yeah. We’re a week behind on this one so it’s double feature time.

Oh, sweet. To be continued, folks.

See you in a bit!