Wooper:<\/b><\/span> We\u2019ve cycled through all sorts of names for these check-in columns over the years, but the most appropriate one for this week\u2019s post might be \u201ccatch-up,\u201d as I watched three episodes of some of these shows in an effort to get current with the spring season. That\u2019s a lot for an old man who rarely watches weekly anymore, but I\u2019m enjoying my (temporary) return to the habit. I think I\u2019ve settled on these five shows as the ones I\u2019ll cover every two weeks, but there may be extras that pop in from time to time, including this one:<\/p>\n I\u2019m not a LycoReco fan, but I do have an affinity for short anime, so I decided to dip my toes back into the franchise for Friends Are Thieves of Time, whose episodes thus far range from two to four minutes. Not all of them have been released yet, but of the ones that have, episode 3 was my favorite, riffing on the series\u2019 iconic poop parfait with a new potty-themed dessert. The moment of that new menu item\u2019s reveal is bound to be one of the best parts of this mini series, so I won\u2019t spoil it before the jump \u2013 unfortunately, it has to compete for presentational space with squealish voice acting and aggressive use of the show\u2019s ending theme. Those two issues are constants in FAToT, but for those of you with an established love for this cast, the moments when the characters\u2019 voices continue through the credits will probably tickle your brain. All four of these episodes take place entirely at the LycoReco cafe, so there\u2019s been minimal action so far, but the character animation has been quite good. The horror-themed fourth installment takes a big swing (as big as can be taken in four minutes, anyway), while the first two episodes are more chill, Chisato\/Takina centered affairs. One of them even features a conversation about what they\u2019ll do on their upcoming Hawaii trip, indicating that Thieves of Time takes place before the end of the first season \u2013 that\u2019s a nice piece of continuity for existing fans.<\/p>\n This must be the show I most underestimated when contributing to our season preview a month and a half ago, as I\u2019m loving it so far. I\u2019m not a battle shounen enthusiast by any stretch, but Yaiba\u2019s earnest blend of action, comedy, and over-the-top villainy has made it one of my favorite spring series through five episodes. The art and animation are clearly its best qualities, but let\u2019s put those aside for a moment to talk about the broad strokes of the story, which sees antagonist Onimaru send eight animal-themed \u201cogres\u201d after Yaiba and co. in pursuit of his legendary sword. In just two episodes (4-5), one of them defects to the good guys, two are soundly defeated (one in dramatic fashion, the other humorously), three fail to frighten Yaiba into submission and become his temporary traveling partners, one is brushed aside by his master after he outlives his usefulness, and the last and strongest is marked as an upcoming antagonist. That the show balances all these developments while giving each ogre their own personality is a real feat; my favorite is the starfish from episode 5, who organizes lackluster traps that play into anime\u2019s onsen and kimodameshi tropes, then complains that his master pays a pittance after his defeat. Then there\u2019s episode 3\u2019s introduction of Miyamoto freakin\u2019 Musashi as a two foot tall, 400 year old swordmaster, which was quite funny for his character design alone, but he\u2019s proven to be a valuable addition to the cast, as well (classic grandpa lechery notwithstanding).<\/p>\n Now that\u2019s how you do a cliffhanger! KGR has given us a couple lackluster variants of the technique in its first few outings (including Kudo\u2019s misleading \u201cmurder\u201d confession at the end of episode 4*), but the most recent reveal of Kowloon\u2019s ruined exterior generated a ton of questions about what I\u2019d watched, as the best cliffhangers do. For me, the most pressing question is what will happen when Gwen the former teahouse server steps into those ruins. Based on his conversation with Miyuki in episode 4, we know he has a clone that resides in Kowloon, but it\u2019s not the type to disappear when his original version crosses the threshold. (We see an example of that phenomenon when one of Kudo\u2019s elderly mahjong buddies, Mr. Chan, vanishes into thin air the moment his original steps into Kowloon.) Rather, I think there\u2019s a link between Gwen and Kudo\u2019s identities that would explain their shared knowledge of Kujirai B\u2019s fate, as well as the former\u2019s continued interest in the latter\u2019s love life. Looking at this image<\/span><\/a> of Gwen in the taxi cab on the way to Kowloon, his face bears a striking resemblance to Kudo\u2019s. That could just be a quirk of Jun Mayuzuki\u2019s style or the anime team\u2019s translation thereof, but even so, I\u2019m making it my pet theory that Kudo and Gwen are two sides of the same coin, be they clones, blood relatives, or something else. There was plenty of other good stuff here, especially with regard to the show\u2019s dueling themes of authenticity and artifice, but I\u2019m out of space already \u2013 I wish it had come along when I was still doing episodic blogging!<\/p>\n *I\u2019m not ruling out Kudo\u2019s involvement in Kujirai B\u2019s disappearance and\/or death, but the way his admission was temporarily hand-waved at the start of the next episode was very lame.<\/p>\n My biggest issue with GQX right now is the character of Shuji, the mysterious pilot of the Red Gundam. As in the \u201cBeginning\u201d compilation film, his introduction midway through episode 3 was swift \u2013 Shuji\u2019s very first meeting with Machu resulted in his recruitment as her partner for the Pomeranians, and by the end of the episode they\u2019d already won their first Clan Battle match. But they entered the battlefield from separate locations and did nothing in the way of strategizing, and the same was true for weeks 4 and 5. The combat scenes are some of their only opportunities to communicate with each other, at least on screen, but their cooperation invariably boils down to Newtype magic rather than a meshing of their personalities. To be clear, I don\u2019t want GQX to become some tactics-heavy mecha series, just for some of the mystique surrounding Shuji to be dispelled so that Machu\u2019s fascination with him will feel less farfetched. To make matters weirder, episode 5 ramped that fascination up to infatuation with girl talk from Anqi (implying that she had caught on to the younger girl\u2019s crush), plus a scene where both she and Nyaan got half naked to cool themselves off while hanging out with him. Shuji\u2019s character motivation is to go to Earth, as it\u2019s what he says the Red Gundam wants to do (he claims to be able to hear its voice), and Machu\u2019s immediate desire to accompany him and escape Side 6 defies belief \u2013 as far as Enokido scripts go, GQX has nothing on FLCL in depicting teenage restlessness. Credit where it\u2019s due, though: the show\u2019s 2D visual direction remains impeccable.<\/p>\n Was anybody expecting a 50 year time skip to start off this show\u2019s third episode? I certainly wasn\u2019t, but it\u2019s not an impossible move, given that the main cast were robots. I say \u201cwere\u201d because the cast received a major upgrade in episode 3: a tanuki family who chose Earth as their new home after fleeing their own war-torn planet. The family played a major role in the last three weeks of Apocalypse Hotel, especially their daughter Ponko, who enlisted herself as a Gingarou employee to make up for her family\u2019s initial abuse of the hotel\u2019s hospitality. Ponko is a fantastic addition to the cast, with enthusiasm, charming naivete, and bravery at her disposal \u2013 the last of which was on full display during her confrontation with a massive sandworm in episode 4. The sandworm scenes were merely \u201cgood enough,\u201d but her team-up with Yachiyo and Ze-chan (Ponko\u2019s nickname for the environmental monitor bot) solidified her as a member of the team, and the tanukis\u2019 contributions to the hotel\u2019s new distillery did the same for their entire family in episode 5. The show is progressing well, then, but it\u2019s also great on a moment to moment basis. Ponko\u2019s attempt at using a walkie talkie to communicate with her dead grandfather (she\u2019d been told it let you talk to people who were \u201cfar away\u201d) created the perfect mix of sweetness and sadness, and Yachiyo\u2019s bartender talk with an unlucky-in-love alien guest added a bit of sophistication to the show\u2019s typically humorous air. Moments like these give me confidence that the show will handle the eventual reveal of humanity\u2019s extinction with grace.<\/p>\nLycoris Recoil: Friends Are
Thieves of Time \u2013 1-4<\/h2>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/starcrossedanime.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/LycoReco-Friends-are-Thieves-1.1.jpg\")
<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\nShin Samurai-den Yaiba \u2013 3-5<\/h2>\n
<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\nKowloon Generic Romance \u2013 4-5<\/h2>\n
<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\nMobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX \u2013 3-5<\/h2>\n
<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\nApocalypse Hotel \u2013 3-5<\/h2>\n
<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/figure><\/div>\nLazarus \u2013 4-5<\/h2>\n
<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n