Re: Silent Call Ryo Mizukane
Blair Capellas
Pinto Delgado reminded that the books of Ester and Ruth, as well as the Lamentations of Jeremiah, showed how fragile are human beings. Living on earth as perpetual "wanderers" ("peregrinos"), the safe haven he personally found in Richelieu's France ("allando yo un Puerto seguro, refugio de más naufragios") along with many other Conversos exiles who fled the Iberian Inquisitions and the exclusion of the "laws of purity of blood", deserved to be publicly acknowledged and praised. At the same time, by depicting the Cardinal Richelieu in such a way, Pinto Delgado was implicitly acting as a sophisticated Converso political thinker: showing that Richelieu's model of combining Catholic religion, absolutistic political penchants and a minimal dose of freedom of conscience was a preferable alternative to the Iberian confessional intolerant and centrifugal model in a broader Converso phenomenon of political agency I called: "Marrano in Richelieu's garb."
In March 1949, as the guns of the Independence War were falling silent, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion held a meeting with some forty Hebrew authors, poets and intellectuals to discuss the shaping of the young state's spiritual image, as well as the absorption of the huge immigration waves and other fundamental issues. This meeting was followed by another one, held in October 1949.
For starters, we have the usual Iketeru laughing at alternate terms for the penis, this time's terms in question being "bone" and "dong" - the latter of which he laughs at twice! - in response to his sister calling him a "bonehead" and "ding-dong" (also twice) respectively during an argument they're having. But the more subtle piece of dialogue that most might not have noticed was him wording his request for Utano to solve the situation by meeting with Mabui as "take my sister", to which Utano responds, "Ahh, you meant that way," after he clears it up, suggesting a slightly more sexual initial interpretation. Honorable mention of the moment is Usahara reacting to Uramichi's home-grown shiso leaves by claiming that growing "illegal-looking leaves" on his balcony is very risky. Profanity consisted of a single use of "sucks".
In a similar case to Rayearth, this was one where the overall PG set is different from the chronological PG set. For the former, there's the first of Nicol's marriage candidates passing out complete with nosebleed after he touches her forehead (to check for fever, naturally), and for the latter, it's arguable that Nicol's main reason for wanting to get over his crush on Catarina - not wanting to steal his good friend Geordo's girl - fits the bill, though I'm not sure if bride-stealing is a mature enough theme to really constitute a PG set, since it's not intrinsically adultery.
The suggestive dialogue comes from this week's new character Rika (no relation), first in the cold open where she talks about how the ugly monster who loves young women so much should get a prostitute, and then near the end when she sees the new monster tying up some idol fans, comparing it to S&M. The violence... well, let me explain my ratings choices so far. Episode 1 had a big shower of blood viewed from a distance, the kind of thing I think Poke would rate at least MA straight. But it was the worst violence in the episode, and I tend to rate blood splatters lower than some other ratings people would. The second episode was a similar deal, but the explosion was closer up, there was slightly more involved violence, and the rest of the episode was MA-level anyway. This time, the only blood to appear was on the face of Sachiko, a.k.a. Umibozu, our weekly Egg monster who's basically Squid Girl meets Lady Dimitrescu meets the embodiment of a jam band musician's bad trip (based on the trumpet-like things on her tentacle hair). The heroes chopped off parts of her hair with their weapons, and they also destroyed some Seeno Evils along the way. The former is PG-level beat-em-up violence, while the latter is practically Y7FV. There was one scene where one of the Seeno Evils gets hit in the face and flies away all stylized, but it was pretty short and probably meant more for comedic relief. Even the Seeno Evils' texture effects have been reduced to splotches of burnt yellow and orange, rather than menacing crimson blood. Oh, and we find out that Rika has self-harmed, but we only see the cuts she made in the past, and she even vows not to do it anymore while in the bath. So this week's episode doesn't get the V, although I have a feeling that's going to change in due time.
#8: Kumatani says the word "shitty" four times while telling Usahara, in a roundabout way, that the all-girls' bar employees he brags about himself to not only aren't interested in his stories but are resisting the urge to just beat the crap out of him over them. Four S-bombs in a fourteen-second period. Enough to earn a TV-MAL by my standards, but since there were no other profanities and the rest of the episode was PG-level, the rating stayed on the technically more younger-skewing side.
SUGGESTIVE DIALOGUE: On the debatable side, Hotori briefly admits to looking at Kon's butt (while under the impression that she's a young boy instead of an older girl). On the more straight-forward side, Kon calls Hotori's "Maid's Cage" maneuver she uses to get control of her pet cat a name fit for a porno.
#21: This was admittedly a gut reaction since it stood out compared to the content of the eight episodes prior, but Keith's half-brother Thomas beating him with an onscreen stomp on his chest and four more offscreen strikes was seen as "moderate violence" to me, I guess. Causes for concern dialogue wise include Larna explaining that she made Alexander on commission from Jeffrey, calling him a "certain pervert" but stopping herself one letter short of completing the latter word, and one use of the phrase "mistress's child" in a flashback establishing how Keith knows Thomas.
Then there's the matter of the dialogue, which went from two allusions to Keith being a mistress's child - one part of Thomas's monologue of despair, the other a flashback name-call in Keith's subconscious - straight to outright confirmation that Keith does indeed have romantic feelings for Catarina, to the point of giving his sister-by-adoption an unprompted kiss on the lips. Incest has always been a topic that could never be consistently rated on its own merits, to the point where even in incest-centric anime like Oreimo and Koi Kaze, it all came down to the surrounding content in what rating it earned than the incestual focus itself. (I blame SAO 21 for convincing me it was PG level, and S&P's seeming ignorance of the whole "Asuna almost gets tentacle raped" scene did not help!) But seeing as there was no verbal indication in any of the scenes that Keith/Catarina was wrong because of their sibling relation, despite that undercurrent remaining still, it combined with the lack of venturing into Keith being a mistress's child beyond that title didn't stack up to much on its own.
Compared to last episode, the amount of violence was actually greater in both frequency and level of detail, though still a ways away from the high bar set by episode 5. Much of the violence done, both in the moment and after the fact, pertained to Vigor (Vigger?), one of Ascot's monsters who he disguised as a cute Pokemon-esque woodland creature as part of his most recent plot to dispatch the Magic Knights. Vigor's cute creature form is introduced as having a wound on his hind leg, complete with a close-up showing the exposed red flesh; after he transforms and attacks, he takes a strike from Fuu's sword right around where the wound was, causing an after-the-fact blood trickle; and more blood is shown as Hikaru (who has taken to calling him Hikari after her dog back home) goes to heal it. (By comparison, his defeat by dissipation into light particles was hardly anything.) For what it's worth, Vigor/Hikari did manage to land some blows of to-human damage on Hikaru and Fuu, slashing them both across the back and temporarily incapacitating them both, despite the lacking presence of blood.
#1: Knowing ahead of time that this was the type of series that features ecchi prominently, and that the first episode featured a dude dying from accidentally stabbing himself in the mouth after getting pushed down (with the guy who did the pushing getting blamed for it), I went in expecting something 14 level, even with the word "shittier" in the full official English title. Not even that could prepare me for how much profanity was even in this episode. One use each of "crap", "damn", "dick", "prick" and "asshole", two of "bitch" (one as "son of a bitch") and "sucks", three of "hell", four of "ass" (one as "fake-ass"), and at the top of it all, ten uses of "shit". One as "shitty", another as "bullshit", and seven "Oh shit"s in a row, as the most harem protag JYB since Maiku Kamishiro stated while running away from the aforementioned murder scene he accidentally caused, and the childhood friend who's a little too psychotically angry about the whole ordeal. Yep, this latest entry in the "shows Poke says he'll never ever watch until he does for easily ignorable reasons" series is looking to be an interesting rate compared to the typical indeed.
#2: Six of the seven "oh shit" uses from last time made it into the cold open recap, followed by one extra "shit" during the episode proper. Other profanities included six uses of "hell", four of "crap" (one as "bullcrap"), two of "ass" (one as "roadkilled skunk ass", the other as "assclown"), and one each of "bastard", "piss", "freaking", and "damn". Other notable moments of colorful dub language use include Reona describing Kiwame Quest's developer as going "tits-up", Hiro shouting "son of a slut" in frustration, and him calling Ginji a "chode" after he outs him as the wanted criminal everyone's after.
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