saori

after a thousand years!

as a reminder: this is just going to be the quick and dirty and completely unedited notes i take while watching, so nowhere near as comprehensive as the ep1 post. i don't want all of these posts to take forever so please understand lol. anyway

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• first of all: mahiro playing sol against bridget in guilty gear... what could this possibly mean. we just don't know

• second of all: the person who did these fansubs for the OP is a genius. colossal brain

• "You're a genius scientist, aren't you? Can't you fix [the water heater]?" "This isn't my area of expertise..." yep, because as i said before, mihari isn't a 'genius scientist', she's just a girl who got into college early. which you might think is a little fantastical on its own, but the show portrays the situation rather realistically... anyway

• as of right now, i've watched every episode except for 12, and i can say that 2 is the one that Got It as much as 1 did. (not to say that the other ones are bad, mind) but as you can see in this shot at 3:09, it's even using the same visual language with the light — right when mahiro is probably thinking "uhhhh, which bath do i go into......" there's this flickering light over her head... very cute lol, and it's followed by the shot of her going into the bathhouse where only the entrance is lit up! good stuff.

• you know, i have to wonder what mahiro trying to go into the men's bath looks like to people watching. maybe she just comes across as a girl who's used to bathing with her parents or something, lol

• hey, remember how basically every joke in ep1 had the punchline be that mahiro was way overthinking stuff that's no big deal at all?? yep, same thing here lmao. also these are some very adorably-illustrated old ladies

• but then, this next bit where it's mihari who briefly overthinks things!! ah, so good to see ep1's language expanded upon like this

• aaand yep, if you're not using to having long hair, taking care of it sure is a pain

• ahh, and this scene as they're leaving, with the implication that mihari wants to be a figure that mahiro can look up to now, just like mahiro used to be for her when they were kids... and mahiro slowly beginning to consider the idea of being the little sister...

• wow these two birds look so cute together like that. i'm sure this doesn't mean anything though

• ok folks help me out here. the way the camera lingers for a moment on mahiro's breakfast tells me there's something going on here, but i'm having a bit of a hard time figuring out what it is. on the one hand, it could just be something like, ah it's nice that they're eating breakfast together now... but that feels too simple? but on the other hand, wow that egg sure is shaped like an among us crewmate huh. eggs and sausages and among us... hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

• wow one of the birds approaches the other, who backs away a little, but then they get together again... oh well, must be nothing

• gghhhh like i said, having long hair is a pain, so i keep mine short... but damn if this part with mahiro trying out different hairstyles doesn't make me wish i had the patience for it...... wonderfully-animated, and look at how happy she looks.........

• next up we have this very interestingly-framed shot where the two are arguing, with the mirror between them. and then oh my fucking god, mihari storms out and mahiro IMMEDIATELY STARTS PLAYING WITH HER HAIR AGAIN

• and the end of this part is another case of the joke being on mihari again, where she gets a little excited about dressing up with mahiro, but doesn't realize mahiro just told her that stuff so she'd leave her alone...... there's something to be said about how she enjoys being the big sister, introducing mahiro to dressing up or taking care of her hair, etc, but on some level still thinks of mahiro as the big bro she wants to impress. and seeing this now, after some of the subsequent episodes, her being nervous about dressing up also begins to point towards, like... how her going to college early means she didn't really get to do fun stuff like this with friends who are the same age as her, right? we'll see more of this later, but it's already interesting to think about her relationship with her own adolescence...

• one funny scene where mahiro fails to clear even these cartoonishly simplistic notions of "masculinity" later, and we get to the real juicy meat of this episode!!!! right off the bat, we have the funny music cutting off at the EXACT moment mahiro feeling strange goes from "lol she can't even do a sit-up" to "oh, uh, wait a second" — indeed, just like how ep1 knew that some things she'd worry about were actually worth getting worried about! and how the scene then becomes comedic again, but with the comedy revolving around mihari slowly realizing what's going on and being like "uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh how do i tell her about this.................." and the part after mahiro goes to the bathroom, where oh my god the tone is balanced so absurdly carefully here, because her thinking she's going to die is a funny overreaction, but different from the ones we've seen so far, right? instead of being framed as a dumbass, as usual, we're worried about her just like mihari is... even while thinking she's silly...

• now, i'm AMAB, so obviously i've never gone through any of this. but for what it's worth, i think it was handled really well? especially considering this is something i've never seen any anime or manga talk about. really, my only complaint is that the subs say what this is all about out loud when talking about the sekihan, which kind of ruins the subtle-yet-explicit writing... but that's not a problem with the show itself, and yeah i don't think a lot of people in the west would know what sekihan is? hmm.

• and the final scene wraps it all up perfectly. i really enjoy how it's a microcosm of how odd their relationship is at the moment, with mahiro in her more little sisterly mode acknowledging that she didn't know mihari was going through this all this time... before saying the most cluelessly headass guy thing, lmao. well, she still has a long way to go.

• well then, if i was still worried about the show after ep1 (which i obviously wasn't), then this, which is basically the best possible ep2 that could've followed that one up, would have put me completely at ease. the animation and direction are still expressive and excellent, the visual and comedic language is expanded upon, mahiro and mihari's relationship is further developed while the latter is humanized a little bit more... and hell, now that i think about it, the menstruation thing must've been particularly tricky to get right, because. that doesn't happen to trans women, right?? so from a trans perspective, mahiro's reactions there were basically all made up. that they still came across as so believable, then, speaks to how much the show understands not just her, but puberty as well. and oh boy do the next episodes have stuff to say about puberty... look forward to them!!