Hisone to Masotan – 08 [Limited time offer! Spicy granny flavor]

Readers who read my previous coverages on HisoMaso would know that I wasn’t very happy with the direction this show took. There’s a mean-spirited tone, and just downright nonsensical with the plot to make our girls fallen in love and then crush their hearts to pieces. But with this episode, I’m happy to say that HisoMaso finds a much stronger shape and it justifies most of the events happened before. So, the main plot going forward gonna focus about the ritual, which actually to move the giant big legendary sleeping dragon to its new bed, and that process can take up to 3 whole days without stop. The real challenge with this is the girls have to fight not to sleep for the whole 72 hours, otherwise that gigantic dragon would go off track. That actually sounds refreshing, for once the overarching plot isn’t going to be “saving the world and destroy bad guys” like I afraid, and there’s still some actual stake in there. Moreover, this ritual speaks well to this strange yet whimsical world.

We also know the true identity of the yogurt old lady (it’s about goddamn time). Turns out she was a OTF pilot back in the last time they carried the mission, and she proves to be a good addition to this cast. Her wise advice regarding how they fight with the lack of sleep, for example, is to sleep, on the ground that they have to be in sync with the dragons in order to ride them normally even when they’re asleep. After a brief argument with Hisone (in which I find her reason a bunch of rubbish. Man, her reasons never make sense to me), the old wise woman proceeds to do just that: let them relax and just listen to the sound of their dragons. This goes well in the end and for me, the episode brings me back to the show after a somewhat disappointing middle part.

So we’ll have a celebration (in which HisoMaso phrases it as “Ritual” huh? Will there be any sacrifice here?), we have the torii gate, the dragons and their pilots as the main players, and naturally we need to have shire maidens too. Which comes to the aspect I’m not confident about HisoMaso: the romances. While I personally enjoy the growing chemistry of Hisone and Okonogi, I can’t say the same with Hosino and the captain whatever-his-name-is. It feels hamfisted at best that they need to show us that these girls have some romantic feeling beside piloting dragon. Furthermore, the reveal in the end, the Okonogi is an important figure of “Divinity department” and his apparent love-interest put Okonomi-Hisone relationship into another light and I’m not sure if I’m on boat with this twist. Now that relationship becomes a three-way love which… is how anime plot tends to do, which is too say it’s repetitive and tiresome. I’m growing fond with Okonogi, however, and I especially like the part where Hisone tells him about the “original shitty horror movie which just released in Bluray” part, so yeah at least for now it’s not a deal-breaker. This episode does a pretty admiring job of pulling this show back from their weak and misfired last couple of episodes, at least for now I’m looking forward to see how HisoMaso going to wrap itself up.

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Hisone to Masotan – 07 [Kingdom of Love]

Hmmm, I do feel like I’m watching some propaganda in HisoMaso this week, in which it tries to sell us the ideas that women’s low self-esteem and insecurity are the best way to “soulmate” their dragons, and worse, learning the whole conspiracy method of crushing these poor girls’ hearts to make sure they’ll ever love again, so they can devote all their hearts to pilot the dragons? WHAT? Okay, propaganda is a bit exaggerating, but I can’t help but feel the mean-spiritedness in this approach, especially virtually no one in the higher-ups question about it or that Ilboshi guy’s decision morally, instead they just roll with it. Haizz, they play those up for laugh, and I guess they set all this up so that the girls can overcome those, but still I feel a bit uneasy watching all these play out. Especially seeing the young mug Okonogi tries his damnest to slide between following his orders and just have fun with Hisone. I figure my uneasiness lies in the fact that these girls, our D-Pilots are the victims and clueless about all this. Ways to depreciate our women and their intelligence here, Mari Osada.

SO the plan is to figure out all the girls’ potential romantic interests, push it a bit and then squeeze that love like breaking an egg. Haizz. This plot gets thicken fast as Okonogi is granted a chance to go to a date with Hisone, watching some lame horror movie (wait, is it the same film with the one in After the Rain?). Meanwhile, Kinutsugai becomes an informant (because of Kingdom!) by that guy Ilboshi again. He now becomes a sore thumb here as beside babblings all those bullshits about white lovers, purity and what’s not, he acts equally stupid and manipulative too. To make things worse, this week our dragons get left out, in place for these stupid romantic threads (that include Hoshino and “the guy who ticks all the boxes” and Hitomi’s multiple interests).

The show’s writer is most infamously known for injecting unnecessary and drawn-out romances and it seems like she again hits the streak in this episode. It’s not enough to bring HisoMaso down, at least not yet, so I’ll reserve my final feeling when this all business about the ceremony is dealt with, but for now I’m not that keen on the direction it laid out. It should focus on the dragons – their pilots relationship, or even focus to develop our girls, not this. And HisoMaso still holds their cards too close regarding the real identity of the yogurt lady. Too much sniffing and licking without revealing won’t tease people anymore. I’m a bit concerned with HisoMaso now, it looks like it will head dive into the deep ocean full of sharks and I’m not sure if it ever going to recover from that.

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