(L) Kamisama Dolls

[Thany]

Originally Posted by mangatron

Aha, thanks for that. Does that mean we're going to get 3 Utao specials? Yay! More cake!

The top 3 of each poll get a special. Yes if the "bunnyman" option end up third we'll get it too
Oh god YES previous volume was Utao-chan in swimsuit

[klare]

Mahiru is totally a wild and out of control character, i hope Kuuko is still alive...

after this flashback, we can finally understand why Aki keeps chasing after Kyohei

[Lexxus]

I don't think she is dead yet. A character like her isn't easy to kill IMO

[Dean_the_Young]

'Chaotic' and 'crazy' is a good description of this episode. And Mahiru, but I repeat myself.

It was kind of hard to see where they were going. At first I was like 'foreboding!' Then, 'comedy?' Then a few laughs, and then it was being a brat and a fight. All over the place like a ping-pong ball, even in the flashback. The only part I didn't like it was the comedic face for when she was terrified by Ammarate-whatever. That was the one time it really wasn't called for. Otherwise, I'm interested in knowing more. She definitely won points for, while being bratty herself, calling Utao out on bro-con tendencies. And putting Aki in his place in an appropriately close call. It just goes to unerline how high she thinks of Kyohei when she can justifiably be called the best Seki still around.


Karahari opens a new prospect. Reformer who wants to open up the village? Or just a new face in the eternal power struggle? Probably the second, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't be 'best' for the village. And Aki didn't kill him out of hand, which I was half expecting.


Utao is comedy gold as always, but I was actually impressed that she held herself back this episode. The old Utao would have impulsively attacked right away at being teased or embarassed. But when she caught the wire to bring down the barrier... luck? Skill? Chance? Or did Kyohei happen to step in again?

Hibino didn't have much to say or do, except be in danger. I hope her thoughts/questions are raised next episode. On the other hand, I actually sided with Mahiru when she put on airs: if Hibino intends to try and insert herself on the basis of being related to the village, she should expect to play by the village rules. This doesn't pardon Mahiru, but in village matters we are not 'all equal.'

And yet another episode comes and another character goes by without Kyohei revealing what HE thinks of someone. Mahiru's head over heels for Kyohei, or at least the Kyohei she remembers, but while Kyohei lets loose the secrets of the past he still doesn't offer much of a personal opinion on others.

Kou considers to be the considerate, patient Huga, and even saved Hibino. He isn't overpowered, but he isn't a chump either. The fact he interrogated Kyohei away from the others was both considerate, but forceful: he wasn't taking no for an answer.

It's a shame, but also likely significant, he couldn't get the whole story from Kyohei though. Kyohei seems to have forgotten, or blocked out, something significant. That... thing that awes both Aki and Mahiru, and at the same time frightens him. Kyohei broke, or didn't broke but showed his true nature, and in doing so won the battle and shaped their views of him.


Frankly, I think the analogy is of a cliff ledge might be appropriate. Amatseru-whatever, it throws people off that cliff of sanity/extremity of the 'inner nature'. Kyohei barely crawled up and is on a narrow ledge, safe for the moment but one snap from falling back in. Aki relishes in it, and hopes to drag Kyohei down with him. And Mahiru is in it as well, fell in love with what she saw of Kyohei when he was in the pit, but isn't interested in forcing him off his ledge deliberatly.

Hibino represents stability at the top of the cliff, away from the edge. Mahiru and Aki are the overly-attractive intensity of the fall.

[zzhk]

I don't know, Mahiru just doesn't seem that crazy to me.
Though the encounter with Amaterasu was terrifying at the time, the only thing she got out of it was an enduring crush on Kyouhei.
Sure, she's tactless, talks tough, incredibly arrogant but all her actions and speech are within the realms of a normal headstrong ojousama who grew up pampered and allowed to do whatever she wanted.
Naturally, the meaning of restraint would be foreign to such an upbringing and Mahiru would be frustrated when things are not going her way like in the village.

Similarly, I don't think the Amaterasu incident changed Aki that much.
Aki isn't antisocial and negative because he met Amaterasu.
Rather, Amaterasu chose Aki because he already harboured darkness due to his isolated upbringing (illegitimate child born from a mistress and all that).

Originally Posted by Dean_the_Young

Utao is comedy gold as always, but I was actually impressed that she held herself back this episode. The old Utao would have impulsively attacked right away at being teased or embarassed. But when she caught the wire to bring down the barrier... luck? Skill? Chance? Or did Kyohei happen to step in again?

While Mahiru's attention was drawn by Moyako threatening to end maintenance, you can see Kirio silently giving signals to Koushiro and Utao to get ready for his diversion.

Utao's priorities are funny as usual...
Her first response to Mahiru is to get her away from Kyouhei and her biggest gripe is Kirio acknowledging someone else as big sister.

Originally Posted by Kanon

That's exactly what I was fearing. Nonetheless, some small part of me wants Koushirou to win

That would be quite a sight.
Apparently Koushiro used to be quite the ladies' man.
His wife was totally not surprised if Kirio was a lovechild from his wilder days.

Originally Posted by mangatron

I'll be honest here, I forgot his name (I do recall he introduced himself to Aki)

Shimoyama is THE punching bag of the series.
I don't think there's any major female character who met him face to face without giving him a good beating.
Though I guess there would be viewers with a masochistic streak who'd like to be in his shoes...

Originally Posted by mangatron

I see. It's safe to say this series has really been faithful to its source regarding this. I like it too, it really gives me a sense that I'm not missing much from the source's portrayal.

The anime has done a great job so far, however, ever since Episode 8 it has been breezing through the manga material to streamline the plot.
It's unfortunate that most anime adaptations have to be shoehorned into seasons instead of using a natural number of episodes.

[totoum]

Oh man,I want more of this HanaKana,sounded like a mix of Sharon from Pandora hearts and Kuroneko from Ore no Imouto ,hell last time I had so much fun listening to HanaKana was Kuroneko's epic rant when trying to get her game idea aproved ("if to them my masturbation material is boring then I'll have to show them masturbation material like they've never seen before")

But yeah apart from my HanaKana fanboyism I enjoyed the episode as a whole,I'm going to be sad to see this one go after only 1 cour,anyone know how the BD preorders are looking?

[Guardian Enzo]

Hopefully all of those extras contests are helping the sales - they're certainly getting a lot of votes. It would be criminal if this didn't get a second season.

[Jin Kizuite]

I pity Aki after watching this episode. He seemingly has the weakest Kakashi out of the bunch in terms of abilities.

I'm not used to good "anti-heroes" not having the strength to back up their talk. So when he failed to hand out some ass slapping to Mahiru who really deserved it I was gravely disappointed.

[Dean_the_Young]

Weak? I don't know about that. It's a melee-specialist, but nothing about that is 'weak' in the Kamisama Dolls context. Certainly it's played on an even field with every other doll it's fought to date. Aki beat Kou, can go head-to-head with Kukuri, and lost to Mahiru by a very narrow margin. Aki's not the 'best', necessarily, but he's certainly showed himself to be formidable and certainly upper-tier.

[zzhk]

Special abilities are very seki-dependent though; kakashi's may have hidden features that can only be unlocked by qualified seki.
Take Kukuri for example, whose left hand hasn't been unlocked for a century until Kyouhei came along.
So Kuramitsuha may appear to be purely slice-and-dice only because that is the way Aki uses it (, or knows how to use it).
His way of fighting does offer few options for Aki to subdue opponents unless he is serious to kill.

Though each kakashi has their strengths and specialties, it's probably fair to say that there is no weakest kakashi.
Weakest seki, on the other hand...

Furthermore, at the end of the Episode 7 flashback, Kyouhei does mention that Kuramitsuha was sealed away when Aki was imprisoned.
We still don't know the full circumstances of Aki's escape.

[D-KLAC]

ep.10 only way to describe it's so Playing Against Type literally on Kana Hanazawa's characters on it.

yikes really too uh-oh a lot of what she did & yet more past history & did i notice she was wetting herself in it?

[mangatron]

^--She did wet herself. And Kyohei was fine carrying her. So....

Kinda late for this, but the preview for ep 11 went up over the weekend.

Spoiler:

Originally Posted by mangatron

In my not-so-awake state of mind, I actually saw Hibino as a naked girl wrapped in only a valentine gift wrapped ribbon....

Honestly, I did see that at first

That actually went up later than I thought.

Say, about that topic of Aki's doll being weaker. I did make that joke earlier in the series that it's kind of tough for a doll like that to give a helping hand when... it has blades for hands but the one thing I noticed, is Kukuri seems to have more built-in functions than the others, not to mention a beam weapon. Long lost cousin of the 4-legged turtle?

[Serp]

Originally Posted by mangatron

^--She did wet herself. And Kyohei was fine carrying her. So....

Kinda late for this, but the preview for ep 11 went up over the weekend.

Spoiler:

Honestly, I did see that at first

That actually went up later than I thought.

Say, about that topic of Aki's doll being weaker. I did make that joke earlier in the series that it's kind of tough for a doll like that to give a helping hand when... it has blades for hands but the one thing I noticed, is Kukuri seems to have more built-in functions than the others, not to mention a beam weapon. Long lost cousin of the 4-legged turtle?

I don't think Kukuri has more built in functions. He has his eye beam, which from what I can tell they all have, the knife, and the "refraction" arm...thing. Its mentioned that its rare that the latter be used at all. I think Kukuri might be a rare Kakashi...but really I think its more due to the link between Seki and Kakashi. I really hate to bring up Evangelion but sort of like the sync ratio.

This is just an opinion, though.

[mangatron]

Originally Posted by Serp

I don't think Kukuri has more built in functions. He has his eye beam, which from what I can tell they all have, the knife, and the "refraction" arm...thing. Its mentioned that its rare that the latter be used at all. I think Kukuri might be a rare Kakashi...but really I think its more due to the link between Seki and Kakashi. I really hate to bring up Evangelion but sort of like the sync ratio.

This is just an opinion, though.

Well for one thing, Kukuri has fingers, which we know is great for holding a PS2 controller. 3 Kakashi do not have fingers like that, I would added Mahiru's doll as it looks more like a fork than individually moveable fingers.

As for the eye beam, it remains to be seen for the others like Koushiro's or Mahiru's, I'm sure Aki's doesn't have a beam as he'd have used it by now, also Takemikazuchi has more of a lightning type of weapon, and not necessarily like a beam like the 4-legger or Kukuri.

The knife, I find it funny it's retractable, with Kukuri alongside Koushiro's doll, these are the only two pacifist-looking dolls, which I'm glad their owners aren't loose cannons

Of course the Seki matters in the end. Imagine if Kuuko was Kuramitsuha's Seki....

[Haak]

I found it rather amusing when they first panned to Hibino, they showed her breasts first, and then focused upwards to her face...

[Dean_the_Young]

So, during Mahiru's dream-land animation sequence, who else had a 'what... the... fuck...' expression?

Girl needs maturity, but Kyohei was right that she wasn't the real danger. Mahiru is a comic sexual abuser, but again, in a comic way. Not a rapist. I sort of wanted Hibino to misinterpret Mahiru's jealousy of Kyohei as advances on her, just to play it up.

Kou was funny, with his blatant flirting. Kirio cut to the quick as well.


And frankly, I'm not surprised that Aki set Mahiru on Hibino like that. I've been expecting him to try and arrange things so that Kyohei snaps and wants to take down the whole village, and what better way than to twist things so that Mahiru does it? He probably doesn't know about our would-be-rapist's attempts, but it certainly would fit into such a plan. I doubt they'll go that way, but a good cliffhanger ending of sorts would be for Kyohei to 'snap' and leave with Aki at the end of the last episode, due to whatever occurs.

And props to Hibino for finally calling Kyohei out on not sharing things with herself and Utao.

[ookamigirl]

Mahiru vs Hibino for Kyohei *sigh*
She sure is persistent and annoying.
Even Utao can't stand her much.

[EroKing]

Episode 11

OMFG MAHIRU! She is such a fun character! HanaKana did an amazing job with her voice this week.

I had a fun this week too making these gifs


lol Mahiru's vision of Hibino


Can't believe Mahiru doing all those things to Hibino, wish I was in her place


So cute



Poor Utao

[blitz1/2]

Yes, they included the relationship chart!!!

[Lexxus]

Damn Hibino. What an amazing breast. Mahiru really enjoyed toying with it.

lol at Utao for writing Hibino as her rival again