Recap: Cornered by Hime and her snazzy new Dragon Spear, Morino’s mysterious benefactor reveals his true identity… and then gets his ass handed to him by pretty much the entire cast.

Aqua’s thoughts: My weekly coverage of Yozakura Quartet is starting to turn into an odyssey into the depths of my very soul in an attempt to find the reason why I even love this obviously rather poorly written parade of underwear in the first place. The answer is surprisingly simple. Because it’s awesome. Yozakura Quartet runs on the best kind of Dumb Shounen Plot™, the kind that would happily throw depth or logic out of the window just to get as much awesomeness in as possible, but it does seem to have missed the memo saying that it is perfectly possible to kick convention in the face without having to give up the very basics of writing itself. This show’s defining flaw is its exaggerated reliance on the expodump. It is anime’s favourite way to unceremoniously screw over the number one rule of writing — you know the one — and roughly the only flaw Yozakura Quartet has in common with its direct competitors. That, however, makes its presence all the more glaring.

Though the swashbuckling storytelling has its childlike charms, the messiness of it all somehow does allow Yozakura Quartet to divert more attention to its many strong points. The expodumps, unceremonious as they may be, do give the world some considerably fleshing out. The numerous asspulls do provide all new moments of awesome and keep all the characters involved in the story. The fanservice does…. Yeah, scratch that, the fanservice does nothing at all. The fact that Suzuhito Yasuda needs to “rely” on wonky writing in order to do the crazy things he wants to do reveals his inexperience as a writer, yet whenever he manages to hit his strife, he does it with gusto.

No other episode of Yozakura Quartet up until now has proven this as well as this one did. It marked the formal introduction of Enjin Hiizumi, with a landslide advantage the lamest character in the show, but it also subjected him to a savagely awesome beatdown at the end of the entire titular quartet. The smug feline possessing Ao’s brother is everything a villain should not be: always on top of things for no reason, always in the know of any random twists for no reason and always dressed in a horrible fur coat for no reason. He delivers his oh-so-evil lines with the subtlety of the panty shots his sister is mostly reduced to, and can’t choose between being a calculated badass or a cackling maniac to save his life. Not that he does a very convincing job at either, though. Yet at least the heroes don’t stand by and let him be generic like so many other villains get the right to be. Maybe Enjin has to do all the expodumping himself because no one even bothers to heed his ramblings. Knowing that, it’s hard not to love our heroes.

In typical Yozakura Quartet fashion, Hime and company let their fists do the talking and chase Enjin off with — quite literally– his tail between his legs to outsource his evildoings to the far more interesting baddies yet to come. Before we get there, however, we still get some awesome moments. Shinozuka’s change of heart serves as a nice little heartwarming moment and Yuuhi stepping in to lampshade the fact that this arc’s entire premise makes not a lick of sense is a wonderful bit of self-awareness. I like how in the end, Kohime wanted little more than to walk in the footsteps of her cousin and Morino’s insane paranoia, albeit grossly exaggerated, did serve as a nice little analogy on how grown-ups often feel threatened by the enthusiasm and idealism of the younger generation. Or something.

Anyways, with the Thorny Path arc wrapped up, looks like next episode will be all about Yozakura Quartet‘s dedicated obsession with the act of befriending one’s former enemy. With a stamp rally. Because stamp rallies are freaking awesome.

Bonus Yozakura Quartet drinking game

• Whenever there is a panty shot, take a drink.
  • Take two if there is one at a painfully inappropriate moment. (Iro’s Note: You’d be dead halfway through episode 1)
    
• Whenever someone gets groped, take a drink.Take two if they comment on it.
  • If Kotoha is somehow involved, finish your drink instead.
• Whenever someone mentions “the dark age of the law” that Hime is Ned Stark’s bastard the mayor, take a drink.
• Whenever Hime’s scarf gets in the way of something, take a drink.
  • If it magically changes length in between shots, finish your drink instead.
• Whenever one of the older girls hits on Kyousuke, take a drink.
• Whenever Touka falls over, take a drink.
  • Take two if Kyousuke falls over as well.
• Whenever someone falls asleep or is shown to have fallen asleep, take a drink.
• Whenever you hear the “striking” sound effect, take a drink.
• Whenever someone seemingly dies, finish your drink.

All quartets will lead lead, say li-li-li-li-liver damage~

Iro’s thoughts: Cue the villain, I guess? Yozakura Quartet seems to be following that grand shounen tradition of the big bad popping up and laughing at the heroes as he explains his origins and motivations. Although, considering how confused I’ve been over the past seven episodes, it was a bit refreshing just to have someone stand around and exposit exactly what’s going on. But wait, he’s like possessing Ao’s brother, or something? And wants to possess Akina? I’m not even sure why he wants to fuse the dimensions. Revenge, maybe? Why not just go after only Akina then? Man, scratch what I said. I still don’t get this.

Did anybody believe for even a second that Akina was actually stabbed? Everybody else going ballistic on Enjin’s ass was a fun scene, but it seems somewhat pointless in retrospect. The clear lack of blood should have tipped off anybody with eyes, and plus this is a shounen manga and therefore the male lead will never actually die or take on grievous, lasting wounds. Actually, if Akina was unharmed, why did he even slump dramatically to the ground? That’s a completely unnecessary action! He could have kept going and punched Enjin in the face! And if Kotoha has to lick things to make shortcuts, when did she lick a gravity well (or building-sized swords)? Hime has never used the Dragon Spear until 5 minutes ago, so how/when did she learn to turn it into a flamethrower / knife? Gahhhhh!

Okay, okay. I’m re-realizing every week that I need to turn off my brain when I watch Yozakura Quartet – at least, the part of my brain that’s been conditioned  by the long-winded explanations of the Cosmere and Type-Moon. Stuff just happens in this show and I have to either roll with it or feel my enjoyment draining away as I try to apply logic to where little exists, or is necessary. And accordingly, I hope next week’s episode will be fun.