With episode seven of Sparks of Tomorrow, the thematic potency that endeared me so much to the prior episode falls away and is replaced with character actions, motivations, and scenarios that feel nearly nonsensical to me. While the previous episode helped me accept that this show is dealing more in vibes than the structure of storytelling as a craft, and the lavishly animated chase sequence at least makes this episode entertaining, I need something more to grab onto than what Sparks of Tomorrow is giving me. While this episode’s cliffhanger finale promises to finally reveal the relationship and motivations of nearly half of this ensemble cast, these characters have been too undefined in the story so far for me to really care about them.

This episode begins with a looming engagement ceremony between the foppish Yosuke Mizoe and the fifteen-year-old Inako (ew). A background anxiety for much of the main cast throughout the show so far, this episode largely follows Sasaki and Inako’s escape from Inako’s father and Yosuke to a neighboring community so they can meet with Kate’s father who supposedly has the other half of the electrical catalogue. However, this escape sequence broke my, fairly generous, suspension of disbelief and made me feel more frustrated than excited for these characters.

This plan starts with Inako’s sister subbing in for her sister at this betrothal ceremony and, even if she was doubled-over for the majority of the proceeding, I don’t believe for a second that this ruse would by the main characters any amount of time considering Inako’s sister is a foot and a half taller than her. Joining Yosuke in his pursuit of Sasaki and Inako is the physically capable soft-boi Kengo Kuga who nearly apprehends the youths when he manages to get onto their riverboat…but then he decides to support them instead when Sasaki reminds him (for like the fifth time now) of Sasaki’s brother and Kengo’s war buddy Seiroku.

I understand characters having a change of heart and their allegiances shifting as a result is an established narrative beat in fiction and a part of the human condition, but change of heart for Kengo fails to work as the emotional crux of this episode for a couple of reasons. The first is that this character is pretty poorly defined outside of his affection and allegiance to Inako’s sister and his commitment to doing whatever he can to support her family. In a better written show, Kengo being a hyper effective tool that’s utilized by shifting factions until he decides to start acting in accordance with his own beliefs and values would be inspirational, but in Sparks of Tomorrow it instead feels more like Kengo is just now starting to become a real character in the series.

This is due to the second problem with this narrative progression, this character development comes way too late and feels less than motivated. Kengo has been inspired by Sasaki previously in the show to an even greater degree, and it doesn’t feel at all like the character reaches a tipping point and decides to ally himself with Sasaki in this episode. Instead, it just feels like the main tension in this episode had to resolve itself because the characters were written into a corner with no other means of progression.

Even if Sparks of Tomorrow can, on occasion, present its themes in an impactful way, it’s clear after this episode that it cannot make me care about its characters and their underexplored and less-than-enhanced struggles.

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Lucas DeRuyter finds sparks of inspiration in all parts of his life, which would explain why his portfolio features such a broad array of interests and writing formats! To read what he’s ruminating on more regularly, you can keep up with his regular contributions to ANN’s This Week in Anime column.

Sparks of Tomorrow is currently streaming on
Netflix.

On it’s most basic level, this episode is about how our sibling heroes think. Despite their lives of being lied to, hunted, and coveted by those who want to use them for selfish ends, the pair still retain a strict moral compass.

Last episode, when we left Yuru, he was stuck facing a dilemma. While he had originally walked willingly into the trap to save both Fake Asa and the village girl, that was only his immediate goal. His overall goal is—and long has been—finding his parents. By teasing that he knew what happened to them, Ivan forced Yuru to make a choice: Does he save the hostages (and whoever sent the smoke signal) or chase after his own selfish desires?

With this episode we see that, despite being a hardened killer towards anyone who threatens his life, Yuru will put his life on the line for friends, family, and the innocent—even if he may not particularly like any of them at any given moment. Danji and Fake Asa may have lied to him for years—kept him ignorant about both the outside world and the fate of his family—but it’s clear that part of him knows that there was something real beneath the lies. And it’s something he can’t simply abandon.

On the flip side of the story, we see that Asa, despite having a far worse life than Yuru, still shares the same philosophy. She may have come to rescue her brother, but upon encountering the hostages, she immediately whisks them to safety and checks to make sure she hasn’t missed saving anyone else—even though one of them is near the top of the list for people she hates most in this world.

Of course, let’s not pretend that Asa is being truly altruistic with her actions. Her only real life goal is to revitalize her relationship with her brother—the only true family she has left. Helping him by removing the enemy’s leverage against him isn’t exactly an action that requires deep thought. And while Asa would almost certainly save any innocent given the chance, saving Fake Asa is a far more calculated move.

Asa understands what her brother is going through more than anyone. She knows about the isolation, the fear, and, especially, the lies. The deceptions of first the villagers, and later those who thought to exploit her powers, hurt her—led to her death, even. Because of this, she knows just how important the 100% unfiltered truth is to Yuru. In a world without repercussions, I have no doubt Asa would have killed Fake Asa on the spot. However, what’s more important to her than vengeance is having her brother learn everything first hand about what was done to him and why.

In a world where they can trust no one, Asa wants to prove that she can be trusted—to the point that she’ll put her own desires aside for her brother. And that’s why it’s so heartwarming that Yuru responds so positively towards her—agreeing to meet her after this crisis is all over. Her innocent, earnest feelings are getting through to him because she backs them up with action. And hopefully, when the immediate issue has passed, she’ll get a good taste of the familial love she’s longed for all these years.

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Daemons of the Shadow Realm is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll.

You can never let the serial spectacle of acquiring new girlfriends distract from the delights of the previous ones. Rentaro loves all them fully equally, of course, and as more and more friends join the family, that just opens up the avenues of wacky hijinks that can ensue. Granted, some things never change, so even with all the extra polyamorous perspectives, the silly little situation that kicks off this week’s 100 Girlfriends happens at the behest of one of Kusuri’s new drugs. The show, naturally, is self-aware about this consistent contrivance, and will reference it in the B-part of this episode, but at the outset, Kusuri’s drug is a small element of setting up this little problem: Nano is now putting the “Nano” in…her own name.

Look, virtually every character and/or storyline in 100 Girlfriends naturally embodies something that could be considered a fetish to some degree. It’s not like it’s ticking off some tremendous Totally Spies-esque checklist, it’s just the nature of the beast when needing to spin up wacky, farcical situations for these characters to find themselves in with the series operating at the outrageous baseline it already does. So sure, mini-Nano. It means a great number of cuts in this segment can be devoted to the lilliputian efficiency expert doing cute tiny-person things, like eating now-giant-sized food, riding around in her boyfriend’s shirt pocket, and, naturally, getting smushed in-between Hahari’s cleavage. If you know anyone into micro/macro material, this is going to be ground obviously well-tread (while watching out for being stepped on). Even apart from those motives, yes, it’s extremely cute to see Rentaro put together a tiny note-taking booklet or construct a cute little box-bed for the negligably sized Nano to sleep in.

What helps the heart of this segment is how it taps into the connection between Rentaro and Nano (as he would have with all of his girlfriends) apart from her usual defining gimmick. Nano’s obsession with efficiency comes up a bit in her dialoging around her situation (hey, at least she’s more energy-efficient now) but it’s more about her deadpan delivery complimenting the inherently cute situation. The real selling point is how Rentaro helps Nano out and covers for things like her fear of heights that are going to be exacerbated. The big (uh, little) climax of the issue is her getting swept away by a parachute-effect plastic bag, necessitating Rentaro risking life and limb to safely retrieve her. It’s ridiculous, but anybody who wholeheartedly puts himself on the line in that kind of ridiculousness is a keeper. It’s not about testing new waters in the relationship, it’s about strengthening what’s already there. And making viewers wish there was a pocked-sized Nano of their own they could pre-order.

Proving Rentaro’s devotion comes back with Kusuri’s aforementioned drugs in the back half of the episode. Given what happened with Hahari, it’s understandable why both Rentaro and the show would want to pace out bringing parents into the picture. Our boy even calls it out and endures a scare with his latest-introduced mother-in-law! But past that, it makes apparent how this many girlfriends means the same exponential number of meet-the-parents plot waiting in the wings, and that is an avenue ripe for exploring in this series.

Granted, the Yakuzen parents also being a couple of constantly drugged-up diminutives who look exactly like their daughter is probably the easiest called shot in terms of character bits in 100 Girlfriends. It’s funny, but appropriate, that this absurdity is the baseline, as with the cute little Kusuri-papa interrogating Rentaro about the possible ethical breaches of his polyamory. Living in a supervillain lab and cooking up almost-certainly illegal drugs all the time, do Kusuri’s parents still count as belonging to that “normal” world which this show has called a bit of attention to this season—those which can’t see the wild situations of Rentaro’s raucous rooftop ring of relationships as anything but the crazy concoctions they are? Probably not, since those aforementioned qualifiers of Kusuri and her family immediately land them in a heated hostage situation with a representative of Big Pharma, but it’s the thought that counts.

What’s really funny is that I type out all those details and still have qualify that this segment isn’t as laugh-out-loud goofy as the preceding tale of tiny Nano. It’s hardly “tense” since I never doubt that one dude with a gun stands a chance against Rentaro’s love and Kusuri’s drive to commit chemical crimes. It’s always a matter of “how” and if it’s not through the conspicuous Chekov’s gun of the “body exploding drug” on the table, it’s through the slightly less-conspicuous antidote behind it and the point that the viewers counting on the fact that they’ll get a look at the “real” forms of Kusuri’s mom and dad at some point. If anything, it makes me think the reveal is too lopsided: Kusuri’s dad being a massive muscle-mass who can block bullets is great, so her mom just looking like some general adult anime woman can’t help but be disappointing. There were a lot of places they could have gone with this.

No, the real star of the serious unseriousness is the “lesson” Rentaro espouses—not simply wanting Kusuri to stay, but not wanting her drugs to be taken away. It honestly marks it as brilliant that this whole episode opens with the “standby” mechanic of Kusuri’s concoctions fueling a plot, because it reminds audiences how neatly that shortcut works, and almost makes sense as something Rentaro (and the others?) sentimentally wouldn’t want to lose. Of course they have to keep Kusuri’s drugs around, how else could they fuel absurd one-off plots that rope in the age-regression or size-difference fetishists? It’s the lifeblood of 100 Girlfriends, especially since branching out into meet-the-parents plots always comes with the danger of Rentaro accidentally seducing someone’s mom. Or grandmother.

Did Rentaro really heart-crack at the sight of Kusuri’s drug-dimorphed grandmama at the end of this episode? I”m inclined to say fake-out, not just for the overt-even-by-the-standards-of-this-show absurdity of the situation (then again with 85 girlfriends to go Rentaro’s gonna have to grab a GMILF or two by the end of it, law of averages), but also because the interface isn’t lining up. The show’s completed opening and closing indicate that some sword-wielding girl is next in line as Rentaro’s destined, and she doesn’t match up with what’s seen of this unseen grandma—

Suddenly I remember that Mei was similarly snuck into the second season of the show in such a way. Aw fu—

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The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You Season 3 is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll.

Chris has watched at least 100 anime, and really really really really really thought most of them were at least okay. You can peruse his thoughts and see which cartoon girlfriends he’s reposting art of over on his BlueSky.