This is a Princess?
Princess Buttocks (I really do wish I could remember her real name – I do know it isn’t Catherine) is getting desperate. She’s finally tracked down her summoned hero and, for the purpose of plot convenience, she admits she can’t summon anyone else unless Genzo goes home or is killed, so she needs him to actually go and fight the demon king. Which Genzo has absolutely zero interest in doing until Carmilla convinces him that the demon king has three heads and tentacles (I think eye-beams were mentioned in that wondrous bit of nonsense).
Anyway, MAO, the summoned demon king, doesn’t care about the whole being a demon king thing as much as he cares about having an opportunity for a rematch with Genzo and so gathers a horde of monsters, who he does nothing with. This is kind of weird given as they approach the orc village he pretty much tells them he’s fine on his own and goes and more or less does exactly what Genzo did and defeats the orcs. The question would be, why gather the army of monsters if you aren’t doing anything with them?
However despite being aware of the orc village being attacked, Genzo puts a pin in the whole tracking down the demon king mission as something more important has come up; Hiroyuki was kidnapped and sold. Genzo has proven time and again how attached to that pup he really is. Yet, Kemono Michi actually surprised me in this episode as Genzo didn’t crush the new owner but rather agreed to leave Hiroyuki with his new young owner because he thought it might be better for the puppy. That isn’t how things end but it was a more nuanced moment for Genzo’s character that this anime has rarely delivered.
Of course, it becomes crystal clear why the anime has thrown another spanner in the works rather than getting on and confronting the demon king. With 12 episodes, this one has been trying to time the confrontation and if we’ve felt that the previous episodes might have been stretching the content a bit, that thought probably isn’t inaccurate. We’re now at the business end of the season and episode 10 leads us into what I guess will be the climatic rematch of MAO and Animal Mask – I wonder if he’ll dig out the costume again?
Even then, it looks like we’ll have a rematch of Carmilla and the other vampire girl before that and I’m not sure I’m all that interested. That flash back wasn’t overly welcome. Still, for an anime about a pro-wrestler getting transported to another world, it kind of makes sense that the conclusion would involve a fairly large wrestling tournament (match/competition/I don’t know what the actual right word is here). I guess we’ll see if they can keep it entertaining as the rest of the season has been surprisingly entertaining given my general lack of interest in wrestling.
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Karandi James
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Images from: Hataage! Kemono Michi. Dir. K Miura. ENGI. 2019.
Kemono Michi is weird. I’ve been wanting to drop it since forever yet, i’m not…? It’s not even that entertaining or funny yet i’m always like PLEASE MORE and yes, I will shamefully admit, I watch Kemono Michi on Wednesdays before anything else even though its the show I enjoy least…Maybe its not Kemono Michi that’s weird but me.
It is definitely weird in that objectively there’s plenty I don’t like about it but overall I would have to say I am entertained.