Still making my way down the top 10 as the episodes end ✍️ Here’s Ahu! This episode was so good and the style shifts were amazing! Also, what a banger theme song
xin ya is better than me bc if my dog suddenly spoke in the voice of the police captain from link click, I would not let him lick me anymore. idc how much i love him, that is a middle aged man
(from the moment i heard his voice i couldn't unhear him as officer xiao so i keep thinking of him as if officer xiao had been cursed into being a dog 😭😭)
I was wondering why the Ahu poster in this week's preview looked like a tiger, and well, we have the answer! This episode felt like some cross between Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt and Baccano!. This episode said "stand against real estate developers" and "solidarity with fellow marginalized folks", and I love it XD
Given X seems to frequent the area, I wonder if he lives around here or if he's from here or has a friend here? Maybe he does some heroing there after regular work? Maybe he's taken to wandering more after Smile's death? The drink machine just "appeared" according to Granny Wang, after all. Maybe it's somehow related to his patrolling.
Yeah, YouTube commenters are cruel : (((
Also Ahu's little :3 After being complimented was really sweet. Song lyrics for his song are also up:
I was really hoping the guy on the other end of the phone line wasn't Nice even though it sounded like him lol Oh well. Though it does seem like at least X was watching over Ahu and Xin Ya, based on when Xin Ya slowed down and the style switch in the hallway fight. So again, X kind of just... watches.
I'm sure someone out there hasn't seen it, but a chunk of the episode was just partially redrawn + Ahu-focused POV for this promotional video of X that came out some years ago (if you want to see what X did):
Honestly the redraw version was cute. Also neat to know that Ahu can seemingly see X's powers work, when it's up for debate how much regular people, let alone other heroes, can. Dogs see a bit differently (particularly colors) than humans do, so I wonder if that plays into it.
In the video, X keeps checking his watch for a timer, so is he hopping around places that he has to do heroing at specific times? From the hallway to help Ahu and Xin Ya, to the alleyway to help Ahu, to... Shang De's shed to deal with Nice?
X in this 2D style was cute.
It's fun to see one of X's hobbies (as listed on the Japanese TBHX site), magic, is being referenced here. I wondered if we'd only see it (maybe) in 24, but nope! We see it here, too. Sort of.
Ah Nice. It's good to remember he volunteered to go murder the scientists in the Ruins with very little prompting. Regardless of what he planned with the Smile v Dragon Boy fight, I think back to that a lot. Yes, Shang De is an abusive monster, but Nice is still making choices here. And one of those choices... is letting a monster axe murder a dog and a young woman on behalf of a landlord.
And Ahu gets so much trust he can talk now lol And... lies about how he won the fight. To make himself look better? To protect X's secret identity? Both? Who knows! And it's good to know Xin Ya isn't like terminally ill or something. That seemed to be the case from the promo footage of her, but she was just recovering from a very bad multi-storey fall(?) and beat-down.
It feels kind of like X was watching in the alley with Nice, Ahu, Xin Ya, and the monster. What Ahu saw on Nice with the fear was different than what Nice saw, as he felt the fear was covering him. I wonder if X changed what Nice saw to make Nice panic more, maybe as punishment for what Nice was letting happen with the land stealing stuff/letting a monster murder Xin Ya and Ahu. It doesn't exactly make sense because Ahu could seemingly see at least part of X's powers earlier, but who knows? Unless it's just more of fear-corrupted people seeing things differently and/or Nice's trauma and anxiety. It would make sense if X was the reason Nice saw the fear corruption differently in the alleyway because that would give X a reason to show up at Shang De's shed (and maybe teleported him to the Treeman building during/after): he just followed Nice there.
I do think it's interesting that Nice states he doesn't want to die while he's panicking. He seems more afraid of that than anything else. So unless the conversation with Shang De further shifted his perception, it seems whoever is manipulating him at the top of Treeman is going to have to do more work to get him to fall to his death.
"Lower than a dog" >.< Well...... ahh Nice.
And now we see how Nice got up on top of the Treeman building. This episode seems to be more "dreamy" than others, with a more dubious question about what's real and what's not, not just with the style switch, but also with the cartoony design of the building that Ahu and Xin Ya somehow manage to break into. It's not clear if presumably X's snap that gets Nice to that building over Lin Ling for his jump is X just spying on Nice and Shang De, a metaphor for time passing, or what.
And yeah, it does seem like we're maybe going to end the series with Nice jumping. It feels like the stuff in the preview for Episode 24 will happen and will maybe end up there? With an explanation for why maybe X put Nice there? I'm not comforted by this video Bilibili uploaded ("The life of a pawn is doomed to tragedy"):
(Though I know it could just be a fake-out of some kind)
Is X trying to give Nice a way to break out of the fear? Or a way to repent for his crimes? Or maybe a way to finally break out from Shang De's control? (Hence being on the Treeman building where Treeman won't miss his very public suicide). Or to show Shang De that X is watching? Nice seems to not be fully cognizant at the end of Episode 23, so it might be X is making him see something that's not there, which is why he falls. Or is it the mysterious lady in black doing something? I guess we'll maybe see next episode.
And finally, we're coming to the end of the season! X's backstory (at least to a degree?)! Lin Ling being the Commoner (and maybe before/after whatever happened with Moon and E-Soul? Maybe even E-Soul's assignment from presumably Rock to kill her for some reason?) New style stuff! I particularly like the look of whatever's happening in this shot from the preview:
It seems similar to some of the style switching on Nice's freak-out during the snap.
And the 3D models for the Johnnies (and Mickey) are going to make their debut! And perhaps the other heroes who haven't been shown in 3D yet.
