Karen's Anime Blog

We’re continuing with the siege of Clearflow Lake. Suori popped in at the very end to lend aid last week, and it turns out her aid is a whole lot of money. A group including Boxxo and Lammis goes to Suori’s mansion to get the gold coins out of her safe; the money will give Boxxo the points to stay in his giant vending machine form while everyone else repairs the hole in the village wall. Like everything else in town, Suori’s mansion is trashed, which leads her to cry like the little girl she really is. Awww, I don’t want to see Suori sad, she’s so much fun when she’s being an absolute bitch on wheels.

“We can fix it: we have the technology.“

Boxxo thanks Suori for her help, and then Lammis makes Boxxo say her name too, but the best he can do is “La-is” because he doesn’t have the “mi” sound. Suori rubs it in that Boxxo can say her name perfectly, and I’m happy she’s back to being the pettiest little hellcat on the block.

Supposedly Suori gives Boxxo 110 coins; there’s way more than 110 here.

Boxxo muses about how they say that adversity brings out a person’s true worth, and now we’re starting to see Suori’s. I’m actually not sure if I agree with that; yes, pressure creates diamonds, but sometimes, suffering just makes you suffer. It’s easy to justify mistreating people if you believe that the adversity will make them better people.

When the group gets back, the people camping in the Hunter’s Association building go crazy; it’s hot as blazes, and they want Boxxo’s cold drinks and snacks. It’s clear all these people are not going to be able to tolerate these living conditions for much longer.

Hunter meeting time. Director Bear and Hulemy concoct a plan to vanquish the monsters: they’ll wait until the monsters make their nightly attack on the Hunter’s Association, when monsters will be pulled away from the hole in the wall, then they’ll close the wall up while the monsters’ defenses are lowered. This will expose the defenders at the Association to a lot of danger, but they really have no choice at this point.

If you imagine “Decisive Battle” from Evangelion playing, it makes this scene better.

Time to head out. Director Bear tells the defenders staying at the Association that if the “Fix the Damn Wall” Task Force fails to return, they should hole up in the Association building using the month’s supply of food that Boxxo has provided; help from the other strata will arrive. Honestly, if the other strata were hit as hard as Clearflow Lake I wouldn’t be expecting reinforcements any time soon, but I guess that’s better than saying “If we don’t come back, enjoy the food until you run out of it and die.”

At the wall, Lammis gives Boxxo a last pep talk before the fight. She says that her grandma said that no one likes girls that are too pushy, so she’s not going to try to stop Boxxo from fighting on his own. Lammis, I realize you loved your grandma, but that’s probably not the message you should be taking away here.

Boxxo changes into his cardboard form and uses balloons to levitate himself over the hole in the wall, then changes into his giant ice machine form to plug the hole with his giant body. Next, he uses a new function and makes concrete platforms: ten of them, enough to plug the hole.

Wait a minute. If he could do that and plug the hole in a manner of seconds, why did he even need all of Suori’s money? I thought the whole reason he needed more points was because he needed to stay in his giant ice machine form for a long time. The show that explains everything has not sufficiently explained this to me.

Lammis and three earth mages help shore up the wall. Seems like they really didn’t need to bother when Boxxo already had giant slabs of concrete there, but it’s extra security I guess.

Boxxo sees a human standing back near the monsters and pegs him as one of the Netherlord’s commanders. He floats over in his cardboard form and then traps the commander within his barrier. Then things get crazy: Boxxo nearly strangles the guy with a towel, then tortures him by making him drink a whole bottle of cola with fizzy candy in it. Okay, as torture goes it’s not that bad, but isn’t it a problem that once you start torturing people, the idea of doing worse and worse things becomes more palatable? But the people Boxxo loves really are in danger, and getting the info this guy has could be the key to saving them; it’s a conundrum. I’m anti-torture in general, but I can see Boxxo’s POV here.

Faced with the possibility of having to drink cola with even more mints (and not knowing that cola isn’t poisonous), the commander gives up and releases his control over the monsters. It looks like we’re past all the drama until Lammis gets a good look at the commander and recognizes him as the guy who used monsters to destroy her village. Lammis loses her composure and starts punching Boxxo’s barrier; we know from Season One that a normal monster hit does 10 points of damage to Boxxo; Lammis hits are doing 600 each. She may be even stronger than we thought.

I wonder, does Lammis know that hitting the barrier does direct damage to Boxxo? I don’t think she does, because even in her enraged state, I don’t think she would hit Boxxo; she loves him too much. Fortunately, Director Bear is on hand to talk Lammis down. Director Bear then advises the commander that he’d better answer all of their questions if he wants a quick death; I guess everybody has officially had it with this shit by this episode. I’ve had it with this little arc myself, honestly.

Boxxo worries that even though he can now talk– sort of– he has nothing he can say that would help Lammis. Eventually he just blurts out that he’ll be with her forever, which she mistakes as a marriage proposal. Turns out she’s kidding, but she does let slip that her mother got married at 18 and she doesn’t want to get married before then, so…I guess that’s good? Honestly, I can’t wrap my mind around getting married in your teens. I got married at 30. She also mentions that she could get Hulemy to make them some children by making “little Boxxos,” and now I’m envisioning tiny vending machines and it’s adorable.

That’s all for this episode. It’s fun to see how Boxxo navigates problems, but I’m getting a little tired of the giant ice vending machine and the mint-and-cola trick. I hope our favorite vending machine pulls out some new moves in episode four.