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「抱かれたい」 (Dakaretai)
“I Want To Be Embraced”
Keeping with the same mellow and laid-back pace, this second episode of House of Five Leaves follows Masanosuke as he gets more involved with the rest of Yaichi’s group. For the most part, things entailed Otake (Oora Fuyuka) fawning over Masa and trying to get him to join, and Umezou (Takatsuka Masaya) getting visually jealous as a result. It’s bad enough that Ume has to feed and house Masa for free at Yaichi’s request, but now he has to put up with another person aside from Matsukichi (Uchida Yuuya) vying for Otake’s attention. This turned out to be a small subplot in the grand scheme of things, but I enjoyed how it was a recurring theme of sorts. (For anyone wondering about Okinu’s mother, i.e. Ume’s wife, it turns out she passed away when she was younger.)
The rather unassuming focus this week was on Masa and his inability to comprehend Yaichi and his reasons for wanting him to join his band of kidnappers. Given Masa’s timid nature and lack of income to even feed himself, it’s understandable why he’s sticking around the Five Leave members for the time being. For one, not starving your ass off is nice. Secondly, their whole kidnapping side “business” almost seems harmless with the way they handle things. Granted, they’re still kidnapping someone and holding them for random which is about as illegal as it gets, but when there’s no mistreatment of the hostage and no intention to do harm, it’s hard to consider them typical bandits. In addition, Yaichi seems to send Matsu to check on the returned hostage to see if they’ve bothered to contact the local authorities. Rather than a gang of bandits, Five Leaves seems more like a bunch of schemers out to selectively extort money from rich people, much like a certain group of individuals in Ocean’s Eleven. Because of that and their rather unusual stance on the matter, I’m curious as to where things will go now that Masa is more or less officially on board.
Seeing as this is Ono Natsume’s work, it’s very possible that we may never see a big name hostage of sorts nor the House of Five Leaves getting into a serious pinch. While I wouldn’t mind if things continued to focus on the character interactions much like they did in Ristorante Paradiso, I wouldn’t be opposed to some sort of notable conflict here since we are dealing with samurai in the Edo period. Judging from the preview, things look like they’re going to remain fairly uneventful for now, which means it’s probably best to move on if you aren’t really into seinen series in the first place (this is a noitaminA anime after all). Personally, I like the characters so far and am interested in seeing more of them, so I’m planning to stick with this one.
Note: This series is being simulcasted by FUNimation. Their website’s streams are hosted on Hulu which is only available in the US, but their YouTube channel seems to be a bit more region-friendly.
Preview
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I have really taken a liking to this show! its feels fresh!
I, for one, could not love seinen titles more 🙂
Although I do like the occasional seinen series, for some reason I’m having trouble following this one. It’s kinda funny too, since this series was one of the shows I was most hyped up about because of Manglobe and samurai (hell I even rewatched Samurai Champloo for the 3rd time for this). I’ll stick around for a few more episodes, but I’m really hoping for an insane fight somewhere, or things to get a bit more eventful. I’m not saying it’s bad though, it’s just I’m having trouble following this right now.
P.S. The art doesn’t trouble me at all ._. I don’t get what some people are freaking out about, since it kind of feels refreshing to have new artistic style instead of the much more generic one =P
Yeah, I agree it’s starting off a bit slower than even I’d like to see. Hopefully it’ll pick up in the next couple of episodes though.
The number of English translations of this episode title baffles me. In ANN it’s called “I want to get laid” on Funimation subs it’s titled “Make love to me”. I had to resort to torrents to watch the episode. The youtube channel doesn’t work for me. So far two episodes in and it’s very interesting. 10 episodes left and I wonder what kind of story arc will they work with.
The verb daku 抱く, passive form dakareru 抱かれる, means to hug or embrace under normal circumstances. It has the implied meaning of “sleep with” when written without the kanji. i.e. だく.
Given the brothel that Yaichi stays at and how all the girls there want to sleep with him (including one that said “dakaretai”), one would assume that’s the meaning they were going for. I choose to translate the title in the broader sense though, because I felt it also alluded to Masa’s desire to be taken in by a circle of friends like he mentioned at the end.
the art seems to have gotten more “normal” than the last episode.
I agree, I think they toned down a little bit of the exaggerated facial features (particularly the mouths) to make them a bit less harsh and scary looking. It makes sense for the females, but I wish they’d kept the males a bit harsher like the first episode. Then again, I may just be imagining a difference after getting more used to the art.
As far as plot goes, I actually quite enjoy the leisurely pace they’re taking. Granted, by episode 4 or 5 I’d like to see a good fight scene, but I think the characters are intriguing and I’m excited to see how things progress as Masa gets himself deeper involved with them.
I cannot find anyone who is subbing this, is anybody?
this is my favorite this season.
I love the art, the voices, the story~
I don’t think i’ve seen an anime quite like this ;D i like!
Gotta think twice to make Ume upset. He carried that guy in the basket without breaking a sweat. I’m expecting some trouble for the gang, like someone that won’t pay to have their “loved” one returned. I like the way females are drawn here. Otake looks better, specially after 3 or 4 shots of amasake!!!!
For some odd reason the artwork makes me think of the Vision of Escaflowner
fluck region blocking
I don’t know about other people, but this art style is a major turnoff for me. The women look like poorly dresses trannies who could gut you with their noses D: Other than that, it’s a nice show 😀
The birth of moe?
https://randomc.net/image/Sarai-ya%20Goyou/Sarai-ya%20Goyou%20-%2002%20-%20Large%2037.jpg
Manglobe is now forgiven for that Blacksmith… Sword of Failure. This is the second best thing I’m watching this season. I am actually content with this anime season. c:
Oh and I dunno why some keep saying the people are ‘ugly’ and looks like trannies. I find how everyone looks here refreshing, and a nice change from all the crap we usually see. The people in Kaichou… maid… that shoujo look at least a 10 x’s more hideous.
“The people in Kaichou… maid… that shoujo look at least a 10 x’s more hideous.”
So how’s the weather in eliteville? Population still 1-4?
One of the shows of the season…
If anything goes downhill, at least the soundtrack will still be great…