“A Ninja and an Assassin’s Big House”
What They Say:
Satoko takes an interest in social media while Konoha is introduced to school prodigy Aoi, who helps with her future career plans.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Based on the manga by Hamburger known as Ninja to Koroshiya no Futarigurashi, it began in 2021 and has a handful of volumes so far, and no English language pickup. The show has Yukihiro Miyamoto directing it with the series composition by Fuyashi Tou. Miyamoto has some solid credits to their name with work on a number of SHAFT projects like Hidamari Sketch, but was the series director on Ground Control to Psychoelectic Girl and also directed a handful of episodes of the Monster TV series. Tou has a smaller resume overall but did the Kizumonogatari film series and worked on both seasons of March Comes in Like a Lion, among others. SHAFT has a wide range of works with over a hundred series they’ve done production animation on, so there’s a lot to like from them in general.
Events have taken a sudden turn for the worse for Konoha and Satoko as their apartment has been engulfed in a fire, causing them to live temporarily with Marin who is certainly abusing Konoha in this situation. As it turns out, Satoko had gotten involved with another ninja through social media in a way that ended badly online and caused said ninja to track down where she lived and torched the place. Satoko was oblivious to the obvious statements by the ninja and since Marin has been using a drone to surveil her and Konoha’s place, she got all the footage for it. It’s pretty amusing and we see how Marin helps them get a new place and sets a quick and easy trap to draw in the ninja, kill her, and convert her to leaves so they can get on with their lives for a while. Both lost a lot, but Satoko lost all her money as well since she never set up a bank account. That increases the pressure to be sure!
Unfortunately, a good chunk of the episode falls to some less-than-interesting material once all of that is settled. With the pair in the new house with Marin there, there are a lot of instances of something going bump in the night and causing problems around the house as well that they can’t quite track down. There are some interesting bits as other characters show up to help out, and to try and perform an exorcism on Marin, but a lot of it just didn’t click for me in the same way other episodes have. It’s not bad per se but it just didn’t work with the semi-seriousness of it and the absurdity of the moments as well. Marin herself is hit or miss with each episode, but adding these other elements in didn’t work. It has some great visual moments, and seeing the pairings work well together here while trying to contain Marin is done well, it just felt a bit soulless.
In Summary:
There are fun moments to be had in the episode and everything up until we get to the supernatural-ish part works well for me. The whole fire and fallout from it with how everyone handles it has a lot going for it. Once we get past that and things start puttering around the new temporary house, it just doesn’t maintain a good enough hold to keep you engaged with it. I do like that we get more of the cast to show up and it became a kind of group event but it just didn’t hit for me, unfortuantely, as I felt more bored by it than anything else.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
