It’s musical mayhem on this week’s Simulblast! Our contestants suggest new openings for their shows and try to move up in the ranks! Join us for this melodious medley of massive momentousness!

This week’s challenge: Pick an artist that should be doing the theme song and soundtrack for the show as well as explain why.

Chaika ~ The Coffin Princess (Episode Seven)
Player: Kanashimi
Class: Boss

Even though I enjoy the opening for Chaika ~ The Coffin Princess, I think I much prefer the animation. I feel like the song would have more punch if it was by the group Angela. They’re known for contributions to a ton of anime, but lately they’ve been working on the anime “K” and “K: Missing Kings.” Their stuff just gives a very action-like feel fueled with adrenaline, and I’m not quite sure the current opening does that.

The episode begins with Guy appearing to provide information on the next hero they need to steal from. His name is Simon Scania, and he’s a wizard! Welp, now we know who rules the internet. Either way, the group heads into a town and finds out about the Valley Of No Return where this Simon guy is supposed to reside. In addition, apparently, Alberic is still going after Chaika against his orders? What changed there? I thought we were free of you?! Aaaaaargh!

Alberic and his gang confront Chaika, asking them to surrender and what her intention is. She answers simply that she wants to give him a funeral and, go figure, Alberic is really surprised by this. With a drop in animation quality, he declares war on them, and a battle ensues. Frederica jumps in, getting excited that killing is happening, transforms into a dragon, and decides to help them escape. She’s pretty upset she hasn’t gotten to fight Toru to the death yet, though.

Okay, wait, stop! Calling it now, this Valley Of No Return shows people visions, because if I’m to believe the story, Akari is dead and Chaika is about to do love confessions. You’re gonna give me that stuff so easily? No way. I know I have to suffer to see a pairing get off the ground; I’m not dumb. Annnnd I was right, Frederica, Chaika, and Akari are able to watch the fantasies that Toru is having. So I’m just gonna assume Akari is gonna kill him since they don’t involve getting with her.

They wait for Toru to approach their protective barrier and smack him inside once he is. Smacking always removes magic; know that for the future, kids. Chaika is able to stretch and reposition the barrier essentially to allow them movement through the area, but they have to move with a bit of speed to do so. They find a device to get rid of the fog and voila. Simon comes out of his house like a crazy bum; he denies he’s Simon, but Frederica confirms it’s indeed him. He seems to have gone absolutely crazy because Marco apparently sold them out to the enemy. And his wife died. So he lives in a fantasy world to cope with everything that’s occurred and traps his enemies in illusions, then turns the illusions into nightmares.

Before the episode ends, we get the cutest frickin’ moe moment thus far; I can’t even. Toru states that he’s unable to really be with Chaika and that she shouldn’t focus on the illusions. They probably just occurred because he can’t be with his sister or a dragoon. Chaika gets grumpy and refuses to answer any questions, citing that she’s driving. Once Toru realizes she’s mad, he gets a piece of bread (or some other food item?) thrown at his face. C’mon man, you deserved that one.

Watch Chaika ~ The Coffin Princess on Crunchyroll or talk about this episode on our forums.

Captain Earth (Episode Seven)
Player: Bobby Henshin
Class: DJ

Oh my god! Finally, after four giant-robot-less episodes, we get the giant robot battle we deserve! Welcome to episode seven of Captain Earth. With the talk of betrayal being thrown everywhere, it’s hard to trust people. We learn that Amarock and Moco were one of these six children called the Designer Children. Teppei is also one of these children. They were artificially made to be able to fire the LivLaster. This entire project was so that the evil company could obtain unlimited energy. So there are three more Kiltgangs we might have to worry about…crap.

We cut to our four protagonists sharing some watermelon on the porch. Hana says that Pitz told her that moments like these won’t last forever, so we must enjoy them. Wise words, Pitz; very wise words. Teppei voices his concern about him being a Kiltgang. He is afraid of going into the Goodfellow again because he doesn’t know if he will be the same again if he transforms. Daichi reassures him by saying that he has some melons
that they can share for tomorrow, so he better come back. Pitz freaks out trying to get everyone’s attention.

Cue the intro theme! Now this weeks Simulblast challenge is to say what band or artist we think should have done the intro and soundtrack to this anime. My choice would have to be a team up between Jam Project and T.M. Revolution. Both have amazing voices that have lent their style of rock to super robot anime in the past. Yet we have never seen them together. I think their styles would compliment each other greatly in this space epic, mainly because of the special epic feeling you get in the chorus from Jam Project with the techno beats from T.M. Revolution.

Continuing on, everyone is now at Globe headquarters where they pull up a map of Japan, and Pitz is showing them where the Kiltgangs are going to strike next. Turns out that Pitz has the power to predict when the Kiltgangs are going to attack. Daichi is already inside his rocket, ready to go. The Commander is mad because he said that Daichi wasn’t aloud to pilot again. Daichi is scared, but he says he also made a promise and that he will never let go of what his father taught him of courage. And with these brave words, Daichi is now off into space.

Just as predicted, Moco shows up in her pink Goodfellow, but that’s not the worst of it. Out of nowhere comes Amarock in his Goodfellow. They decided to double team the Earth Engine and destroy it once and for all. Hana tries to get Teppei to help, but he is reluctant and scared. Akari decides to snap him out with a new spell she calls the “Suck-It-Up Forte.” This spell is just a big slap in the face. Really, she just slaps him in the face. She tells him that, unless he doesn’t go and help, Daichi will die and they won’t be able to share that melon together. This snaps Teppei out of it, and he jumps into his Goodfellow.

Meanwhile in the battle for space, the Earth Engine has already lost an arm and is getting destroyed. Seems to me they can’t keep this robot intact, can they? Just as Moco was about to kill Daichi, Teppai shows up to help. While Teppei keeps Moco busy, Daichi focuses on Amarock. Amarock pins down the Earth Engine and tells Moco to fire and kill them both. This is where we learn that the little cubes that fly off when a Goodfellow is destroyed are what make the Kiltgangs immortal. Now we know how to kill the Kiltgangs once and for all. So what does Teppei do? He rips out the cube from his Goodfellow and uses it to make a massive explosion, destroying Moco’s Goodfellow. What?! They just told you that that’s what keeps you alive… What are you doing?!

With both Moco and Teppei out of the picture, it’s up to Daichi to beat Amarock. He is out of fuel, but Akari sends up a pod full of missiles to Daichi. Daichi fires at the missile pod and uses the explosion to deliver a killer punch to Amarock, defeating him. Back on Earth we find everyone trying to get Teppei out of the Goodfellow. His vitals are all green…for a normal human. The pod opens up and Teppei is now holding a brand new LivLaster! By destroying the cube, Teppei is now a normal human with his own LivLaster. With this new turn of events, the commander has formed a new team for Globe: the team of Daichi, Akari, Hana and Teppei. The team shall be known as the Midsummer Nights. The name was chosen because Daichi’s last name means Midsummer. This makes Daichi the captain of the team, and shall now be awarded the title of Captain Earth! Now we know the reason for the anime’s name.

This episode felt a bit fast. It wasn’t a bad episode, but it really didn’t do much other then tell us how to kill the Kiltgangs and that we have 3 more of them to worry about. Seriously, we need to put some stronger armor on the Earth engine, because that thing is fragile. Hopefully things will be better in episode eight. Catch you all later!

Watch Captain Earth on Crunchyroll or talk about this episode on our forums.

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders (Episode Seven)
Player: Elk
Class: DJ

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the 7th episode of this crazy anime series; this is probably going to be the craziest of them. Before we start, though, I’m going to assign Vanilla Ice as the singer for the OP. What? That makes no sense! Have you lost your mind, Elk? Probably, but there will actually be a character later in the show who in the Japanese version is NAMED Vanilla Ice. Will he be named that in this version? Given the name changes to Part 2, probably not.

Anyways, Dio fears the Joestar bloodline. He feels he cannot underestimate it, and the creepy old lady thinks he is silly. OP BREAK! Let me just play Ice Ice Baby in the background.

So we left our heroes in a lifeboat outside a giant ship. The entrance ramp is down, but there is no one from the crew to meet them. Everyone boards the ship, including the stranded sailors and the stowaway.

They search the ship, and though everything seems to be in order mechanically, there’s absolutely no crew. The stowaway, however, finds a large Orangutan in a cage. It has creepy eyes. As the Orangutan isn’t dead, obviously someone must be feeding it, so they go to look harder.

All of a sudden, a ship crane starts moving and impales a sailor, stringing him up and dripping blood everywhere. No one was at the controls of the crane, but the Stand users realize there must be a Stand controlling it; however, no one saw a Stand. Kakyoin has Heirophant Green check in small spaces people can’t get.

The stowaway is frightened at the trouble the main characters seem to attract, and Joseph tries to calm her down. She goes to check on the creepy orangutan, and it motions for her to open the cage, but she doesn’t have a key. The orangutan holds out a freshly cut apple, signifying someone must be feeding him. While she ponders this, it lights a match, starts smoking, and pulls out a Playboy magazine. While she is creeped out by the orangutan’s attraction to humans, some sailors come out and tell her to watch out for the orangutan since they’re so strong.

She realizes she needs a shower so she goes to have one, which means it’s child nudity time! Why do we have this scene? Oh yeah, it’s because the orangutan is a pedophile and we need to have a Psycho-type shower scene after he kills the other sailors. JoJo finds the cage destroyed and the Playboy magazine thrown on the floor. Cutting back to the shower, the stowaway tries to cover herself, and the orangutan goes to attack her.

JoJo shows up and attacks the ape, stopping him from molesting the young girl, and all the colours change for effect. A propeller blade moves on it’s own, hitting JoJo, and then begins to bend. he still can’t see the Stand, so he’s wondering where it is or why he can’t see it. By this point I would assume most people know the Stand IS the ship, so let me spoil it for you. After we figure it out, so does he.

Unfortunately, the ship has already begun sinking people into its steel and holding them there. Everyone else is getting slowly crushed by the ship, and the “Captain” has JoJo tied up. He lets JoJo know his Stand’s name is Strength. Then he solves a Rubix Cube just to show JoJo how smart he is. He crushes it, then turns towards the young girl again. I never thought we’d see an anime with a pedophile ape ship captain as an antagonist, but here it is. JoJo beats this stand user with the same 2 finger trick he beat the last user with, this time using his fingers to propel a pin into his head. The ape shows his unprotected belly to JoJo, signifying defeat. JoJo refuses to accept this and punches him to death.

Everyone gets off the ship as the stand slowly crushes inwards. Once again, because JoJo is a highschool student, his obvious smoking is censored, and they continue their travel towards Singapore on their little lifeboat.

Back at Dio’s place, the witch tells Dio not to worry as her son with two right hands will kill them for sure. This is obviously the man who Polnareff has sworn to kill.

As a final thought, Oingo Boingo should handle the OST besides the OP and ED themes, for the same reason as Vanilla Ice, and for the subject matter of this episode. That orangutan probably sang “I love little girls” every day before he fought JoJo.

Watch JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders on Crunchyroll or talk about this episode on our forums.

The Irregular At Magic High School (Episode Seven)
Player: Kayarath
Class: Content Provider

This week’s The Irregular at Magic High School starts off with the student assault party storming the gate to the terrorist base. Then we get the opening piece by Lisa. This week’s challenge is to suggest another artist to sing the opening, but aren’t many anime openings a bit generic by nature? Honestly, once you establish the type of song you want, you can pick a dozen different people to it. The opening piece is “Rising Hope” and it’s a meat and potato mix of J-rock and J-pop with with some but too much edginess. Yuna Ito and Angelia Aki are too folky; Fripside is too dancy; Vic Mignogna could pull it off if he tried, but this show doesn’t have enough fangirl bait for him.

Shoko-tan would be a great fit, but that feels like a cop out. Doing anime openings is her thing, so she’s a super obvious choice. I think Uverworld could do it, as they can rock but not over do it. Aya Hirano would be a great choice as well. She sang the opening to the Haruhi Suzumiya anime, so she has a good track record. My music knowledge isn’t bloom level though, so I could be wrong.

Me being wrong is a recurring theme this week. There was no mole in the student assault party, and they had no trouble with the terrorists base. They were plowing through them like it was the opening level of an action RPG. Heck, a few of the people who came along complained that were no bad guys left to beat up.

Even the final boss of the dungeon was severely… outclassed (now that’s a pun that would make KROZE proud)! When Tatsuya and Miyuki (the protagonists, brother and sister pair) barge into his encounter, he was like, “LOL, Geass!” but Tatsuya was like, “nope.” Then he went, “shoot him!” but Tatsuya was like, “nope.” With about twenty other terrorists in the room, my natural thought went to, “why not just bum rush him? You do outnumber him by a lot.” One of them did try, but it was a really bad idea. Miyuki is there too, and she doesn’t take kindly to people even looking at her brother funny. She retaliates by ice nuking (is there an ice equivalent of nuking?) all of them. After Tatsuya goes “nope” one more time, someone else kill steals the terrorist leader by cutting off part of his arm. This is a show that isn’t afraid to spill some blood.

After wrapping up that dungeon, it’s time to lighten up with some character development, foreshadowing, and hijinks. It turns out Mibu received a get out jail free card even though she was part of a terrorist group. It seems that Mibu failed her will save against mind control, so I guess they’re willing to cut her a break. The school in general wants to just keep it on the down low. Normally I’m against cover ups, but when the students resolve the issue by taking out a terrorist cell without breaking a sweat, I guess that puts the problem under the solved category.

This leaves Mibu’s schedule tantalizing open; time to pick a boyfriend! I was wrong again, as she decided to go with another guy instead of Tatsuya. When you visit someone in the hospital everyday and cut off the arm of the person who messes up your life, that must score you a lot of points. He was in the student assault squad too, and while he can cut people up like a pro, he can be socially awkward around girls. I guess that makes him more relateable then Tatsuya. Like Batman, he excels at kicking butt and being distant to people.

Now that everything is settled down, Tatsuya and Miyuki can walk off into the sunset to continue playing high school comedy. The enrollment arc is finally over! It looks like the trouble’s just gonna keep coming, though. We get a glimpse of the matriarch of Tatsuya’s family, and she looks like she’s gonna cause a poop storm five to twenty episodes from now. The next rival also makes his debut. His nickname is the “Crimson Prince” and people don’t get nicknames like that because they love the color red. What else does he do besides have a red motif? I don’t know, but I know how to find out! See you next episode!

Watch The Irregular at Magic High School on Daisuki or talk about this episode on our forums.

No Game No Life (Episode Seven)
Player: Whiskahs
Class: Technomancer

Episode 7 of No Game No Life continues to deliver on the lack of substance that I’ve become so accustomed to. This episode uses the recurring bit of Steph becoming frustrated with Sora for some reason or another before falling in love with him all over again. The addition of Jibril as one of the siblings’ underlings and a plot device Steph wears in her hair are the only reasons the story moves forward at all.

The episode begins with slightly different takes on the bathroom and kitchen scenes from earlier in the series with some tweaks because of Jibril’s presence. The main topic of conversation is the werebeast nation that Steph’s grandfather lost most of the land of the kingdom to before his death. While Sora was aware of this before, he didn’t realize the context, which was that no one in the world had even attempted to challenge the werebeasts to a game in over a decade after many of the stronger races failed to defeat them even once. What begins as Sora thinking out loud turns into a bit of rant against Steph’s grandfather, which causes her to break down and run off to her room.

While she is in her room crying, we’re treated to a flashback where Steph receives a key from her grandfather. He tells her to give it to the one she believes can bring humanity back to prominence before the flashback cuts away. Steph pulls the key out of her hair (she apparently keeps it behind the flower she generally wears) and plays with it before Jibril appears out of the wall and urges Steph to come to the library. Steph is annoyed by the intrusion, but before she can voice any complaints, Jibril disappears, and she is left to her own devices.

Meanwhile in the library, Sora is trying to figure out why the former king challenged the werebeasts not once, but eight times even though he was sure to lose. By this time, Sora has already uncovered that all the land lost was mostly useless to the humans, so he is convinced that the king had some sort of motive in playing all the games he did against the werebeasts. In the process of thinking out loud, and after a bit of monologue about how he believes in humanity, which Steph overhears, he is given the key that Steph had been entrusted and goes off to the secret room that it unlocks.

The room is mostly empty aside from a book. Inside the book are the writings of the former king, which Sora believes contains the secrets to defeating the werebeasts at whatever game they play. Armed with this new knowledge, Sora thanks Steph and the episode ends.

Outside of the main plot, we also get a brief scene where the defeated Clammy is bathing at a spring in a forest somewhere. Her elven friend comes back, bearing food and other supplies, which surprises Clammy at first. After what seems to be a bit of playful flittering, the elf enters the clearing and asks what Clammy’s plans are going forward. It turns out Clammy believes that Sora is in the pocket of the werebeasts and that she was in fact defeated because of whatever magical support he received from them instead of through skill and conviction like he had told her. It seems like she’ll be coming back to challenge him again in the near future.

I haven’t done a challenge in awhile, so I figured I’d put a little above minimal effort into this episode summary… If I had to choose a musician to do the soundtrack for this show it would be Jon Lajoie. I feel like his kind of disturbing humor along with his simple and purposefully bad sound (from his earlier stuff) would compliment the quality of the show incredibly well. The topic manner of Jon’s earlier bits would actually match up with the show incredibly well too. Sora would fit right in with a Pedophile Beard.

Watch No Game, No Life on Crunchyroll or talk about this episode on our forums.

Daimidaler (Episode Seven)
Player: Knightshade
Class: DJ

Knightshade has missed the deadline for this week’s Simulblast. He is considered a No Show and gains no points for writing this week. He has FOUR more chances to miss before he is out of the competition!

Watch Daimidaler on Funimation or talk about this episode on our forums.

Black Bullet (Episode Seven)
Player: Midnight
Class: DJ

Midnight has missed the deadline for this week’s Simulblast. She is considered a No Show and gains no points for writing this week. She has ONE more chance to miss before she is out of the competition!

Watch Black Bullet on Crunchyroll or talk about this episode on our forums.

Week 007 Tally

1. Kanashimi: 700
2. Bobby Henshin: 690
3. Elk: 610
4. Kayarath: 580
5. Whiskahs: 500
6. Knightshade: 450
7. Midnight: 280
8. The Editor: 20

Next week’s challenge: It’s time to catch your favorite! If you could take a character home who would it be and what would you do with them?

Make sure to vote for your favorite review below! You can give your favorite an extra 20 points.