Mekaku city actors-episode 4

In this installment of Cybric's corner we're talking about Mekaku City Actors episode 4 "Heat Haze Daze. In the forth episode of the series we're introduced to yet another story thread that has to be laced into the ever growing plot matrix that is this series. For all the content they are showing us I can't imagine this is going to be a twelve episode run so I'm going to go ahead and brace myself for the long haul here.

Alright now to the episode. What happened this week? Does it matter?  This week were introduced to three new characters. The first half of the episode is essentially comedic fodder to move the episode along and to establish a sense of anime normalcy but it will stand in contrast for the more surrealistic elements that we're going to talk about later on.

Hibiya

The episode opens with Hibiya Amamiya, who we met during episode after bumping into Momo talking with a girl which we haven't met yet. He asks her"who were you a hero to?" and the scene jumps for a surreal location to the big city. Hibiya has been shopping for his unrequited love Hiyori and buys her a little key chain dinosaur which she says is most definitely not her style. Hiyori and Hibiya then go into a comedy bit about how useless he is. 

We learn that the two of them are spending the summer in the big city by lying to their parents about why they are in town. What follows is a pretty good comedy sequence but I doubt your going to be rolling on the floor or making memes out of it. Hibiya resolves to tell Hiyori about his feelings for her and falls asleep. 

While he dreams, we assume he's dreaming, Hibiya sees Hiyori get killed in a traffic accident which wakes him up...or does it?  From this point on we get tossed into an inception meets groundhogs day time lop of Hibiya trying to save Hiyori but it doesn't end so well. Each time Hibiya goes through a lop of events there is a one more crow watching him than last time as they so on one of the power cables spanning the into dreamscape. By the end of the episode there are thousands of crows observing implying that Hibiya had attempts to save her over and over again.

Hibiya ends the time lop however by sacrificing himself for Hiyori and those ending the lol but we don't see him wake up for his "dream" leaving us to wonder what has happened to him?  Has he died? I'd he sleeping in a coma now?  Did his dream actual affect anything in the story?  Presumably if they found the need to show us this it is important and will come into play. 

The series is building base level character knowledge each episode but they are taking their sweet time with it. Most animes would have already laid out the skeleton of all their core characters by now and be well into telling the rise of their story arcs already but Mekaku is still warming up. They are taking a really gradual rise allowing us really get to take in each character or group of characters. I get it, your weaving all these stories together and eventually you're going to pull the thread that brings the whole picture into view well done and bravo. But in the meantime while you weave this tapestry of plot and convergence together I'm starting to forget about what's his name from the first episode. Like I said I'm sure this will all come together but I feel like we haven't been shown what links all these people together than the fact that they have powers. I can only assume that the parallel story of the "monster" that runs after the credits each episode somehow relates but again it hasn't been explained or even hinted at in a really meaningful way. 

For all that I have said I can't seem to stop watching this series.   Each week I'm so excited to see it waiting for me in my Crunchyroll queue so that I can meet the next character and see the next layer of this vast onion that they are peeling. It's disjointed right now but I have a feeling the payoff for the loyal viewer that stays with them will have a great time with it. Keep watching, keep loving and keep dreaming fellow anime fans!

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