Lots and lots of fanservice and action in episode nine. There’s also some blatant censorship and some opportunities for redraw.
The episode kicks off with a dream sequence, one that infers a degree of sexual jealousy from Mikoto towards Arashi.
This dream sequence ends with a bizarre tentacle rape in the manga, which was left out in the anime:
This isn’t the first time a small part of a scene was trimmed off despite it containing fanservice. I wonder if Xebec plans to have some extended scenes the way Shinmai Maou no Testament did? Probably not, but it’s worth wondering about.
The rest of the episode is about Konomi being abducted and tormented (in a sensual manner, of course). Black Label jumps in to help rescue her, despite the fact that Konomi and her Detective partner Isoroku had been chasing Black Label up to this point in the show.
Will nipples be shown here? I couldn’t tell you, since this specific moment is nowhere to be found in the manga. I guess we’ll find out if Xebec is trying to up their nudity quotient here.
Konomi is stripped naked and covered in moisture. This scene delivered nudity in the manga, so it’s pretty likely those figures in the foreground will disappear on BD.
This looks promising… particularly the second shot where they are washing her armpit while leaving nothing to cover up her chest.
And the fanservice ends with an openly censored chest shot. Should be a fun episode on BD.
Here are some anime to manga comparisons from this episode, to give you an idea of how closely the anime has been following the manga:
This episode covers the latter half of the eight manga tankobon up until about the one quarter mark of volume nine. Literally the very next scene in the manga is the long awaited bathing bonanza that covers almost a third of volume nine.
As I talked about last week, the best case scenario for episode nine was to push the bath scene to episode 10, that way the anime producers wouldn’t have to rush things the way the previous bath scene in episode four had to. If Xebec wanted, they could have the upcoming bath scene take up half of episode ten easily, then use the latter half of the episode to finish the rest of volume nine. Volume nine ends with a bit of a plot cliffhanger regarding the assumed head villain, ‘Princess’. It’s a good spot to end a season.
I really hope they milk that last onsen scene for all it’s worth. They’ve set themselves up nicely to take as much time as needed on it. Can’t wait ’til next week.
I’m not going to pretend that Triage X is a masterpiece, but I will say this. One of the best signs of a quality anime is how the episodes seem to fly by quickly. Most of these episodes, including episode nine today, felt like they were over in ten minutes or so. This show hasn’t been groundbreaking, but it hasn’t been hard to watch either.
