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Yumekui Merry is now in plushie form according to TomoPop, complete with her cute fang, indestructible hat over her purple hair, and striped socks!

I'm a 25 year old guy who's last soft toy was a Beanie Baby a decade ago. Why do I suddenly have an urge to buy this?! Wait, I know why: Japanese marketers are absolute geniuses.

While these two images may look identical at first, the one above is of Isana from Yumekui Merry, and the one below is of the Singapore Istana. The difference? The President has more tea.

Sometimes I worry I'm *too* funny. Fortunately, such feelings subside quickly.

Pallette [sic] is an adorable (and apt) name! Yumekui Merry #11: Pallette of Dreams

With exams and studying and assignments and all that other associated university fun I haven't had the time to watch as much stuff as I should, partly because I know that if I did watch something I'd be blogging about it afterwards! First world problems, or developed world problems depending on your economic leanings.

Essentially this episode further built up the previous episode's cliffhanger, with surprisingly few extra details. Decisions were reached regarding action with Isana, though said plans are more difficult to carry out once they meet Pallette and Merry has second thoughts about destroying dreams. Gosh darn its hard to write summaries of later episodes without spoilers!

Ironically exams played a part in the plot of this episode as well, in what I call the Anime Manga Convenience Factor. How many daemon overlords do you know that would halt an epic battle because things were interesting and/or to give the enemy combatants time... to do their exams? This was the same issue I had with most magical girl anime that I admit to watching far too much of back in the day; all the world's evil seemed to concentrate just on Nippon, conveniently within fighting range of the protagonists!

Perhaps Mystletainn isn't soft, she's just intentionally drawing out the dread and fear as much as she can, akin to psychological torture. Dentists do this when they postpone appointments for braces fitting. Ruben scared. Anyway, if this is the case, touché.

Chizuro has also hinted which side she's on, but her reluctance to part with pertinent information means we can't trust her entirely yet either. I suppose being a shell of a person (her words) doesn't lend itself easily to holding things like feelings, though perhaps its slowly changing.

Oh yeah, and don't steal Merry's hat. Just... don't. You're playing with fire!

In terms of animation quality, the scenery is still absolutely stunning; not being shackled to "reality" by being in a daydream world certainly gives the artists a great amount of freedom to come up with with some amazing designs, and the colours they employ are just wonderful. That said, the animators seemed to slack off a bit again, at times the characters themselves looked like they were drawn in a vector animation program from the 1980s. Nothing necessarily wrong with that (in and of itself), but it kinda lets the rest of the production down.

If I ever get any more anime figures or plushies, I want it to be a Pallette one. I'm just saying :).

This post was drafted on the 17th of February, but I never got around to publishing it. Can't imagine why.

So Isana is quite the artist, and Mamas in dreams are envious of humans because they have the dreams all to themselves. Yumekui Merry #10: Not Waking From a Dream.

The situation

We're on the home stretch for this series and the pressure is slowly starting to build up like... something that builds up.

Having learned that his closest childhood friend Isana is now a vessel for a dream daemon, Yumeji begins to fret about her safety, though he doesn't let it on to her while she's showing her art (more on that below!). Eventually it becomes too much to bear, so he appeals to our favourite doctor's assistant Yui and her dream deamon Leon for protection. He also drafts Merry into it while discussing the situation, though apparently the idea of the now legendary dream eater and Leon targeting him doesn't phase Pharos Hercules after learning of the plot. I guess you could say... he's not losing any... sleep? Sorry, it had to be done.

Chizuru

Having seen her as a relatively cold and distant person throughout the series, we also get a bit more backstory on Chizuru. It turns out she's hollow and receptive to becoming a vessel because of the traumatic experience of losing her parents when she was little. It was painful to lose my mum and best friend while I was still living at home, but that would be nothing compared to the feeling of loss and isolation a child would feel.

Whoa, that's a little depressing. Okay, lets discuss something else: despite offering that explanation, we're not informed as to why she wears school gym outfits indoors, nor why the camera needs to show it at... certain angles. I suppose it makes as much sense as an action hero wearing a miniskirt, a short shirt and massive coat tails which would get tangled up in even a basic fight, let alone the highly coreographed aerobatics Merry gets up to.

Is she friend or foe though? That's the question.

Isana and artists

Isana is quite the artist! By far my favourite part of the episode was seeing her at work in her bright, highly decorated room of pink awesomeness. Perhaps even more entertaining was seeing how Merry contorted herself to inspect her drafts, presumably one can't appreciate artistic talent unless you're risking your spine. Then again she's from the dream world and isn't technically real, right? Perhaps dream daemons have no need for such bone structures, or perhaps they have them but use their loose grip on reality to contort them into shapes that humans can't... just to mess with our heads. But I digress.

What Isana brings up speaks for something I've been feeling since I was a kid. See, I've never been able to draw. While mostly accepting that I'm am as skilled with a pencil as I am with blogging (that is to say, not very!) the one thing I'm envious of artists about is that they can draw sketches of criminals for police profilers if they're mugged, and secondly they can draw their dreams. Obviously we can't take cameras into our dreams, but the idea of drawing and therefore relieving them in the real world deeply fascinates me. Why can't I draw, consarnit!?

Isana is absolutely adorable... I'm unashamed ^^. And yes, she pictures these beautiful bird like fish creatures in her dreams, so on a hunch she paints them, much to the bewilderment of Merry who doesn't understand how a human can paint something they haven't seen before. Imagination and the dream world is where she comes from though, right?

I'd hate to bring up my English classes from high school, but the juxtaposition between the brightly lit room and the darkness outside was executed brilliantly. Given its so cold here this evening too (These Sydney photos may look identical at first), it made it feel that much warmer. It's the little touches like this that draws me to anime in general, but also to specific series' such as this.

Anyway, back to reality, episode #11 is shaping up to be quite an event.

This show finally started exploring the idea behind dreams and how they affect us... which is why I started watching it in the first place! Yumekui Merry #09: "Disturbed Dreams" / "Yume Midarete".

After last episode which tended to lurch from adorable cuteness to more serious undertones, this episode consisted largely of the latter. Lots more detail, much less Merry eating a doughnut surrounded by angelic choirs of angels. Angelic chiors of angels, surprising though it may seem.

While being an unabashed fan of moeblob (and I really do mean that, people who claim the style is ruining the anime industry simply need not watch) I revel in shows that make me think, and while I must admit I was expecting Yumekui Merry to have a little more substance, this episode finally started to deliver it. Well, and that one scene above ;).

We pick up where we left of in the daydream state with Yui, her dream daemon Engi (complete with wings and ridiculously large bosoms), Merry, her dream colour-seeing sidekick Yumeji and the clownisly Commander Keen villin-esque Landsborough. That sounds like a brand of offroad vechile.

As Merry is about to deliver her spinning, highly coreographed kick arse blow that would make the likes of Sailor Moon jealous, he suddenly informs her of a reason not to. Engi attempts to take care of business, but is stopped by Yumeji once he himself understands the implications.

The pieces are all starting to come together. People's dreams are being intimitely researched, and armed with that information their hosts are being targeted and their bodies taken over for the next wave of mumas... and how its pulled off and who is behind it blew me away. I should have seen it from a mile away, and I'm kicking myself that they led me on for this long without putting the pieces together!

Yes, this is how long it took for me to get it Isana-san, shaddup! Coincidently this was also the point where I stopped reading the manga; albeit the anime and manga diverge significantly in places in terms of plot and introduced characters, but still, WOW. Kudos you schrewd devils ;).

A highly brief summary (well there goes my English degree, if I had one) but it leaves us to explore some of the interesting philosophical questions he raises that I was so looking forward to this anime delivering, just as I was excited to watch Inception! Dream words have always fascinated me!

Yui, stop distracting me!

The dream stuff

I'm quoting Ayako's fansubs here as I can't speak or understand Japanese ^^;. After confronting his foes, our offroad vechile brand-named dream daemon had this to say not about the perception humans have of their dreams, but of dreams on humans.

What attracts us to humans? The power to walk forward.

While dreams might seem perfectly random at times, they can only draw from our own previous experiences with people, places and events. Previous, right? So if there were dream daemons and they wanted to see the future rather than always living in someone's past (or a world influenced by past experiences) then they'd want to use humans as hosts to live in what they would perceive to be the future, right? Cool idea!

We leave on the thoughts of this otherwise evil character on what dreams do for people:

The courage to spindle your thoughts...
The hope that connects your thoughts...
The passion that moves your thoughts...
And the power to acheive...
A place where the heart becomes the most brave and the brightest...
Furthermore, its a place where they're easily lost...

That's some pretty deep stuff right there, and I certainly attest to some of it. I would think it too easy to dismiss all our failings on our ability to dream, for one thing I doubt I could be a heavyweight champ by virtue of the fact I'm an anemic stick insect. At some point there are physical limitations that even our dreams cannot conquer. Or... can they? I suppose at this point we get into what constitutes a dream, and a limitation.

Needless to say, these quotes and the ideas behind the relationship between humans and dreems were pretty deep, but I think we have to go deeper. See what I did there?

My main criticism of this episode stemmed not from the plot, but by the sudden reversal of production values. In many of the scenes it seemed as though shortcuts were taken with drawing, and unless the characters were drawn right up close (I believe "closeup" is the cinematographic term, thank you Paul Simon) there was a tendancy to ignore even more basic detail. I've been told a similar phenomena occured with Gurren Lagann. Oh well, had the plot been crappy (and some say that it was, haters gonna hate) and the production values not so good, it would have been even worse!

That's not to say scenery wasn't still beautiful though. In anime, these are the shots that make me want to buy the Blu-ray discs when they become available.

If the whole place is filled with Mumas... Who's gonna make the donuts!? I'm the Dream Devourer Merry! Yumekui Merry #08: "Dream Corridor" / "Yume Kairō"

After a forced break from anime watching owing to a number of mitigating factors (aka: life), I'm back in the seat or zone or whatever it is cool people call it, and am ready to talk about such material again! Come to think of it I haven't been sleeping well at all lately, its probably Merry's fault.

The story is really getting more involved now, so much so that I felt like I needed to watch the previous episode again to refresh my memory. Turns out that was this series' obligatory beach episode though, so I didn't and just tried to make sense of what was going on. That's the great thing about manga, you can just go back a few pages after leaving it for a while!

Leaving the realm of dreams for a while, Yumeji's cute housemate (for want of a better word!) Isana deals with more real world problems, specifically what she wants to do when she leaves high school. I can remember those career interviews with teachers, I know they have your best interests at heart but pressuring kids at that age always seemed kinda... weird? Needless to say after much fumbling and worrying, she admits she wants to draw. Designers ^_^.

In the meantime, the sprained ankle Yumeji picks up from their beach trip last episode has got worse, so naturally he walks with Merry to get it checked out by their local doctor. Wouldn't you want to get a lift or have someone come over if you had a sprained ankle? Would you be able to maintain such swagger in that condition? Perhaps the ability to see the colour of people's dreams also affords you some pretty gosh darn high pain tolerance.

Speaking of tolerance, after lamenting the lack of doughnut related gags for a while, we finally get another one. Wait, what did that have to do with tolerance? Tolerating a lack of doughnutness? Never mind.

Merry was super adorable in the second episode when she tastes her first doughnut and sets the ball rolling (I was going to make a bad pun joke there, but decided to just roll with it) with this newfound obsession of hers, and in this episode while walking to the clinic they naturally walk past a doughnut shop. After swearing to walk alongside Yumeji to make sure he didn't injure himself further on the way there (presumably) he leaves her there to gorge (presumably) while he continued by himself. He's a good friend ;).

With a country of over 120 million people, coincidences in anime set in Japan sure are commonplace! In this case while getting his sprained ankle checked out by the doc, it turns out his granddaughter is Yui, the girl from the shopping centre he and Merry met back in episode 5. Of course!

IT REALLY WAS THAT BAD! After ingesting some of her well meaning but awful tasting tea (straw!), Yui lets the Engi dream daemon use her as a host and explains what the heck has been going on. Startled, he drops and breaks a perfectly good Japanese tea cup, but makes up for it by having a chat with her on a stereotypically green field overlooking the city. Remembering he left Merry at the doughnut shop he rushes back to arrange a dialogue... I think!

What happens next reminded me of that episode of Star Trek Voyager when the minds of the senior officers are trapped in this mind control computer with clowns, darn it which episode was that again? When I saw it I was only a kid and had nightmares about it! Anyway this daydream was weird, right down to the array of geometric shapes across the floor and circus themed scaryness. Yes I'm sorry this stuff scares me, Cirque du Soleil has been the only circus so far that hasn't royally creeped me out! French Canadians.

One of the patrons of the same doughnut shop who was working on one of those awesome maze placemats turns out to be a vessel for a daemon of his own who's single eye and weird build made him look like a villein from Commander Keen. His name is Landsborough, and its his scary circus world they're transported to, along with Yui who seems just as surprised to be there herself as Yumeji and Merry are. Argh circuses! Turns out he has a connection to Hercules, the dream entity not the graphics card or cheesy nineties television series based on the Greek God of the same name.

Soon the world will be filled with Mumas, leaving nobody to make doughnuts!

I'm sorry no, that's Merry! See what I did there?

Compared to previous episodes most of the fanservice this time around consisted of showing us Merry in awe of doughnuts, which I'll admit I thought was simply adorable. Insert holier-than-though rant about how scenes like this are killing the anime industry. There were also only a couple of the obligitory so-called "Merry Navel" shots which would have no doubt disappointed a large part of the fanbase. Oh well I guess every Star Trek Voyager needs its 7 of 9 :P

I didn't mention it in the notes for the previous episode, but I thought it highly amusing that the only episode where we didn't get shots like this was the beach episode where the other girls were wearing bikinis, the blokes were in their trunks, and she was wearing sukumizu... go figure! The studio making fun of a certain percentage of their viewers perhaps? But I digress!

What I will say though is... does this pose look like movie poster material or does this pose look like movie poster material. Let's ask Isana!

Now that I think of it, I'd wager there was almost as much Isana in this episode as Merry or Yumeji, which if I recall from the manga wasn't really the case. I love her hair, though I imagine that colour (while being most fetching) would be terribly difficult to maintain.

It could just be because I hadn't watched the series for a month or so, but it did seem as though that while inconsistent across the episode, overall the pacing is starting to pick up again, especially after the last one. The graphics and art in the daydream world scared me a little I'll admit (hey, shaddup!) but was well executed. I'm genuinely interested in what happens next, and hope they keep it up... must refrain from reading anime sites owing to the fact I'm several months behind now and the series has long since finished!

For a while in March when uni and work were under control, I was watching an episode and reporting on them every second day or so. Wonder if I can keep that up for a while again? Probably not, but worth a try. Rambling, pointless reviews don't actually take too long to write when you're not concerned with quality, as is evidently the case here! ^^;;;;.

Is it okay to want that Hawaiian shirt? Yumekui Merry #07: "Dreams, Swimsuits and the Colour of the Sea".

For those of you who read my blog primarily for my other topics, the idea of the obligatory beach episode may seem foreign and strange, let alone anime in general. Pull up a comfy chair and allow me to sew the seeds of understanding during this break I have from uni and family document scanning.

Since the dawn of recent time, animators have weaved into their narratives at least one or more episodes that are set on the beach or surrounds, either in the context of a day trip or a short holiday. In anime fandom lexicon, these episodes are referred to as a series' obligatory beach episode, and depending on your perception they're either endemic of the "declining quality of anime", something to tolerate, or one of the greatest things ever invented. I'll let you decide for yourself which it is.

Needless to say, the invention of such an episode format was designed specifically to give animators a free pass to dress their characters up (or down, as it were) in swimsuits and have them frolic around in an idyllic setting. They also spawn an entire subset of merchandise sales and official art in magazines, and as you can see above it doesn't take them very long! Money money money, must be funny...

Essentially, one can think of these as the anime equivalent of certain travel shows that always have their suspiciously attractive guide showing you around the coral reefs of Mauritius in speedos or a bikini, while their less attractive colleague shows you the best rest-stop grub in New Jersey or something. But I digress.

Fortunately, despite the predisposition of such episodes in general to have plots so thin you could pass alpha radiation through them, Yumekui Merry at least had a side story that wasn't burdened with having to explain the beach premise, and enough character development did happen. Well, kinda.

First of all, we learned that despite her efforts Merry is struggling in her role as one of the wait staff owing to her memory which clearly isn't that much better than mine! Honestly I have the same problem she has, give me five things to remember and in less than a minute I'll either have them confused or completely forgotten.

During this time, its suggested they take a break and go to the beach, which Isono's dad wholeheartedly supports. Of course he does :P

For some reason the entire writing club and the mysterious transfer student Chizuru ends up joining Yumeji, Merry, Isano and her dad at the beach. They all know each other now?

Ironically enough, most of the episode's obligatory fanservice is provided by Mei Hoshino, the writing club president (left in the screecap above) who only a few episodes ago was portrayed as a bashful and super shy bookworm. Allegedly sea air instills confidence and volleyball athletic ability... maybe I need to try this!

No, Merry isn't acting sheepish because I'm pointing out further plot holes in her story, she just poked fun at Yumeji for not being able to swim... only to admit she can't either. Awww ;).

Does it count as Inception when you're watching a television show about a television show? I know this is about dream daemons not Inception, but its a valid question.

The Power Rangers-ish action show that Yumeji has been watching in the previous episodes of this show (wow, my brain is already starting to melt trying to explain this) started filming an episode on the beach, which clearly he was excited about! I never watched Power Rangers I'll be honest, but there were plenty of people in my school who did, and dressed up as them ;).

Another person who was excited to see them was a young boy who turns out to be a vessel for a dream daemon himself. His youthful excitement at meeting and getting an autograph from one of his favourite television characters is quickly destroyed after he enters a daydream and has his dream daemon Delga killed by another dream daemon called Mistelteinn who we've seen before, and no doubt we'll see again.

Upon returning to the real world, his eyes are lifeless and his enthusiasm for what excited him only moments before is gone, which supports what previous episodes have told us about what happens to former vessels who lose their dream dameons, and also affirms Merry's unique position as a dream daemon who doesn't need a vessel. Having [stupidly!] read the manga I now know why... but that's for the future ;)

Basically everything else that happened was regular obligitory beach episode fare. Bikini tops are pulled off "by accident", the gang engage in that blindfolded watermellon hitting game whatsit that I used to play in Singapore with Stephen Fugiwara and our friends from school... hi if you're reading this!

Finally Merry's self doubt about whether or not what she's doing is the right thing destroying other dream damons comes into play again, but with an overly cliche but otherwise beautiful sunset with lots of pretty colours as the backdrop, Yumeji reassures her. Awwww :)

And therein was the Yumekui Merry Obligitory Beach Episode. Can we get back to the real world now, please? I suppose in a series about dreams, the "real world" is a relative term, but still. The Bird is The Word.

Oh and I couldn't resist, this screenshot just had to be included because of Merry's facial expression. In the anime she's nervous about the clothes other people are wearing compared to her, but I like to think of it instead that she just stepped on one of those pointy shells. OUCH! XD.
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