Hotel Inhumans Season 2

You get this whole quiet stretch of a kid just trying to exist on a train and it breaks you a little. Then Sekiya uses the bandage Eriko offered her earlier. That tiny callback did more than any big speech could

Spent the whole first half waiting for the worst to happen and hating how exposed that kid was on that train. Then the reveal that her favorite radio host is the same woman reading poison books lands and I just sat there grinning

I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop the whole time. This show has trained me to expect the worst so Eriko actually making it to that uniform felt like a small miracle. That final scene at the station got me

Ikuro in the rain chasing the scent of roses to find an old dog is exactly the kind of small thing this show does better than anyone. No big speeches just a man refusing to give up on something tiny

Koshiba saying sometimes you just have to accept the outcome really got to me. Everyone wants the miracle ending but he is the only one willing to say the dog might already be gone. Then Edel turns up under that rose bush and I felt stupid for agreeing with him

That polite assassin dying right after checking in is going to sit with me for a while. He killed people. He also said thank you. The hotel just let him rest and did not ask questions. Something about that is so bleak and so gentle at once

Watching her fumble with a diaper after mowing down five men is the exact kind of whiplash this show does so well. The staff peeking in killed me

Sekiya pretending to have the flu to get that guy to leave was so calm and creepy at the same time. Nobody raised their voice. Nothing flashy. She just shut him down and that was that

Anyone else feel the episodic stuff getting a bit squeezed this season. Edel's search wrapped so fast it barely had room to breathe. Still liked it but season one gave these stories more space

Mrs Hughes holding Edel again broke me and I do not even like dogs that much. She thought she lost him for good. That reunion made the whole rainy search worth it

The hitmen covering their ears while shooting got me. Small thing but nobody ever animates that and it sold the whole warehouse fight

I did not expect to tear up watching Sara hum Jingle Bells to a baby in the middle of a gunfight. My whole opinion of her changed this episode

Not their best episode, but I most definitely appreciate what they did. The first half of the episode just concluded the storyline from the one previous and, because the storyline from before wasn't all that complicated or emotionally intricate, it really mostly served to round out the little Ikuro focussed segments we'd been seeing. He, of course, helped out even when things looked bleak, being testament to his character and simply how nice he is for the environment he's surrounded by. The second half did something a lot more interesting, in my opinion, bringing the viewer into the perspective of a guest in the hotel, allowing us to see the beginning and end of one's stay through a lens we'd never had access to before. It was strangely sweet and well executed despite only half an episode to work with, but everything - from the perspective shifts to the use of colour bleeding at the very end - just felt so real. For sure the latter half carries this episode, but it's an overall calm and enjoyable watch.

The way this show uses silence is genuinely so beautiful to me. It allows everything apart from the atmosphere and the soundtrack to take over the viewer, leaving these massive gaps in direct communication to let us just bathe in the everyday reality of the characters we see on our screens. Aside from just general praise for the season/series thus far, despite us being introduced to a character who's really unappealing for me, I love the focus on Ikuro this episode. He's clearly this show's version of a main character, almost a proxy for the audience since he feels like an anomaly in the context of this hotel - a being too kind to exist alongside everyone else, and yet he fits in inexplicably. We have our episodely plot of helping out a guest, the story of which is truly just a sweet one with nothing really to hide and dissect, which is why the Ikuro focus helps to tie everything together and his conflicts with Kirihara add the friction that would otherwise be missing. Currently, this is shaping up to be one of my favourite things to air this season.

Genuinely such a beautiful portrayal of human emotions. Every single second of this episode, I sat in that eerie feeling that built up from the first second I heard the first piano key start playing. I absolutely adore Subaru and what he had to go through, and I have so much sympathy for him because it's so wonderful to see play out the way it does. The fact that this is a piano-centric story makes the soundtrack wondrous and ethereal while also constantly adding to the underlying tension that just seeps from every corner of this episode. I wouldn't change anything about the way this episode panned out; I feel completely shell-shocked (in a good way) and do, in fact, need a little while to process what I've just seen. Would never have expected something this amazing to be an opening story.

Genuinely such a great opener to the season. Off the bat, I felt engaged with our main character of the episode and the scenario their line of work has put them in and, because of the nature of this current plot line, the soundtrack felt particularly praiseworthy and outstanding. The discussion of character dynamics in our main plot is so entertaining and one can only imagine how much more this is going to be explored in the next part. Overall, a remarkably compelling twenty minutes which makes me want to dive straight into the continuation of this storyline.

Her English was actually really good and that was the last thing I expected from a deadly concierge reloading a gun

Not all men, but always a man - that (very clearly hyperbolic) sentiment is exactly how I feel about the man we see in this episode. That being said, this episode is the furthest thing from focusing on a man; in fact, it's a young girl who's trying to navigate the world on her own despite her less than normal home life. For the first time as far as I remember, we don't really focus on anything relating to contract killers and we really just see Eriko coming into her own, with an obstacle here and there and her working on her own confidence. The contract killer thing only truly becomes relevant towards the end, but it's so small in the gran scheme of Eriko's story that it may as well not really be a part of the episode, which I actually like. It shows that sometimes these things are going on behind the scenes and not so much in the forefront like we see them happening so often in this show. I just very much enjoyed Eriko this episode; I did let a couple of tears slip at one point just because of how her experiences hit me emotionally, and that, I think, is the most beautiful thing this episode.