This week’s episode of Space Brothers started out as a revisitation of the awkward/adorable humor that characterized the show early on. Mutta showed up early while fumbling a sizable, unwieldy package. Apo, always the adorable mascot, got his licks in in an adorable perspective-swapping moment with the hot dog. But the comedic star of this episode was Hibito, who ended up having to poker-face up and deal with a fad of his own creation after considerable grumbling.
Monokuma’s background antics made this episode. But there was definitely a lot to like elsewhere.
Somewhere out there, a terrible writer is making a joke about not being allowed to bring pot in a courtroom
WataMote doesn’t really have a consistent sense of episode structure in a way that some comedies do. Contrary to last week’s, where the rain and the cold bits split the episode, this week’s show ran through a series of 3 skits. The underwear one invoked some legitimate pity, and had a fairly touching conclusion.* However, the others (the nightmare and the molestation one) were based around karmic payback for Tomoko’s stupidity. All of which was accompanied by the series’ typical visual panache and some nigh-flawless transitions.
I can’t believe they brought back Q&A Talk. Of all the one-off jokes to bring back, I would not have expected that one. The continuity in this show is airtight. The real question, though, is this: which brother actually likes that show enough to turn on the radio? I’m sure the answer would be worth another 500 words worth of personality contrast analysis, minimum. Ah well, Mutta’s anticipation of Hibito’s response to how clean his bike was was rich enough. I do think this show would benefit from a whole episode devoted to the two of them just talking real talk or having a day off together.
One of the big draws of this show is its varied character designs, and up till now it’s mainly been letting each personality tell its own story. This week, it kicked things up a notch and really gave us a lot more of the characters spending time with each other. The scene showcasing the rising tension was as solid as the early episodes were, but the comedy was vintage Kishi Seiji.* Between numerous scenes proving that Shoukiin Kagerou would have a field day with every one of them and the sauna scene proving that Ishimaru and Oowada were bad enough to be right at home being captains in Kaiser Reinhard’s fleet, pretty much every joke was a dead-on critical critical. What’s even better is that including all that didn’t disrupt the series’ appreciably fast pacing.
Training-based interlude that it was, this episode did come across as extremely well-researched. It found ways outline some of the key concepts and terminology behind different swimming exercises and strokes. It also happened to include different ways people can learn how to swim. For example, I never encountered the “turtle float” method when I was learning to swim. It was a neat new angle on an old bit of knowledge.
Kuroki is such a fun comedy character. I often struggle with anime comedies where the protagonist is a nice-guy loser because I want to root for them so much and they keep getting unlucky in ways that totally aren’t their fault. Kuroki’s a much-improved version of the loveable-but-luckless archetype; she’s got the courtesy to dig her own grave much of the time, turning situations that would be just kind of sad into some righteously hilarious karmic payback.
I love Deniel’s cavalier, devil-may care approach to life. In the wake of Sharon’s grim prognosis, his attitude is a breath of fresh air. He’s not trying too hard, but he’s still living life to the fullest and tackling aging with a decidedly youthful vigor. Nothing like a charming old romantic to enhance the already significant natural beauty of flight.
Dangan Ronpa is so damn campy. But I love campy. So I love it. In all seriousness, there was a choice to be made when this anime was adapted. The staff could take the source material and turn it into a serious work about a bunch of teenagers forced to kill each other in a sadistic game they’ve been trapped inside of. Not that that genre is at all saturated. Or they could just make an anime that celebrates the already zany source material and went wild with the game-adaptation portion. There were plenty of points this episode where I found myself thinking “oh yeah, this is a game adaptation”, but there were exactly zero where I found myself minding.
It’s pretty standard for school life anime about high school clubs to devote at least one episode into persistently recruiting a new member, so this more generic premise made the episode a good point of comparison with other shows in the genre. It’s a testament to the man writing it that the garden-variety setup elevated the show and set an appreciably high baseline.
Animetics 