Full disclosure: Mysterious Girlfriend X is a show about a couple that swaps spit on a daily basis. If you’re the type of person who rejects shows on premise, you probably won’t give this one any more of a chance than reading the plot summary. Once you get past that one hurdle, though, the show is a decent romance which gets a lot of extra punch from an ominous, quirky soundtrack and an approach that treats the characters with dignity.
For an episode that spent about half its time focusing on one battle scene, this week’s Devil Survivor 2 really ought to have been more interesting than it was. It’s hard to talk about the major focus of this week’s episode without using the word “anticlimax”.
The decision to add complexity to a character is a tricky one; there are as many ways to do it wrong and make a character flat as there are to do it right and make a character deeper. Arata Kangatari made some missteps this week, but is moving forward regardless.
I was worried about whether this show was going to fall off a cliff by resorting to cheap boob humor and forgetting to be actually funny. Fortunately, Muromi-san showed itself to be made of sterner stuff.
You know you’ve made a good point when Nanba Mutta repeats the statement almost word for word on an episode of Space Brothers airing two days later. This episode was great, and it was great because it built around dialogue that established Pico and Mutta as serious-business engineers.
Previously, I had Devil Survivor 2 pegged as a grey vs. grey morality show, the type that seems to show up a lot these days. This episode pretty much turned that assumption on its head; it’s much less of a moral conundrum and much more of a clear case of the large organization being a different kind of evil from the demons, while the rebel faction is, in the absolute worst case, lacking knowledge about the situation. This story choice leads to a show that holds more of a “protect the civilians” ethic, something I’m perfectly happy with. Too, It’s more fun to watch a protagonist proactively picking a side.
It’s not exactly uncommon in an anime for the main character to be the most interesting one, but it is more of a rarity to have one who’s as chronically underconfident as Arata is in an action show. It surprises me that I’m actually enjoying the resulting contrast.
There are a lot of mecha anime out there, and while I haven’t seen too many of them, I tend to really enjoy the self-aware mecha shows that take unique takes on the implications of the genre; stuff like Dai-Guard, where the focus is a hot-blooded protagonist dealing with various impracticalities of the genre, or Fist Planet, where the mech pilot just clowns around to pass the time in his dull job, or Gad Guard, which is all about the downsides of having a robot minion that does whatever you want.
One day, I had heard a certain 90s mecha by the name of Gasaraki mentioned in this context enough times that I had to give it a look. Suffice to say it’s a lot less in the style of Ishikawa Ken (Getter Robo) and a lot more in the style of Kaiji Kawaguchi (Zipang, A Spirit of the Sun), a gripping political thriller.
Though the premise of each episode thus far has been fairly similar, I’d never accuse this show of being on cruise control. It’s simply too well-handled. Muromi-san a roller coaster ride that has as much fun making fun of its own ideas as it does playing them straight up.
It’s time to welcome back one of the best anime currently airing from a 3-week recap break. This break was entirely forgivable in my book for 3 reasons:
1. The series had not had a recap previously.
2. The move to a new timeslot means there are a lot of people just tuning in who have no clue what’s going on. Recaps serve to fill them in so that they keep watching.
3. Spring 2013 has brough with it pretty crowded Saturdays (Attack on Titan, Muromi-san, Hentai Ouji), so Space Bros’ being on break made it easier to blog those intros.
If it had gone for a fourth week, though, it would’ve started to count for something. It came back not a moment too soon, really.
Animetics 