Will: Once again, this show is really good. Cool looking combat, cute girls, and the jazz trend continues. I guess that’s just the battle soundtrack they’ve gone for, which I wholeheartedly support. It’s so awesome every time. I like these characters, and it’s pretty much what I expected, but better. I actually saw the drama this week, and I wasn’t surprised. The main character still has confidence issues, the rival is typical rival, noting out of the ordinary. Hell, even the way Sono talked to Yura was pretty typical, and in my opinion justified. I mean, the music and acting made it really dramatic, way more than it seems like it should be, but in that situation, I’d do the same in a way. I’ve done team competitions before, and I’ve frequently been the one to tell people, “Hey, this is a game, have fun, lose with a smile, or don’t compete.” Yura was really taking it too seriously and personally when she surrendered. It’s airsoft, at least try to take someone down with you. All that said, I still enjoy the hell out of this show.

Drew: I agree that the fundamental concept was pretty regular for interscholastic competitions of any kind, but I do think the show went a few hundred meters too far down melodramatic avenue to make its point. I don’t need it to be a huge issue, and by making that scene what it was, the show brought itself closer to the bad side of the gap between fun entertainment and serious drama. There’s a market for combining the two in a skilled way, but there sure as hell ain’t one for shoehorning one into the other. That aside, it was a fun tournament episode, and the matches shown in detail, both the win and the curbstomp, were good viewing. I hope we get a rematch in the future and it’s either light-hearted or a GaoGaiGar ripoff. So long as it’s not that kind of dramatic.

Sam: I think the issue with the drama is that it wants to be manly with its ideals, but the rest of the show is so uninterested with being like that that when it does try and get manly, it gets really stupid. The entire show to me right now feels like two different elements pulling desperately towards opposite ends of the quality spectrum, and while I still like it, I really want it to just drop the pretense and be fun. When its fun its fun, but it isn’t good when it is not fun.

Will: Y’know, I honestly don’t really feel one way or the other about the drama. It’s just there to create some tension and conflict in a show that doesn’t inherently have any. It’s exactly what I expected. Some episodes of K-ON! had things like this, and really, Hidamari Sketch is one of the few that ends up being really great without any real conflict or drama. I’m honestly only discussing the drama in C3-bu because episode to episode, there’s not much else to say. It’s cute girls doing cute things, with some jazzy airsoft action. Either you like it or you don’t. It’s a great show so far, there’s just not much to talk about. I guess my point is that the drama does not feel incongruous to me, it just feels like token drama, and nothing more.

Sam: I’m OK with token drama, but this drama is kind of dragging the rest of the series down. It stinks because the rest of the series is great, so I just hope that the drama improves or decreases its prominence.

Will: I think it’s just building towards some awesome character development. I mean, that’s why everyone fell in love with Gainax in the first place, characters really growing as the story goes on. Half the things they’re known for are coming-of-age stories. And I mean, It’s not like this is a completely different crew, not everyone left for Trigger.

Drew: Maybe not everybody left for Trigger, but a large portion of the senior staff did. The Director, Art Director, Sound Director, Animation Director, and Character Designer are all people whose history doing things for Gainax does not predate Dantalian. It’d be interesting to take a fuller look at the staff, but I personally think the comparison between new and old Gainax is very tenuous. Their strongest link is the brand name. People have, in the interim, tried to tell the same type of story at other studios, but few of them are as good as Anno or even Imaishi at said job. I look at their ability to insert a non-forced coming-of-age story into a show of this type with considerable skepticism. Time will tell, but I suspect it will be mostly moot as the show gets back to fun airsoft next week.