She seems to rub them against a lot of things… mostly Sora.

Impressions:

Now that Raika’s finally actually rejoined the show, you’d think it would have improved. Instead, it’s mostly used as an excuse for Sora to sulk and act up over her inferiority issues. And if there’s one thing you know I love, it’s a character sulking. Raika was probably taunting her anyway, what with resting her breasts on Sora’s shoulders while teaching her how to cook. Raika is also afflicted by the same nuclear sexual organs as many other Japanese females are suffering from. It’s an epidemic.

So still better than most, but it’s still struggling for something to happen. Oh, sure, there was the cliffhanger in literally the last couple seconds of the episode of the landlord kicking them out, but given the way this show goes, I give about a 75% chance that by 5 minutes into next episode, she’ll have given them some better/bigger room that needs to be fixed up or something so we can have a pithy speech about making it their own and being a real family. Also, the shot in the preview for next episode. The remaining 25% is that it’ll take all of next week’s episode to keep up with the trend of "nothing happens, very slowly."

Preview:

If you’re reading this, it means that I forgot to change the template.

This post contains baby penis.

Impressions:

I wish they’d tone down the random shenanigans a little bit. The characters would (mostly) be able to stand on their own without Andy digging up some almost random thing each week (literally this week), and telling a story about it. Granted, it’s only been two weeks of that, but it still reeks of bad writing to have your side character just pop up and go "Hey, guys! I found the plot for this episode!" Thankfully, the plot of this show still was never exactly this show’s draw, but this is dipping a little below the level of easily ignorable, particularly since there wasn’t any real development, advancement, or even new characters on the protagonist side this week. IE, I’m a little annoyed that they didn’t really do anything with Zess/Mikono despite this ostensibly being an episode focused around them. I guess they began making a pretty strong case for Kagura’s imminent switch to the other side along with any possible jokes you want to tell about Amata beginning to get obsessed over him, but that’s about it.

Anyway, enemy’s new weapon has a side effect of damaging clothing, so that plus Andy’s impromptu lesson about naked Greco-Roman wrestling turns in Zessica’s mind into "Naked=power" so they all strip, which somehow lets her ‘feel’ the bullets and dodge them before they use a Rock-Paper-Scissors combination punch to win. Becaues apparently throwing all three at the same time is unblockable. I think that metaphor broke down som. The rest I can sort of follow the general chain, not that it’s a chain that makes any sense, but Mikono throwing scissors as their finishing blow is closer to what I expect from Guilty Crown. They also made sure to appeal to the ladies and had Shrade unbutton in the middle of it too. Thanks for that cutaway, Evol.

Preview:

Mix and Andy finally hook up.

Why else would they walk around their village naked?

Impressions:

Well wasn’t this spastic? It began with Tabitha getting ready to finally leave to go do… whatever the hell it is at her home that she had to do. Then that was delayed by the merry band of assassins showing up and a brief fight. Neither of these events have a single thing to do with the rest of the episode. In fact, everybody just kind of forgets about them because a bunch of desert elves popped up, knocked everyone out, and carted Tifa and Saito off to their oasis village for a secret breeding program. That’s how I choose to believe it. I also choose to believe that they’re not actually elves, but crazy irradiated mutants worshipping the crashed jet in the middle of their lake. Sure, it’s stretching a little bit to assume that it was carrying a nuclear payload that would have mutated normal desert nomads into thinking that they’re elves, but then I remember that last week was an episode all about taking baths. The truth is just the usual Madlib based combination of "Gandalfr", "Magic" and "Half-elf" anyway.

So off in the secret elf nudist breeding camp, the first thing Saito does after waking up is notice that there are breasts nearby and begin rubbing them. It’s not like the last memory he has is being in a losing fight for his life or anything. He then goes skinny dipping with Tifa. Meanwhile, practically every single named character goes flying off to find them while an instrumental version of one of the OPs plays to show their immense resolve and emotion surrounding this event that happened four minutes ago and has already been shown to have nothing going on but wet elves being naked around him. I think you may have overshot that one, JC Staff.

Preview:

Lots of shots of eyes.

The denizen volkswagon van may out-stupid Gas Station Head.

Impressions:

This is as good as it’s going to get, isn’t it? Don’t get me wrong, it was better than probably at least 16 other episodes for this season, but it really says something when the middle of Yoshida’s supposed death scene has this interstitial jammed into the middle of it. Thankfully, they finally gave the infodumping a rest for at least a little bit and let the characters actually do things and interact for a short while. Not intelligently, mind you, what with the double whammies of Yuuji’s weakness being Shana calling him stupid and Yoshida not dying. But hey, at least… uh… we saw Shana and Yuuji bounce off each other from 50 feet away. Now that’s dynamic action!

Which isn’t to say that the horrible exposition wasn’t there. Pheles pulled Johan out of Yuuji and they spent the next four or so minutes standing completely still in the middle of Pheles’s typhoon… staring into each other’s eyes from inches apart… the raw sexual energy between them crackling… And then, because the show’s ridiculous quota hadn’t been fulfilled yet, The Mystery Mobile came driving up out of the ocean and then drove off again on a road of light while Yuuji (and I) watched on in confusion. The episode somehow continued for another couple minutes after that although I’m really not sure how or why. 

Preview:

Egg worlds.

Nice balcony on your new costume, girl.

Impressions:

As usual, excellent for about a third and then quite a lot of nothing. There was slightly more substance than the usual nothing, but most of it was either intensely irritating (anything involving Miku) or intensely obvious (anything involving Chris Kurisu). The Kurisu cliched development when she’s not fighting would normally be a lot more forgivable, but it’s unfortunatelly sandwiched between a mountain of bleh. The excellent third came at the start this time with Chris Kurisu revealing that she’s a Valk just like them and her Noise powers are separate from that before the evil woman (Phine?) took away all the Noise bits and disappears with Kurisu in chase. Miku also ramped the PMSing for keeping a secret from her up to maximum. Maybe if I cared in even the slightest about Miku, I might… well… care, but she remains mostly just annoying. With any luck, perhaps they’re setting her up for going crazy and joining the Noise side with this and the original bit at Hibiki’s grave.

Kurisu continued her face-turn fairly transparently too, helping lost children stop crying while they teach her a valuable lesson about having friends. Yes, yes, I get that they’re contrasting that against Miku being a complete *expletive deleted*, but they could stand to at least be a little less transparent about it. The cherry on top was Kurisu outright being betrayed and attacked by Phine to end the episode. The rest was just a flatout info dump set to flashbacks and pictures of things like… a desk… and a coffee mug. At least give us some damned power point slides to follow along.

Preview:

If you’re reading this, it means that I forgot to change the template.

Way to take the high road.

Impressions:

And in this thrilling adventure Issei and Asia learn about familiars, but before they can actually go do anything, they get distracted by a magical tennis match for the Claire Bible. Wait, wrong show. It switches into magical dodgeball anyway, culminating with Asia healing Issei’s stricken penis while waving her ass about 3 inches from the camera. At least she wasn’t kneading her hands in the air. I think they literally just dragged a circle of light bloom around a background with random effects cycling and tried to call it a dodgeball match. And that was the first 13 minutes of the episode.

Then they remembered the whole familiar thing from the first two minutes of the episode and go off to the forest where they meet Crazy Forest Ash, a professional familiar catcher who leads them all to a blob that dissolves clothing. It also makes the piano blare and adds irritating echo effects to everything. But of course, it’s not everybody’s clothing. This isn’t an equal opportunity acidic blob. Only female clothes are affected. It’s probably whatever the material is that they use that makes them skin-tight. And now Asia has a dragon to make sure that every single character can hilariously swat/electrocute/explode him.

Preview:

Bare chests.

I can’t even tell if that’s supposed to be Nay or No.

Impressions:

Sweet. Finally back to those episodes where I just have to summarize what happened, make incredulous noises, and call it a day. Let’s start from last week then. Remember the cliffhanger with blood splattering everywhere from Inori attacking ol Still-Don’t-Care-To-Learn-Her-Name? It was Mana, not Inori. Okay, not surprising there. She used her magical disease crystals to stab her in the hand (then went crying to Shu later about being a monster). Pres was so shocked by this that she curled up in her room sobbing until she got a mysterious call. But someone discovered her in the middle of her seditious acts so she prostituted herself to get out of it. Yep. Not five minutes after showing both Shu and Inori becoming dangerously unhinged, they felt the need to remind us who the ‘real’ good guys are by whoring one side out.

Then once the attack began with an army of Void users (forgetting that one of them took down an entire battalion before), Shu’s entire army decided to betray him. Then Gai appeared, cut off Shu’s arm and absorbed his power. Ah, Guilty Crown. Why do you do the things that you do? This is an actual question. I don’t know what’s gotten into the water in the writing room at Production IG lately, but there is no way in hell that it can be good for them.

I like how there are two Sun Links and they’re both horrible.

Impressions:

Ugh. Ayane. Your Link is terrible to begin with. Why couldn’t you be one of the montaged ones from the summer festival? Or cut entirely? Anything besides chewing up a third of the episode. I didn’t fight and die in the Trombone/Trumpet Wars of 2004 to have you come by and shame my instrument by… existing. It also worried me as a musician that they think trombones come in a single piece with the slide just being a handle that moves around. Then Ai had to show up and remind us all what midgets with apples for heads look like. Which was also a good thing because the artists this week were more drunk than usual. Unfortunately, Ai disappeared as quickly as she came, but at least she rescued Yuu from the claws of that apple-headed harpy.

The rest is about what you’d expect, a more or less by the books adaptation of the school festival plus a tiny bit more of Rise’s Link. It does say something about the show and audience that they spent more time panning over the crowd’s reactions of drooling high school boys than they did over the girls.I did chuckle when they worked the whole ‘ham actor comes from Hamlet’ thing into the show in a different way than the class lesson. Clever, AIC. Incredibly inane and pointless, but clever.

Preview:

Naked time for the men and Nanako learns a new word.

Time to start crying again.

Impressions:

And this would be the exact opposite direction that I wanted the show to go in. It’s also the direction that I originally expected it to go in but let’s set that aside. This was The Banal Lives of High School Girls^tm while the Otherworld segments were reduced to maybe about two minutes, almost all of which were characters staring wistfully with the bizarre ending that when Peppy McNewCharacter was killed in the Otherworld, she collapsed at school. If there was even anything worth ripping, I would have just done that instead, but sadly, no. The entire first half of this episode doesn’t really need to exist for that matter and just served to introduce Peppy McNewCharacter, who everybody teamed up on to make fun of because the writing dictated that and then got further angsted up by a character who spent 95% of her screentime crying or longingly touching pictures. Take it down a peg before you’re cutting yourself to Linkin Park, BRS.

Or better yet, do start cutting yourself. Go all the way with this crazy. Stop pussyfooting around like it’s all a bad joke about menstruation and knife someone. Maybe yourself. Maybe someone else. It’s all good.

This was… odd.

In case you were curious, and I know you are, Tenco uploaded the weirdest promo video ever for Eiyuu Senki this morning. Also, just FYI, I have a meeting that’ll probably push back coverage of at least one show to an hour or two later.

Impressions:

This was another one of those awkward episodes that the first season had sometimes where they weren’t quite sure what they were going for and didn’t remember to overplay the comedy and cliches enough to really make them work. Basically, Henrietta snapped out of frustration (and ODing on tea) and declared all-out war to amuse herself, including on her own subordinates when they said she wasn’t acting like herself. End result was the utter obliteration of the entire school apparently. Not sure where that leaves things for the rest of the season, but it isn’t like the school is exactly required for… well… anything. Maybe it means Twenty et all will be working with the gang to ‘rescue’ Henriette.

There were still a few moments when things came together, like Twenty and Stone River’s Extra Manly Sekiha Love Love Combination Fist or G4′s secret weapon, the Kokoro Cannon… and the show’s direction with these severely underanimated ‘fight’ scenes remains admirable, but action’s still not the show’s strength and like I said, they didn’t go far enough with it like they did in the season one finale. Aaand it took half the episode to actually get there, most of the time spent wondering if they were actually building up to some bigger punchline or not. Apparently no.

Preview:

Uh, old footage a month from the show actually being over.