Special A #02 — Duwa!

April 14th, 2008

 

ICHIJOU!!!

Impressions:

Eh… my enthusiasm for this show took a hit with this episode. Aside from reintroducing use to every single character, including the leads, it was painfully predictable from start to finish and even above and beyond that, it was fundamentally identical to the first one. Hinano was complaining a bit last week that it takes a while (seemingly a long while) to get out of this "challenge!" nonsense. She’s actually familiar with the source whereas I’m not, but if the majority of the series is going to be "Hikari and Kei are challenged by X, compete briefly, then team up and walk off into the sunset" I’m not sure how long I’ll last. Granted, the sample size so far is only N=2, but I’m already tired of this motif. I’m also pretty sure that Hikari gained a bust size or two in her pro wrestling chinese dress.

Also, it’s late and I need to wake up relatively early tomorrow, so that may be coloring my judgement here. ARODUC GO SLEEP!

Oh, and I detest the OP. I don’t even think Yuuko Goto is particularly good VA, and she’s definitely not a good singer. This is just so painfully girly and crappy. I expect there to be lollipops and ponies dancing around.

Brief Summary:

This time, the match is against another school’s student council who barges in and gets all uppity. After spying on Hikari and Kei sparring, they decide to fight dirty, trying to attack Hikari with traps and just straight out beat up Kei. He gets worried about her, but she’s as clueless as always.

Once the day of the showdown comes, a strange ‘woman’ surprises them before the match and handcuffs them together. Hikari is too stupid to know how to fight with the handcuffs and Kei ends up getting his hand stomped protecting her. He takes the lead and protects her by putting her outside of the ring while they stomp on his back. Hikari yells at him, but he says it’s fine. Hikari gets cranky and tells him that her fights with him are because they’re fun and this isn’t okay at all.

Kei finally snaps and declares that he won’t lose to them. He easily breaks the handcuffs and then they tagteam the enemy and easily defeat them. As the cheating student council dude runs off, Hikari calls out to him and thanks him for the fun they had. At the end, Kei manages to get a dig in at Hikari as they walk off together.

Special A OP

Preview:

Please don’t be a cooking challenge. Please don’t be a cooking challenge. Please don’t be a cooking challenge…

Posted in Anime | 7 Comments »

7 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Impz says:
    April 14, 2008 at 5:24 am

    It’s not….you will be amazed at Hikari’s keen ability in cooking soon enough.

    *_*. Well, the continual “I GONNA CHALLENGE you!” is present for most of the earlier chapters, so it might annoy you. It did annoy me quite a bit.

    This episode is ok, even though they change it slightly. =/

  • Tess says:
    April 14, 2008 at 5:58 am

    The biggest problem with this series is definitely that Goto Yuuko was a HORRIBLE choice to voice Hikari.

  • sage says:
    April 14, 2008 at 9:56 am

    Yuuko Goto should only stick to voicing moeblob and yandere.

  • Hinano says:
    April 14, 2008 at 11:24 am

    Why don’t anyone post the raws of this crap on time?
    I’m at a point where I’d rather just blog it on Monday =_=;

  • totali says:
    April 14, 2008 at 3:22 pm

    Don’t say nii~!

    Yuuko Goto is better as a victim of DV and a tail lover.

  • Ex-fansubber ひとり言 » Special A - 02 says:
    April 14, 2008 at 8:27 pm

    […] week also featured the new opening which none of my blogger buddies liked. Well I honestly don’t blame them. It wasn’t as annoying as Hikari’s […]

  • Cent says:
    April 29, 2008 at 5:37 am

    I got tired of the repeated “Don’t call me second” gags. And bricks falling out of nowhere onto her head. It wasn’t great humor to start, just repeated ridiculousness that falls incredibly short of being off-the-wall like Kyouran Kazoku Nikki. If you’re not going to have tactful humor, then at least just be bonkers.

    Also it seems that this anime is prone to the character personality resets, where everything that happened in the previous episode has been forgotten, and character development is an endless loop of the mundane. Pulling this romantic touching moment at the end of each moment where a obsessively-competitive girl with an absolute jackass suddenly turned sympathetic individual is trite, but worse, it’s shoved under the carpet ala Zero No Tsukaima S2.

    Worse, the setting gets stale fast, placing itself into a school environment, but is basically comprised only of 7 characters who really should be in their own institute of elitist assholes and segregated from society. Since when was obsessively competitive students ever anything but an absurd topic? And somehow all the best students of the school are all rich kids with influential backgrounds, despite this being a public school? What? The mangaka would have been able to make this more comedic if he based it off brutal child mutilation.