天下制覇

Oh boy, a world reset ending.

Impressions:

I’m pretty sure I called this one the moment that Senkawa left Birdy’s body an episode or two ago. Through the power of love and using Nakasugi’s first name, he manages to calm her down enough to kiss her and take the little parasite into himself, so Birdy kills him and the whole thing goes right back to where it was at the end of episode 5 or so. Why Senkawa was pissy about Birdy killing Nakasugi and then rebuilding a body for her, I’ll never know… I don’t think the writers do either, but it really speaks to Senkawa’s character that we had the following exchange:

Nakasugi: –Is green, glowing, and floating in midair–
Senkawa: Sayaka!
Nakasugi: Tsutomu-kun… I’m the ryunka. 
Senkawa: –GASP!!–

So here’s to you, Mr Totally Oblivious Japanese Kid. Just because your woman is green, glowing, and in a derelict ship owned by a crazed pedophile full of defunct robots, that doesn’t mean that you can come to any conclusions. Maybe that green glow is from the shampoo she’s using, and that pile of corpses in the closet was there before she got there. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise, because you know that by just calling out her name, you can dissolve the giant tank that she’s become. And it’s all good, because at the end of the day, she’ll have no clue who you are, because amnesia is just as contagious as stupidity.

To say something nice, the animation was a bit better this week than previous ones, but since there was really no interesting action, all we got were over exaggerated head turns and water that looked very very strange. The big show down between the ryunka tank and Birdy was just a single punch and then lots of lasers and Birdy grunting before Captain Oblivious stepped in and brought an end to even that much with the power of love (shut up, Totali), or at the very least, some pity kissing.

Final thoughts at the bottom.

Final Thoughts:

If there is one glaringly obvious problem with the series, it’s Senkawa. He doesn’t grow. He doesn’t mature. He’s spouting the same pithy nonsensical "do your best and don’t kill humans!" nonsense from episode 2 to episode 13 even while the pile of corpses and destruction is surrounding him like a bad stink. He is the wet towel to Birdy’s exuberance and joy of property damage and the only thing more painful than hearing him stubbornly refuse to before the things happening five feet in front of his face was his total ineptitude at everything he tried to do. Hell, in this episode, they had to show him struggling to push over robot crewmen that were shut off. He came to a door where there were two of them and his face went "oh crap, I’m screwed." Senkawa added absolutely nothing to the show except the horrible deus ex love power ending, which didn’t even make a whole ton of sense even in the Birdy universe. If they had just kicked him out and let Shion get close to Nakasugi instead, that would have been better on so so so many levels…. wink wink nudge nudge.

As much as I’d like to lay all of the blame on him though, I really can’t. Those two episodes of Birdy going back into space were tortuous and killed the excellent early momentum of the series. I can’t even remember why they were fighting the dog people anymore. After that, the action was sparse, Senkawa took center stage, and the villains got incomprehensible. Hell, Birdy only met one antagonist in person, who immediately broke her arm and then left the show until the last 20 seconds. All the rest of the evil masterminds had essentially no interaction with them whatsoever and are still running around all will nilly.

The series really did start relatively strong, though even from the start, Senkawa sucked a lot, but Birdy/Shion’s antics were cute enough to overlook that. As Birdy got dialed down and Senkawa dialed up though, it just became harder and harder to stay interested. Combine that with wildly fluctuating art, moronic characters, and an ending that magically resets everything to the way it was before the plot started, and I’m not sure I’d be able to stand the second season. They’d have to actually kill Senkawa in the opening episode for my interest to perk up.