天下制覇

Truly mysterious nabe.

Impressions:

An episode of nothing special, letting this series end just how it began, and that’s perfectly fine. Better than fine really, since the status quo is generally to fabricate some drama in the last 20 minutes. Granted, Namiko was sick for the first 5 minutes of the episode, so I was a little worried that they’d get overly angsty on that front, but then they hopped to the next day, she was all better, and they all had mystery nabe at her house… emphasis on the mystery, thanks to Noda and Tomokane. I wish they had done a little more with the background splash imagery stuff, but otherwise, a solid episode.

I do wish that they hadn’t jammed the instrumental version of the OP into the episode completely at random. It’s a nice tune, but they literally just dumped it into a segment at the middle that was completely unimportant. The ending theme this time was an ensemble song (I believe) that started a minute or two from the credit roll and just continued through it. A decent song, but I prefer the real ending(s). The comic highlight for me definitely had to be Namiko trying to put Noda into the child’s seat of the shopping cart. I’m almost surprised that Noda didn’t go for it.

I’m just sad that it’s over now, but at least there’s still the OVA to look forward to and the everlasting hope that they’ll produce more of it some day.

Final Thoughts:

One of the most consistently enjoyable comedies I’ve seen in a long while oozing charm, wit, and never forgetting that it was and is a very simple comic series. I wish that all of the short comic adaptations could maintain the quick pace and rapidfire jokes of their medium instead of trying to repackage themselves into slow paced snorefests stretching a four panel joke out for a full minute or longer. Most of the cast deserves a lot of praise too. Every single character was well defined without us ever having to be beaten over the head with some archetype or angst-tastic life lesson. It probably also helps that every single one of them comes off as, if not intelligent, then at least very knowledgable about the subject matter. It’s so much more pleasant to watch unhinged geniuses than blithering idiots. I still haven’t warmed up to Awarararara and her club, but they weren’t really that bad, just sadly lacking compared to Noda and Tomokane’s antics.

There are some slower patches to the show, and at its core, the BGM is largely forgettable, and it really does boil down to "spastic girls acting silly," so I realize that it’s probably not to some people’s tastes, but unlike so many other shows cut from the same vein, the focus is on the comedy, and that really makes all the difference. You’re not going to find this show trying to sell you some cutesy catchphrase, or telling an ‘inspiring’ story about making friends, or something so obsessed with being artistic that it forgot to include jokes, just a fun little comedy about art students. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.