Punch Line #07 — Let’s Do the Time Warp Again

May 21st, 2015

   

And again, and again, and again.

Impressions:

At this point, it’d take a miracle to convince me that they didn’t start out with the premise and then think to themselves “What is the most convoluted, twisty, nonsensical backstory we can give all these characters?” The ol’ Penguindrum schtick, although with all the body swapping and time travel, maybe Kingdom Hearts is a better parallel. In either case, forgetting that the story in the present has been going absolutely nowhere… and in fact, has gone backwards. Not helping is that half the episode was frittered away on reliving the hilarious bits where he (not changing my pronoun) stops himself from seeing panties, only to see more panties. It’s hilarious because it’s repeated and totally so self-aware. Ha. Ha. Ha. And then the cliffhanger where he… gets the costume to become the guy that last episode told us he was going to be. How is this a surprise to end the episode on? Have the writers been mainlining absinthe?

I guess the big ‘twist’, if you can even call it that in this convoluted, knotted mess trying to pass for (non) plot threads, is that the trio of magical children are all body swapped with each other with laser-focused amnesia and a bit of handwaving over how the soul at the very center of the goddamned show is the same as the ‘wrong’ host body. Why does it even matter? Hell if I know. Why should I care? Ditto. What does this change or what purpose does it serve? See previous statement. This is not a twist. This is not a gotcha reveal. It’s just convolution for convolution’s sake. He could have been revealed to actually be Abraham Lincoln and it’d still have as much impact, although at least then, it could pass for gag. If this show’s writing was a knock knock joke, it’d be:
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Interrupting cow.
Interrupting cow who?
Tooth-hurty.

Posted in Punch Line | 8 Comments »

8 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • algorithm says:
    May 21, 2015 at 3:15 pm

    It’s budget drop week for everyone.

  • kenuran says:
    May 21, 2015 at 4:52 pm

    Next episode’s PV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPmxLyxun_c

    The main thing about this reveal about the experimented kids in from the flashback being body-swapped is that if you were paying close attention to the flashback, you already knew that two of the kids were the main character and Mikatan. Its just that it seems strange they looked slightly different with the powering up hair color thing, the main character having a girls body, and the name marks on the kids from the past not matching up to the present. I could already tell that either they switched bodies or their bodies transformed somehow. All the reveal does is show that the flashback was basically was just some fake out and just adds some getting-your-true-body-back subplot.

    The problem with that is that its like Aroduc says, its doesn’t add anything to the show. Just more grounds for info-dumping. How many times have anyone mentioned that their bodies were swapped before this episode? Plus, with this shows love of just never really going anywhere with the main plot or the characters while throwing out tons of cheap foreshadow bait, these reveals or “twists” either are:

    1: Some crap that you probably knew ahead of time if you tend to pause or re-watch parts of episodes to gauge everything characters are saying and all the stuff the show wants you to remember. Leading to the reveals to feel lame or predictable cause you don’t care about the characters that much.

    2: The feeling of that the show is just pulling crap out of its ass for shock effect (the masked man being Ito’s teacher, MC having a girls body) since you didn’t care enough about the plot or its characters enough to warrant having to keep up with every damn little thing the show brings up and never mentions again until the plot wants to explain a bunch of them all at once.

    • Aroduc says:
      May 21, 2015 at 8:50 pm

      You’re probably right that I just spaced on some of that. Even at my best, I dismiss random things unrelated to ongoing events or immediately important to characters as so much white noise. At least in things like Guilty Crown or Cross Ange, shows no less guilty of crapping the bed with their writing, the crappings were generally to move things in some direction. There’s just nothing going on here to anchor information to characters or plot, and it certainly doesn’t help, again, that all the characters have done is sit around, twiddle their thumbs, and spit out exposition. No immediacy (or worse here, undermined with the time traveling) really does a number on everything.

  • Jack says:
    May 21, 2015 at 5:05 pm

    Sweet “Rocky Horror Picture Show” reference. Shame it had to go to waste for a dull episode and show spiraling into banality.

    It’s just a jump to your left…

  • ZakuAbumi says:
    May 21, 2015 at 7:04 pm

    I’d like Uchikoshi to stop recycling twists to no ends.

    Also, Yuuta’s ex-body is currently being controlled by the antagonist. Calling it.

  • Abyss says:
    May 22, 2015 at 10:11 am

    Okay the body swapping thing just complicate matter without any good reason. I kind of expected this episode to be 90% exposition so no surprise here, on the other hand it answered the question: why was masked guy not doing anything or telling anyone the truth? It’s a bad reason but a reason nonetheless, when thing actually need an explanation they do it super quickly to spend the deserved time on the mad up crap, efficient writing. I love this show.