Fantasy Ovum Concern #06 — Title Drop
February 16th, 2021
You'd think they'd put a little more effot into the English if it was supposed to be a title drop.
Impressions:
Why do I feel like randomly throwing in magical pets is a turning point for the show, and not a good one. The color-swap the random monsters, randomly declare that they're somehow stronger in… uh… some way… and that they can only be beaten with the help of these new magical pets. The stupid little chameleon eats approximately one of them and then exits the episode. This stupid goddamn thing eats up the start and end of the episode, without even bothering to show up for the boss fight. It's just some stupid magical pet for the sake of having a stupid goddamned magical pet. Similarly, the dead girl of the week was one who was haunted by literal ghosts and demons until it drove her insane. The contrast between that and bullying is a bit stark.
Anyway, all the stuff around the counselor dude is what will eat up all the oxygen in the room from this episode. The dude wants to start dating her mom, but Ai apparently has had a crush on him, which is making her jealously act out and likely had to do with her guilt over her friend's death. That makes the end of the episode where she races away to him and breathlessly throws herself into his arms a bit… odd to take though. They keep throwing out the grooming theory, to the point where it's getting a bit weird, even for this show. He (and her mom) also remain offputtingly blasé about a girl whose friend recently committed suicide who is lashing out and that they think is self-harming. But now that she realized her true feelings for this older man and is actively fantasizing about being in a corny romance novel with him, she's happy and confident and brave enough to go back to school again? I, uh… okay then?
Posted in Wonder Egg | 2 Comments »
Fede
I thought this was easily the best episode since the first one, the occasionally ridiculous bits aside such as Momoe getting a weekly love confession and the dumb title drop but Ai bleeding from who knows where by having her arm attacked should at least lead to it being broken yet she’s totally fine thereafter and just goes “yesterday sure was tough”. Seems oddly disappointing after them previously demonstrating that these wounds do carry over and aren’t without consequence for their family environment.
I suppose there’ll be a downside to the magical pets. Maybe memory loss, reduction of life years, personality changes or something.
I don’t think the chuuni girl from this episode was legit but actually mentally ill. Yeah, she DID see the monster contrary to Ai but these are supernatural creatures in the first place, created solely based on the fears of the egg girls so the monster being invisible to everyone but her makes a lot of sense. If anything, chuunibyou being closer to a mental illness in the show’s portrayal is a whole lot more laudable than anime’s usual “Your chuunibyou is important too! :) POWER OF IMAGINATION! Aren’t we all a bit chuuni? ^_^” rubbish. If she was an actual psychic or something of the sorts, they probably wouldn’t have given her the menhera-tier stuffed animal or chuuni eyepatch.
I guess the message is “Just because her delusions aren’t real, it doesn’t mean she’s not hurt by them because they certainly FEEL real to her” and that the treatment she received was the worst possible thing they could have done to her.
I do wish the show was a bit clearer on what it wants to say with the individual egg girl cases rather than just treating them as a social commentary checklist akin to “By the way, this societal problem exists too and now you’re all aware of it!” It’s weird how the show just dances around these issues in relatively abstract, impersonal ways, expressed through third parties rather than the protagonists, who get some really outlandish stuff like “the child CEO who got stabbed by her sister” and “she’s so pretty girls confess to her literally every week and she doesn’t like it” instead.