Virgin Road #07 — Magical Hair Dryer

May 13th, 2022

 

Why… Why do we keep highlighting a hairdryer?

Impressions:

This is where I think we bid this show adieu. I'm not sure I have it in me to suffer through another month and a half of this banality. At least with Dawn of the Witch, I give it a 50/50 shot of reminding me of some other random trashy show from the past that I should really take another glance through again to remind myself that, yes, indeed, the drek of 2010 was better than all these cheat power RPGs. Granted, this is very far from the worst offender in that vein, but an episode where they meander aimlessly, take a bath, and then cheat power out of being off-screen leviathan'd by a formless waterfall blob… that's not exactly a step in the positive direction.

Christ, as much focus was given to the existence of a hair dryer as there was to the supposed new 'plot', of the new crazy girl going to a meeting and then stuffing a girl in an iron maiden. Why are we so focused on the hair dryer? Are we trying to fetishize hair drying? It's not even an electric hair dryer. There are trains and a motor boat, so electricity wouldn't be out of place. Or if it is, it's emitting a hell of a lot of sparks. What is it plugged into? Does this mean there are magical outlets? There's some kind of magical infrastructure supplying magical electricity… to the baths? For the magical hair dryers?

Posted in Virgin Road | 10 Comments »

10 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Joshua says:
    May 13, 2022 at 11:52 am

    “Wait until the next arc,” they said.
    “It’ll totally get better, I swear!” they said.

    At this rate, the twist at the premiere where it “subverted your expectations” is all this isekai has going for it. Because it’s following the MCU model of making even the tiniest deviation from the formula (i.e. insinuating that Captain America 2 is “totally an old school political thriller!!!” and not just another superhero movie) seem like the grandest, biggest thing to people who mostly only consume isekai series every season (i.e. replacing the male power fantasy with a yuri power fantasy, big whoop).

    And fucking hell, since Virgin Road is in the title, they had to just keep emphasizing ad nauseum how “pure” this yuribait pairing is throughout this series in order to not scare off the dudebros who would shit on this series for being “woke” if it featured a lesbian lead and didn’t pander to their male gaze fetishes.

    How is this an improvement over other isekai? The praise I’m seeing for this series makes absolutely no sense unless their diet is nothing but hatewatching isekai shows.

    • Kitsu says:
      May 13, 2022 at 3:00 pm

      exactly what is your problem with a story with slow pacing? not all chapters can have action or be dramatic because saturating the series with the same tone would only cause it to become boring in the long run the tension is more effective the less times it is used

  • Kitsu says:
    May 13, 2022 at 2:50 pm

    This is called world building which you are not used to. If you paid attention to what they say everything from the technology is explained in episode 2 and this is a build up episode to the next arc and the start of adapting volume 2

    • Aroduc says:
      May 13, 2022 at 7:57 pm

      It’s seven episodes in.

      If the world has not been built, an eight minute bath scene is not going to be what gets it there.

      • Kitsu says:
        May 14, 2022 at 4:04 pm

        The world can always continue to be built or you want to be introduced to new things and them not being explained?, we already have the bases so now the series expands with other places, specially because in the novel this is Volume 2.

        • Aroduc says:
          May 17, 2022 at 9:54 am

          It’s weird that you’re arguing that they could be building more or introducing new things for an episode where they did none of that.

  • Fede says:
    May 13, 2022 at 5:17 pm

    Good that you drop the show, you complains were a lot of stuff that didn’t make sense. And the hair dryer was given “importance” (which wasn’t that big of importance actually) because Menou was testing Akari’s extremely high trust in her by letting her enter in her again, they aren’t trying to fetishize it, this really says you aren’t paying attention to the show.

  • redpanther says:
    May 14, 2022 at 12:41 am

    Just from killing that poor sap nobody in Ep1 and people keep scrutinizing this little mediocre show to dead, again and again.

  • Joshua says:
    May 23, 2022 at 9:00 am

    Oh btw, the next episode was literally just the characters all sitting in a room being told everything that’s going to happen next since they spent all of the previous episode loitering around with hair dryers and baths.

    And again, this is just bog-standard isekai shit at this point, what’s even so special about this apart from the yuribait?

  • Joshua says:
    June 5, 2022 at 1:03 pm

    This is a real line uttered by the generic baddie in the most recent episode of Virgin Road in 2022. I did not make this up:
    “What you are about to witness is a B-movie screening!”

    They’re just aiming for glib self-aware irony at this point after the novelty of the premiere “subverting your expectations” wore off.