天下制覇

  

I’m happy just to make Sunday name-day.

Impressions:

Dogakobo continues to be deft with comedy and flexing their production abilities, but let’s remember that their traditional modus operandi is to drop off at approximately week 2, sometimes going all the way to week 3. As far as this episode goes though, it’s colorful, expressive, a tad shouty, but at least it’s consistent about it without getting distracted into trying to also sell itself as a romance or drama. It could probably use a little more structure. Not having a grand overarching plot is fine, but there should still be something going on episode to episode to provide a vehicle for the humor if nothing else.

Speaking of which it does badly need a larger cast to provide a lot more breadth to the humor. There’s not a lot of chemistry between the two leads, so about 80% of the humor came from Ginger’s overreactions and shouting to the titual Nozaki standing there impassively. He’s essentially a golem. They’re probably going for deadpan ‘quirky,’ but he’s nowhere near quirky enough, and the result is that, as usual, most of the humor comes from overreactions and internalized shouting. To its credit, not all, but as always happens when I watch a couple dozen episodes of anime in a week, I’m really, really tired of being screamed at in Japanese by 30 year old women trying to pretend to be 15.

I’ll give it at least an episode or two to see if it’s going to build on this instead of repeat itself. I’m not a great fan of either character, but it’s certainly the most competent comedy of the season I’ve watched so far. Not the highest praise, I’m aware, but oh well.

Next Episode:

Romans invade.