Binbougami Ga! – 04

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Which one is the real one, indeed…

[gg]_Binbougami_ga!_-_04_[A3B7F716].mkv_snapshot_01.00_[2012.07.26_12.30.30]If you’re going to be an anime comedy, bringing in Shimono Hiro to play a masochistic Dog God is probably never a bad idea.  And Hiro-Hiro really sinks his teeth into the role of Momou the Inugami, an old bondage buddy of Momiji from the world of the Gods and her latest weapon in the battle to leech Tittyko’s good fortune away from her.  If Binbougami has a favorite parody so far it would seem to be Dragonball, and we get a taste of it here as we see that Momou goes all Super Saiyan when his pleasure/pain buttons are pushed hard enough, and turns into a tiny terrier with huge eyes, a kind of stealth weapon of terrible cuteness against the reprehensibly lucky Sakura.

[gg]_Binbougami_ga!_-_04_[A3B7F716].mkv_snapshot_01.33_[2012.07.26_12.31.03]So far, the balance of evidence suggests this series is pretty good at mixing absurd comedy with just enough heart.  It’s not so much heart that it’s actually making me like Tittyko – she’s still pretty insufferable most of the time – but it’s enough to paint her as a human being and not a caricature, and thus when something akin to Momou feeling sorry for her happens, we can sort of understand why.  And the comedy generally is funny, which certainly helps – Shimono-san is particularly good as Momou this week, overacting as few others can.  Much of the teleplay in the episode is in fact Momou’s internal monologues as he plots ways of stealing Tittyko’s fortune, then comes to see a different side of her as she digs through the dump all night looking for her box of letters from Suwano (a box she’d lost to one of his divine helpers being partially successful at stealing her good fortune). 

[gg]_Binbougami_ga!_-_04_[A3B7F716].mkv_snapshot_04.37_[2012.07.26_12.33.13]It’s not so much that Sakura’s feelings for Suwano vindicate her character entirely, but they do reveal that under the right circumstances she’s capable of selfless love – which plainly serves as the spine of the story here.  If I have a complaint it’s that we’re not seeing enough of Momiji lately.  I still find her the funnier of the main pair, and her head-on collisions with Sakura provided some of the funniest moments of the first two eps.  The last two have worked pretty well with Momiji in a  much smaller role, but I’m ready for more of her.  As to the series on the whole, I’m still not 100% that this basically very simple premise can maintain its forward momentum for a full cour, but so far so good.

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10 comments

  1. I

    Luckiest dog ever

  2. H

    I like the series' use of Suwano as a humanizing element to Ichika. It moves her from a character that has no redeeming qualities to one that feels like she's just lost her way.

    I agree that we need to get more Momiji soon, but I'm hoping it's not a return to the frenetic pace of the first two episodes. Mostly somewhere in between. I actually think we'll probably get a couple of Momiji-focused episodes in here soon.

    And am I the only person who thinks that Bobby is a pretty useless character? Basically he's just hanging around. They need to either do something with him or get rid of him.

  3. S

    No one can do maso as well as Hiro Hiro XD
    I agree, as much as I like Chichiko, Momiji needs more screen time and it'll be great if we get to see more of her back story too =3

  4. S

    Unfortunately, Ichiko is obviously the main character, and as I've read the manga, Momiji doesn't have a "back story". Either way, being a god, I don't see how her backstory would be interesting.

  5. E

    The amount of parodies in this episode increased
    dragon ball
    inu yasha
    durarara
    shaman king

    and hiro hiro as maso XD

  6. b

    This is really funny, I so love this series. Can't wait to watch the whole series.

  7. A

    Is there a site that lists all the refs for each ep like there was one for haiyore nyaruko-san?

  8. A

    Momiji doesn't need a thing called a "backstory" to be awesome. 'Nuff said.

  9. I pretty much agree – I don't need to see her backstory so much as to see more of her, period.

  10. F

    Wow, sure as hell that I haven’t expected to find a coverage of Binbogami Ga! on LiA after I didn’t find one on randomc. I was looking for a light comedy show to fill some of my Friday night since the current anime season is quite horrid and actually finding this show is a rather pleasant surprise. So that I even found episodic reviews is really the icing on the cake. This show executes well the premise of an obnoxious, unlikeable main character’s struggles, who at the same time feels human and flawed, but not overly malicious or generic (yeah, I’m looking at you, Masamune and Kuzu no Honkai).

    And those last five minutes was a really nice emotional whiplash, it struck a good balace between the zany comedy and the more heartfelt moments. (And it’s quite strange but I even feel as if the voice actors were more enthusiastic about their roles in this anime (or in most of the things that aired five years ago) than in today’s shows, in which it sounds just forced a lot of times, like they are playing it safe following the Karasume Chitose pattern. In the case “Binbougami Ga!” you can hear it from the voice acting that the lead actors are actually having fun while recording it and this passion seems to have faded over the years with the ‘industrialization’ of anime becoming more and more permeating)

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