A two-part episode of SnO this week. The first half comprised really the only serious ep of the season, as Sugata makes another journey to the inside of Tomoki’s dreams, this time with Sohara as a hitchhiker. Turns out Sugata has figured out that Tomoki’s dream is actually the Synapse, and at first glance it seems a surprisingly pleasant and bucolic place. But there’s more sinister stuff going on, and Sugata has thought this out well – he pre-plans an escape route with Nymph and he and Sohara are teleported out just in the nick of time. But not before we have some very unsettling hints of what’s really going on up there, as Sugata develops a theory…

The second-part, meanwhile, returns us to familiar (if anime-original) territory as Tomoki tries to figure out how to turn the device Sohara accidentally dropped to Earth from the synapse into an erotic device. After a few hilarious attemps, he builds Panty-robo 2.0, powered by Tomoki’s “pervergy”. At last – an endless source of renewable energy! Much skirt-lifting and hidden camera locker room spying and brotherly bonding fun is had by all, but not even Panty-robo can withstand the wrath of Sohara and alas, the episode – like so many others in this series – ends in tragedy.

We’re in a sort of holding-pattern with this show, but not an unpleasant one. It’s still fun to watch and the ecchi is as creatively hilarious as ever, but it feels a lot like S1. I do find it slightly annoying that Ikaros (my favorite) has so little to do this season. Another quibble actually is a change from S1, but not a good one – why is Tomoki in chibi form so much more often this year? Last gripe – what the heck was up with Sohara’s seiyuu? Her voice sounded extremely different during the synapse sequence – I did a double-take just to make sure it was the same character.