Brave 10 – 05

I’m kind of coasting along in a holding pattern with Brave 10.  It’s easy to watch and competently produced, but really isn’t doing much to excite me.  Somehow the writing feels very by-the-books to me – while the characters have a sort of iconic quality to them, the dialogue doesn’t feel especially natural.  It’s a stagey production and obviously not going for documentary realism, but I haven’t quite figured out whether the artificiality is intentional, a flaw in the writing or a flaw in my perception.  In any case with nothing airing on Wednesdays it’s an easy show to cover in digest form, and certainly enjoyable – I’m especially liking Yukimura and I hope he becomes a larger player in the coming episodes.  The business with Rokuro’s eye (we’ve seen that particular talent in anime before) is certainly an interesting one, though I can’t escape the feeling that he’s primarily there as fujoshi-bait.  But with the show almost half over and most of the cast not even introduced yet, the primary interest for me is in seeing just how they try to wrap this up.  Next week, looks like the warrior monk joins the cast.

Papa no Iukoto wo Kikinasai – 05

I just don’t know about PapaKiki.  The running gag with Yuuta seeing Sora naked is very, very unfunny.  And giving us at least one bath scene every week really doesn’t sit right with me.  Yet I want to like it, because I sense there’s a good heart hidden under that nonsense and syrupy BGM.  The elements of the story that seem interesting to me – Raika, the difficulties that would surely arise with the extended family about this arrangement, the seiyuu neighbor – seem to be taking a back seat to repetitive “Home Alone” style gags, relentless Hina-moe and bath towels.  I don’t want this to devolve into me lecturing about what’s wrong with the show every week, so if I don’t see positive movement in the next episode or two I think it might be time to let this one go.

In terms of the episode itself, one thing that’s been striking me more and more is that Sora seems fairly inept at self-preservation for a seemingly bright middle-schooler.  A lot of 14 year-olds are pretty mature and self-sufficient, but she nearly burns the house down cooking, gets on the wrong bus and forgets to charge her phone or bring an umbrella…  She’s a bit of a screw-up, and I suppose it’s possible she was fairly pampered in her comfortable life with her parents, but I’m surprised her coping skills aren’t better – she’s old enough to baby-sit other people’s kids.  And what’s with Miu just opening the door when neighbor Atarashi Kurumi (Nakamura Sakura, debut performance) showed up with the watermelon?  What if it’d been a pervert like Shuntaro?