Weekly Digest: 5/28/12 - Mobile Suit Gundam AGE. Kimi to Boku 2, Haiyore! Nyaruko-san

I know this will come as a shock, but Zaeheart lost a battle.

Mobile Suit Gundam AGE – 33

At least we’re starting to get some excuses for why Zaeheart continues to be owned by the generally incompetent Federation – some sort of mysterious plan whereby Ezelcant deliberately gives the Earthers a chance to get out of jail free. Is he testing them? Is he simply lacking the backbone to exterminate his cousins? Whatever the reason, he could certainly have succeeded this time if the Vagan merely set off the plasma bombs they’d successfully snuck into the base, rather than putting them on a timer and giving Flit a chance to lamp out their intentions. Zaeheart intentionally kneecapping his own troops and the Earth Federation so incompetent they need pensioners to do their thinking for them – this war is in a sorry state, indeed.

You certainly can’t blame the Vagan for suspecting Zaeheart’s fitness to command, which is apparently why pink-haired cutie Fram Nara (what would anime be like if all characters were named after auto-parts stores and former Japanese capitals?) has been sent to keep tabs. Fram (Kotobuki Minako) seems destined to play a prominent role in the story. Meanwhile, as the ghoulish Flit continues to dream of using Kio’s “unlimited potential” to genocide the Vagan, the boy is coming to realize that war really does suck. And with the Vagan actually having succeeded in taking control of 40% of Earth’s surface, it sucks pretty badly for the Earthers at the moment.

All in all that was an improvement over the last couple of eps, with a brisker pace and a somewhat more compelling narrative. Better still, the pirates from the OP are finally going to enter the picture next week – which likely means Asemu isn’t far behind. And once all three generations of Asuno are together, the meat of the story – settling this pointless conflict with the Vagan once and for all and confronting the morality of child soldiers – can begin.

Kimi to Boku 2 – 09

It was another thoroughly enjoyable week on KtB, certainly one of the sillier episodes of the season. The subject this week is yet another teen anxiety, the first job – and it’s Yuki of all people who’s goaded into getting one in order to be able to buy the next big game, “First Fantasy”. I kind of think Shun’s notion of a bookstore was rather a better fit, even if there was the danger of Yuki reading “Oldtype” all day. A family restaurant just doesn’t suit him, especially one with a terrifying manager played by the great Shinichiro Miki.

Not a whole lot happened here (no surprise there) but it was certainly fun to watch the boys blunder their way incompetently through Yuki’s first day at work, compounding every mistake for a bigger one. Identity switching, drinking the customer’s juice – it’s a mess. I know I can’t have been the only one thinking “Put the lid on the blender!”. On the plus side, the Asaba brothers prove themselves appealing to an astonishingly wide age range of females, and Yuki manages to lose his “kiss virginity” to the one on the younger end of the scale. Ono Yuuki delivers one of the funniest line readings of his career to close out the episode.

Interestingly enough next week episode looks to be another Chizuru-Mary ep, interestingly titled “Cherry”. My curiosity is certainly raised.

Haiyore! Nyaruko-san – 08

Full-on genre parody is always a risky proposition with anime – a lot harder to pull of than it first appears. Even shows that made it their stock and trade such as Abenobashi were pretty hit and miss. Fortunately, Haiyore! definitely has the chops for this – this kind of winking at the audience is what the show does best, and this full-bore dating sim sendup was the funniest episode since the premiere.

It’s a mistake to worry about plot with this show, so the convenient hook that sends Mahiro and his harem (apparently his mother and Yoichi have to be included in that number) to “Dokidoki Private Academy” is really beside the point. What is the point is a pretty on-target lampooning of the genre, and a few others besides. Kukko’s dream of having her “very own Endless Eight” with Nyaruko was rather cutting, and casting Hastur as Bridget for the final battle was a hilarious dig at this show’s audience. Hastur giving Mahiro a cast-off figure of himself was pretty cheeky too. We also got what must surely be the first “Working!”-Cthulhu tie-in, with the gang working at “Derleth” (August Derleth was Lovecraft’s publisher) and Nyaruko warning Mahiro that a beautiful waitress with a Japanese sword would cut him in half if he didn’t behave.

It’s certainly interesting to see the Yin and Yang of anime comedy, KtB and Haiyore!, both tackle working in a family restaurant and first kisses in the same week – and even more to see how both mined the topics for solid laughs in totally different ways. In the end, of course, it’s obvious whose flags are going to win out – just as it’s obvious that Nyaruko remembers everything that happened in the sim, including stealing Mahiro’s kiss virginity under “the tree with some sort of history”. I’m tempted to believe she somehow set the whole thing up – it certainly couldn’t have been more convenient for her.

12 comments

Ishruns

May 29, 2012 at 7:00 am

BEST EPISODE EVER!!!!!.

Easily the funniest episode of any show this year for me (Better than Danshi). Loved all the Haruhi, Working, WGOK, Tokimeki (I think), not to mention general hacking away at the cliches of Eroges.

KtB was a bit on the weaker side for me. Just felt a bit too cold, kind of hard to connect to the jokes and situation for me.

If only these shows were on Sunday, then we could call it Stand Up Sunday

Anonymous

May 30, 2012 at 12:14 am

Haha, ghoulish? Do you dislike Flit even more now than during the second generation?

And I'm not sure what Kuuko meant with the Endless Eight reference…

admin

May 30, 2012 at 12:36 am

It's a meme that came out of the second season of Haruhi, which would take a while to explain. And given that I didn't find Haruhi that interesting the first time around, I'm not going to get into it now… 😉

Sufficeth to say, repetition is the key to the concept. And if you're Kuuko in this situation…

Anonymous

May 30, 2012 at 12:43 am

Haha! I'm one of the "lucky" people that watched all eight episodes of Endless back in the day, and I wouldn't want to relive that nightmare, but I have to admit that this yuri version of Endless Eight isn't so bad. :p

So what do you think of generation 3 Flit? Don't worry, I'm not a fanboy; I think Flit's a fascinating character that's undergone a lot of character development, so I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on him even if you hate him and think he's evil.

admin

May 30, 2012 at 1:16 am

I don't hate him and I'd call him more misguided and warped by hate than evil. But I think what he's doing to Kio is despicable – taking a boy too young to make up his own mind and trying to groom him into the perfect weapon in order to wipe out an entire race of people.

Sadly, the Earth Federation is so incompetent and corrupt that it's only Flit that's kept them from being taken over by the Vagan already. For all his moral inadequacies, Flit is a hell of a commander.

Altritter

May 30, 2012 at 4:40 am

I honestly think he's mellowed out in gen 3, though; yeah, grooming Kio was wrong, but do you really think he's still hellbent on genocide like he was in gen 2? I don't see it at all. In this ep he considered that the Vagans were testing the Earthers instead of just failing to see that through hate, and he could have easily blamed Shanalua's death on the Vagan while talking to Kio, but he didn't do that either. He did call Ezelcant a 'demon' a few eps back but honestly I haven't gotten any genocidal vibes from him in this gen compared to gen 2.

admin

May 30, 2012 at 4:58 am

I really haven't seen anything to make me think he's changed his tune, TBH, but we'll see. I think the whole thing about the Vagans testing humans was just him thinking strategically.

Altritter

May 30, 2012 at 12:12 pm

Yeah, it's honestly difficult to tell if the writers intend for us to think about him one way or the other or if they want to keep it up in the air, but Flit's mindset is certainly the issue of most division in the AGE fanbase. I honestly don't think the Vagans have been portrayed pretty sympathetically at all and from what we've seen, Flit pretty much has no reason to NOT want to hate them. Still, though, I don't think genocide is his goal in gen 3. Despite all his talk in gen 2, we've never actually seen Flit do anything cruel to the Vagans, not even close, and he's stated that they've tried to negotiate peace. Compare that to them slaughtering innocent civilians for no reason, and Flit looks pretty good in comparison. I don't think he'd actually go through with genocide if it came to that, but yeah, we'll have to see.

Eternia

May 30, 2012 at 2:35 am

You didn't mention that they imitated Katsuragi Keima from TWGOK.
I totally laugh off that.

admin

May 30, 2012 at 2:41 am

Not one of my shows, I'm afraid. With as many references as this series throws out there, I don't even try and catch all of them.

Eternia

May 31, 2012 at 4:56 am

I see. I thought you are one of those guys, who went as far as listing all the references. Hehe.

Beckett

May 31, 2012 at 7:49 am

Ah haha this week's Nyarlko was absolutely brilliant. It might be the best episode of comedy anime in years. Hilarious references to Maria-sama, TWGOK, Haruhi, Working!, the whole thing just had me in stitches for the whole episode. This show is the height of just too much.

Weekly Digest: 5/28/12 – Mobile Suit Gundam AGE. Kimi to Boku 2, Haiyore! Nyaruko-san

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