Hippocratic Oath of comedy threshold met.

I can definitely say after two episodes that Binbougami Ga! has a winning comedic formula.  It’s made me laugh consistently through two eps by totally buying into the stupidity of the premise and embracing its inner idiocy.  You’ve also got two very solid seiyuu performers at the center and a pretty good stock of otaku metahumor and ecchi.  I’m not sure if I’ll continue to blog it, because like Haiyore! Nyaruko-san, unless you want to be the one cataloguing all the otaku references (someone will, but not me) it’s not all that easy to write about.  It was dumb, energetic and I laughed.  Nothing wrong with that, but Andrew Sarris is ain’t.

That said, a couple of things really made me laugh hard in this week’s ep, starting with Momiji sharing with the class that her favorite word was “BDSM”.  I also loved the introduction of Bobby (Kawahara Yoshihisa) the ecchi Priest, who fakes an accent because everyone knows Japanese are more likely to help out a clueless tourist (it’s funny ‘cause it’s true).  Among the many references I did pick up this week were Doraemon, Rosario, and the more obvious pocket monsters stuff – I’m sure a dozen others skated right past me, as they fly pretty fast and furious.  If you’re a fan of the fourth-wall bending (I am, if used judiciously) we had that too – with Momiji rolling out her goods line because “this is a one-cour series, and we can’t just let it air and be forgotten”. 

I don’t rank character development as a major factor in my enjoyment of this show, but I will be interested in seeing what happens when Ichiko’s classmates are brought into focus a little bit.   Basically right now it’s fun because Ichiko and Momiji are batshit crazy and trying to kill each others in spectacular fashion, but the show may be tempted to go a little deeper and even a little sincere at some point – and that might not be a bad thing, though if handled badly it could sink the entire affair.