I may have mentioned this once or a hundred times before, but comedy is about as subjective as entertainment gets.  Certainly with anime it, more than any genre, boils down to personal taste and beggars hard and cold analysis.  Stuff either strikes one funny or it doesn’t.  The world seems to love Grand Blue, and I found it obnoxious as fuck.  The world seems to collectively ignore Chio-chan no Tsuugakuro, and I laugh consistently at it.  Given the synopses Grand Blue is the show I should like and Chio-chan the one I hate, but comedy is funny that way sometimes.

This episode was, if anything, funnier than the first one for me – and I kind of liked that one to start with.  There seems to be just enough tonal variety here to sustain 22 minutes – maybe – and the execution so far has been really good.  Among the highlights this week:

• Koyama Rikiya seems to be in every show this season, and here he joins the cast as a street tough who looks almost exactly like Nitta from Hitomimatsuri.  That’s not entirely shocking, as that seems to be the stereotypical “yankee” in the mind of the Japanese.  This isn’t a stretch role for Koyama-san by any means, but he’s funny nonetheless.
• “Bloody Butterfly” is as good a mobster name as any for a high school girl, I suppose.
• I don’t know why we almost never hear from Omigawa Chiaki these days, but I wish that weren’t the case.  I’ve always liked her as a seiyuu, primarily because she doesn’t sound like every other female seiyuu.  She’s also quite funny, and she certainly is as Nonomura Manana.  Manana-san is Chio’s comrade in the outcast brigade, but something of a climber.
• I loved how petty and vindictive Manana was.  “Breaking up” that couple for three seconds, then gleeful when Hosokawa-san turned down Hozuki-kun.
• That whole discourse on “relationship noobs”, culminating in the  “ootoro” chart, was genius.
• The near-miss kiss and the whole “college guy” farce was effective too.
• Again, the bit with the office guy at the end was pretty much comic gold for me.  Chio-san and Manana figure out his lie, but outing him was pretty mean-spirited.  Hosokawa not caring was the kicker, but it does make me wonder if she’s hiding a dark side that’ll eventually burst the damn and flood the town.

As a whole, again, I found this pretty effective.  The narrative is plenty snarky and edgy without lapsing into abject cruelty.  Will it have staying power, who knows – but for now, I’m enjoying the commute.