Mieruko-chan – 02

I think the fanservice in Mieruko-chan may be some of the least artfully done I’ve ever seen, and this is anime we’re talking about.  Seriously, it’s just unbelievably crass – they’re making no attempt to couch it as anything but a transparent ploy (which is working) to attract otaku interest.  As I made clear in my Taishou Otome post I think we tend to make too much of casual fanservice in anime, and there are more insidious forms of sexism in the medium that get an underserved free pass.  But for fucks sake, at least make an effort.

That whole locker room sequence had me so disgusted that I pretty much tuned out the rest of the ep to be honest, but it was mostly more of the same until the last five minutes.  If this is just going to be week after week of the cute girl getting tortured by visions she has no control over I don’t see much point to any of it, but maybe there’ll be some further development in future episodes.  At least the cat bit at the end showed the other side to her ability – not every spirit Miko sees is horrifying, and her ability can actually be of some positive use.

Muteking the Dancing Hero – 02

I continue to enjoy Muteking the Dancing Hero for its unabashed goofiness, as well as its amusingly surreal depiction of San Francisco.  This week you get Lombard Street, the Transamerica Pyramid, Chinatown – but all seen in a funhouse mirror of Japanese aesthetic and fictionalized future.  There are enough small details here to convince me that someone involved in this production has actually lived there – stuff that you aren’t going to get out of a guidebook or an organized tour full of Japanese tourists.

The pretext behind this series is emerging – an embrace of the analog world.  Skating, arcades, cassette players, boom boxes, all disappearing under the onslaught on a company that acts a like like Apple and is actually run by an alien (presumably).  I suppose that’a fitting for a series with a 78 and 85 year-old director, but it doesn’t feel especially fusty or cranky – just nostalgic.  There’s also a little twist where the TV reporter going on about aliens is actually Muteki’s older sister (according to Grandma Sarah anyway).

As for Muteki, he reveals that he’s actually a pretty good dancer when he runs across four gamers named for the seasons in a run-down Chinatown arcade.  I like the way Muteki just basically wants to hang out and find a girlfriend – very normal for a 14 year-old – and his sights are clearly set on Aida the waitress.  Her ice cream soda gag continues to make me chuckle but who knows, maybe there’s something plot-related to it.  And could the mayor be behind that locked door at the diner?

Digimon Ghost Game – 02

I must admit, Ghost Game strikes me as one of the snappier Digimon entries in quite a while.  I like that it’s tweaking the usual formula a fair bit, and not taking itself too seriously.  It’s just a good, solid, kids adventure show – well-directed, visually pleasing, and smart enough to avoid condescension to its target audience (part of it anyway).

This time around mummies are the theme, with a string of disappearances in Ueno Park being linked (on the internet) t0 a display of Egyptian relics at the natural history museum.  Meanwhile Gammamon proves himself to have an insatiable appetite and an amusingly fractured command of Japanese.  Hiro decides to go around telling folks that Gammamon is a hologram rather than trying to explain his presence otherwise, though that’s going to be more difficult if anyone catches a glimpse of his evolved “Betelgammamon” form.

An interesting twist is that this week’s opponent isn’t actually evil, but rather a Digimon that wants to be a doctor (why?) who’s convinced himself that Egyptian mummification is the latest in human medical technology.  And the resolution is actually Hiro telling him that, after which he just lets everybody go and heads off to intern at one of the local hospitals.  Refreshingly anti-climactic, that.  Little quirks make a big difference in what could otherwise be fairly generic material, and Digimon Ghost Game has enough of them to keep it interesting.