Certainly the big anime news of the past week – for those of us of a certain age, anyway – was that Hoshi no Samidare is getting an anime adaptation.  This was a ship most fans thought had long since sailed.  The Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer was quite popular back in the day, but the dream of a Gainax adaptation was scuttled over Mizukami’s insistence that The Pillows provide the soundtrack, and the unwillingness of their licensing companies to give up the rights.  By the time the idea of The Pillows was dropped it was too late – the money had moved on (to Panty and Stocking) and the dream of a Samidare anime was seemingly lost forever.

I have no idea what the adaptation (due this summer) will be like, though given the staff and studio expectations levels are a long way off vintage Gainax and The Pillows.  I bring this up now because on some level, Sabikui Bisco isn’t the worst comp for Biscuit Hammer.  I have no idea if Biscuit Hammer (which ended in 2010) was an inspiration, but if nothing else it’s clear that the creators of both series were inspired by the same sort of manga and anime themselves (and they’re certainly not alone).  Ikariya Atsushi would have been a good pick for Samidare (though Matsumoto Rie would have been the top pick by a mile) – his directorial style with Bisco is the right sort of unhinged for Samidare.

Sabikui Bisco is nowhere near as good as Hoshi no Samidare – I think that’s pretty clear after three episodes, but it really isn’t the point.  You might get a manga on par with Samidare every few years or every decade, but anime which represent this storytelling and visual aesthetic were once quite common and no longer are.  For me it is, as I noted last week, as comfortable as an old sweater.  Whether it comes from a manga or a light novel seems irrelevant for now, because the series plays as totally authentic to the style.  It’s not exactly spellbinding yet, but it’s solidly entertaining and it scratches an itch.

The one thing I’m not crazy about is this needless timeline jumping, which as far as I can tell adds nothing positive to the ledger, but at least there was less of it this week.  The first three episodes were the prologue, which is common in this sort of series.  Sooner or later Bisco and Milo were going to end up at the center of a buddy comedy, it was just a question of how they got there.  Pawoo has to be dealt with first – she and Milo obviously love each other, but Pawoo is an obstacle to what Bisco is trying to do (and his goals and Panda-kun’s are basically one and the same).  I thought Bisco might win her over altogether, but for now he just neutralizes her and sets the stage for the main dynamic to assert itself.

I don’t blame Bisco for being pissed off, as everyone is trying to kill him for trying to save their asses.  Jabi gives us most of the details but the explanation is handled pretty organically by LN standards.  It’s about what you probably guessed – the mushrooms don’s spread rust, they eat it, and Bisco is searching for the legendary “rust eater” which can eat any sort of rust (and cure anyone afflicted with it).  Bisco is doing all this to save Jabi (at least I assume he is) which makes Jabi’s sacrifice at the end seem a little pointless.  But clearly he’s got a ticket for the Styx cruise and has from Episode 1, and he has to clear out to make room for Bisco and Milo to bond.

The zany touches we get every week – like the giant bowling pin complete with bowling sound effects – really add a lot to the experience.  The creatures get weirder every week too, and that last “living shrine” dude looked like something out of Avatar: The Last Airbender.  Sabikui Bisco isn’t anything especially brilliant or profound, but I find it to be very honest, and quite expressive of a genuine love of genre in much the same way something like the first season of Symphogear was.  I think the big test is how things go with Milo and Bisco as a pair, but what we’ve seen so far suggests that will probably work pretty well.