So we finally have the name – Sakata Kinta. He had his debut last week, but that didn’t really count – a teaser at most. And when you have a character as outsized in every sense as Kinta, a conventional introduction just isn’t going to cut it. Kinta is a character who seemed to elicit pretty polarized reactions from the manga fanbase right from the moment he was introduced. But whether you loved him or hated him, he was certainly never someone who faded into the background (and that may be the heart of that issue right there).

I think mindful of the huge splash Kinta made in the manga (a hindsight Tatsu Yukinobu of course didn’t have at his disposal), SARU wanted to give Kinta  a splashy debutante, and so they did. With a more or less original sequence, effectively replaying the brilliant Episode 5 montage of Okarun and Momo never synching up at school set to “Introduction and Variations on a Theme by Mozart, Op. 9” (this show does love it some public domain). Except with Kinta inserted throughout (there’s also an anime-original name drop of another huge character to come during this sequence).

One of the hilarious things about Kinta (I think there are many) is that he’s basically a doppelgänger of his seiyuu, Fujiwara Daichi. When a guy strolls on camera singing “Char ga Kuru” it’s pretty obvious he’s not going to be a paragon of subtlety and restraint. The reason why Kinta is divisive, I think, is because he’s just that huge a screen presence. Combining his looks and personality he basically owns every scene he’s in, for better or worse. I happen to think it’s overwhelmingly for better, so I like him. But I can also see where some readers think it can be a bit much at times.

There’s absolutely some personality overlap between Kinta and Ken. To the point where they could easily be friends, and it’s actually sort of surprising they’re strangers in the same class. Kinta is an otaku like Okarun, but a more conventional one – his love is for sci-fi and all its trappings, anime and otherwise. He obviously loves Gundam (one of the ways he tries to get Okarun’s attention is by running back and forth down the row with a Gunpla). The reason he’s declared Okarun an enemy is because he seems so friendly with Momo (Kinta has no idea), who Kinta idolizes himself. As you’d imagine he’s not popular with the girls, and all of a sudden his fellow low-ranker Ken seems to have leveled up in desirability.

But of course the matter at hand here is the mythical golden ball, which has apparently turned up at a local apartment complex. Kinta is absolutely perplexed why Okarun – and even Momo – can keep talking dirty and his own double entendres are met with scorn and derision. He follows the pair to the complex, where he’s about to get the show of a lifetime. The kintama is indeed there, but retrieving it is proving to be no mean task. It’s clearly associated with some sort of physical presence, but Momo and Ken are unable to see it.

Here the ludicrous popinjay Kinta, for all this puffery and ridiculousness, in fact proves himself very useful. He may have no obvious spiritual powers, but he has geek powers. He figures out the trick being used here – some sort of optical projection where the ball-wielder is being hidden by showing Okarun and Momo scenery that blends in with the background. This allows Momo to restrain the target and Okarun to go full throttle, which seems to leave the enemy down for the count. And it seems to be some kind of lizard, for lack of a better word.

This is an area where Kinta and Ken’s obsessions almost certainly overlap – a kaijuu is something both of them can get excited about. But this one is a lot more than it first appears to be, whether that’s the doing of the golden ball or not. And the minute backs are turned it goes into full growth spurt mode, becoming a true kaijuu in the monster movie sense of the word. I mean, you didn’t think we were going to get through an entire Dandadan episode without some sort of monster content, did you?