Urgh.  Brand New Animal follows up probably its best episode with easily its worst.  I noted after Episode 2 that one of the reasons this show was working is that it wasn’t “over-the-top Trigger”, but I guess I was tempting fate there, as Episode 5 was very much just that.  Trying way too hard to be funny when it isn’t, crossing the line between silly and genuinely stupid, and jam-packed with really cheap-looking visuals.  What a difference from one ep to the next.

I don’t see anything essential in this baseball subplot in the first place, though one-shot episodes are certainly fine if they work on their own terms.  The only thing that really made me laugh here was that the Bears’ uniforms were obviously modeled on the Bad News Bears, but that’s not much reward for 22 minutes of slog.  BNA had built up a fair amount of credibility over its first four episodes with a fairly complex and interesting premise, but a lot of that was frittered away with the sheer ludicrousness of what happened here.

If there’s any upside to that episode being so utterly disposable it’s that it’s relatively easy to pretend it doesn’t even exist.  Episode 6 could as easily be Episode 5 (apart from a cameo by the chibi-bear catcher) and you’d never miss a beat.  And fortunately it’s mostly a return to form as the series gets back to the canon storyline.  More importantly the tone is back in balance, stupidity morphs back into silliness and the puzzle has a couple more pieces slotted into place.

Hiwatashi Nazuna (Naganawa Maria) is someone we’ve met before, and clearly an important piece to that puzzle.  I’m struck (no pun intended) by the fact that she and Michiru were injured in the same accident, which makes the fact that they both fell victim to their “disease” soon after no coincidence.  Whether the accident itself was planned or (more likely) Sylvasta simply seized on it as an opportunity to advance their research for whatever reason, the two girls’ fates are clearly linked and just as clearly not accidental.

Nazuna reappears as the totem of a group of Ginrou worshippers who make their way to Anima City, though in fact she’s no white wolf but a fox (it seems pretty obvious that Ginrou is actually Shirou, though it’s of those cases where it’s so obvious I’m hoping it’s a feint).  Michiru is obviously glad to see her best friend even under such weird circumstances, and even goes so far as to run away and join the cult in a bid to spend more time with her.  But Nazuna isn’t the person Michiru thinks she is (that’s a theme here), and for her this reunion is more about convenience than affection.

Once more this seems like a good opportunity for Nakashima Kazuki to pursue some interesting social satire, should he choose to.  To conflate the two definitions of “idol” in the way this episode does is a rather cutting bit of commentary, and while anime always pulls its punches when pursuing that chain of thought, just this once I’d like to see a writer show the balls to let it play out.  That’s really going to be the determining factor with Brand New Animal for me – how aggressively Nakashima pushes the satirical side of the story, and how much he surrenders to the usual Trigger lowbrow pandering.  We’ve reached the end of the “preview” block of episodes, so presumably that’s all we’ll get of BNA until the seventh week of the spring season – I suppose I’ll make a decision about sticking with it then.