I don’t know if you could say this week marks the start of the halfway stage for shows: the time of juicy action and interesting plot points. For some, that has definitely been the case, while others have just been same-old same old.
After the cliffhanger (of sorts) in last week’s Astra Lost in Space, we (and the rest of the crew) have finally seen the real Yunhua Lu…or rather, who she really wanted to be. Her self-loathing was something taught by her parents, and so it’s nice (if somewhat predictable) that she has come out of her shell this week at last. What future role will she play, though, is unknown. She has said that singing is the only thing she’s any good at, which is not encouraging.
This week, the crew reach the next planet on their trip: an oceanic planet that can provide them with meat, fruit and safe drinking water. However, the studio only had to make this week’s episode the beach episode. Yes, that’s right. These 9 kids are stranded out in deep space and need to rely on each other to survive & find a way to contact civilization, knowing that someone among them could be a saboteur, and yet Studio Lerche find the time to make a beach episode…*sigh*
With beach episodes comes out-of-control teenage hormones. Quitterie finally pops the question to Aries whether she likes Kanata or not, which seems pretty obvious, but that question is immediately bounced back, when it’s revealed that Quitterie might have some hidden feelings for Zack.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, things are beginning to heat up. For the first time, we are shown how everyone else is taking these 9 schoolkids disappearing mysteriously. We see that it has now become an international incident, and almost 40 days in, the authorities are considering ending the search for them, but it’s even more evident this week that not all of the parents are too concerned about seeing their children again.
While Aries’ mother is fraught with panic, and Charce’s mother is just as worried but being realistic at the same time, the others at this meeting just look so incredibly shifty. This week, as well as Yunhua’s mother (the famous singer) and Ulgar’s father (the school’s vice-principal), we see the parents of Quitterie, Funicia, Zack, Luca and Kanata for the first time, and none more so has this all looked like one big conspiracy as it has this week. Out of all of them, both Ulgar’s and Luca’s fathers look the most shady. I think it’s still a little too early to theorize anything tangible yet, but this week’s Astra Lost in Space is certainly a good example of what I was talking about – halfway episodes with juicy plot points.
Heck, even here in this scene of the parent meeting, we can see the most shifty people covered in shadow. Not the most original idea, but certainly the most effective.
I’m looking forward to how this part of Astra Lost in Space‘s story will be told, as while we dip into humor on the crew’s end, the more sinister stuff seems far more interesting.
For Lord El-Melloi II’s Case Files, we continue on where we left off last week, with a murder at a magical workshop in a secluded mansion. As a second murder appears, we learn that no one person among the group there is solely responsible for the murders, no matter how shifty they all look. Instead, it is the workshop itself (and the fairies that are summoned there by the residents) that are responsible for the deaths.
A lot of this went over my head though, what with it being deep lore in the Fate franchise; I should just look at this as some kind of CSI or NCIS type of show. Even though this week we finally learn a little more on who Gray actually is (and I admit that that moment was quite interesting to watch), it is this ongoing lore that troubles me as I watch this show.
Even though some of the cases in this show have been cool, and the animation direction is quite pretty to watch, it’s almost like all I can see here is a show that is trying to be too stylish for its own good. I shouldn’t be so harsh here though; the Fate non-fans and newbies could watch the show and just follow the cases on their own, and the Fate hardcore fans could easily find little bits of lore and Easter Eggs to spot and form new theories. I’m not a hardcore Fate fan in the slightest myself. Maybe I should just look at El-Melloi from a fresh perspective; not as a Fate fan, but instead as someone brand-new to the franchise. Maybe I could just not think about the Fate franchise at all as I watch this.
A tricky one here, as I want to love this show so much, like I enjoyed watching that other recent Fate spin-off Fate/Extra: Last Encore, despite it going in an unexpected direction (focusing more on science and technology instead of magic and the arcane). Perhaps it is all this lore and stuff that is holding me back.
It is this week that a bit of a revelation hits me in Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru? – one that I kind of feel embarrassed that I didn’t notice before. This show has a lot of fan service, and I mean a lot. Has all of this muscle showing and these edutainment spots distracted me from seeing all of this skin? Most likely.
The show remains what it is, and that is a slice-of-life show about girls wanting to get fit for various reasons. This is a show that none of us should look into deeply, although I kind of agree with some people when they say that all of the edutainment spots in this show should not be taken as gospel. This week, as the girls return to school after summer break, we learn that a sports fair is coming, and participation has become mandatory. This all means that we get to see Hibiki, Akemi and Ayaka learning on how to tone their leg muscles and how not to overwork them…with some added posing and Machio clothes stripping that is totally unnecessary but has now just become the norm now.
By the way, I’m still finding something this season that I can call my Summer Curse™. Even though I’m enjoying a lot of what I see this week, I can’t help but shake the feeling that, by the end of September, I’m going to end up really disliking one of these shows. Maybe it’s just past experience talking, and the fact that it has happened pretty much every time before, that my feeling like this has just become unconscious now, and I can do nothing about it. I could end up letting this unnecessary posing in Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru? make me think that the show is terrible when it isn’t, or the fact that El-Melloi is trying to be too stylish for its own good, which isn’t…entirely true. Ehh, I should just chill out more and not dwell on this.
While we see pretty much the same-old same-old in Dumbbell Nan Kilo Moteru?, O Maidens In Your Savage Season continues on with its individual stories, but decides to take a very different direction in some of them.
Hitoha opens up to the club advisor (who I guess we’ll just call Milo, since that’s his online name) about how much difficulty she’s having on putting erotic scenes to paper for her novels. Here we see that writing is something Hitoha really wants to do, and her naivety in a topic like this is something that is really bothering her. Turning to a high-school teacher is something she doesn’t want to do at all, but what he proposes is something that might just help her, even if it’s a little extreme. This is more a ‘see-for-yourself’ moment.
Since we’re talking about men helping high-school girls, Niina talks to Izumi about what happened to her at the theater troupe her parents made her go to when she was younger, and a name is put to the weird guy that she seems to despise so much.
Saegusa was the director of a play the troupe put on, and much to the troupe’s surprise, he chose Niina to play the lead, which she didn’t want to do. He seemed to take an unnatural liking to the 11-year-old Niina though, claiming he admired her girlish innocence – something that sounds shady already. Niina says Saegusa never touched her like that though, but as we watch this week’s episode of O Maidens, we sort of understand why Niina acts as mysterious as she does: it is a result of what is taught to her at this theater troupe. I was very curious on why she would use these metaphors of a young naive girl dying and metamorphosing into a learned and ‘experienced’ woman, and I finally understand why she thinks like this.
While the other individual stories carry on like we kind of expect them to, these ones by Niina and Hitoha are suddenly taking an unexpected turn. Now, if Momoko, Rika and Kazusa/Izumi’s stories went some a similar unexpected turn…
I’m up to episode 5 of Senki Zesshou Symphogear now. Tsubasa is still in a critical condition, this other girl in Symphogear armor, Chris, is mad she had to go home empty-handed, and Hibiki is making more and more excuses when it comes to Symphogear training, instead of what she should be doing, which is spending all of her time with her wife Miki). This episode covers a relic, Durandal, that needs to be protected at all costs, and we sort of see for the first time how much contempt the world governments have for the Symphogear team, likely because they end up destroying so much while getting rid of the Noise.
Now I was told already that the production of Symphogear season 1 was straight-up mediocre; it was pretty evident to see in episode 3, when we saw Tsubasa try to walk and talk at the same time. Here though, in episode 5, we watch the acting team do their best English voices…
I’ll be kind when it comes to criticizing the production in season 1, as I’ve been told that as new seasons went by, the franchise’s budget got bigger, meaning the show looked better. There’s a specific reason I bring this up. You see, I’ve sort of been swayed into this so-called Symphogear challenge that has been on my mind after all, so there’ll be some big changes when it comes to my coverage of Symphogear…purely because I’ll be watching everything now! Oh, something else as well. I’ll be doing some individual posts that’ll cover some recent and out-of-season shows here on The OASG, starting soon. I guess you could call this me getting off my butt and expanding my anime horizons some more. Not that it’ll get me to watch My Hero Academia in the fall though. Not happening. Nope.
This week has been a cool week for my anime shows though, even for the ones I’m not as optimistic about. So do you agree with me? Do you think I’m looking into shows too much? Should I look at El-Melloi from a fresh perspective? Should I not be too concerned about the fan service in the muscle show? Do you think week 5 is the point where juicy action and plot points come out that mark the rest of the show? Feel free to hit that like button and air your opinions in the comments below!