ef ~ A Tale of Melodies #03 — Shoes Shoes Shoes!

October 20th, 2008

 

Enough with the damn shoes!

Impressions:

Ugh. I don’t know if I can survive Mondays like this for too much longer. Vampire Knight was certainly better than last week, but easily half the episode was centered around tertiary Aidou’s boyhood, and while nothing livens up angsty vampires like showing their boyish antics, it just felt like a giant time and space filler.

Over in ef land, we had pretty much the same thing. Looooooong sequence with Chihiro without any general purpose and what felt like a particularly long scene between Yuuko, Yuu, and Yuuko’s brother, the teacher which also seemed to go absolutely nowhere. The deus ex Chihiro at the end was also pretty cheesy. Couldn’t they just have had Mizuki follow him out? She was clearly waiting for him on the porch. Why bring in somebody to say "Quick quick, the princess Kuze needs your help, go to the dark castle beach to save her her." I still really have no idea what the deal is with Nagi or how her exhibitionism plays into any of this at all. She’s just there to provide some breasts and/or nudity jokes so far, and bear in mind that we’re 25% of the way through the show now.

I did think that the violin scene at the end was done very well. It kind of had to be in order to redeem this episode’s massive use of still shots and reused frames, but I digress. Kuze’s choice of setting fire to something on the beach was rather silly. There’s water and sand right there. They come with beaches. It’s a "put out your own fire kit" for fires eight thousand times the size of a violin. I’m sure the violin is probably ruined anyway after being dunked in salt water, so it’s probably academic. Mizuki still annoys me a bit. She’s so needy and demanding of attention, and now has something of a Mother Theresa complex to add to her problems. Yeah, Kuze may suck, deserve pity, and be a pyromaniac, but I don’t think tempting him to have his way with a girl half his age is exactly the road to mental healing here. Don’t sell yourself too high here, midget.

Shaft decided to hide more episode after the ED again. Why they didn’t just put Yuuko’s continuing shoe escapades earlier in the episode is beyond me.

Posted in ef | 6 Comments »

6 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • hashihime says:
    October 20, 2008 at 6:13 pm

    Personally, I loved this episode almost as much as I loved ep3 of Vampire Knight. All the things you mentioned seemed to me to create more emotional uncertainty and tension, which is what I want at this point in this show.

    In VKG, I have read the manga, and this gave me some Aidou background emotions — and Kaname background — that I didn’t feel I got from there.

    Here, the frustrating elusiveness of the two girls associated with Yuu is reaching a peak, as is his even more frustrating approach-avoidance. But after frustration will come joy. I hope.

    I thought the presence of Chihiro and Renji was like a talisman of romance. She took the plunge, and she wants to help Mizuki take it, too, since she knows Mizuki just can’t help loving Kuze. Emotional intelligence in a 17-year-old twelve-year-old.

  • shh227 says:
    October 20, 2008 at 6:32 pm

    The opening has changed its colours a bit. It nice to see Chihiro return and I like the scene when Kuze burn the violin.

  • Kresnik says:
    October 20, 2008 at 8:02 pm

    It’s, too, fast..
    They won’t last more than 8 episodes if this keeps going on.

  • anon says:
    October 21, 2008 at 1:38 am

    If we were watching the same episode, Mizuki was waiting for Shuuichi to come home but he never did, so there was no one to “follow out”.

    Also, how come dialogue heavy episodes always feel long to you Aroduc? This is just an observation (so correct me if I’m wrong), but it seems like you don’t quite understand the dialogue in a lot of the raws you watch. When that’s the case, you tend to just make jokes about trivial things. (e.g. like you did frequently in your coverage of Nabari no Ou.)

    If that’s your blogging style, fair enough, but you might appreciate a series (like ef) more if you actually took in everything that’s being said. Otherwise, it just comes off as you butchering other people’s work for no good reason. While some people might get a few chuckles out of it (after they’ve watched a sub), others are left wondering why you’re making fun of an episode you don’t really seem to understand.

  • Aroduc says:
    October 21, 2008 at 4:11 am

    *shrug* I tend to not pay attention when shows start to bore me, so yes, I don’t absorb much when the delivery becomes bland and uninteresting. Just because there’s a lot of dialogue doesn’t mean that it has to be a 20 minute parade of talking heads and distance shots, which, unfortunately, is what this episode was.

    And you misunderstand my complaint about Mizuki waiting for Kuze. I’d rather there be a real reason for Mizuki to end up at the beach instead of a random person stopping by and telling her “Yo, fatboy-slim told me to tell you that you should go to the beach. He’s probably having a nervous break down. Later, dawg.”

    And there is so not anything trivial about the boylove between Miharu and Yoite. Soul mates 4 lyfe, yo. ^^

  • sage says:
    October 21, 2008 at 4:22 am

    OH GOD CHIHIRO. MUST WATCH.