It’s entirely too late at night for me to be creative.

*Shrug* Better late than never. Although it didn’t even show up on the normal streams until yesterday anyway.

Impressions:

I think my patience with this series has just about run dry. Yes, Shaft, we know you can make very interesting and strangely directed opening sequences. It would be stellar if you would spend a tenth of that creativity in animating the episodes themselves. Where did all the creativity from season 2 go? Washed away on the wings of "Shaft stopped caring" apparently. It really doesn’t help that it feels like they’ve completely run out of jokes either. I swear that this is at least the fourth or fifth time they’ve devoted a segment to "people say one thing, but mean something else" with the exact same formula every single time. Didn’t they pay Horie Yui to speak like, 5 lines for this season? Let’s see those characters instead of the 18th repetition the exact same Kafuka and Chiri reaction to words not matching meaning. While we’re on the subject of missing students, what ever happened to Kanako for that matter? At least they remembered Chie for perhaps the second time in the extended 3rd season.

Anyway, the first part was a rather bad pun on AED (CPR), by adding Dame (don’t) to make DAED, for things that have lived beyond their natural life, Okusa ran around abusing the DAED machine on various things before accidentally inciting a zombie riot. The second part was about getting ‘swept away,’ and I couldn’t help thinking while they’re SWEPT AWAY on an ISLAND about a certain show with that exact title. It was a little odd that they never pointed that out. The only really interesting thing there was that Chiri is immune to it because she’s a social nutjob. The final part was yet another riff on doublespeak (well, mincing words to be exact), some parts about adding a ‘softer’ meaning to certain things, some parts adding subtitles clarifying what people really mean. Sort of. For a given level of ‘really.’

I’m not even sure what the hell this is.

Impressions:

Wow! A 21 minute episode! It’s like a normal episode! That’s amazing, Shaft! You’ve overcome all odds and made an episode just as long as every other studio does every week. Congratu-bloody-lations.

Whew. I better go lie down. I’m not sure my heart can take anymore excitement.

Anyway, unfortunately, despite somehow managing to make it a full 21 minutes it was a pretty poor episode. The first part was about half-assed demonstrations where every single joke was the same thing. "Down with X… but I support Y…" That’s not even a joke. That’s the bumper stickers that I see every day… or what passes for political debate in the US. The second part was a little closer to actual humor and was about how people assume things they don’t understand are funnier/better than they actually are. Striking close to home for the English anime world, I’m sure. The third part introduced Chiri’s sister, Tane (Kita-nee being the portmanteau of her name and a pun meaning "filthy"), who makes messes just to keep Chiri’s OCD from getting her into trouble. It wasn’t as lame as the other two, but at that point, I was completely out of it.

At least they didn’t top it off with a Drawing Itoshiki segment… not that it made spending an extra 30 seconds on unanimated storytime at the start any more bearable. Sigh. I miss the second season so much.

At least it started with a joke.

Impressions:

Part 1 was pretty lame. They framed mistakes that have become famous by going to a museum displaying them, and then making simple word slips and whatnot, ending with Kafuka’s claim that the mistakes were so big that yada yada. The whole bit felt more like Seinfeld standup than actual comedy. The second part took about five minutes before it had any kind of theme. Komori’s blanket got blown away and the whole class got sucked into looking for it, and then once a business man got hold of it and discovered its greatness, they started making/selling used Komori blankets to the world. That led into selling everybody’s brand of… er… random objects. Itoshiki had a rant about selling themselves, but the girls insisted that as long as they had him, they were fine and tore him to bits.

The third part was about trends, sorta. It lasted three minutes. The less said, the better. If that wasn’t half-assed enough, they tacked on a little Christmas thing at the very end with an ‘unexpected guest’ that lasted all of 90 seconds before they made us sit through the cast singing a Christmas carol before running 20 seconds of a special ED. At that point, the budget apparently ran oout and they had to fill the last minute with stupid Draw Itoshiki. Lovely. It’s pretty characteristic of this season to limp right up to the finish line.

Final thoughts at the bottom.

Final Thoughts:

Well, I’ll preface this by saying that it was still a decent comedy, but the fact remains that compared to previous seasons, there was a massive decline in production, creativity, and direction. If you want to see the source just dumped straight into an anime with minimal effort and no creativity whatsoever, then great. Shaft has two full seasons worth of character art which they can (and did) use so that they could lurch their way through this one with it only looking moderately cheap most of the time, and pathetically cheap the other 20% or so. Maybe if they hadn’t blown off the equivilent of almost an episode and a half on the Draw Itoshiki and Storytime segments (to say nothing of the other recycling), then they could have at least masked it a little bit better. Nothing says "budget problems" like foregoing animating a full 26 minutes of your show. 

This is particularly disappointing because I know Shaft can do so much better than this. It’s always sad to see a series drop off in quality so immensely, but if they do decide to make more, I hope they can recapture a little bit of that charm and creativity from the first two seasons instead of continuing the blatant time filling and budget saving escapades that they abused to hell through this entire season. Hell, even some competent direction would have made certain parts, especially the segments divided across multiple weeks, a bit more tolerable. Cutting off mid conversation and then picking up the same joke a week later mystifies me. Sadly, it was clear that this was not where Shaft was focusing its efforts this season and it showed. Painfully.

So overall, as a comedy in its own little world, it was decent. Not stellar, but I’ve seen much worse. As a sequel to the second season, it was painfully cheap, uncreative, and completely phoned in. Take that as you will.

The frequent Engrish is bad enough without throwing German in there too.

Impressions:

Wow. I’m not sure that they could have pronounced Schrodinger any worse. Shu-rei-do-ing. Aaaaaaanyway, the first segment was on Schrodinger’s cats… sorta. They did kind of corrupt it a bit to mostly only focus on the dead cat possibility and say "better to never know." Outside of the particularly painful mispronunciation, it was decent enough, but it was mostly just people finding things they didn’t want inside of boxes, which… really isn’t what Schrodinger’s cat is all about.

Part 2 had a missile land in the school yard and then everybody tried to figure out what to do with it, mostly centering on the trouble it involved… pretending like they couldn’t see it so they wouldn’t be drawn in, trying to disguise it, etc. It didn’t really have a particularly strong focus on any one theme though, except maybe self-delusions about… uh… missiles in the school yard, ending with the revelation that it was a fake missile with the real one incoming. At least it was short.

The final sequence was a continuation from last week’s similarly undirected segment. Rin and Nami got their ramen and then went to karaoke, destroying more buildings along the way and absorbing more students in the process, and discovering Itoshiki at the karaoke bar in the process. And then the credits rolled at 18 minutes in… minus the OP and story segment… 16.5 minutes. The extra 2 minutes or so were filled with a Kaede music video after the credits as the ‘ending’ to that previous sequence from… I don’t even know, a month or two back with the nipple pinching. I’d be a little more forgiving if that segment had more than about three jokes, one of which was Kaede giving a handjob to the ‘nose of a tengu.’ Subtle. Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeal subtle.

At least it had Rin.

Impressions:

Well, given the Bakemonogatari fiasco this week, I was expecting the worst here, but thankfully, it was more or less about the same as always… which, granted, is still about three tiers lower than previous seasons, but at least it’s not in flames yet. It was rather heartwarming to watch the message boards light up with rage though.

Annnnnnnnnyway, pretty much the same as most of this season. A mostly decent episode with a pretty horrible tertiary segment crammed in. To shake things up, they threw the short segment in as part 2 this time instead of part 3. It didn’t even have a real theme… or even have Itoshiki or Kafuka in it for that matter. How do you even have this show without either of them? Bleh. There were a few good jokes scattered here and there, but aside from another journey for Itoshiki into the arms of another man, nothing that really struck me as particularly noteworthy.

Part 1 covered the image changing effects of colored sunglasses. I’m also pretty sure that a Dragonball scouter does not count as a pair of sunglasses. If I had to pick a theme for the second part, it’d be boredom, but it was about 95% Nami whining about how she was bored and Rin destroying houses for a change of pace or to make a direct path to the ramen shop. That’s seriously all it was. The final part was a little more back on target on the techniques of pandering or maybe appeal or luring a reaction would be better terms, with people doing the cheerleader high-kick/panty flash whenever they did it, and whether or not it was just a friendly service. At least Koyasu got to show up for the first time in a long while. That said, he should never be allowed to come within a mile’s radius of the "Draw Itoshiki" portion ever again.

Man, remember when Shaft put effort into their shows?

Impressions:

If you remove the OP, the ED, the minute of story time at the start, the minute of letting the VAs draw Itoshiki, and the mailbag segment at the end of this episode consisting of about 6 frames, this episode comes to a grand total of 17 minutes. Oh, and they reused a little bit from last week too in order to lead into the second part of the golf segment. So let’s just call it 16.5 minutes worth of animation that couldn’t have been done by a single intern in an afternoon.

What the bloody hell, Shaft?

I like my animated picture shows to have animated pictures. It’s one thing to be consistently mediocere or poor, it’s another altogether to just completely stop trying for 25% of the episode.

That revelation has a way of instantly souring my mood, which is kind of sad because the first part was passable and I mostly enjoyed the second. Part 1 was various chicken or egg questions, typically defaulting back to prehistoric cavemen being given one of the objects and then trying to figure out what to do with it. There were other humorous things brought up too, like which was first, sadists or masochists. It ended pretty weakly though, asking which of despair or hope came first and then stringing it out to all hell.

The second part was a little more down to earth, and about sudden complications that muck up everything, such as forgetting your money when you go shopping and then bringing the entire queue to a horrible stop, or your rail card not reading and creating a human pileup behind you. It reminded me a lot of those terrible Visa check card advertisements, only without the added benefit of getting to hear the Bugs Bunny factory theme. A lot of focus on the people involved in such as well, be they observers or with darker motives.

Part 3 was just more of the golf metaphor, which ends up being significantly less amusing a week after the joke has been introduced. At least Komori destroyed the school. If you’re wondering what happened to the remaining time, after drawing Itoshiki, we got to read fanmail. Not do anything interesting with it, just go through it. Happy Seven did a better job with its fanmail sequences. Hell, Galaxy Angel’s "We had an extra 45 seconds to fill, so we’re going to answer some mail. Or discuss the secret of the corned beef can. You see, it’s actually about… oh, we’re out of time," segments were more amusing than this, not to mention 50 seconds shorter, although I’m pretty sure that’s directly related.

Oh yeah, and there was what appeared to be a production error in the "draw Itoshiki" part where it flipped to another picture for about five frames at the very end. *Sigh.*

ED #2

See if you can count the number of Negima! posters in the background of this episode.

Impressions:

Part 1 was centered on everyday emergencies, like someone declaring it’s their birthday and not having a present for them. Then they accidentally killed Itoshiki and Chiri’s murderous rampage ended with a series of dolls made up to substitute for everybody in the class (and her family). It was decent enough, although did they really have to go through every bloody single member of the cast during the birthday scene? Three or four, fine, but all 15 or so? Ugh.

The second part was easily my favorite and began with a rare test for the class… which immediately changed into a quiz show based on the world’s realities. "Which should be more popular, Negima! or SZS?" and because the world is wrong, it’s Negima. Subtle, Shaft. Reaaaaaal subtle. I’m sure there’s a better way to explain the theme than that, but the television show format, while entertaining, kind of obfuscated things a bit by flipping in and out of genres towards the end.

The final part was an extended metaphor of golfing and life. I’m not sure they finished it either. Not so much on the ‘fairways of life’ or the more western golf metaphors, but closer to "getting off your ass and going out into the world is a good shot for the first hole." They only got to the fifth or sixth ‘hole’ and then things just stopped. Which isn’t to say that the segments usually have a well defined beginning or end, but the ED kicked in practically in the middle of a conversation. My metaphorical golf Japanese isn’t exactly up to snuff anyway, something about how far you can ‘drive’ yourself to bizarre, mostly antisocial goals. I’ll be sure to bone up on it for next week.

Now there’s a lasting image.

I’m not late. I’m 2 hours early for the rerun.

Impressions:

Gee, have I noted Shaft’s massive reuse of footage and cheap techniques this season?

Not exactly the strongest episode of the season. We pick up right where we left off last episode, complete with a little under a minute of repeating the introduction to the whole ‘unexpected surprise’ spiel, just for them to continue that to its conclusion for another 3 minutes. Nothing says awesome like a 6 minute segment with a week’s break in between. Part 2 was a bit more interesting and focused on people’s images in various ways, mostly how they train themselves in various ways to display the proper image of themselves.

For the first time in the season, they finally putzed around with the art style of a sequence. I’m not sure what I’d call it though. It was pretty much the same paper cutouts as they’ve used for the OPs at various ponts. It does lead me to believe that the art budget ran out and they had the VAs draw the episode. The content wasn’t really interesting either, and I feel like I’m missing something culturally, or maybe they did spend this segment on the terrifyng horror of mystery train destinatons.

It’s also interesting to me that the VAs have stopped trying to draw anything that looks even vaguely like Itoshiki. Maybe they’re as tired of that sequence as I am.

She’s bloody everywhere this season.

Impressions:

The first part was kind of odd; simultaneously mundane as well as increasingly bizarre. It started out being just about getting nailed with unexpected extra costs (like having to buy ice after buying meat from Horie Yui, or ink for a printer), but then we somehow ended up creating a new Itoshiki while the lifesize model’s head ended up at the police station. I was a little more preoccupied slamming my head into my keyboard when Horie showed up. I love her and all, but I’m really tired of hearing her voice as we hit her 7th or 8th show this season. She’s also apparently a terrible artist. You’d think being on GA would have taught her something.

In any case… Part 2 got somewhat weirder, and started with a pun on "fuyu shogun" (kind of like a "winter/cold front"), but we sort of segued into all sorts of *shogun wordplay, maybe about a third of which actually made sense. The love shogun was… uh… special enough I suppose. Kafuka then started calling other people different types of shoguns. That… dragged on as they went through the entire bloody cast… and then went through random other people too.

Kafuka threw a surprise birthday party for Itoshiki on a day that wasn’t his birthday to kick off a "is it really a surprise if you’re expecting it" set of rantings and the different ways to be surprised, especially depending on the people involved. Like most of the part 3s though, it was rather short and they didn’t really have time to do anything with it. They seem to have finally abandoned that roaming narrative though… thankfully. All the less chance of them reusing a minute or two from the previous episode.

"Oh right, we’re paying Kikuko Inoue, better use her."

Impressions:

A pretty good episode, but part 3 was really cheap and barely had time to introduce the joke before it ended and that leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. If it was short just because the other parts ran long, fine, but with the 2 minutes still blown at the start and end of every episode and them reusing almost a full minute from the previous episode… well… color me displeased.

Part 1 was age (in)appropriate behavior and growing up in general. Majiru kind of deserved what he got for reaching at Chiri’s chest, even if there’s not much there. Leave it to her to not forgive a child. I’d have thought they’d bring the married Manami into it sooner, but they did finally pull her in at the end and gave her speaking parts in all three segments. Even Chie finally got to make a rare public appearance for the first time this season I think. What ever happened to the forbidden love between her and Komori? I miss that.

The beginning and end of part 2 had Oura Kanako (aka "ooraka na ko", "big-hearted person," although in her case it’s because she doesn’t pay attention to anything, like the classroom covered in blood or her skirt not fastened), but she didn’t have anything to do with the actual content, which was about social/relationship networks. It all ended in a violent bloody disaster at Chiri’s hands… as do most things. Watching Itoshiki run around, full of hope carrying a "Love and Peace" balloon is a particularly surreal thing to see usually reserved as a flashback to particularly violent hallucinogenic drugs.

Part 3 didn’t start well. They recycled about a minute from the previous episode to lead into Manami’s own take on the "slew life." By the time they finished that, there were about 200 seconds left to do something new, so they had Chiri putting stickers of the creators on various things, including people (parents). Or in Kafuka’s belief, their true creators were the weird ’gods’ of Japan. That part could have had potential… if it had lasted longer than three minutes. Bloody hell, Shaft. Maybe they’ll actually come back and cover it for real next week.