Blort.

Impressions:

With the release of the first Tayutama DVD comes a short little 2.5 minute special sporting art and animation almost better than the series itself. I think Ameri actually becomes cute when she’s reduced to a soulless little candy munching moeblob. Yumina somehow still manages to be lame and annoying, even without saying a word. Apparently, Mifuyu is too good to get the blob treatment. 

Uh, that’s all I have to say about that. Like I said… it’s a hell of a slow week for anime.

Whoa.

Impressions:

I… wow. I’m not entirely sure how they managed to drag this disaster out of the pit, but this was one hell of an ending. Maybe I’m just a sucker for bittersweet finales, but this was hands down the best episode of the show, and at the moment and I think it’d be hard for anything else ending this season to top it. Both Mashiro and Yuuri’s speeches during their wedding ceremony before she discorporated, or whatever you want to call her non-death were fantastic and Mashiro’s especially was a real tearjerker. I was worried for a minute that they’d immediately negate it by throwing in some deus ex machina magic to bring her back and let everybody live happily ever after, but from the post-ED segment, the town’s going to be destroyed by flooding before that comes to pass. I’ll choose to believe that that happens at least 10-20 years in the future instead of a dam bursting 10 minutes after the show ends.

I wasn’t entirely pleased with how they wrapped up the Ouryuu stuff. Ameri got to confess her feelings for Yuuri at the very least, but then she just browbeat Ouryuu into not being evil anymore, mostly not even heard by the audience. I don’t think all he needed was a stern talking to, but apparently the giant city-devouring dragon’s weakness is Super Nanny. Still, that was just the first 5 minutes or so of the episode, and I’m not sure I could have asked for anything more out of the rest. Kudos to the writers for… well… maybe not quite salvaging this mess, but ending it just about as strongly as they could have.

Final thoughts at the bottom.

Final Thoughts:

Hmm… let’s look back at what I said after watching the very first episode. 

"Assuming the budget doesn’t have too much further to fall, it looks like it could be nice little brainless show to just tune out and watch. There’s enough silliness that I’m not afraid it’ll get bogged down in dumb melodrama."

Oops.

In the show’s defense, it did start out decently enough with its best arc and I really do love the ending, but aside from that, it ranged from somewhat below average to abysmal on most fronts. It wasn’t even that good to begin with, but at least Mifuyu’s arc didn’t embarrass itself and featured ancient gods dancing around with underwear on their heads while Wakamoto made panty suggestions. After that, the humor all but evaporated in a puff of angst and terrible animation with Nue being the show’s sole saving grace most episodes. It’s almost frustrating after that ending, since they showed that they could do good drama, but instead, things just became mired in an endless morass of Ameri’s angst.

Overall though, one really (really) enjoyable episode doesn’t excuse the last 11, so I really can’t give this that much of an endorsement. If you’ve made it most of the way through, I’d say that it’s worth finishing off just for this episode. If you haven’t started on the series though… I’m not sure the one episode is worth the price of admission. Both Ameri’s and Yumina’s arcs vary somewhere between just flat out boring, and almost offensively bad. If you can make it through that, at least there’s a pot of gold at the end of the road.

That would be a blessing.

Impressions:

The only thing that’s keeping me from calling this the most abysmal looking thing I’ve seen in recent memory is Higurashi Rei. Hou (or was it Ou?) won the award for the worst animated of the ‘action’ bits, but all of them were of the half-assed posing with beams popping out, along with grunting. Yuuri’s final blast and 15 seconds of grunting was the only one that got so bad that it actually amused me. Well… the Hou/Ou and Nue heads sticking out of Ouryuu’s chest was also sufficiently ridiculous enough to make me shake my head and wonder what the hell the writers were thinking. I also particularly enjoyed how Mashiro took Ameri’s hand, and then raised her arm and took Ameri’s hand. I think someone got the order of those shots reversed.

At least it was overall a distant second to Rei just for its constant use of random crap flying through the air and showing shots of people’s feet or the back of their heads to mix things up during their 10 minute whine-a-thons. Remove the animation, and you’ve got almost ten full minutes of Ameri and Mashiro talking about how they like Yuri. Their feelings will come as a surprise to anybody who may have missed episodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10, so it was great to have a ten minute mostly static recap for Ameri to stop being a whiny little brat.

Man, I can’t wait for the new batch of shows to start so I can forget this ever existed.

Preview:

Most exciting preview ever.

Belldandy, he ain’t.

Impressions:

Either this episode was better than I was expecting for angsty setup into the final boss fight, or my standards for this show have slipped far enough that I can’t really tell the difference. I have absolutely no idea why they decided to wait until a couple weeks from the end of the show to introduce the ditzy pink haired teacher. Maybe they were going down the porn game checklist and realized that they forgot somebody. Speaking of forgotten somebodies, it really became clear this episode that Mifuyu and Yumina have absolutely nothing to do with this show anymore. In between Mashiro getting ever weaker from Yuuri-fever and Ameri angsting/being stalked by Ouryuu, they were talking about Yumina taking over for Mifuyu after graduation. FOCUS HERE, WRITERS.

For how bitchy and angsty Ameri was this week after that unusual upswing last episode, I was happy that when Ouryuu tried to start turning her against Mashiro, her first response was to blame herself for everything that happened. Same brand of angst, but at least in that case, she can either step up and take responsibilty… or toss herself off a bridge. Either/or. In any case, if she just accepted that and stepped up to the plate, we wouldn’t have had any of this whining… and we’re still in store for some more once Ouryuu is dealt with and Yuuri figures out that what’s up with Mashiro. They’re actually kind of running out of episodes here for that. We’ve still got the big reveal, some angsting, and then resolution… and all of 2 episodes left to do it.

I’m also not really sure what the artists were thinking, but Ameri’s stocking was probably the most detailed thing this show has had to date. It wasn’t even provocative, just curiously well drawn and animated.

Preview:

Final boss battle.

This episode started running out of them around 10 minutes in.

Sorry I’m a bit late with these tonight. I had some personal stuff randomly swing by that while ultimate trivial (and a bit out of touch with reality), conspired to be both immensely stressful and exceedingly time-consuming. Enough about me though…

Impressions:

This episode felt sort of strange because the first half was rather silly and featured all sorts of blobby characters being silly. Then after a new eyecatch of different twitching ears, the budget hit rock bottom and we were treated to long long long periods of just watching static shots of Ameri stand around or ride an elevator. Most of the first half was pretty enjoyable though, or at the very least, more enjoyable than the show’s been for the past few weeks. It was nice to see most of them getting along once again and birds bullying Yumina. She deserves to be picked on for existing. I have no idea where the knock-off Nabeshin came from and frankly, I’m afraid to ask, but at least he was the vehicle for some Mashiro fantasies and an attempted Nue tentacle raping.

I do have to admit that this episode was easily the most effectively positive portrayal of Ameri to date (not like that’s hard). She really did try to push Mashiro and Yuuri together, but got forced to be with him time and again while Mashiro touristed out, and when she finally got the courage up to say something, Mashiro showed up to cockblock her. If they had started with this portrayal of Ameri instead of the jealous bitchy version, then I think I might have liked her a lot more. The other big event is a little more of Mashiro being forced away from Yuuri thanks to his demon buster powers. They’ve gotten strong enough now to react without him even being awake or noticing. Being a good little marshmallow creampuff, she’ll just struggle through it as she evolves into a sick girl in the spring.

Preview:

Afro afro afro afro afro afro afro afro afro?

Gee, have I seen this flashback already?

Impressions:

Well, it was a step up from the Yumina arc, but they abused that flashback so many times that I almost gagged on my dinner. Above and beyond that, Ameri was painfully cliche as well. Wah wah, I want a normal life without all these spirits and now I’m going to complain about it while buying an ugly hat. And now my hat is crushed and instead of the evil rapist dragon who dropped a ferris wheel compartment on it, we’re going to blame Mashiro and Yuuri. Cry me a freakin’ river, you whiny little brat. At least Nue’s newfound mastery of the internet can serve as inspiration for all the aspiring 21st century tentacle lolis.

Welp… let’s go, momentum… carry me to the end.

Preview:

A new low in the budget.

In some ways, I think this episode was scarier than Hitchcock’s movie.

Impressions:

The production for this episode was perhaps the most abysmal I’ve seen since Cobra made me physically retch. Nothing felt dramatic at all since everything was just a bunch of drifting stills with very little music or direction accompanying any of it. They even just stopped animating things altogether for the denouement (triple word score) and just threw up a full minute of crayon drawings. That’s atrocious. It wasn’t even a good denouement either. They had a jealous spat over an airplane. Great. And to make matters worse, we had to sit through another episode of Yumina’s shrill piercing whine, just for the big conclusion that she’ll take responsibility for Hou and Ou and do her best too.

I’m also not entirely pleased that they’ve already started up the meat of Masiro’s story now that she’s come down with her magical cancer from hanging around ghost buster boy all the time something totally unknown and mysterious. Behind amnesiacs and any character voiced by Mamiko Noto, sick little girls excite me slightly less than the thought of a root canal.

Preview:

While Mashiro’s KOed, time to go to a carnival with Ameri! Good plan!

He doesn’t even make a hot girl, which I’m pretty sure breaks one of the ironclad laws of anime.

Impressions:

Yuuri’s crossdressing is starting to worry me. He’s even attained a magical girl charm to help him become a pretty soldier protecting the moon the other school. Compounding the fetishism of this episode was that Mashiro reverted to her irritating loli form for this episode as well. It was amusing to watch Yuuri spazz out, all ready for a fight when he heard one of the new troublemaker tayutais showed up. Hou started out as just a fat little irritable chicken attached to Yumina’s head.

That really was about where my interest ran out though. The rest of the episode was centered on the still annoying Yumina and Yuuri busting his balls (literally) for her, with the ever so dumb revelation that he considers her family. SHOCK! GASP! 30 SECONDS OF SHRIEKING! Yeah, nobody ever saw it coming. At least the episode ends with Hou’s more evil better half, Ou, showing up to hopefully attempt to eat Yumina and be hit with a flying motorcycle. Oops. Spoilers. Hopefully they’ll at least do a somewhat better (as in, not embarassing) job of animating it, because the scene at the end of this episode made Yoichi look positively dramatic. Maybe if Yumina’s shrill whining didn’t annoy the ever living hell out of me, I’d have been more or a fan. Good lord, is she a chore to listen to.

Preview:

When pissy phoenixes attack.

This would have been a twist if it wasn’t in the OP.

Impressions:

A thousand times lamer than the previous episode, and I lay all of it on Ameri. She spent the entire episode being a whiny little bint and then ended up more or less possessed by Ouryuu after being attacked by the snake demon that was eating various people around town. Thankfully, Mashiro did take the time to lay things out for Yuuri in no uncertain terms about how Ameri feels towards him, but they didn’t really resolve that, or even have the two carry on a conversation before the Shana-knockoff non-battle. Ameri seems a little more in control of herself than I expected, although she did magically bind Yuuri. Regardless, she was still giving evil glares to the other girls in the nurse’s office, so… whatever. I honestly don’t care about her at all, and this episode just made me like her even less.

I did like their silly 90s cassette player and the terrible way that Ameri’s hair blew completely behind her eyes. It’s pretty common to see that in anime since the faces tend to be produced independently from the rest of the body animation, but the hair don’t usually completely subsume eyes like that. Ew.

Preview:

Oh right, remember Yumina?

When they’re worn on the head, I don’t think it’s considered fanservice.

Impressions:

What a subversive delightful episode, and probably my favorite episode of this show to date. We began with fighting lightning tentacle monsters, segued into Mashiro literally covered in panties, had a little aside for Yuuri’s testacles to drop low enough to sing funk, tossed in a little needless crossdressing, and then ended with more gods covered in panties while Wakamoto was in there just being… Wakamoto. If it hadn’t been for the tentacle graping, this would have really been a pretty innocuous episode, for the copious number of panties and abuse towards dogs, women, and tentacle monster lolis.

Both Ameri and Yuuri went up a few notches in my personal rankings this week. Ameri didn’t really do anything except act as a straight man to Mashiro and Nue’s obsession with panties, but she was genuinely enjoyable to watch in both of those scenes. Yuuri, meanwhile, has turned into some kind of badass demon hunter in a few episodes of off-screen training, and isn’t going to take any crap from Mifuyu about being a bike mechanic. Not only was he going toe to toe with Mashiro in training, but he took down (an admittedly weakened) Nue in a single shot. Mifuyu wasn’t too bad either, mobilizing the student body into taking out Nue’s spiders all at once as well as noticing that Nue was weakened by water when they fought before. Well done all around, cast.

Okay, Nue was a little more annoyingly braindead than I expected her to be, but so long as she mixes god arrogance with her petulance, I think I’ll be okay.

Brief Summary:

Nue and Mifuyu fight at school. Mifuyu is knocked out, and Nue escapes. At Mito’s house, Mashiro is trying to choose the right pair of panties for herself while Ameri somewhat helplessly watches on, occasionally pausing to beat Yuuri when he wanders in. Mifuyu comes by to tell them about the attack. Afterwards, Yuuri works on his bike. Mifuyu’s dismissive of it, and Yuuri tells her to basically get the hell out. That night, Nue creeps over the campus again, with a legion of spiders spinning their webs all over the place.

In the morning, when Yumina and Mifu arrive to fetch Mashiro, they watch Yuuri engage her in some pretty heated training. At Flawless, Mifu sics the student body out while Mashiro and Yuuri (in drag) go to confront Nue. They find Nue immediately, but she’s more than a match for them. Mifu puts the plan into action and the student body all kills the spiders around campus at once, severely weakening Nue, and then Mifu turns on the sprinklers, preventing Nue from using her lightning. Mashiro and Mifu both attack and then Yuuri explodes out of his dress to finish it, but when the slime clears, Nue’s revealed as a small girl. Mifuyu befriends her and makes a promise to be with her.

Later, Nue’s picking out her own pair of panties. She and Mashiro argue about it while Ameri and Yumina helplessly look on. Wakamoto has his own $.02 again as well. Outside the room, Yuuri asks Mifu if she’s really going to keep her promise to Nue. She replies in the affirmative and broaches the subject of a bike to try to make amends.

Preview:

Mysterious murders.