I get the feeling that the writers hate Mizuno.

Impressions:

The funniest part of this episode is that they burned down Mizuno’s home for a single throwaway joke. That’s all. There was no other point to it. They never went anywhere else with it. She didn’t confess to Keigo or go find a new apartment and kidnap Nayu, her home and everything she owned is just gone now. Take THAT, Mizuno. Now you… have no home and no boyfriend. Just a bunch of girls (and one poor genderless manthing) obsessed with underwear. She didn’t even have a sex daydream this episode. It probably comes with suddenly becoming a hobo.

But in any case, it was about what I expected, which is to say, not terribly good. A lot of angst about Nayu leaving, everybody makes up and vows to continue the fight, and then they cop out at the last second. In this case… literally the last second. Nayu shows up again and it’s all but explicity states that she’s going to live alone so she can stay at the school. Also, there may or may not be a cross-dresser joining the underwear club. I’m not really sure why they would call attention to ’her’ speech pattern otherwise, although it’s hardly that unusual for a female. Yet another character that would have been more entertaining than the core cast. It’s a little disappointing that they didn’t resolve… well… anything (and they burned down Mizuno’s house), but I didn’t really expect much different. Nayu’s already shoved her face into Haruka’s crotch anyway. By typical anime lesbian standards, that means they’ve been married for 20 years.

Final thoughts at the end.

Final Thoughts:

Well, the show is certainly better than its premise, and after that terrifying first episode with the talking nipples, it got quite a bit better. They at least mostly eschewed the fetishism and tried (excessively) to play nice with the underwear. In the end though, I’d be hard pressed to call it much more than average, and that’s if and only if the whole "middle schoolers obsessed with underwear" angle doesn’t bother you. Even beyond that, there are still more than a few moments each episode that would have probably been better just cut entirely. Then again, I think if this had just been about knitting, the show wouldn’t even have infamy.

The biggest weakness of the show is that the core cast simply isn’t very interesting. All three of them are cut from the exact same archetype and listening to Miyako and Haruka complain about their breasts for four episodes is very very tedious. Sadly, there’s really nothing beyond that. Thankfully, the show’s main strength is the secondary set of characters. Komachi, Kiyono, and Mizuno are all much more interesting and kept things amusing. Komachi and Kiyono are both good for jokes, sarcasm, and providing a less angsty (and more sane) group… which is strange to say about a poor kid that ended up in his brother’s banana hammock one episode.

So, it certainly could have been worse, but unless you have a strange obsession with underwear, I wouldn’t say it’s particularly notable either. Just an average show without to it but its twist. At least it does make itself more than that… although that is setting the bar pretty low.

Tch. Spared the cosplay crossdress after all.

Impressions:

A pretty decent episode, I suppose, but I find my tolerance for corny summation speeches to be at an all time low these days. It was doubly bad because they had to fabricate a character out of thin air just to provide some extra DRAMA for the scene. Plus, the scene didn’t even make a whole ton of sense in the first place. Nayu had three teachers, two clubs, and although they conveniently forgot about it, a class of maids in her corner, against somebody threatening to shut down a school play because of the underwear the actors were going to wear. Even in the best of situations, that’s not terribly sensical and really wasn’t a terribly satisfying conclusion to the whole "underwear club = evil!" plot, but it looks like it’s all we’re going to get.

Of course, all of this would probably be solved if Nayu and Haruka would just come out of the closet already. Otherwise, fairly predictible. I’m not sure why they decided to let Komachi know about Nayu transferring slightly before the others if they weren’t really going to do anything with it, but eh, they probably had an extra two minutes to kill and wanted to draw Haruka being jealous again. It beats spending more time on the irritating drama club.

Preview:

Pfft!

Ow, my continuity.

Impressions:

This episode had some serious writing problems pretty much all over the map. The episode peaked entirely too early with Mizuno’s increasingly strange sexual daydream about Keigo in a mansier bro, and Komachi pretty much getting the same treatment in the rest of the club’s minds. The rest of the first half was basically a long montage of Kiyono trying to do things to increase her breast size, but then they never really sufficiently got into what was bothering her. The club just made some underwear, put it on her, and everything was fine again. Crisis averted, whatever the hell it was. I assume she was bothered because the one guy in the room didn’t really react to her and/or just thought of her as a child, but hell if I know. And this is apparently some kind of tailor who makes lingerie for little girls. There’s a 99% chance that he’s either gay or a future guest on To Catch a Predator. The remaining 1% is skrull.

The drama club that needs theatrical underwear was also… well…. in a word, painful. If I had to use more words, I would probably just start listing out as many expletives as I could think of. They’re really damned annoying, popped up out of nowhere, and while I suppose they do sort of work well in being a group that would work well with and get along with the whole clothing design bit, I really disliked the way they presented it overall. Having them show up, beg for help, and then not actually finish that until after everybody decided that the underwear club was indeed awesome (because apparently alll the schoolgirls are lesbians for Kiyono) just mixes and dilutes both parts of it. I don’t even want to talk about the temporal anomolies around the ending either. That’s the epitome of lazy writing.

Oh yeah, and both Kiyono and Nayu know that Keigo’s ‘leaving’ now. Ha. Yeah, right.

Preview:

And suddenly Kiyono is two sizes larger.

And back to lesbian overtones we go.

Impressions:

Meh. This was a pretty lame episode that returned focus back to Haruka and Yako. One is developing a crush on someone, and the other has a little spat with her male friend, which was pretty much just a rehash of Komachi and Nayu’s relationship, only condensed down to about four minutes and nobody hit anybody else with a shoe. I don’t really like how they’re presenting Haruka’s crush much either. I’m putting at least even odds on the ‘surprise’ twist that it’s on Nayu, not Komachi. She only gets bothered when she sees the two of them talking, and is more curious than anything else when Kiyono drapes herself all over him. It just felt a lot like they tried to pair off every single character this episode.

I also don’t like what they did with Kiyono this episode. She’s always been pretty subdued around Komachi but she cranked the teasing and generally uppitiness to maximum this week. It makes a little sense if she believes that Haruka’s crush is on Nayu instead of Komachi, but that doesn’t seem like a logical conclusion she’d reach off of a couple gazes. At least Komachi was a little amusing with his ninja advice routine, but that was pretty much the only high point of this episode. Well… perhaps Mizuno’s constant sex daydreams too. That woman desperately needs to get some.

Ah yes, and Keigo’s being transferred to a new job elsewhere, so I’m guessing that’s going to be the big drama for the end of this show. Oh boy.

Preview:

Komachi awakens.

Banana hammock.

Impressions:

Yet more evidence that Komachi comes from a very very troubled home. How does someone even get away with shopping for banana hammocks for middle schoolers without being arrested by the police? Unless Komachi’s brother is handing down his own old banana hammock, which just makes it even creepier. I’m also a little surprised that not even Kiyono had particularly good taste in swimsuits. Come on, fashion gestapo. Backless does not excuse the bizarre fern print. They look like hands groping her hips and lack of a chest.

Unfortunately though, most of this episode was spent on the girls just dressing up Mizuno and screwing around with her, so there wasn’t really anything of note outside of the rather dubious moral lesson of "Obey peer pressure." I don’t think the after school specials are going to be happy with that one. Unfortunately, Mizuno doesn’t provide too much cringe-worthy content, so they had to tack on a brief note on pubic hair. Thank you, Chu-Bra. You’ve set a new level for… uh… the discussion of public hair in anime. Way to be a trailblazer. At least Kiyono didn’t jump in there with the offer for a full Brazilian.

Preview:

Yako and her man.

Komachi, you are a broken, broken man.

Impressions:

This ended up being probably the most fun I’ve had with an episode of this show to date. As I’ve held, Komachi’s a really likeable guy, and the whole underwear motif works well with him. Nayu’s training has gotten to the point where he can’t help but see underwear everywhere, but also can’t look at it without considering the utility. The whole love letter bit was a little stupid (someone put it in the wrong box), but Yako and Haruka’s daydreams that it must either be a samurai or a drag queen were amusing enough in their own right. It also makes a suspicious amount of sense that Komachi would have a roided up controlling brother. No wonder he has hangups about sex. He probably has to go home and see a giant oily muscled naked man every day. I would probably attempt to swear off procreation too. The episode didn’t really go anywhere though. Komachi quits in a huff, learns that Nayu’s trying hard to keep him as a part of it, rejoins. Status quo maintained.

I do think they could have handled Komachi’s interactions with his classmates a little bit better. The girls did a complete 180 in their attitude towards him while they were offscreen. I can see either them being creeped out by his new encyclopedic knowledge of underwear or liking him as defender of morality, but in their 10 seconds of screen time, they hit both ends of the spectrum and it felt rather forced. Kiyono was spot on with her teasing this week too. She and Komachi make things so much more entertaining than Haruka and Yako. We probably could have done without the garter belt instructional video at the end, but apparently they had an extra 30 seconds to fill and they needed to make sure that every episode stayed juuuuust a tad bit creepy.

Preview:

Beach trip.

Now if she’d only do something about that weird hair.

Impressions:

I’m actually a little disappointed in how plain this episode ended up being. Kiyono’s a tease, sure, but otherwise, she’s fairly normal and still bothered by pretty much the same things as the others. She’s just more aware that she’s a girl and is proud of her femininity. They’re apparently just presenting her as a counterpoint to Nayu, saying that underwear should be worn for the sake of other people (ie, the person you love) instead of Nayu’s ‘childish’ reason of protecting yourself. In functional terms though, it really just sort of means that she cares about panties while Nayu cares about bras. Underwear semantics fights are not quite as entertaining as you might think. Or perhaps they are.

I did find her docking Mizuno 30 ‘woman points’ for her fashion sense amusing at least. Smacking Yako around for backtalking her was also a highlight of the episode. In fact, I find myself amused whenever this show resorts to violence. I’m not sure what that says about either me or these characters. I’ve got to admit that the deconstruction of the bra was pretty interesting too, possibly because it looks like a spaceship when you take it apart… I wonder if all bras look like spaceships when you reduce them to their component elements… or perhaps now I’ll never be able to look at a TIE Fighter the same way ever again.

Sleep deprived? Me? Naaaaaah.

Preview:

Summer time for Komachi.

What a manly man…

The fact that I finished watching this some 15 minutes into the ‘start’ of class instead of listening to the professor argue with someone about the Droid should do a sufficient job of applying context here.

Oh yeah, and I already have a degree in what today’s lecture is about. Le sigh…

Impressions:

A nice little episode that pretty much confirms for me (and stop me if I sound like a broken record here), if not for the whole obsession with little girls and underwear, this is a pretty nice little show. Granted, I was a little tired of hearing about how awesome Keigo was by the end. The first half was Nayu following him around in her funk while the second half had a lot of flashbacks to Mizuno and Keigo’s highschool years. At least he’s still a pretty likeable guy who apparently carries around a mountain of bras and panties, ready to give them away at a moment’s notice. And now I have the image of him as some kind of reverse-panty thief that races around, giving underwear to women in the dead of the night.

Komachi’s stock remained high this week too. He felt bad for accidentally screwing things up for Nayu, so he took responsibility and ended up offering to join her club to make it up to her. Good boy. I like people with spines who don’t try to make crappy excuses. Unfortunately, Kiyono got shunted off to next week. She had a brief little bit after the ED where she threw down the underwear gauntlet, but it was literally just tacked on at the end and had pretty much nothing to do with anything else going on in the episode in the slightest.

Preview:

Adventures into adulthood.

Just one of those days.

Impressions:

At this point, I think I’m mainly watching this show because the OP makes me smile. I’m weak against countermelodies. Well, that and the fact that it really has yet to disappoint my rather low expectations for it, unlike other shows I could name. Sometimes the status quo is a-okay.

I’ve got to admit that I really liked both Komachi and Amahara (the other long haired girl) this week though. Komachi makes a good foil against Nayu’s dumbness and I think it would actually work out pretty well if he had a more central role, if for no other reason than it amuses me to see him run off in tears at the sight of a Nayu groping Tamaki. Plus the whole beating her with a shoe thing. You can never have too much shoe related violence. Kiyono only had one line, but "Oh? That’s underwear for having sex in, are you sure you’re an underwear expert?" is a perfectly suitable first introduction. I hope she doesn’t end up being some Kononoe Rin knock off, but since she seemed more obsessed with Komachi last week, I don’t think that’s too big of a danger. I assume she’s just going to be of the "underwear is supposed to be sexy" variety… or maybe a teenaged prostitute. Or both!

It was a little disappointing that they sort of recycled Haruka’s insecurities about the size of her breasts again, but blah blah blah, power of friendship conquers teenage girl insecurities until Komachi gets into a fight to protect the fitting demo from the perverts and scaring off all the girls. Again, Komachi really does deserve more screen time. Everybody else outside of Nayu is totally passive and are pretty much just there to give her different body types to grope. Actually, I kind of like all of the named guys in this show, even the bald middle aged teacher. It’s kind of amusing how little any of them care about underwear given… well… every single thing about this show.

Preview:

Nayu notices boys.

I approve of shoe violence.

Impressions:

I almost didn’t post, but then I figured… hell, I already watched the bloody episode, I may as well say something. I did, however, open up some classwork about 12 minutes into the episode and work on that instead of paying close attention. In short, I’m just about done with this show, and unless next week’s episode is quite a bit better as it introduces the last main character, I’m out.

I actually kind of like Komachi, or rather, I find myself unable to dislike someone who hits people with his shoe. This episode was particularly boring since it felt like a rehash of episode one. Nayumi likes underwear, people call her weird, she gets sad. Wash, rinse, repeat. Unfortunately, it’s looking like thigh-high girl is going to end up part of the cast because she likes him, and he’s obsessed with Nayumi because she’s the only one who gets better grades than him. Who knows though. I’m still not holding by breath.

Preview:

Time to force people into the club.