Shameful Otaku Secret!

Otoha

Really? You’re really going to do this to us? I only started watching H2O in earnest because I was couch-bound with the flu and had nothing else to watch (yes, I know, Shigufumi, but hindsight is 20/20), and it hasn’t really struck me since. Like I said, I don’t hate it. I just haven’t found a great reason to get attached to it either. Takuma’s a decent protagonist but kind of flat, and the two main girls aren’t exactly brimming with personality either. But now, just when I start to think I can handle sticking with this show until the end, they whip out a bizarrely random but mostly unfunny self-parody episode. Why kill what little flow you had up until now?

Story

Well, there isn’t much of one here. Takuma wakes up one morning to find that Hotaru and Hayami are his sisters, and his uncle is his “mother” aka a cross-dressing vehicle for typically Japanese homophobia.

School turns out to be no better, with Otoha appearing as a both a transfer student from the spirit world and his fiancee; and Yui as “Magical Farm Girl Yui,” who plans to turn the school into a farm. Otoha herself transforms into a magical girl and we get some half-baked Sailor Moon parody action for a while. The halfway point has a new, fake OP, and I must admit I had a chuckle. Other parodies (some I caught and some I didn’t) wind their way through this wholly random and spastic excuse for sweat beads and fanservice as Takuma is forced to whack people with the nearest object until he can make sense of the world again (Best line, as he smacks Hamaji: “When you came out of the closet it was shocking, but it moved my heart a little!”).

In the end, the entire debacle was actually last week’s storybook brought to life by Otoha, which I don’t consider a spoiler because it’s barely important. There is one other major development that takes place in the final minutes as reality comes back together, and it’s kind of sad but I have very little emotional attachment to this show to begin with.

What We’ve Learned

Not much: this whole thing seems conceived as some kind of break or respite from regular progress, or at least an explosion of fanservice.

However, we see a major character supposedly bowing out for good, so our one development is a biggie. What’s this going to do for the plot? I’m guessing Takuma’s time with eyesight is going to be running out soon, but I don’t know what else.

We also learned that someone both wrote and recorded a “Magical Girl Otoha” theme for this episode. I have pity, I do. But like I said, it was my one real laugh.

And most importantly, we learned that the beach episode wasn’t the worst this show could do.

Thoughts

There hasn’t been a major push in any particular direction, so I really don’t understand what’s supposed to be developing or what’s supposed to be driving me to watch the show anymore. That mysterious carrot on a stick is farther away and smaller looking than ever. And for a show with such thin developments to suddenly drop in a sidestep like this when every other series is making great strides, I hope they have something in mind.

Everlasting Love

In spite of SNS’s often predictable storylines, or the way it tends to pile on incomprehensible lingo and convoluted lists of characters to make things artificially less clichéd, I keep giving the show credit — mostly for its believable characters and their realistic choices given the situations in which they’re placed. But the show is starting to burn its karma faster than it ever could with just some panning up to the sky (shades of Haruhi), thanks to the giant crack in its character-driven solidity: Kazumi.

Is love blind, or just retarded?

Don’t get me wrong: there are plenty of shy-human vs. magical-girl love triangles less involving or believable than this. And I (usually) enjoy the weird truce that Shana and Kazumi have going on. But the realism of most of the characters’ actions is exactly what gets the show in trouble here.

While the stilted, awkward anime-style non-romance in most shows like this is motivated strictly by “we’re a Japanese show,” “main character is a little thick,” or “just for the sake of drawing it out to the last episode,” I have zero problems believing Yuji’s lack of romantic awareness here. Let’s take a tally. There’s Pheles (who I really want to be Phyllis when I hear it, but the subbers disagree), the Silver, Hecate’s seal, Johan, Balle Masque, and Margery Daw’s murderous will to vengeance on the Silver, all living inside the Reiji Maigo. Any of those could kill him at any moment if it weren’t for the fact that he’s essentially already dead. I can one hundred percent forgive him for lacking the motivation to hug puppies and make out with Kazumi all day.

So her near-constant whingeing is really starting to chap my ass. Oooh, I’ll never be as close to him as Shana. Ooooh, if I want to participate in this deadly supernatural world and be of any benefit to Yuji I’ll have to kill myself using this Hougu from Pheles. There are things in this world that bigger breasts just cannot compete with, and magical powers or a big sword that help keep your would-be boyfriend alive… I think that’d do it.

The sad part is her transformation from ultra-shy to a little more confident in the first series was really winning. It didn’t seem to win over Yuji, no. But it was exemplary of just how decent these writers are at developing their characters, even through situations that are really silly at times. Sort of like how Margery went from the obligatory American drunkard to a scarred Flame Haze with a buried human soul somewhere underneath. Now is the time that I really hope they’re going to whip out one of their trademark little surprises that make me go “hey, now that’s real nice.” Because the show’s been in a holding pattern for a little while.

Recap?

In other news, Satou and Tanaka never really appeared to get over Margery’s berzerker rage. Tanaka has taken a sieze-the-moment approach by getting together in earnest with Ogata and mostly staying away from Satou’s house. Satou is still running errands for Margery, but he’s real sulky about it. I’d be surprised if something major wasn’t planned for him before too long.

Everyone’s forgotten Konoe, the vessel sent by Hecate to collect human experience. That makes Kazumi sad as well, and while that’s probably supposed to make us like her even more for her naive and unquestioning sense of caring, it just makes me think she grasps the weight of the situation even less than before. The final scene, however, has Hecate seeing a bird and contemplating it. Have her experiences as Konoe softened her? Is she now a wild card?

And Yuji, he’s stepping up to the plate to swing Blutsauger, the massive sword that Tanaka and Satou used to spend their days trying to lift. And watching him practice with it, Kazumi — about to throw the Hougu into the river — almost seems to get the selfish futility of her endless whine. But swordplay takes a backseat to paperwork when Wilhelmina makes him sort through endless useless reports from the Outlaw.

Yuji’s dad leaves again, to go… what the hell does that guy do anyway?

And what’s more…

If the horrendous new opening (they just don’t seem to get any better…) serves no other purpose, it at least seems to show us a lot of action that should be in store very soon. If I recall, the first series absolutely exploded at episode 17, culminating with the Seeking Researcher saying “Wow! This is really starting to get exciting!” or something humorously self-aware like that. Either 17 or 18 saw Kazumi declare her love, and apparently 20-some-odd episodes of non-reciprocation aren’t enough to deter her.

I’m ready for the explosion of rapid plot development, big action, and crazy realizations that marked the last series around now. Are we going to get them? I’m cautiously optimistic, but this show has a way of doing the unexpected just when I’m about to give up on it, so you can bet that I’ll at least be watching.

Enjoy this terrible yet awful dub

Before I get too far, I should preface this by saying that I love Gainax to death. I’m supposed to though, and so is everyone else. They’re a “for the people by the people” kind of company, a collection of otakus who got together to make better giant robots than anyone else and succeeded in making some of the medium’s most respected movies and shows (Neon Genesis Evangelion, FLCL, Wings of Honneamise). But even the Kings of Fanservice aren’t invulnerable to missteps or moe trends, and This Ugly Yet Beautiful World frustratingly proves that.

Story

It’s a sci-fi romance, I guess. Alien girl comes to Earth, has no body, uses “ideal girl” image from first person she meets on the planet, who happens to be a boy with a troubled past. I haven’t specifically seen this plot before, but for some reason “original” was not the word that came to mind. I can’t go as far as to call it dumb, the writers never insulted my intelligence. But unlike Gainax’s best work, they didn’t reward it either. The story takes a a different and more epic (but not entirely unexpected) turn halfway, but I really have no urge to say anything positive about it. I certainly can’t explain it without “spoiling” it. The comedy is overdone and typically ham-fisted, whoops-boobies-in-your-face style. The tragedy isn’t particularly tragic. And the romance is stilted and unrewarding, even for an anime.

Characters

I finished this series yesterday, and I’ve already forgotten the names of the characters. Hold on while I look them up.

Back.

In the middle of looking, I realized I didn’t care.

Does it matter, they’re all shallow archetypes — even the mains, “tragic Shinji hero kid with parental issues” and “magical/space girl.” Other than that, you have the old “reliable buddy with advice,” “loud and stupid duo of male friends,” “inexplicable cousin crush,” “older perverted beer-drinking lady (flip 50-50 for American),” and “pointless girls just there to show you how much in love with the magical girl you should be.” Characters wear the fuck out really fast when you know them from the first second of the first episode. And seriously, I heard the “Magical Girl Purupurin” song (”Little girls… can’t be satisfied… with just a text message”) from Welcome to the NHK every time the main space girl was onscreen. So I guess that’s some entertainment factor.

Animation

Animation and art from this Gainax/Shaft pairing are high quality stuff for the most part. The few action scenes are nothing original but well drawn, well paced, and exciting. Character designs aren’t great, but they do their job. Typically Gainax, the monsters have a somewhat Angel-like look to them, and the lone robot is very cool looking in a comedic sort of way. What surprised me is the extreme moe-factor of the space girl designs. It’s so kawaii ^_^ they look like they walked out of the drawings for Kanon, although sadly they lack the same visual appeal.

Tragically, fanservice really seems to be the driving force behind this show. Until the last couple episodes, it’s pretty rare to go a whole 24 minutes without an ass shot, a naked pair of breasts, or a hyper-slutty outfit on the American scientist-lodger-lecher character Jennifer. So, if you’re into fanservice enough to let it carry a whole series, you’ll freaking love this.

Dub

I’ve been waiting 5 or 6 paragraphs to lay into this thing, only to find that there’s nothing to really say about it other than holy shit it’s bad. The script is OK, sure, but ADV’s second-string actors are just terrible. I seriously feel bad for these people because there must have been something horribly wrong. Cynthia Martinez (Martian Successor Nadesico) in the space girl role apparently mistook “breathy” for “smoke all day until you sound like Bonnie Tyler after a knife to the throat.” I’ll give her some credit though for not dropping dead while delivering lines like “Look at all the colors!” Shelley Black as the American scientist is a terrible attempt at crossing Air’s Aunt Haruko with Evangelion’s Misato. She should have actually been drunk, it might have taken the Wood Factor down to “Pine” at least. And the lead, Braden Hunt, just hurts me. The only good delivery in the whole thing comes from Paul Oddo as the robot. Take this guy off the bench and put him in a dub you care about, ADV.

Bottom Line

Other than the dub, there’s nothing terribly offensive about this show. It was somewhat entertaining but never engaging. I didn’t care about the characters, excepting the times when I wanted to smack the Dragonball hair right off the protagonist. But mostly, it went by in a pleasantly forgettable display of fanservice, weak jokes, and weaker romantic tragedy.