So this was a wrap-up episode, where Shuusuke stays home alone with Nao, goes on a trash-digging trip with the A.G.E., gets sick, and Iroha and Kondou come over. Certainly not the weakest episode of the series, but still fairly boring. We’ve seen all these jokes so many times already… can’t they think up something new? Looking on the bright side, Iroha finally did something other than stalking Shuusuke, although there was still plenty of stalking too.

A milestone of sorts: this is the first series I’ve finished blogging, and I’m quite pleased that I’ve managed to keep going this long. Initially I thought I would write for about a week and then get bored of it, but so far I’m still enjoying it. The lesson does seem to be to choose carefully when picking series to blog, though. It really is a crapshoot picking a show based on only the first episode. The first episode of Onii-chan no Koto was hilarious (although in retrospect, it seemed so bad I assumed it was a parody but was sadly mistaken) but from there on it was all downhill. Probably should have done Level-E instead, which had the opposite trend. But everything else turned out to be a pretty good choice. I’ll probably try to blog five series next year – I’m thinking about doing C : The Possibility of Soul and Probability Control in iambic tetrameter assuming the first episode is any good.

In this episode, the creators decided to let Nao and Iroha do something besides stalk Shuusuke from the background, and (surprise, suprise!) it was drastically improved. I would say that this was the most entertaining episode since episode one. Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but whatever.

The characters in this show (Nao and Shuusuke especially) aren’t really that bad, but the creators have no idea how to use them. Nao and Iroha have done nothing but stalk Shuusuke from a distance, and Shuusuke does nothing but ogle girls. They’ve wasted so much retelling the same jokes that weren’t funny the first time that they haven’t gotten a chance to do anything else.  I think that part of the problem is that the main characters are completely passive and just get dragged along by whatever happens. Shuusuke goes to pathetic extents to get girls, Nao drools over how disgusting he is, Iroha gets jealous watching him through her night-vision binoculars, and Kondou doesn’t notice because she’s looking at his nipples. That’s a fairly comprehensive summary of the past eight or so episodes.

And in spite of how much she’s obsessed with him, I don’t think that Nao has even spoken to Shuusuke much for the past six or so episodes. She is by far the most interesting character, and her actually doing things was what made this episode work. The entire sequence with Nao escaping from Clone, her awkward meeting with Shuusuke at home and her betrayal of Iroha were the highlights of this episode.

There’s one more episode left, so this probably won’t come to any sort of conclusion. Not that there was much of a story to begin with.

Star Driver and Zombie will be delayed for obvious reasons. You can donate to the Japanese Red Cross here.

Apologies for the map covering a quarter of the screen, but honestly, it wasn’t really blocking much. I can’t for the life of me figure out where this show is trying to go. The first episode was funny – and Nao still is an interesting character. But every other episode has just pushed her into the background reliving the same jokes and following Shuusuke around, peeking from behind bushes. Why don’t the creators let Nao and Iroha actually do something for a change instead of stalking Shuusuke? It was somewhat funny for the first episode when Iroha did it, but my tolerance was exceeded long ago. It doesn’t help that they overused Kondou for a series of episodes, which pushed Nao and Iroha into the background, only to apparently forget about her now.

And now not only do Nao and Iroha remain as stalkers, but we get two new characters with barely any time left in the show. What in the world were they thinking introducing this cosplay girl? She is ridiculous (in a painful way) and her sister is not much better. I guess Nao having a yuri lover could have potential, but otherwise I couldn’t see any point to this episode. I guess the joke was supposed to be how shameless Shuusuke was? It might be funny except this is the punchline for every other joke in this show (the other half being that Nao and Iroha are stalkers).

They already passed the point the manga ended a while ago (it hadn’t gotten to the trip to the pool with Kondou), so this may be part of the problem.  The manga probably had enough material for at most six episodes (and a lot of this was too drawn out). Some shows manage to make anime original material which is better than the original series, but this is not one of them. Every original part the creators have attempted has been, frankly, a dismal failure. Overall this series has been quite disappointing, although in retrospect I shouldn’t be surprised. The director, Keitarou Motonaga, has a history of poor adaptations with one notable exception.

At this point, I’m just continuing to lose interest in this show every week. It began ok, but it’s just become bogged down in using the same jokes over and over again with little to no variance. This week saw the addition of a competition in pervertedness between Nao and Iroha, which was even more painful to watch than the jokes they keep retelling.

As usual, the highlights were the ten second cameo by Nao’s friends and the AGE’s activities. I will admit though, this episode was better than much of the long stretch where Nao and Iroha were getting along for no apparent reason.

Also, I’m completely confused about Kondou. I thought she was going abroad for a while, but she’s back already? Her brief scene at the end was one of the best parts (relatively speaking), but that’s probably only her nipple fetish is their latest joke, only introduced one episode ago. I’m sure that in an episode or two I will be tired of it already.