This episode focused on Shirayuki and trying to see how many annoying cliches  the creators could stuff into a single character. This seems to have become popular lately (the example that comes to mind first is Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka?!, but I know that other examples precede it). The creators seem to say: oh, there are so many mikos lately, that’ll be boring. There are too many childhood friends too, we can’t have one. And everyone has the obsessive wanna-be newlywed. But I have a brilliant idea! Let’s make a character that’s all of these at once! No one’s ever thought of that before!

The only problem is that this only serves to make the character triply annoying. Now Zombie had the same idea at a high level: let’s combine a newlywed and a vampire and a ninja, or a zombie with a magical girl. But that worked because it was funny. A male zombie magical girl is WIN. A miko newlywed childhood friend is a triple fail. That’s not to mention her tragic past, isolated by her parents and bullied by everyone at the temple (yet another cliche…). Or how she’s a damsel in distress needing bodyguards. Or how she has supernatural powers. Still, I should point out that despite all her baggage, Shirayuki still annoys me much less than Aria.

The pacing was pretty terrible in this episode too. Kinji is watching Aria and Shirayuki fight as they rip his apartment to shreds. Then he leans back against the wall and has a flashback of how he knew Shirayuki as a child. Way to dump all the excitement out the window.

This episode was terrible enough that I think I will continue to blog it. It certainly gives me plenty to complain about.