This episode was definitely an improvement over last week’s. In the beginning we start out with a Doberman knocking on the door instead of the pizza delivery man, who proceeds to cut apart Ayumu’s arm. When he sees Yuu he realizes it is a misunderstanding, and Ayumu follows him to the scene of the latest serial murder, where the Doberman dies protecting a zombie from something that wouldn’t have killed him. Ayumu gets stabbed anyway when the blade goes through the Doberman’s chest. Ayumu learns that Yuu has to suffer the same pain as him to revive him. A heartbreaking discussion ensues.
Well, whatever, they were going to put drama in somehow. At least they decided to do it in a ridiculous over the top way instead of trying to take this show seriously. The dog was quite funny. And the Yuu segment was redeemed by being followed by a completely random battle against a giant whale after Ayumu told Yuu he would protect her. Way to make him stick to his promises immediately!
The battle against the whale was great, as Ayumu’s magical girl costume powered up. The Trans-Am giant whale missile dodging was excellent, as were Sera’s delayed insult and Haruka’s warnings not to power up any further. Hopefully the show can maintain the pace of this episode and the first episode rather than becoming bogged down with fanservice.
No, Ayumu, don't do it! You can't become any cuter!
In other news, Level E has really picked up since the first episode! I didn’t find the first episode that interesting but they really made good use of it in the second and especially third episode. It goes to show that you can’t really judge much by just one episode.
Ok, so apparently everyone and their second cousin is doing beach episodes today. Well, Star Driver managed to make it less painful than Onii-chan, but it was still disappointing especially since I had higher expectations for this show. At least it was only a third of the episode instead of the entire thing. Wako’s sand burial, her friend’s delusions and the volleyball match were mildly amusing, so it might not have felt as horrible if I hadn’t watched that other beach episode right before.
Because now I'm above you.
We’re introduced to two new characters from the Adult Bank. I thought that the Adult Bank sounded like the name of a prostitution ring and it seems like I may have been right. But really, so far we know absolutely nothing about these characters except that they appear to be lesbians. This made for a rather lackluster battle since Takuto’s opponent this week was someone who had made no impact whatsoever. Hopefully the creators will do more to flesh these characters out in the coming weeks as they have done so far with the rest of the side characters.
Head pulled off a coup de etat in the Hiraboshi this week, but aside from that it didn’t really seem like much happened. I suppose the first half at the beach was intended as comic relief of sorts after the intensity of last weeks episode, but still, they could have at least taken the opportunity to better introduce the new characters.
But Sugata’s appearance in zero time in pajamas did help to redeem the episode in the end.
This is what I feared that this show would end up as. Pointless fanservice while using the same jokes over and over again which are by now getting old. It was the obligatory beach episode so hopefully it will pick up again after this… but still… what was the point?
The entire episode basically consists of Iroha and Nao abusing Shuusuke at the beach and Nao’s two friends making horrified faces at them. I’ll admit their faces were pretty funny… but that was about all that was funny.
And Shuusuke’s dreams were honestly just dumb, not funny at all. I can see that they were setting it up for him to kiss the guy, but it definitely wasn’t worth all the time they wasted on it. I really hope that next week we can have something new instead of constant fighting between Nao and Iroha.
This episode was much more eventful than the previous ones. We have a lot more development regarding Team Rocket, who we realize now is part of a larger organization called Lost Millenium which wants to dismantle the Fractale system. Clain and Nessa become their “hostages”, and Clain eats food that didn’t come from a tube for the first time. Lost Millenium stages a raid on the priestesses’ ritual, in which the fat guy, the guards, some priestesses and random bystanders are killed. Phrynne comes and sings and everyone stops shooting for some reason. Nessa’s clone is one of the priestesses.
I honestly was not expecting anyone to get killed, considering how serious the kidnappers seemed to be, but this episode was actually quite bloody. It was quite a disconnect from how peaceful and low-key this series has been up until this point.
Also, I wish they would be more subtle about some of the themes in this show. The argument about Clain and Lost Millennium about the nature of freedom was particularly overblown to me – it seemed like that guy was just trying to pick a fight so they could have someone talk about it. And why did Clain get so mad at him? He more or less agreed with most of what he was saying last episode…
The thing which upset me the most about this episode though was how the Fractale system went from being morally ambiguous to downright blatantly evil. Up until this point the show could have brought up some interesting points about the nature of freedom, personality, post-scarcity societies, and privacy… but now that one side is brainwashing people, it’s more or less in the wrong by default. I just personally find it more interesting and prescient when the dystopia is less obviously evil.
I watched the Evangelion TV series about four years ago. And I was quite underwhelmed. I didn’t like or care about any of the characters. The monster of the week format didn’t help much. And the ending was highly questionable. Plus, I kept trying to make sense of the randomly inserted mythological names and symbols and couldn’t make heads or tails of them. Every time I watched the OP all I could think about was “why is there a tree of life?”. I don’t think the issue was the plot– I loved Rahxephon, which had the same general idea. It was the execution which was terribly lacking.
Which brings us to the movie. When I watched the movie, it seemed like I was watching an entirely different story! I still didn’t like any of the characters – but now I hated them! There was so much more of an emotional impact the way they were portrayed in the movie. When I watched the original series, I remember thinking that Shinji was the character I couldn’t stand the most since he was so indecisive. But the movie’s portrayal of Shinji was so much more sympathetic – he’s really just a kid, abandoned by his father, hated by his classmates and with no positive adult role models whatsoever. How could I begrudge him not wanting to go and get himself killed for the bastards who put him in this situation?
Shinji's moment of awesome, calling Misato a hypocrite.
And the character I hated the most in this movie was by far Misato. Shinji was absolutely right that she’s a hypocrite. At least Shinji’s dad has the decency to not even pretend to care about Shinji. But Misato’s alternating pretending to care and sending Shinji to die is the worst. Acting friendly and inviting him to live in her house, then sending him out in a mission to die. And when he does almost die (more or less every time) the way she acts like she didn’t think it would happen and really wants to rescue him is just disgusting. It really seems like she only worries about him and takes care of him because she wants to pretend to herself that she is a good person, but really, she isn’t fooling anyone. The way she talks to Shinji pissed me off as well. First she verbally abuses him for not deciding for himself about piloting. Then she hits him for disobeying her orders. And then when he finally does make up his own mind and decides he doesn’t want to pilot, she gets even angrier. And gives him some story about how everyone at Nerv is willing to die if he fails and the Angel arrives underground. Of course everyone is — wait, then why did no one tell Shinji about this? And why is there a school built above this base? This show just kept making me angrier and angrier about how these “adults” treat children.
I hated all of this show’s characters so I must have hated the movie, right? No, I loved it! A good characterization is one that makes you care about what happens to the characters, whether it’s love or hate, it’s all good with me. The thing which I absolutely can’t stand is characters which the viewer is completely indifferent to – this means that the show is boring. And the movie did show much better in this regard than the series – I don’t remember having much of an opinion about Misato at all in the TV series.
As for the rest of my complaints about the TV show – the monster of the week thing wasn’t an issue anymore since this was a movie. We haven’t seen the ending yet, but I assume it will be better. And they toned down the random mythobabble a lot. They did mention something about the angels eating from the tree of life and the Nerv eating the fruit of wisdom – well, it was knowledge, but a better attempt than before. And Nerv certainly doesn’t have wisdom, and if they do have the knowledge of good and evil — well, they certainly aren’t making good use of it. I might be a bit biased since I already know Nerv’s plan, but the angel’s seem to have a much better grasp on good and evil – they don’t even kill innocent bystanders, unlike certain groups that build schools on battlegrounds. They only gave the second an angel a name this time through – Lillith – which is a good fit since she is a mother figure. Overall a much better attempt at the mythology this time around.
I’m holding off on watching the second movie for a bit longer, but hopefully it will live up to the promise of the first movie.
Voice Actor of the Show Award – Mitsuishi Kotono, for her portrayal Misato Kitsuragi that was believable enough that I could hate the character with a passion.
