Another typical episode of Hidan no Aria. A third of Aria screaming at Kinji and calling him stupid (because we certainly haven’t hard Rie Kugimiya do that enough!), a third of Shirayuki acting tragic in a kimono, and a third of Kinji running around like an idiot and clutching his cellphone.

For the first third of the episode involving Aria, I think I’ve already exhausted the same complaints for every other episode, so I’ll skip that. For Shirayuki they have unfortunately decided to neglect her crazy side, and turned her into another cute innocent unfortunate girl needing a manly man to protect her. I would feel much more sympathetic for her if she spent less time trying to steal a kiss and more time cutting her rivals to pieces.

But I can’t wait for the next episode! Who is the person who’s taken Shirayukii hostage? I can’t tell because of the crazy synthed voice and the fact that his presence is cloaked in shadow! Is it Durandal and will Aria finally get her revenge? Kyaah! </sarcasm>

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.

This episode redefined the meaning of the word terrible. I actually praised Hidan no Aria’s last episode, mainly because of Riko, but this time I couldn’t forgive the nonsensical plot and actions of the characters even with Riko and Kinji in hysteria mode.

Let’s look at what happens this episode. Aria gets shot, and to treat her wound, Kinji takes off her clothes, straddles her, and gives her an injection. I’m pretty sure this is not how you should treat bullet wounds. Then Aria immediately wakes up, and does the usual routine of yelling at him for being a pervert. Her voice is one of the most annoying things I’ve ever heard. Kinji kisses her to enter hysteria mode.

Riko finds them, and they team up on her and cut her hair (Kinji cuts a bullet in half with his sword). Riko enters Medusa mode, and then runs away. Later, Kinji corners Riko on the plane where she has surrounded herself with bombs. She blows the wall out, jumps out of the plane, pulls off her school uniform, and uses it as a parachute. At this point I completely lost it. Riko quickly follows up with a missile barrage which precisely takes out two engines. I guess those were hidden in her uniform too.

From this point it only gets worse, as Aria and Kinji collaborate with their classmates to land the plane. The government, to control damage to their image, decides it’s better to shoot down the plane themselves than to let it potentially crash land at the airport. Whoever made that decision had better get sacked after this.

The next ten minutes are a snoozefest of radio calls and looking at the fuel meter. When they land at the school ten minutes later, their classmates have prepared hundreds of spotlights powered by their own individual windmills to light the way to the landing strip. Right. The remainder of the episode is some corny drama about Aria leaving again, getting stopped at the last minute and jumping out of a flying helicopter. (I’m sure there’s more to complain about in there, but I wasn’t really paying attention anymore).

I’m actually thinking about picking this show up mid-season for blogging— it sucks, but there’s certainly a lot to say about it. If next weeks episode is either good or terrible I’ll probably pick it up, if it’s average I won’t.

This came completely out of left field, but this last episode of Aria was absolutely amazing. The first three episodes had me shuffling the show away in the refuse bin of Shakugan no Shana retakes, but then an episode like this comes along and blows my mind. Ok, so Kugimiya Rie’s little girl voice is as annoying as ever, and the Holmes / Lupin thing is retarded, but I’m willing to put that aside based on everything else in this episode.

First of all, Riko is an excellent character. I would say she’s an excellent villain but I don’t feel that she’ll remain one for long. Her evil plotting skills are top-notch. Her insanity is super high-level. She has two faces, one demure and ditzy and one pure evil. She’s even good at seduction. I complained last season about how Kyoko from Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka failed as a crazy bitch, but everything they did wrong with Kyoko was just right for Riko. In case it isn’t obvious, I’m a big fan of this character type.

I never thought I’d be saying this either, but the background on Aria that was revealed this episode was great too. How often do you see a character who lives alone because her mother is in prison? (Now if only mercenaries and government officials here in America had the same level of accountability here in America as they do in Aria…)

Kinji’s brief stint in Hysteria mode was awesome as well. We really need to get more of it. The thing is, if this show could have less of Aria and her super-annoying voice it would actually be really good. This episode showed that it can be great even in spite of her voice. Let’s hope it keeps going in this direction.

With Moshidora’s sobfest, continuing excellence from Ano Hana, a spike in quality from C, and now this, today set some pretty spectacular standards for a single day of releases. If they keep it up this season will be one of the best we’ve had in a long while.

(note: I’m not going to start blogging Aria, just felt like commenting on this one episode)