Well, that was disappointing. This most definitely was the worst episode of Hakaba Kitarou yet when it half-degrades into a dating-sim series between Kitarou and Neko. What the heck were the creators thinking, turning this series into a cheesy love-drama? When Kitarou fell in love, he totally ruined his own evil anti-hero that I liked so much in the first three episodes.
Thankfully, the cat’s dead now, so thankfully she won’t ruin the series much further, though the preview for the next episode shows Kitarou being angsty and love-sick. And now I realize how this series has one major problem: it doesn’t build up carefully. It does have the shock-value, though this episode showed that building-up is not its strongest point, and that’s really needed to make a love-relationship interesting. Right now, it feels like we’ve temporarily gone down a cheap romantic comedy.
I should have known to be careful with this series when the director only did Kamisama Kazoku before. That series to had some interesting twists, but the romance really felt horribly annoying at times. And the romance is one thing, but I also spotted numerous Deus ex Machinas and badly explained plot-holes during the climax. Writers: what happened?!
Please, Kitarou, go back to horror!
That’s right, you didn’t like Kamisama Kazoku, did you? Well, I tend to agree with you more often than not, but we definitely part ways on that one… Kamisama Kazoku and Midori no Hibi / Midori Days are barnone THE BEST romantic comedy anime I’ve ever seen. Both of them were immensely charming, with really great characters and a really great ending (especially Kamisama Kazoku – that last episode had me all teary-eyed!).
Guess we can’t agree on EVERYTHING. (: But the fact that the director from Kamisama Kazoku had a hand in this show actually makes me MORE interested in watching it… and I was already quite intrigued! (:
-Tom
While I agree that this was the most disappointing episode yet, there were some parts of it that left me confused, and strangely enough kept my interest. They’ll be solved in Ep 5 I suppose.