Whoa.
I must say, I totally didn’t see this coming. This was without a doubt the best episode of Shangri-La yet. The thing with Gonzo is that they’ve got so much flaws, that I at times forget that these guys make damn good anime. No other animation studio has surprised me more times than they did. Blassreiter looked like a simple action-show, but what terrific action it became. Gad Guard from the outside looked like yet another boy meets robot show, and yet it developed into a very likable series. The same goes for the likes as Solty Rei, Welcome to the NHK, Seto no Hanayome, they’re all shows that turned out to be excellent even though you wouldn’t suspect it at first glance.
After the previous episodes’ disaster in the animation department, I was seriously surprised to see the animation quality this much improved. The inconsistencies are totally gone. Characters aren’t conveniently placed in the background to save money on drawing close-ups, and especially the virtual reality animation rocked beyond belief. Now, if only the rest of this series can keep this same quality.
But also in the storyline department this show got some new dimensions. Like above, the virtual reality turns out to play a much more important role than suspected, as even some of the guys at Akihabara make use of the same technology that our little genius uses to manipulate companies. At the same time, the military has also been working on an invisibility device, and Kuniko makes use of one of the naive guys of the military and finally gets a bit of an idea of what’s going on inside Atlas. I personally loved that scene between them, because you could really tell that the two of them were living in totally different worlds and tried to justify their own actions.
Oh, and I had to laugh at the subtle otaku-jokes. Usually in anime these sorts of jokes are dumbed down a bit too much, but I loved how Kuniko’s grandmother used to be a popular idol when she was young. I definitely understand why she’s trying to hide that. ^^;
In any case, overall this episode made this series even more intriguing than it already was. I really had some doubts whether this series would turn out okay or not in the end, but this episode surely removed a lot of them.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
“Rating: ** (Excellent)” what stupid rating system. u r better off using a scale like (boring,average,entertaining) word scale.
if ** means excellent, what the hell does ***** mean? godlike? u r really screwed up
The threads are being braided together at last. The only drawback to this episode was the bit with Sayako — the Evil, Decadent, Overclass living in the sky bit is done to death (see Last Exile, Texhnolyze).
I love the way panchira-crazy Gonzo keeps teasing us with Kuniko’s acrobatics — strawberries, this time (or so we hear).
And, yes, the otaku-based humor here is very good — what made you decide that Kuniko’s grand-mother was an idol (presumably the voice for Gina?), as opposed to some other connection with that character?
Kuniko, Kunihito, Mikuni. They share syllables as well as inherited daggers.
I think the first commentor has missed yhe post with your explanation on the new rating system.
Anywayz, whoaaaaaaa!!!! I’m so excited to see this episode! *counts the hours before she gets home*
Is Kusanagi there? He makes the episode much more exciting for me! Haha!
;o;: yeah, the point of those ratings is to be more like the restaurant and hotel system rather than the school system: an episode has to earn its stars.
dm0: well, it at least has to be something similar, with the way she got so embarrassed when Kuniko brought out that figure and everyone who knew her got that suspicious smile on their face. 😛
;o;: Five stars mean “ZOMFGBBQWTF”. Srsly, adding a LOLcat quote to each article would make infinitely more sense than any rating system that psgels ever came up with.
Kurisu: what? I simply change labels for the episode ratings and suddenly they become terrible?
Besides, if you don’t like it, then don’t read it. 😉
Oh, I always comment before reading. It’s not like I’m a hypocrite or anything.
Loved this episode!
For the grandmother being an idol or atleast the inspiration of the figure and hence her reaction to it. I didn’t notice it on the first watch but after reading on Animesuki I looked again and you can see that Nagiko’s hair color is the same as the figure’s as is her hair style with the two braids and even the two pink hair ties, lol.
Are the Akiba otakus really using the same technology as Ishida Finance? I had the impression that the virtual reality interface might just be a standard way of accessing networks. The core of Medusa would seem to be something else entirely, unless Karin’s spiel about the uniqueness of Medusa was rather severe hyperbole.
Well considering the entire basis of the show is rooted in a complete fallacy. Just to let people know graphite isn’t gold:
http://www.worldwidegraphite.com/property.htm
http://www.thehcf.org/emaila5.html
In addition why aren’t the orange shirted carbon police fining everyone and everything for breathing? That’s right you breath out half a ton of CO2 per year. That chicken she was burning in episode 4, the carbon is from the chicken, so whether you eat it or not that carbon will be released. Same with wood whether it is burnt or rots.
Some weird old guys – great; they add nothing to the story not even humour. Its just a poor attempt to add colour to a quite frankly boring nonsensical story so far. What can I say I was expecting a lot more considerin this was meant to be better than Guin Saga.
Is this entire Shangri-La world filled with fetishists, perverts, sexual predators and wackos? Superfluous characters designed to make it edgy or something?