Yeah, this new episode of BNA? It’s not good.
This is gonna be a short post, as I found Brand New Animal’s third outing to be pretty bad. Subtlety, logic, and restraint were just three of the ingredients it lacked, and their absence was sorely missed, since it’s peddling a fictional world inhabited by animal people. Just because you’ve written a wolfman into your show, that doesn’t license you to stretch his sense of smell to an absurd degree. Sniffing a bomb fragment should not enable him to detect the precise locations of five similar bombs scattered across a sprawling metropolis. Taking a good whiff of a room should not grant him time-lapse vision of its last [insert plot convenient number] hours. Nor should smelling an ID badge give him access to the memories of its owner, as is bizarrely implied by the episode’s opening sequence. I doubt that’s what the director wanted us to take from that scene, but the flashbacks to Michiru’s life as a human began right after Shirou sniffed her student ID, and his smoky scent effects were used as transitions therein.
But let’s set Shirou’s ridiculous super cop status aside for a minute and think about the general plot. At first, it looks like an anti-beast group is targeting Sylvasta Pharmaceutical for their beastman sympathies, so Michiru goes to investigate. She sneaks into their hospital, and within *seconds* manages to stumble upon a deal between the mafia and a hospital staffer. This is some laughably shallow story progression. “Looks like Big Pharma was evil all along,” the scriptwriter must have cackled, right before eliminating any possibility of suspense for their episode (if not the entire series). And then the hospital administrator was arrested because his hands have no scent, similar to the odorless bombing scene from earlier. That’s a strong lead, for sure, but it’s not actually evidence of his guilt – a fact which he overlooked before turning into a rhino and going totally berserk. We’re three weeks into the story and Anima City’s corruption has been made patently obvious, which could not be more disappointing.
There are still a couple intriguing avenues that the show can pursue, many of them tied to Michiru’s personal history. Her varying animal traits (inflatable body, electric tail, elastic arms) point to some type of genetic experimentation. But the show gives away the game there, as well, by telling us that Anima City’s mayor is “an authority on beastman genetics.” If she wasn’t a direct participant in Michiru’s transformation, I’ll staple my cheeks together. Honestly, this episode of BNA practically qualifies as self-sabotage. It even raises the question of what happened to Michiru via those opening flashbacks, and ten minutes later, the medical staff at Sylvasta recognize her on sight. The dramatic synths that ramped up during this reveal were – and I’m not using this term lightly – pitiful. What drama is there to be found in a show that sucks the mystery out of every slightly ambiguous story element?
I could go on, but I said this post was going to be short, and it’s in my own best interest to keep it that way. Hopefully episode 4 will feel more plausible, and less like a high schooler wrote it. See you then, I guess.
You cannot expect every episode to be good. Of course there will be a few clunkers. Of course this could be a filler episode and not be brought up again. I believe things will improve in Episodes 4-6
While it’s true that not every episode will be a winner, I don’t think it’s wrong to expect a certain level of logic/plausibility from a show at all times. This one stepped way over the line for me, which is why my post was so negative. I share your hopes for the next three episodes, though. 🙂
Ah, yes. This was the bad episode I was talking about. Feeling reassured I am not the only one who considered it a letdown.
I had the exact same thoughts throughout the whole Shiro part btw., including the confusion about the flashback that might or might not have been him seeing the past (though I will assume it’s just a weird transition and not related until further notice). My main problem with this super sense is that it seems to grant Shiro some hacker power that might lead to asspulls in the future, since the writers can basically bend the rules however they want his limit-breaking ability. This and a possible weak twist that you can smell from miles away (ha!) are the two things that are mainly dragging my hopes down. But maybe the people responsible for 03’s plot were simply not the best.
The series isn’t over yet. I believe the next set of episodes will improve upon the flaws of Ep 3.
We’re on the same page about Shirou’s scent detection and Michiru’s flashback, then. The connection was likely unintentional, but if not, the show just created a “solve the case” button in the form of his nose. Handy!
Ah this is just par for the course with Trigger shows – Kill La Kill had some wildly inconsistent episodes towards the beginning. As long as they don’t paint themselves into a corner, it should work out.
I found it amusing that this episode had a joke that basically wrote itself in regards to its quality.
Anyways, it’s only going to get more uneven from here. You’ve kinda lagged behind on new episode reviews since the second half just came out.
I’ve dropped the show as of episode 6, hence the lag. I’m planning to do a post on 4-6 once Asenshi catches up to that point, then stop writing about it. To give you a one-sentence preview of my thoughts on the series, BNA will be my pick for “biggest disappointment” come our year-end post.