Category: Ooedo Rocket

Okay… whoa at the cliff-hanger of this episode. I never imagined Akai to be the person behind the serial murders, but it makes perfect sense now. The other beast from the sky was the one who killed the first ones, though when she was hurt and unable to, she made Akai take over her role. This is pretty easy to do, especially with a person like Akai. The real meat of the episode was a bit disappointing though. I especially expected something better, seeing as it’s focused on Shinza, who was really funny in the first episode. Even though there was one hilarious scene in the episode, where everyone considers him dead, while he’s actually right in front of them and Ginjiro freaks out. In the rest of the episode, though, he went berserk in some kind of predecessor of modern mechas, which wasn’t very funny or deep, unfortunately. There’s a bit of development on Sora’s and Seikichi’s side as well, when Seikichi finally understands that Sora really is from the sky after she saves Shinza from the berserking mecha. This wasn’t anything special, though. I do hope that the next couple of episodes introduce some fresh meat in this series, because I do feel that the formula is getting old, unfortunately.]]>

Holy god, this anime just keeps introducing more and more characters, and they still manage to make each of them unique. I really wonder whether we get to see Tetsuju again. At the beginning we see him flying off again, but this time he actually doesn’t come down. I do hope we do, actually, he was hilarious in the time he was featured. The current episode was focused on the daughter of the famous fireworks craftsman Kagiya. I also just realized: Sekichi’s family name is Tamaya. Is he actually THE Tamaya, or one of his relatives? Come to think of it, we’ve never seen his father, have we? I suspect that that’s the real one. After he got exiled, Seikichi and his brother remained in Edo, which does explain why they live without any parents now. Anyway, it seems that Kagiya’s daughter has some kind of crush on Seikichi, which in a way is obvious, since she too has a passion for fireworks. She’s just a bit less “subtle” about it, and because of this she just had to get jealous of Sora, who then confirms to her that she thinks that Seikichi is just a good friend of her. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be so willing to send her to the moon. ^^; Also, this episode was the perfect example of what happens when too many anime centre around the same time-period: shows start to use the same events and people. We already knew this through Hijikata Toshizo, who probably holds the record of most appearances in different anime ever, but those who saw Ayakashi Ayashi probably noticed a lot of similarities with Ooedo Rocket as well. First of all, this episode briefly mentions the Ayagami, while Ayakashi Ayashi had an episode to mention the firework craftsmen of Tamaya and Kagiya. Both anime featured the serial murderers of women, in which one of them was killed on the harbour, and not to mention Torii, who makes an appearance in both anime as well. It’s a good thing that both anime are excellent, otherwise it would have gotten repetitive fast. ^^; My favourite character of this episode was Akai, though, even though this may have been a bit too much on the wrong side when he thinks of naughty thinks in front of a corpse, and then actually wets himself when the blue monster from heaven appears. Later, though, we see this monster actually reveal that she too, has a human form. That’s promising to become interesting for the future episodes. Also, I just loved the military helicopters which suddenly appeared. Especially because of the reason they appeared there in the first place, when we see the characters actually look at some drawn cells, used in anime. Finally, it took me a while to notice that the tall guy’s hair changes, depending on his mood.]]>

Seriously. That was AWESOME! The first half probably has to contain the funniest scenes I’ve seen for a while. At times, I nearly fell off my chair from laughter, this episode definitely proved that it was a good idea to keep watching and blogging this, as this episode was just HILARIOUS. Someone really needs to sub this, as it definitely is one of the best series to come this season. 🙂 There were only two things that needed to be added: a new character who looks more ridiculous than all the other characters combined and acts like an oversexed macho, and sake. Seriously, Sora actually gets drunk at one point in the episode, with hilarious results. It all starts when Sekichi and Sora are in the forest, trying to find a place where they can just quietly experiment with fireworks, without destroying nearby objects. Sekichi, though, has been really demotivated after the previous episode. After all, when fireworks explode in the middle of the air, they don’t make the safest forms of travelling. Sora then mentions Kaguya-hime. I looked things up a bit in Wikipedia, and it seems that Kaguya-hime is a fictional character in a 10th century Japanese folk tale. This particular folk-tale is considered the oldest Japanese narrative. The tale goes as follows: Kaguya-hime is a mysterious girl, discovered inside the stalk of a great bamboo plant by a bamboo-cutter named Taketori-no Okina when she was a tiny baby, and she’s said to have come from the capital of the moon. Kaguya-hime then grows up in the care of Taketori-no Okina, and she grew into a beautiful girl. Then, five princes went to her to ask for her hand in marriage. Kaguya-hime didn’t want to marry, though, so she thought up impossible tasks for these men, that they had to accomplish in order to be able to marry her. This works, but after a while, even the emperor went to her, and fell in love with her. Kaguya-hime rejected as well, but the two of them did keep in contact. At one time, though, Kaguya-hime had to return to the moon. When that day came, a bright light took her away from the earth, leaving her foster-parents and the emperor in tears. Ooedo Rocket made a few changes to this story, when Sora claims herself to be Kaguya-hime. Apparently, she never went to the moon and she also wasn’t found in a bamboo-plant, but she just came with a space-ship. Obviously, Sekichi doesn’t believe a word of this. ^^; Then the craziness begins when the strange oversexed macho appears and has the strangest conversation with Sora ever. He then introduces himself as “Hinanawo Tetsuju” (not sure about the first part). What follows is the guy setting up a bar with some strange raccoons that appeared, with Sora and him both enjoying some alcohol. Sora is so funny when she’s drunk. XD Lots of hilarious scenes later, and it’s time for a bit of plot development when it seems that Tetsuju also makes fireworks. It seems that he did find a way to keep fireworks from exploding, and demonstrates this by sending himself off into the air. I think it’s now up to Sekishi to go into the height, it seems as Tetsuju only managed to disappear out of sight, only to come down in a sort-of frozen state. I wonder how he found out about this, though. I couldn’t really pick that up. And surprise, surprise, finally a romance between two characters is actually developed properly! A drunk Sora first has to puke and leave the room (hilarious scene, by the way), and Tetsuju uses this moment to convince Sekichi that he won’t be able to send Sora off to the moon. Sekichi never really made any progress, while Tetsuju’s rockets are already able to achieve quite a height. Because of this and Sora’s absence, Sekichi tells his feelings a bit too honest, and while Sora comes in again and hears everything about his confession. He was so cute when he got embarrassed like that. 🙂 Really, I do hope that all the other episodes in Ooedo Rocket are going to be like this one. It was hilarious, though a bit too much on the wrong side at times. ^^;]]>

Short Synopsis: Sora’s naivety is proven when she nearly kills herself, Sekichi and Ginjiro in her enthusiasm to go to the moon. Good: Sora, the ending, as hilarious as usual. Bad: This show definitely needs more attention. Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 I can’t believe what a great combination of comedy and drama Ooedo Rocket has. It’s definitely the funniest series to debut in the spring-season so far, and to top that, it’s got a captivating story. Especially the climax of this episode was great to see, when Sora gets a bit too enthusiastic and starts helping Sekichi a bit. It seems that her spaceship still has a bit of gunpowder left, so she mixes some of it with Sekichi’s usual mix of gunpowder. I laughed when Sekichi tested this out, and sent a ceramic bowl high up in the sky. Later, he tries this on a larger scale, trying to send a local shrine into orbit. Sora, however, already believes that this will be enough to send her to space, so she hijacks the shrine. Luckily, Ginjiro and Sekichi can get her out just in time, as the thing flies about ten meters into the air, before exploding. This does make me wonder… how is he going to do it when even Sora’s super-gunpowder isn’t enough? It’s also strange, this anime has a huge number of side-characters, but for some reason, they don’t feel out of place. The people from Sekichi’s neighbourhood definitely liven up things, and they make me believe that we’re really the city of Edo right now. I also wonder what the black alien is. He seems to have something against Sora, but for some reason he can’t take the form of a human, unlike Sora can. I really hope, by the way, that Ooedo Rocket is going to take 26 episodes. I’d like to see how this would turn out if the plot really takes its time to develop, instead of trying to cram its story into thirteen episodes.]]>

Short Synopsis: Sora wants to get sent to the moon. Why? Well, she’s an alien! Good: I never expected a complex story behind this one. Never. Bad: That did take a bit of time to get used to. Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10 I remember saying that there was nothing really worth blogging about Ooedo Rocket. Boy, was I wrong. This episode really was good enough for me to blog it, as it featured a lot of surprises. The biggest being the fact that my first impressions about this were totally wrong. First, let me say the following about Ooedo Rocket, for those who didn’t want to see it: – Ooedo Rocket is not a kiddie-show. – Ooedo Rocket is not a pure senseless comedy. – Ooedo Rocket actually presents a complex story with a number of round characters, with a lot of comedy inserted into this storyline. To give a small indication, in the current episode, 10% of the scenes were comedic, and 90% of the scenes were serious, and actually developed the storyline with quite an interesting pacing. The comedy also wasn’t random at all, but all storyline-related. Also, regarding the main character and his annoyingness: – The only annoying part about him is his character-design. – He never got featured much in this episode anyway. It’s surprising, but this episode was all about Ginjiro. But first, the episode reveals the identity of that white monster we’ve been seeing for the past two episodes, in quite an amusing way. It’s actually Sora! At the beginning of the episode, she asks if he didn’t get hurt when the white monster touched him. He answers no, but later he wonders how she knew that that happened in the first place. That does make you wonder, doesn’t it? ^^; Anyway, now onto the serious stuff, these warriors we’ve been seeing are actually under the employment of the current magistrate: Torii-sama (Ayakashi Ayashi, anyone? ^^). He’s found a strange device, which I assume is some kind of space-ship Sora used to get to earth. This speculation may be totally wrong, though, as I didn’t get most of the dialogue. Also, where did the black monsters come from? Ginjiro seems to be an expert lock-picker, and the episode suggests that he can use some kind of supernatural technique to strip the clothing off of people. Anyway, if I had to guess, then I’d say that Torii needs these skills on the UFO, as he can’t get it opened. The second half of this episode reveals the guy’s past, which was actually quite interesting and surprisingly detailed. He used to be a samurai, along with the woman that we sometimes see with him. This does explain why we see the two of them together so often. They used to work for a guy. I first believed that this was the young version of Torii, until he blew himself up. I’m not sure what exactly was up with that… You know what? I sense something amazing inside this anime, so I’m going to do what I’m good at: promoting underdogs! It’s a shame that I’ve been the only one to blog about it, as this series definitely deserves more love. It’s a perfect example of totally wrong first impressions!]]>