Category: Finished Series: Comedy

Shinryaku! Ika-Musume – 08

by psgels, posted in Shinryaku! Ika Musume



Okay, we don’t have to worry about this series running out of material. With this episode the creators showed that they can make something as simple as an umbrella awesome. The third part of this episode was definitely my favourite sketch of the past three episodes. Generally, for me the best episodes of Squid Girl have been not the ones who focused on some gimmicky character, but instead left Squid Girl and her imagination alone for a while, only to observe the carnage. Squid Girl was just too adorable as she discovered the magic wonders of the umbrella.

The other two parts of this episode also rocked. In the first part we see Squid Girl as she catches a truly bizarre disease that makes her hungry for shrimps in a way not too dissimilar from a person drinking sea water: eating them would only make her more and more hungry until she’d eat as much until she dies. How do they think of it? The episode also built up to a great punch-line at the end with the shrimp costume making its return.

The second part also was hilarious as it introduced another part of Squid Girl’s bizarre powers: her hat, as it suddenly starts moving. It’s a pretty useless power, although it seems quite powerful (I loved the part where she tried to squat a mosquito with it). A large part of the episode was also spent om some bickering between Squid Girl and Takeru and a friend of his, which also was just priceless.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Kuragehime – 05

by psgels, posted in Kuragehime



This episode did exactly what I hoped to: instead of goofing off, it wasted no time in pushing the plot forward. Instead of waiting until the penultimate episode for the Sisterhood to actually stand up and do something, it brings in the news that Chieko’s mother is planning to sell the place. That was exactly what this series needed to prevent it from getting stale.

This episode itself was also a complete chaos with the amount of things that happened at the same time: Tsukimi was too busy being love-sick, the sisterhood made a failed attempt to speak up at a council meeting, a newly introduced woman starts hitting on Shuu and Kuranosuke starts his attempts on giving the entire sisterhood a huge make-over. Every part of this was just full of energy, and I especially liked the parts of the episode that tried to mix all of these together, which made this episode juggle all kinds of emotions. It’s one of the rare points at which you can really see that this is from the same director as Baccano and Durarara, as Takehiro may be one of the most versatile directors out there: it feels like his style changes with every series he’s working on.

Unlike the previous episode we didn’t get to see into Shuu’s mind this time, which probably was a build-up for the next number of episodes, because we don’t know exactly what kind of impact the previous episode made on him. This episode portrayed him as relatively normal, but at the same time we also don’t really know what kind of impact that woman made on him (who by the way is quite a character: the personalities she creates for the people she manipulates sound so fake when you consider her real character): was she meant as a character to develop him, Tsukimi or both?
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Shinryaku! Ika-Musume – 07

by psgels, posted in Shinryaku! Ika Musume



This episode was about the scared girl, the scientist woman and the owner of that other beach restaurant. It both revisited old premises, but brought enough new stuff to the table.

The first part looked like it was going to develop the scared girl a bit, only for it to reset itself at the end. It’s her story that’s currently in the most danger of being milked out, although it was very funny to see her discover Squid Girl playing video games at night.

The second part of the episode was mostly fun because it introduced a bunch of goofball scientists who clearly have been working too long on their jobs at finding alien life. Squid Girl herself also had a lot of neat antics in her quest to gather subordinates: the banter between the different characters was really great in this part, even though it was completely stupid at times.

The third segment: I really liked that scene in which Squid Girl was put in that room with a drum-set: you could just bet your hat that she’d eventually use her hair on it (which was awesome, by the way). I also have to praise the creators for not dragging out the hot shy girl joke. At all, especially when any regular moe show would have overstated/ the jokes around her and her boobs way too much. Apart from that, this was a typical part which just let Squid Girl alone, and instead of relying on banter it just relied on her own random antics. Worked well.

But still, this episode again wasn’t as good as some of the other Squid Girl episodes: it had its funny moments, but it wasn’t as funny as the first five episodes, and neither was it as creative. Now, the interesting thing is going to be whether this show will pick itself up again, or whether it really ran out of steam. Everything is still possible at this point, especially since this episode looked like it was building up quite a few things for future episodes.

As for the animation… that one also took a bit of a nose dive, unfortunately. Again, it’s nowhere near bad, but it’s not as god as it used to be. In the previous episodes Squid Girl was really well animated, with a ton of frames spent on her movement, but unfortunately this episode didn’t have that. Again, the question remains whether or not the creators are saving their budget, or they blew it all on the first five episodes…
Rating: * (Good)

Kuragehime – 04

by psgels, posted in Kuragehime



It’s a bit of a shame that this series does use a number of cliches, like nosebleeds, dead mothers and shallow jealousy. Still, its high energy makes up for it, though that only appeared at the end of this episode. It made for a great episode ending, though most of the other airtime this week was put into building up.

There are basically two main plot-lines in this series: Tsukimi’s relationship with Kuranosuke and the adventures of the sisterhood. The former deals with Tsukimi coming out of her shell, exploring love and getting over her trauma about her dead mother. The latter will most likely end up with the sisterhood being forced to face reality when the apartment gets torn down. That all needs build up, and that’s what this episode was for.

The big danger right now for this series is that it’s going to devote too many episodes to building up: there are only eleven episodes; we’ve pretty much established right now that there is a love triangle between the Koibuchi siblings and Tsukimi (though granted, Kuranosuke seemed more jealous of the innocence between two virgins rather than that he actually feels romantically interested in Tsukimi) and that the sisterhood will probably refuse to accept the fact that the apartment will be torn down until the last possible minute. I WANT the next episode to really push this forward. Noitamina is too short to goof off.
Rating: * (Good)

Shinryaku! Ika-Musume – 06

by psgels, posted in Shinryaku! Ika Musume



A consistently funny episode, though unlike the previous episode there wasn’t really one thing that stood out. This episode wasn’t really anything special for this series’ standards, but it still packed some great jokes. The biggest problem with this episode was that half of its jokes weren’t fresh.

What I mean by that mostly lies in the first and third segment: the first segment featured super sentai parodies: that has been done plenty of times before. The third meanwhile came with no new material and instead was more of a set-up, developing a bizarre love polygon that is probably going to be used by future episodes. It has the potential to spiral out of control to be hilarious, but at the moment it still revolved around the scared girl being scared of Squid Girl, which was already featured in this series.

Nevertheless though, all of the segments had something fun. In the first segment, I love how down to earth the people organizing the sentai show were: they were perfect straight men for the antics of Squid Girl and the way in which she took over their performance. The second segment rocked because of how we suddenly discovered that Squid Girl was really good at math. It was obviously meant as something silly at which Squid Girl would completely outclass Eiko at, but to think that the creators went with math of all things.

As for the third segment, I can see what the creators did there. At first I was fearing another forced love triangle or something, but the twist here that everything exists in Eiko’s head definitely made for a bunch of laughs here. At the same time I’m quite surprised at how the creators have restrained themselves from devoting a segment on Goro’s crush on Chizuru: especially this early in the series it probably would have come off horribly forced with predictable romantic jokes you see everywhere. When it surfaces here and there though, it has its charms.
Rating: * (Good)

Kuragehime – 03

by psgels, posted in Kuragehime




Whoa, the characters here are all in their thirties. The females anyway. That makes this show even more interesting; I mean, when was the last time we had a series where the average age of the characters was this high? Ristorante Paradiso? It’s impressive, even for Noitamina’s standards. It’s great that they still dare to make series like this.

I like Kuranosuke’s relationship with his mother: his parents have been divorced for god knows how long for now, and his mother definitely had a lot of influence on him (probably partly inspired his cross-dressing), and yet the series doesn’t try to create cheap drama around her, yet keeps things down to earth.

And yet the series is also so over the top, in the way that Kuranosuke keeps penetrating the ridiculous and in-denial lifestyle of the sisterhood, while at the same time we have Tsukimi making her own impact with Kuranosuke’s brother. The whole way in which he just forces himself onto Tsukimi is what I like best about this series: it’s just so dynamic and lively.

The characterization for the entire cast is excellent, though. On paper especially the members of the sisterhood would have been awfully annoying, but the way that this show portrays them, by giving them some depth here really works. They’re all completely in denial, and have shut themselves off from the outside world completely. They just pretend that there’s nothing wrong with their lifestyles.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Shinryaku! Ika-Musume – 05

by psgels, posted in Shinryaku! Ika Musume



Three very different stories this episode. The first was the least interesting, but that was mostly because it was yet another one of those stereotypical portrayals of Americans. It packed some great jokes, though, especially in the way that she managed to convince Squid Girl that she’s an alien, only for a bunch of shrimps to immediately break that spell.

The second part was hilarious, though, in the way that Squid Girl actually tried to take over the local high school. I love how subtly everything escalated: things all started very harmlessly, with Squid Girl finding out about the new terms starting. It’s hilarious that when left alone, Squid Girl just kept searching more an more trouble, in which she eventually ended up kidnapping the headmaster and forcing him to eat shrimps he’s allergic to. I also loved how Eiko at first thought that letting Squid Girl roam around the school would be harmless enough.

The third part was… pretty unique and charming, and really well animated. There is no dialogue, and instead of the regular set-up we see some dream-like sequence about Eiko picking up a really cute miniature Squid Girl. It’s great to see how much the creators were able to say here, without actually saying anything and made excellent use of the fact that it’s animation.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Kuragehime – 02

by psgels, posted in Kuragehime



It’s really been a while since we’ve gotten a series that starts off with a chemistry that’s already this dynamic, which is especially great considering we’re only dealing with 11 episodes here. At this point I’m pretty sure of my three favourites of the current autumn season: Letter Bee, Star Driver and Kuragehime.

On top of the comedy, this episode also put a lot of attention to prejudices. It’s great to finally have another series about otaku that doesn’t really try to to celebrate them like most series of this kind do, while sort-of looking past their flaws and downsides. The characters here are secluded, but also completely biased and secluded. The characters here don’t fit the general stereotypes of fujoshi; they’re simply a bunch of eccentrics who live together in a house. That’s not to say that this portrayal is perfect, of course: to me it feels like the creators went a bit too much out of their ways to make these characters out of the ordinary, but it’s definitely better than the alternative.

What matters here is how well the creators managed to breathe life into these characters. It just continues to deliver line after line, without much of a break or weak moment. Especially the emotions of the lead character are a complete roller coaster here, and this energy is part of what makes this show so much fun.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Shinryaku! Ika-Musume – 04

by psgels, posted in Shinryaku! Ika Musume



This episode started a bit questionable when it immediately started to repeat some jokes from the previous episodes: the scared girl and the fangirl. Some of the hilarious jokes of the rest of the episode made up for it, though.

I was especially afraid for that fangirl to turn stale by now, but I really have to admit that this episode found something interesting, taking her obsession to the absurd by stuffing herself into a shrimp suit. I especially loved the way in which it was delivered: well built up and intertwined with the other stuff that was going on in this episode, with a great comedic timing.

The funniest part of this episode was when the fake squid girl appeared, though. I’m not sure whether it was meant to be a parody of Squid Girl herself, but it was completely ridiculous and hilarious in the way it made a mockery of Squid Girl’s powers, especially the way in which it produced its seasoning. And really, whenever this show uses a cliche, it introduces this one quite subtly: I’m sure that we’re going to get the big boobed chick who has all of the guys around her instantly mesmerized more often in this series, but to introduce her with such a ridiculous mask on top of her head was a really neat idea.

It also helps that Squid Girl is still such a wonderful character. Even when this show isn’t trying to make a joke, just having her on screen is fun enough to keep watching. I loved how she ended up using the 10000 yen of a reward, completely on buying shrimps, or how she when she was bored started playing with the soy sauce. It’s especially the way in which she’s animated that brings her to life.

There are more jokes that are in the danger zone of being milked out now, though. Especially Chizuru needs some new material now. All she did this episode was poke fun at Squid Girl while looking threatening.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Shinryaku! Ika Musume – 03

by psgels, posted in Shinryaku! Ika Musume



This episode had a few less sketches than last week, so it was a bit slower than the first two episodes. It was still hilarious though, it came with new material, and I can really see that the creators were going for a fear-themed episode: first of all we see the things that scare the human characters, then we get some sketches on the things that scare squid girl, only for the episode to close off with someone who’s actually scared of her.

I liked how this episode showed in what kind of a different environment and culture Squid Girl grew up in, in the way that she had completely no concept of the meaning of ghosts, and instead of ghosts, she’s scared of the big predators that are roaming around the sea. There was also this point at which actual ghosts show up, and I loved how many different ghosts the creators actually put there, from disgruntled authors, surf accident victims and even a bunch of samurai. I love the deadpan delivery of these guys.

As for the rest of the cast, we learn a few of the phobias of them, like the lifeguard is scared of the dark, while a newly introduced surfer girl has this strange fear of squids. Or whatever squid girl makes her think of. The way in which she instantly believed that Squid Girl was a threat to humanity was a bit too much, but I can understand the creators of having some kind of character for Squid Girl to scare. She was indeed hilarious once she found that out. This episode also introduced a few quirks that could become overused running gags, like that classmate’s obsession over Squid Girl, and the lifeguard’s crush on Chizuru (though I like how subtly this was introduced in this episode). Those are the biggest potential pitfalls for this series.
Rating: * (Good)