I understand that for an anime adaption some character designs need to be simplified in order for an easier time to keep them in proportion in animation. But while the characters who suffer in this episode because of this are indeed minor characters, its really a shame to see them become something unrecognisable. The two characters in question are Perisa the Catgirl and Delilah the warrior bunny. Now despite how the job is treated with no humor whatsoever, I am fully aware that the words warrior bunny is about as easy to take seriously as a shark tax accountant. It’s even harder to try to accept when the girls look as young as they do in the anime series. In the manga designs the girls had a level of maturity which really lent to their characters but from the looks of things they went with the Light novel designs which make them look far too young and Persia with pink hair just throws me off completely.
This episode goes to show that even with the best laid plans nothing will really go as expected. Because someone is bound to mess things up no matter how hard you try. In this case a blond Drill haired girl who first dragged Itami back to the city beaten and bloody without thinking and her assaulting him again when she went to his room on orders to sleep with him in order to get the JSDF to forget about the incident and was promptly unintentionally ignored when she entered his crowded room. The pain the princess felt when that came to light is one I am all too familiar with. You give someone one simple job and yet somehow they find a way to bugger it up. It’s quite amazing we humans can get anything done together at all.
The joy of the episode is seeing just how desperate the princess gets as the episode goes on. She the first of the major players if the empire to realize just what they are facing and there’s even a point where her composure momentarily breaks while misunderstanding Itami’s position in the army. By the time she makes it to the base to apologise for the incident, she’s like a scolded child. Next episode looks to have the otherworlders visit Japan which should at least give them a taste of information age culture.
I like this series, but I keep hoping it’ll go in a direction other than where I expect it to go (not having looked into either the manga or light novels). It seems to me played for light harem-fluff — case in point, the maids attending to Itami in this episode. The JSDF is ridiculously more powerful than the opposition, and as a result there doesn’t seem to be much tension.
But there are hints that things could go badly in the future. An elf working for the bad guys could execute Tuka’s trick and crash all the helicopters while their pilots sleep. Rory could lose control and do lots of damage, and it’s not really clear to me whether bullets would stop her. Magic users exist and the full extent of their powers isn’t known (but levitating a heavy wagon might imply it’s easy to levitate a tank off a cliff).
Maybe the Empire doesn’t have those powers in hand, but it would be interesting if they hadn’t sidelined or ticked off the real holders of power in that world. Had those folks sided with the Empire initially, JSDF might have ended up absorbing punishment rather than dishing it out.
Well McFate, you’re in luck. Without spoiling anything specific, the trip to Japan has the shit hit the fan in the latter half of the arc. This is the turning point of the light novels/manga where harem antics take a lesser role compared to the ramifications of the JSDF’s presence in the New World.
I’m glad to hear it!
I disliked the part that after they stopped attacking and were in fact just defending, they just decided to mow them all down without asking for a surrender. They had a line afterwards about capturing the ones who surrendered but that seems a bit too late to me. Of course, on a battlefield, people might get caught up in the heat of the moment but it seemed like they were not in an intense situation.
Aside from that, indeed all the characters seem too young and the otaku “comedy” of “yes I am doing an otaku-ey thing PLEASE LAUGH AT ME” was tired 2 episodes ago. The princess’s desperate and dire-sounding inner monologue also seems a bit much though it may be because she has a medieval mindset of being conquered. Still though, if she was supposed to be a strong leader these inner monologue makes her seem really weak (of course that could be the intent).