Ooedo Rocket – 03

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!]]>