Well… that wasn’t one of the most exciting episodes…
This could be just me, but whenever the major crew of an anime heads off to another resort or hotel, it just feels horribly bland and uninspired. Especially since EVERY SINGLE ONE of these episodes has to have some kind of hot-spring sequence. It’s not necessarily the fanservice that gets me, but the fact that every single episode looks like each other. It feels just like the creators were in a “well, we need one more episode to fill but we’ve run out of ideas so let’s just send the cast off to a resort so that they can enter hot springs”-mood. Such an episode SO doesn’t belong in this series, especially after I praised it for feeling so refreshing!
So, basically this episode was meant to give Chiaki a bit of development, but I feel that it would have been better if it didn’t spend half of its time on pointless chatter. We’ve enough other series for that! It turns out that she too was a normal human, fifty years ago. She was in love with a guy who was about a decade older than she was, and just as the two were about to propose, they got in a car-crash and Chiaki died. Now, fifty years later the guy also finally passed on, and used the Shigofumi to talk to Chiaki one final time. It turns out that she’s always been on his mind.
Well, it’s good enough that this is a rather short series with very few minor characters like Chiaki. One could shorten this series by eliminating unnecessary parts and leave only 90 minutes of a compressed movie.
However, as you certainly noticed, EVERY series produced nowadays(maybe with some exceptions) is meant to have such unnecessary parts in order to fill time and earn more money. That’s because there is a limited amount of creativity, and economical restrictions 🙂
I think that the this sudden change of topic is not without meaning. If every successive episode is better than the next one, it’s hard to beat the previous episode with something new.
So we get a slow episode that will be a contrast in order for the next one to become spectacular 🙂
That’s a shame that the episode that focuses on Chiaki isn’t very good. I was hoping it would be great considering she is such a great character…
I’ll have to disagree with you here. I found this episode to be very touching, and as a result, I see Chiaki in a different light in that she’s not the always happy, stereotypical comic relief character.
Granted, there was a bit of useless chatter throughout, but the onsen scene wasn’t that long. It is clear that the flashback part near the end is the meat of this episode, and in that respect, I found it good enough to beat out True Tears this week.
Hei! Nononono and just NO!! Every anime deserves its own and dirty Hot Spring episode!! It’s tradition now, and who are we to stand against traditions?!? o.O
That is a rare moment to know the intimate world of our beloved anime heroines! (and actually to watch some ‘painted’ flesh)
Fanservice is holy and good!! Let’s start a petition so that every new anime MUST have it’s own Hot Spring and ban the rubber duck at the same time!
:P:P:P:P:P:P:P:P:P:P:P Ghghghh
I am very glad of a lot of overseas people watching an animated cartoon. I make the blog of the animated cartoon, too. Do not you take it good? There is a lot of MAD animated cartoons. Though it does not matter, it is unpleasant at all that I cannot reflect comment when I never write e-mail address when I comment on the overseas site.But I feel relieved because there is virus security.
Eh, yeah. The problem was, like you said before, this series has no subtlety. Sometimes, (Mikawa Kirameki plotline) this is a good thing. Other times (This episode) it’s a bad thing. Really, subtlety is a necessity for an episode like this.
Ok as i’m marathoning Shigofumi, now i can properly speak something clever about this episode:
“Baka no Psgels!!!” This episode was touching and sad. I liked it a lot more than others, say those episodes about suicides i.e.
It was not your average hot-spring like episode, it was the narration of a slow trip (a trip 50 years long), that began with Chiaki’s death and ended on a grave in a southern island, but with the birth of a neverending love beyond time and death. It’s so romantic, yet beautiful and sad, how could you name this an unexciting episode??
Because nothing interesting happened, except that we found Chiaki had been in a disturbing and pathetic relationship with a sad old man? Ugh.