I’m going to try something completely different this season. I’m pretty happy with blogging Bakuman, Yakumo, Letter Bee, Star Driver, Kuragehime and Squid Girl this season, but I just couldn’t make up my mind on the twelfth one. Neither TWGOK nor Togainu no Chi seems really interesting enough to cover weekly for an entire season. So yeah, Togainu no Chi is hereby dropped. Instead, I’m going to try and blog a different series each week.
There are a lot of shows this season that I want to say something about, without having to discuss it every single week. I’ve got about 8 to 12 of them, depending on my mood and how they turn out. In the final weeks I’ll cover the most interesting ones once more. Oh, and for the record: a week for me starts on Monday and ends on Sunday.
This week, I’d like to talk about by far the most underrated series of the season: Milky Holmes: it averages a score of 6,28 on MAL, and a whopping 5,41 on AniDB, and while I admit that this is a very guilty pleasure of mine, I also want to say that none of the comedies this season has managed to make me laugh as hard and consistently as Milky Holmes.
It’s utterly stupid, and yet has flashes of brilliance in its jokes. The jokes are all completely fresh: this episode had the cast, among others, play twister in an ancient museum in order to get their powers back, end up in jail and liking it because at least it had food, and locked up in an ancient tomb with a horny English teacher.
Speaking of which, that English teacher is probably the funniest guy on the entire show. For a show that has relatively little fanservice for a moe show aside from the ED, it does have a few points that are just completely wrong, and most of those really involve that teacher. That trunk scene was both utterly hilarious and utterly disturbing.
As a parody, this series rocks, though, as it completely tears the kaitou genre apart. I’m not really sure why, but most Kaitou-parodies in anime turn out more like homages, even though it’s often a very silly premise. The whole premise of this series takes this just to the absurd: just about everything about it is over the top, and yet it doesn’t lose itself in its insanity, as it does have a narrative and a plot that keeps it going. As a moe parody, this also has everything that I have been missing in TWGOK: it knows that it’s completely stupid, and therefore likes to break a few conventions here and there, like that trunk scene (no, I can’t let go of that. I mean, even the most graphic and controversial fanservice series this year didn’t bother to go that far).
Most of the time with moe series, creators use these cliches to make their cast seem stupid or cute. And the thing is, that I see no cliches whatsoever in Milky Holmes, other than the ones it makes fun of and even at episode three it still shows no signs whatsoever of slowing down. This series turned out to be much more creative than I could have expected, but its stupidity will probably turn me insane if I were to try and blog it every single week.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
You kinda made me curious. What i had heard of it wasn’t very flattering (as you have noticed) but I may give it a try if some episodes later, you still think it’s that funny. I like how your blog always try to give every shows a chance and how you explain your choices. People may disagree with your tastes but I feel that you explain why you like/dislike something well enough for us to decide whether we will enjoy a show.
Great PSgels. What did i say about this show?
That scene with Cordelia and the mad theacher inside the sarcophagus tore me inside out of laughing. I whish i could have understood it better as i watched it raw too 🙁
That mummy of Cordelia at the end was priceless…
And what about the new team from the police? They look quite the crazy one too…
By the way, nice blogging format you thought about! Cycling reviews in search of the best of the season. That was pretty clever.
I’m pretty sure the police team is a little crazier then Milky Holmes. This show rocks. It is freaking amazing. Episode 1 made Cordelia look like the sane one, only to prove that she is most likely the LEST stable one. Sherl is pretty much an idiot with short glimpses of genius, Nero looks like an adorable bokuko, but is in fact the cynical and sarcastic, while Elly… goes along with whatever everyone else is doing. She also sounds like she’s always playing in an HGame.
What happened in that trunk scene? You made me curious, but I don’t feel like watching it because it’s just not my kind of series 😛
How do you know it’s not your kind of series if you haven’t watched it?
Well Sapphire, what could it happen if you close together a little girl and an exhibitionist teacher together in a coffin? Babies… maybe? Maybe not… 😛
@DmonHiro
I can’t say I don’t like it if I haven’t watched it, but I can perfectly say it’s not my kind of series just by reading its synopsis and psgels’ reviews.
@Solaris
Okay… 😛