A few weeks ago, nobody had heard of Invasion! Squid Girl. It was an afterthought on the fall season chart; just another kid’s show from a no-name studio, destined to be as quickly forgotten as the latest Pokemon or Beyblade anime. Then, about a week ago, something strange happened. People started making their own squid hats, ending their tweets with ~de geso, and making jokes about tentacle rape and ink vomit. Slowly but surely, Squid Girl was gaining popularity through word-of-mouth, until it became the sleeper hit of the fall season. Naturally, as an anime blogger, I couldn’t just ignore this. I had to see what all the fuss was about for myself.

Squid Girl is easy to quantify, especially if you’re familiar with the comedy stylings of Kiyohiko Azuma. Like Azumanga Daioh, it effortlessly blends slice of life with character-based comedy, and throws in just a bit of Sgt. Frog‘s wackiness to top it all off. The result isn’t exactly laugh-out-loud funny, but still cheerful and heartwarming… definitely an enjoyable diversion from the more mature anime of this season.

The plot is fairly simple. The titular Squid Girl (also referred to as Ika Musume), is an anthropomorphised moeblob squid who lives just off the coast of Japan. Upon seeing the pollution of the sea caused by dumped garbage, she resolves to invade the surface world and punish arrogant humanity for their transgression. However, her first attempt at conquest goes horribly wrong when she runs afoul of the Aizawa family, who operate The Sea House Lemon, an open-air seaside cafe. After smashing a hole in the cafe’s wall with her hair-tentacles, Squid Girl is forced to work as a waitress to pay off the damages. This sets the stage for all manner of hijinks centered on Squid Girl’s naivete about the human world.

More after the break~de geso!

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Tax dollars at work

This odd mix of Japanese folklore, alternate historical fiction, and shoujo romance caught my eye almost immediately during the fall season previews. I can enjoy something from just about any genre, provided it’s well-written and has interesting characters, but I’m especially fond of unique sociological settings. However, I was curbing my enthusiasm to the best of my ability following some lackluster trailers which were released a few weeks prior to the series’ premiere. My primary concern was that the show would shelve its interesting premise and instead degenerate to a standard romcom, but so far that concern seems to be unfounded. Instead this is shaping up to be an intriguing metaphor for the westernization of Japan during the early Meiji era.

The episode wastes little time on introducing the show’s premise: the various groups of youkai (which I will refer to as ‘spirits’ for the sake of English) are having difficulty adjusting to the westernization of Japan and the new Gregorian calendar in particular. Therefore, the new Meiji government charters the Ministry of Spirit Affairs, which will employ both humans from the military as well as half-human spirits in an attempt to mediate relations and help them integrate into modern society. Hilarity ensues when it comes to light that Agemaki, one of the military officers assigned to the new department, is so terrified of spirits that he can barely keep his composure in their presence.

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Life with a sister is... unique.

I don’t get it. No matter how annoying, overrated and absolutely idiotic slice-of-life anime is, I keep coming back for more. With K-ON!! finally on the shelf, I found myself wanting another silly, frivolous show to fritter my time away. Preferably, I wanted one that was actually GOOD this time around–one that, unlike K-ON!!, wouldn’t fill me with an unspeakable hatred. And the result of my search was an anime with an absurdly long title: My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute!.

From the preview, this sister-love story looked fairly interesting: an anime with a tsundere who’s secretly an otaku. The episode mainly centers on the family and their characteristics. It also, of course, reveals Kirino’s secret of being an otaku, which she’s been hiding for some time because of embarrassment. She finally confesses to her brother, and he agrees to help her with any problems that may arise from her nerdiness.

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Talk to the hand.

If you read my introduction to Iron Man, you might have noticed that I’m kind of a big fan. Couple my love of the comic-book Tony Stark with my desperate need to see something good after the disappointment of last season, and you get some fairly high expectations that Madhouse needed to live up to. Thankfully, that’s exactly what they did, but not quite in the ways I expected.

Instead of retelling Iron Man’s origin story, the first episode introduces us to Tony Stark when he’s a well-established superhero. Stark wants to build one of his famous arc reactors in Japan, which he claims will give the country unlimited, free energy. The Japanese public, however, is skeptical. Since the arc reactor is what powers Stark’s Iron Man armor, who’s to say he’s not trying to build an absurdly powerful weapon under the guise of philanthropy? So, Stark–the stereotypical wealthy American who revels in excess and the occasional vice–is forced to figure out how to get the Japanese to like him while trying to dodge the tough questions and charm the pants off of a spunky reporter named Nanami Ota.

And then the Iron Man Dio, Stark’s prototype for a mass-production armor, somehow goes out of control and starts blasting the landscape. All in all, not the best day he’s ever had.

It is, however, a darn good episode, and I’ll explain why after the jump.

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