Longtime readers of Project Haruhi might have noticed that we haven’t been posting a lot of anime reviews lately. This is because most of our authors, myself included, got tired of writing long screeds for every freakin’ episode of anime we watched. Therefore, we’ve decided to adopt a more streamlined format for individual episode reviews. Each author is going to write a short, two-or-three paragraph review for whichever shows they’re covering, and they will all be collected together into a single weekly column.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the inaugural edition of the Weekly Anime Review. Keep reading below the break for our cynical, jaded anime rants, then let us know what you think in the comment section!

Jon

Squid Girl 5

This show keeps getting better and better.

Part one of this week’s episode focused on American paranormal investigator Cynthia Campbell, who has become convinced that Squid Girl is really an alien FROM OUTER SPACE! Eventually, Cynthia convinces Ika herself that she is indeed extraterrestrial. I found this segment to be funny in parts (especially the Galactic Ika bits), but mostly unexceptional. On a side note, why are Americans always depicted as blonde and big-breasted in anime? I’m American, so why aren’t there more buxom bikini-clad babes in MY life?

Part two saw Ika invading the local high school, which she mistook as some sort of military base. After kidnapping the school’s ruler (or “principal” in human parlance), she gets a flying kick to the head courtesy of Eiko. This segment was probably the highlight of the entire episode for me, as I found it consistently funny throughout. However, I couldn’t help noticing the principal’s rather nonchalant reaction to being captured by an anthropomorphic squid. Is everybody in this universe suffering from a severe case of Sunnydale Syndrome?

Part three of this episode is a “what if” scenario, featuring a cricket-sized chibi version of our protagonist, known as Mini Ika Musume. Eiko finds Mini Ika abandoned on the beach and adopts her as a pet. The two of them spend a happy lifetime together, before Eiko finally passes away of old age. Sadly, since Miki Ika has a lifespan of 150 years, she’s left all alone, bereft of companionship once more. I kid you not; this was the most adorable, joy-filled and emotionally wrenching seven minutes of anime I’ve seen all year.  Even if you don’t watch Squid Girl regularly, you owe it to yourself to see this segment. It’s that good.

Overall, this episode was a huge step up from last week. The comedy was varied and consistently funny throughout, Ika herself was in top form, and the final segment totally blew me away.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Panty & Stocking 6

On the opposite end of the comedy spectrum, this week’s Panty & Stocking introduced a startling new element to the show’s universe: a story! Yup, you read that right. This episode had an ACTUAL PLOT. It’s almost like Gainax finally figured out that nothing but endless scatalogical jokes makes for pretty lousy comedy! Of course, it’s totally inexcusable that it took them six episodes to make their show entertaining, but some improvement is better than none.

When our ostensibly angelic protagonists return to school, they find it’s been taken over by a pair of demons named Scanty and Kneesocks. These red-skinned beauties (who are, ironically, far more interesting than the protagonists) have ossified the school’s social hierarchy, creating a rigid system of rules that everyone must follow. Naturally, the freewheeling Panty and Stocking won’t stand for this, and challenge the demons for leadership. After being defeated in a battle of wits, the angels say “f*ck it” and pull out their guns and swords. The resultant action scene takes up the entire second half of the episode, and it is AWESOME.

In case you haven’t heard, this anime is being directed by Hiroyuki Imaishi of Gurren Lagann fame. This guy really knows how to get a heart-pounding action scene going, and this episode is no exception. Watching Panty and Stocking’s insane destructive antics is, in my opinion, well worth sitting through the admittedly mediocre story. The comic stylings this time around are also chuckle-worthy, if not uproariously funny. Mercifully, they kept the scat to a minimum as well, opting for strategically placed double entendres instead of sensory sh*t overload. All these factors combined make this a definite improvement over previous episodes. And hey, maybe this “story” thing they’ve introduced will actually go somewhere!

Rating: 4 out of 5

Samurai Girls 5

I’m very conflicted about Samurai Girls. On the one hand, it’s taking the traditional fanservice/harem formula and turning it upside-down. On the other, it’s making some pretty basic storytelling mistakes and skipping over essential character development. For now, it remains entertaining… but if these annoyances start accumulating, they might just wind up ruining the whole show.

This episode brings another beautiful samurai to join Muneakira’s harem, the twintailed hammer-wielding Kanetsugu Naoe. Despite being a seekrit spy sent by the shogun, she gives herself away immediately. Meanwhile, Sanada has inexplicably fallen in love with Muneakira, but their budding “romance” is cut short by an attack from Naoe. After poor Muneakira takes a pounding, Sen takes the initiative and kisses him, transforming her into the third master samurai and giving her the power to send Naoe packing.

The character dynamic really clicked in this episode, and produced some great comedy. In particular, Sanada and Sen’s rivalry caused me to chuckle quite a bit. Additionally, the hyperactive pacing and frequent action scenes really help to keep the more cliched harem elements from dragging everything down. To top it all off, Muneakira has proven to be a stronger-than-average romcom protagonist, somehow managing to maintain his integrity despite the amount of abuse he’s received. For these reasons, Samurai Girls is much more tolerable than your average harem show. However, there are still severe pacing issues that keep it from becoming truly great. This was particularly evident in Sanada and Muneakira’s ‘romance’, which feels rushed and underdeveloped. When did they develop feelings for each other? Why haven’t we seen them falling in love? Are the writers just making all this up as they go along?

I’m not sure what to think. Maybe I just need a few more episodes to decide whether or not I like Samurai Girls. Further updates as events warrant.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Dustin

Star Driver 6

If Star Driver episode six makes one thing clear, it’s that this creative team would be better off sticking to comedy. There’s plenty of drama here but very little emotional impact, partly because we can see Sugata’s coma coming as soon as Wako mentions the side-effects from using a King Cybody’s first phase. Besides, even if I didn’t see it coming I doubt I would have cared. Sugata hasn’t done much since he was first introduced. The vast majority of character development has been focused on Takuto and Wako, leaving the rest of the cast feeling a little anemic.

But that’s the least of this episode’s problems. Save for a nicely choreographed action scene where Sugata’s maids and Takuto fight off the new villain’s robot…spirit…thing, the episode just wasn’t much fun to watch. It was pretty dull, actually, making it a huge step down from the previous episode. This is most likely because a too much time was taken up by Wako’s exposition/blatant foreshadowing. It’s rarely interesting when characters simply explain plot to the camera if the audience doesn’t already have a burning desire to know more. And to be honest, I never cared about knowing Sugata’s past, because he’s not very interesting in the present.

This is not to say that episode six went completely off the rails, though. The show seems to be moving closer to the answers I actually want to know, the nature of Wako’s conflicting emotions is made more clear, the new villain is pretty interesting, and—as I mentioned before—the fight scene was certainly fun. I’m worried, though, that the creative team is going to try and make this show as serious as a typical Gundam series, and I just don’t think it’s going to work. Star Driver is much more fun and much better written when it’s reveling in its flamboyance and silliness.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Glen

Otome Youkai Zakuro 6

Up until the sixth episode, Otome Youkai Zakuro had done a very good job at developing its story, characters and setting simultaneously at a smooth pace. There’s a lot of character development this week, but the other two elements seem to have taken a vacation. Flashbacks and exposition of the girls’ history with each other make up the majority of the episode. While these things are fine when incorporated alongside forward motion in the story, they cannot carry an entire episode on their own when there is absolutely no plot progression anywhere in sight.

In the previous episode, we found out that the villain knows about Zakuro and her mother somehow. In this episode, Zakuro correctly perceives that Kushimatsu knows something about this and confronts her. Zakuro is told point blank that now is not the time to get into it, which encapsulates the big problem this episode had: outright refusing to push the story forward and instead stagnating and giving us an information dump for all things I assume we’ll need to know to make sense of what is to come. While the information is both interesting and welcome, setting aside an entire episode is a very clunky way to cover it.

The characters are one of Zakuro’s strongest points, so this episode wasn’t a total loss. We’re finally given Bonbori and Houzuki’s history, which is interesting and expectedly tragic. It also goes into how Kushimatsu collected all these girls together and raised them. We’re given a bit more insight on Zakuro’s dream from the second episode with the Persimmon tree as well as an indication that this has been something haunting her ever since her mother disappeared. The only real forward motion in the episode also comes when Zakuro’s pendant breaks and Agemaki fixes it, with a comment that she’s never allowed anyone to touch it up until then. As always, the dialogue and animation were good, and there were some especially great visuals in some of the flashback sequences. However, all of this could have really benefitted from being split up and worked in over the course of the previous episodes and being accompanied by the main plot that we’ve recently been introduced to, which only made this episode more frustrating. I know this show is better than this, so let’s hope it goes back to doing what it’s been so good at so far.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Chris

OreImo 4 and 5

Y’know, the extent to which Kyousuke works to become the ultimate big brother is starting to become worrying. Is there something more at work here than the simple brother/sister relationship? Time will tell, I guess, but I personally am hoping against it. In the meantime, for those of you who watch OreImo, we already know that Kirino, the firey younger sister, has a huge fetish for siscon eroge. She has been collecting all sorts of questionable stuff over the years until one day her collection reached critical mass and spilled out into her social life.

At first it was Kyousuke who took the brunt of her frustration and taught Kirino to bridge the gap between herself and the otaku world. In doing so he was humiliated, frustrated, punched, slapped and embarrassed countless times. Every time he just shrugs it off as if this is normal sibling stuff. He was even subject to the standard trip-and-fall gag where the male lead ‘accidentally’ falls on the female hottie and she bares her panties. Except in this case it was Kirino, which made it downright awkward to say the least (freaking disturbing, too).

However, Kirino’s best friend, Ayase, has learned of the eroge fetish and is, to put it mildly, appalled. For Kirino, this is a big challenge. Suddenly she has to make the choice between her hobby and her best friend, a choice she doesn’t want to make. As such she retreats for a bit back into her eroge world of cute little girls. Ayase, of course, is shocked, and desperately searches for a reason for Kirino’s nasty habits, so they can make up and be friends again. Kyousuke, ever the oniichan, digs himself further into scapegoat hell and eventually takes the blame for everything. Somehow Kirino comes out squeaky clean–despite the eroge being HER hobby and all–while Kyousuke lands the worst reputation of all time.

I must admit some annoyance at how Kyousuke is so willing to take the brunt of the retribution for his little sister’s hobby. Everyone, from the parents to the friends, think it’s a disgusting fetish, but so far the only reaction from Kyousuke is indifference. This initially was a good thing, because we saw how he taught Kirino to not care about other people’s opinions, and as a result the relationship between the siblings grew. However, the whole scapegoating thing is getting old, and for Kyousuke it means both his family and others are starting to shun him.

However, don’t take this as me griping about the anime and its story. Rather, it’s the complete opposite. Sure, the plotline is heading down channels I am not comfortable with, and Kyousuke needs to stand up for himself as much as he does for Kirino, but so far the story has been told with a fair bit of class. The last episode had me cringing, leaning forward and laughing, all within the space of ten minutes, so in my book OreImo continues to be a win.

Rating: 4 out of 5