Not following a whole lot, honestly, though Fate/Zero is on the "watch it all in one shot" list for later. Haganai and Mirai Nikki follow...


Ten eps of Boku ha Tomodachi ga Sukunai and... I dunno. Harem show in the sense that there is one guy and a bunch of girls. Plays off of type, though, in that it's not really a harem - aside from the two leads, Kodaka's just not interested in any of them. (Granted that we're talking a couple of little-girl lolis, one who is his sister, a double reverse trap, and a girl who's so forward it's a turnoff...)

What I'm thinking is that Kodaka plus Sena is an interesting if somewhat shallow romantic comedy. Is Sena a plausible character? Not really - good-looking girl who's fawned over by boys to the point where she doesn't actually have any "real" friends, and who tends to get lost in gaming, and who thinks that Kodaka's little sister is the cutest thing ever? (Well, maybe the last one is plausible...) But if you take it as over-the-top comedy, the same way that Rika's a ridiculous parody of a fan type, then okay, it works well enough. And Kodaka himself isn't bad, as a harem lead who doesn't get stammery or pop a nosebleed if someone so much as flashes him; he's extricated himself from a couple of tough situations with gentlemanly if implausible white lies that are totally beyond most harem leads.

But Yozora... sigh. Okay, she's the one that creates most of the dramatic tension in the show, advances the plot such as it is, etc. But she does it by being horrible to people! And not just catty, but outright abusive, on and on. This, girl, is why you can't make any friends! And it's a mystery why the rest of them put up with her crap. I will be very disappointed if she doesn't catch a metaphorical slap in the face from Kodaka (frankly, at this point a literal one would be called for) before the series ends.

Mirai Nikki is... odd and bizarre, but possibly in a good way. Definitely going for shock value - it's been a while since I've seen a show where dozens of people have been casually murdered like this. It could quite possibly turn out to be "look at the kook of the week, isn't he kooky", but it could turn into one of those interesting shows where the line between protagonist and antagonist blurs and there's a big scrum in the middle - think Death Note without the pretentious "now I'm 8.5% sure!" and before the L arc ended and everything went to hell. Certainly Gasai is as disturbing as anything that was in Higurashi. Helps that Yukiteru, while still being kind of a social recluse and an uncharismatic backgrounder, has a pair, or at least recalls what a pair is and where he can find one in an emergency. Hopefully he'll remember that and not go all Shinji on us.

Can't really recommend Mirai Nikki since there's still a lot to go, and because it really IS a shock show - it's an episode away from killing off the likeable characters and traumatizing the rest, and probably won't ever get away from that. There's potential for depth but not much actual depth quite yet, though the signals it's sending are encouraging.

Posted by: Avatar_exADV at 07:59 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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