There were several shows for which I had reasonable hopes in the summer season, but the only one I ended up wanting to watch was Strike Witches 2. Alas.

Most of the reviews I've seen about Asobi ni Iku Yo said it stunk, but it still sounded like it was worth giving a chance. And, well, I think it might not be too bad. A harem show? For one thing, maybe it isn't.

ANN translates the title as "Bombshells from the Sky", but I don't see how they got that. (They got the translation of Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaou wrong, too.) I think it translates better as "Coming to Play".

Yeah, there's a dorky guy in the middle surrounded by lots of cute girls, but I'm not so sure it's going to develop that way. And the dorky guy seems to have it together, even though his voice hasn't changed. (I.e. he's got a woman doing his voice.)

Some shows begin with a sequence which ends up being completely uncharacteristic of the rest of the show. Magic Users Club began with a sequence of an alien space ship showing up, destroying a defense satellite, coming down into the atmosphere, and engaging and utterly overpowering an American CBG. Realbout High School began with a fight between two big well-muscled men in some sort of strange run-down temple, ending wth both of them tossing energy blasts at each other.

This one starts strangely, too: a ship of smugglers is engaged by some sort of navy ship (possibly JSDF). A girl is monitoring it all and decides to get involved. She wears a powered suit and flies onto the smugglers' ship (this all is happening at night in a storm) and ends up killing most of the smugglers.

And then, as in all those other cases, you get the OP and what seems to be a complete change of mood. In this case, our hero Kio is a first year high school student, attending a family gathering. There's a gorgeous but rather strange girl there. What with one thing and another, he passes out. (One sip of beer seems to have done it.) He wakes later with that strange girl in his bed.

And then another girl shows up. and then a woman.

Left to right: Hitokasu-sensei, Manami-chan, Kio, Eris.

Hitokasu is one of Kio's teachers at school. Manami-chan is his neighbor and childhood friend, who obviously has a crush on him. Kio is Our Hero. Eris is the one with nekomimi and huge boobs.

Once Hitokasu and Manami become convinced that Eris is really a space alien, they both leave rather abruptly. A while later, Kio tells Eris that he has to go out, but that she should stay in the house, not answer the phone, and ignore any knocks at the door. Even though it's summer vacation, he seems to have an errand to run at school.

On his way, he runs into a slightly mousy girl, shy and quiet, wearing glasses. Her name is Futaba and she's obviously sweet on him. She's been lending him DVDs and they talk a bit about the most recent one. Then she's called away.

So we have all the makings of a classic harem. All that's missing is a loli. (Thank goodness. That it's missing a loli.)

But nothing here is as it seems. Manami goes home, and it's revealed that she is the owner of an impressive arsenal.

Which is all the more impressive because of Japan's gun laws. She turns out to be a junior member of some sort of intelligence agency; her superior is an American woman with the inevitable big jugs and long blonde hair, who drives a vintage Stingray:

That's about 1962 or so, isn't it? Maybe even earlier?

Hitokasu, too, reports to some sort of Illuminati organization.

And as to Futaba? Well, it turns out she was the one who used the powered suit at the beginning. Her mousy personna was entirely an act. Or maybe not entirely, since she may genuinely like Kio. She works for some Illuminati organization; it may be the same one Hitokasu works for, or another.

As to Eris? The name may be deliberately chosen. Eris was the Greek Goddess of Discord, who most famously comes down to us from the beginning of the Iliad.

Eris is easy-going and fun, but she doesn't seem to be a ditz. She says she's there to research the planet and to have a good time. Kio seems to be the one she's decided to research.

So is it a harem show or a paranoid's fantasy? Maybe both? At the end of the episode, Futaba receives orders to kill both Kio and Eris, and that's where the next ep will begin.

What most people who have panned this were reacting to were all the sight gags of various people seeing how big Eris's boobs were and reacting to them, and yeah, that joke wore thin after a while. But mixed in with that was a whole lot of plot exposition and character delineation.

My first reaction to Manami was that she was going to be exactly the same as the neighbor in Girls Bravo but that was before I found out that she's got an arsenal in her bedroom large enough to start a small war. And she's a CIA agent.

I think it's going to take one more episode to find out what kind of tone this series is going to take. But I see one sign that's good: Kio isn't a rug. Manami accuses him of "this and that" with Eris, and he stands up to her and denies it. Strange things are beginning to happen around him, but he isn't acting overwhelmed.

It could go the direction of stupid-fan-service-harem-comedy, which would suck. Or they could take it more in the direction of plots and action and suspense, and that could potentially be pretty awesome.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 04:37 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
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