Ep 2, and I can't stop laughing.

I think that the writers are consciously and deliberately trying to send up a lot of cliches. One is the "surrounded by illuminati" cliche, and we sure got that one in spades.

But some of the Illuminati are more serious than others. The one the school teacher works for turns out to be an organization of SF fans called "Beautiful Contact" who are up in arms (literally) because the first alien contact with Earth was a catgirl. They wanted something else, something a lot stranger!

Manami is working indirectly for the CIA. Futaba turns out to be working for the Japanese government. And Kio's uncle Yuichi turns out to be really kick-ass, but it hasn't yet been revealed who he is working for.

Finding out that he's another Illuminati helps make sense of the first episode. It was Yuichi who put Eris in Kio's bed after Kio passed out. Unlike the other three illuminati, Yuichi seems to be trying to make the first contact work.

So three organizations all decide, for reasons of their own, to hit Eris (and Kio). But the SF fans get there first. Futaba is ready to go, wearing her armor, and then receives an order to stand down because the SF fans are there.

It gets kind of confusing for a while. Eris doesn't act afraid in the slightest. She talks to the SF fans and tries to find out what they're about. Then Futaba disobeys her orders and shows up, and fights the SF fans. Of course, they don't have any chance and she defeats them easily.

She turns and starts to move towards Eris to kill her, but Kio grabs her leg and tries to talk her into stopping.

It gets confusing again, and someone hits Kio and Eris with tranquilizer darts. Then Yuichi shows up and manages to get Kio out of there. He doesn't get Eris, though; she's grabbed by someone else.

I'm not going to try to describe everything that happens. It was strange enough that it was clear to me that it was tongue-in-cheek. But, of course, you started with a bunch of people attacking a military base, and a lot of "I'll fight these guys; you get going" and in the end it was just Kio who reached Eris.

Only it turned out that Eris didn't need saving. She's wearing a powered suit, and was never in any danger. She went along with the kidnapping because she's trying to gather information. And she never seemed afraid because she knew she had nothing to fear. Ultimately she decides she's had enough and proceeds to trash all the guys who thought they had captured her. That's when Kio showed up.

Uncle Yuichi is priceless. At one point he sets off a couple of major demolition charges, and after he blows the first one he shouts "Tamaya!"

You may remember that from ep 21 (IIRC) of Railgun. It turrns out that it's a tradition in Japan to shout the names of big fireworks companies when watching a fireworks show, and Tamaya is one of the biggest.

At another point, all the good guys (basically Kio, Yuichi, the teacher, and the harem) have collected and are confronted by a company of tanks. Eris materializes a magical/high-tech hammer which is some sort of distintegration device, and she hits a tank with it. The tank dissolves and vanishes, and the crew are left sitting on the ground naked.

So come the end of the show, Eris thinks she's accomplished her mission and is preparing to leave. Except there's a change of plans: the Catgirl flagship appears over Tokyo, and the person Eris works for shows up at Kio's front door.

I'm not going to say why; it would ruin a joke.

But at this point Futaba is a renegade, on the run from the Japanese organization she used to work for. Manami is pretty certain that the CIA won't hire her. Yuichi has broken cover but still hasn't identified the organization he works for. (It might be the US DIA.)

And Kio? He's the right kind of guy-in-the-middle for a good harem show. He isn't a rug. He isn't a wimp (as he showed when he went after Eris armed only with a revolver). He's strong and resolute and isn't freaking out about how weird his life has become. He didn't freak out when he learned the truth about Manami and Futaba. He's coping. That's what I want to see from the guy-in-the-middle for a show like this.

And all those little guys in the first picture? They're called Assistaroids. Eris planted high-tech seeds in the ground and they came out, which is like the way the Saiyajin create Saibaimen, only these guys are lot cuter. (Not as cute as mini-En's, though.)

They were part of the reason why I kept laughing while all the action was going down; it's impossible to take them seriously, and I'm sure that the writers know it.

I'll be looking for the ATX raw when it comes by. This ep started with a censored version of Eris taking a shower. The first ep only had one scene which was censored, but this one had several.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 10:28 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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