And the battle continues! And they kicked it up to 11.

Turns out that Becky is a big video-games freak, and her fighting style on the broomstick is like something out of a video-game, so she's instantly an expert. For attacking, she's got a holster full of cards, and when she flings them they become ki bombs, often quite powerful. But they're better than the monshouhou.

Meanwhile, Kuuberu seems to be able to summon a flying carpet, albeit one with foot controls and a stick for steering. She has a pistol, looks like an improved version of what Rico has. The two of them become the terror of the skies, raining down destruction on the ground forces of the other two sides.

Rico shows up with an anti-air unit, a bunch of wagons with three artillery pieces on each, and starts shooting at them. At this point, Kuuberu is riding on the back of Becky's broomstick, and Becky easily dodges all of Rico's shots. Then they return fire, and Rico's unit gets wiped out.

Kuuberu is a bit of a scamp; she fires a round directly at Rico, who gets stripped.

Kuuberu and Becky separate; Becky is supposed to attack Shinku and Nanami, and then go after Biscotti, and Kuuberu is going to take on Galette.

Becky wipes out Shinku and Nanami rather easily, in fact, and hits them with major energy blasts, which results in Shinku in his boxer shorts and Nanami not wearing a stitch. And this time Nanami doesn't show off. So the strip count in this episode is 3 so far.

Becky takes on Millefiore. Millefiore has summoned Excelide and is waiting at her pavilion. They end up firing on each other simultaneously, and their attacks pass through -- and they both get partially stripped, losing armor but still having clothing underneath. Becky beats a dignified retreat.

Kuuberu takes on Leo, who has Grand Vert. Same deal; they fire on each other simultaneously. But the result isn't the same; Leo stops Kuuberu's attack. Kuuberu loses her armor, and ends up crashing her magic carpet.

Truly an awesome battle, and fun for everyone. Quite a success. And the final strip count for this episode was 6. All told, in this entire battle nearly every cute girl got stripped: ½Kuuberu, ½Becky, Nanami, ½Yukki, Rico, ½Eclair, Vert, Jaune, Noir, ½Millefiore. (And we add Shinku to the count, though he isn't a cute girl.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 11:50 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
Post contains 410 words, total size 2 kb.

1 Kuuberu doesn't strike me as the greatest strategist in the world.  Sure, trying to turn the tables with Becky going from captive to hero wasn't bad, but fighting a war on two fronts is a tough slog.  At least she didn't get caught in the Russian winter.
I'm glad Shinku was able to keep his boxers on.
The pacing of this season feels a little odd to me.  I expected some sort of introduction to the next arc at the end of this episode, but none was forthcoming.  They just ended the battle, gave everyone a tour, and that was pretty much it.  I didn't watch the episode preview, so maybe I should have.

Posted by: wahsatchmo at July 21, 2012 03:04 PM (r4uXE)

2

About Kuuberu, keep in mind that this wasn't really a battle. It's a big game, and the main point is for everyone to have fun. Considering that Pastillage isn't a very big or regular participant in these kinds of field exercises, I thought she did pretty well -- and in terms of playing up to the camera, and making the process amusing and/or exciting, she did really well.

About the future, there were two big hints, I think. One was Becky asking Shinku about girlfriends. The other was Leo wanting to have a conference with both Millefiore and Kuuberu.

What significance either of those might have is anyone's guess, though.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at July 21, 2012 03:58 PM (+rSRq)

3 I must say, the conversation the next day was quite entendre-filled. I envy Nanami.

-j

Posted by: J Greely at July 21, 2012 05:03 PM (7CyNp)

4

 Pete: Yes, in that scene Becky is aggressively chasing Shinku around the room trying to get him to tell her which of the girls he likes the most, and those chibis in the image are her talking about them.

The dialog in that scene was rather odd, and I didn't really want to write about it. The upshot of it was that for Shinku, Becky is firmly in the friend zone. She was talking as if he was, too, for her but it's obvious she's head over heals for him, so I fear we may be going to get some angst after all.

If we're lucky, one of the stories this time is going to be Shinku awakening to the fact that Becky is damned cute and loveable, and that he should be reacting to her that way. And then they'll return to Earth, holding hands.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at July 21, 2012 07:48 PM (+rSRq)

5 I wouldn't worry too much, Steve.  I was reading an interview with the director in some magazine or another yesterday, and he said that the thing that makes Dog Days unique is that all the characters are bright, cheerful, and straightforward.  Angst, at any more than a token level, would go against that.  

Posted by: tellu541 at July 21, 2012 08:32 PM (9Llda)

6

...if you consider a tsundere (Eclair) to be straightforward. But I hope you're right.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at July 21, 2012 08:45 PM (+rSRq)

7 Even Eclair is a "wears her emotions on her tail" tsundere, so it's played for laughs. 


Ep 3:



All this episode was missing was Roland shipping Eclair & Shinku, to cover all of the relationship details from S1.  Haha.  That was pretty good recap.

The battle was great.  The power of air control is always important and Becky was showing all her time playing bullet hell games paid off.  Never would have thought it had an application to the real life, but you never know! 

Pastillage's magic is pretty impressive, but I think we can see the problem they have in combat: it's more of "high skill" combat attack and numbers can simply overwhelm them.  Though they only had their "high speed" units with them for this battle.  Plus, given the power of a "Hero" unit to combat in the world, someone like Leo-sama could single handedly turn a battle.  I don't think Pastillage has someone like that, for now.  Which is probably why Kuberu was so enthralled with Becky.  Though it's funny to watch a squirrel ship herself with a human.  I think that might be an anime first.

I do love when a series has a set of characters state the blatantly obvious then want it to do it themselves.  Shinku treating Millie has something of a pet, while out on their walks, was one of those details from S1 that seemed a bit weird.  But, once you got used to it, you could see why he would do it.  She (and pretty much everyone in the world) loves being treated kindly in pet-like ways.  It's one of the charms of the series, but I loved Nanami & Becky going "he's treating the Princess of a country like a pet dog, but we want to do it too, right?"  Just part of the cheerfulness of the series.

As for Shinku and Becky's conversion at episode end, I don't think we're going to get much angst, as I imagine they'll be split up in the near future for whatever the world story is this time.  But I think Becky is thinking further ahead than Shinku is.  She can probably already tell the obvious: Shinku might return to the real world every now and then, but this is going to be his home in the future.  So, while one subtext of the conversation was Becky would like Shinku to notice her as more than a friend, the other subtext is she doesn't want him to leave her.  Though, in Shinku's defense, he's all of 13/14 and having the time of his life in another world.  He's really not thinking of relationships in that way, yet.

It's Shinku's eventual fate to join Yukikaze & Lord D`Arquein in the years long fight against the Demon Swords.  She already tried to teach him the "extending life" technique in S1.  So his place in Flonyard for now and the future is pretty easy to assume.

Posted by: sqa at July 21, 2012 10:18 PM (5/dUV)

8 About all the fanservice, I've reached the conclusion that the studio realized that their intended audience isn't necessarily the one they captured, so they've re-tuned it to be a bit racier.  To manage that without killing the mood from the original series is pretty good.

Posted by: ubu at July 21, 2012 10:45 PM (GfCSm)

9 I think the only bits that have actually changed is that some breast lines are bigger.  I believe in season 1:


Leo is mostly naked & Eclair is only in panties before ep 2 ends.    Millie is naked in the bath with Shinku by ep 3.  Which does happen again as well.

It's just there's a lot more actual battling with females this time around.  When they aren't, they don't tend to get them naked.  But that's not to say they aren't playing to their known fanbase a bit more.  Though nothing really has changed in regard to the way the series operates, it's just getting the girls a bit more naked during the battles.  Though Rico has a thing for losing all of her clothes...

Posted by: sqa at July 22, 2012 01:16 AM (5/dUV)

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