Pete seems to live these days for the opportunity to dump on my favorite shows. This time it's Macademi Wasshoi. (My review. I gave it 2.5 stars, so it's clear I don't think it's perfect. But I liked it a lot, nonetheless, and it's one of the shows for which I really hope we get a sequel.)

Worse, Tanarotte did absolutely nothing to endear.

It's an unusual series, OK? A show like this can't really be judged from one episode, and Tanarotte certainly can't be judged from the first episode because she wasn't complete until the last couple of minutes. The summoning creation wasn't finished until she was given her name and she started talking. For most of the show, the Tanarotte we saw wasn't the one that appears in the entire rest of the series.

Anyway, the show isn't primarily about her. She isn't the main character. There really isn't any "main character"; it's an ensemble show.

The main ensemble is Takuto, Tanarotte, Suzaho/Suzuka, Falce, Sakuma, and Eneus, and none of them really stand out as being more important than any of the others before you get to ep 11.

Ep 11 is about Takuto, and ep 12 is about how his girls feel about him. But there are a lot of episodes where he hardly figures into the story at all, or where his main role is "witness" and "audience avatar".

IIRC SDB zoomed on someone called Falce, who have not appeared yet. But even if she’s Feena fam Earthlight, Koyomi Mizuhara, Aoi Sakuraba, and Kayoko Uchida rolled seamlessly into one, I don’t think she would be able to save the anime from Tanarotte, considering how sacred pact and superpowers embed her front and center.

Falce is introduced in episode 3. It's pretty much her episode. It also is the first episode which deals with the real theme of the show, though it isn't apparent at the time. The series is about people looking for a place to belong, for others to love and be loved by. That's even true for Hapshiel, it turns out. In Falce's case, it's rather more tragic: in ep 3 she'd given up on ever finding such a thing and was looking for a different way out.

In ep 3, there's a point where Falce touches Takuto on the nose. Listen carefully to what she says after that; it's the point of the series.

In any case, Tanarotte isn't front and center. Tanarotte is just part of the ensemble, and she changes as the show proceeds.

These days it seems like Pete is more satisfied finding reasons to reject shows than he is in finding shows worth watching. I guess all I can do is sit back and say, "Your loss."

UPDATE: Pete doesn't credit my opinion. But I'm not alone in liking the series. Aroduc said:

So, once again, just like with Penguin Girl, I was betrayed by my own expectations, and the ‘otaku pandering’ comedy ended up being one of my favorite shows for the season. It’s witty, it’s funny, it’s unpredictable, and for all the crying about excessive fanservice people make, there’s always an angel (and his apprentice!) around the corner to show that the joke’s the thing. I do know that many many people never even gave this a shot, or immediately tuned out after seeing the chintastic art design and rampant fetishism, but for the rest of us, this was an excellent comedy and I really wish that more shows tried to subvert the usual fanservice tropes like this instead of using them as fanbait.

UPDATE: One other thing: Macademi Wasshoi isn't even slightly like Sora no Otoshimono.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 10:12 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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