Our first mystery meat series is Raimuiro Senkitan, which IIRC is sometimes referred to as Lime Iro Senkitan. As it opens, it's war. It's the Meiji era. Japan is weak, threatened, and must rely on five pretty girls to win. I'm going to write about it as I'm watching it.

NSFW below the fold.

Our first clear picture of any of those girls? Well, she's buck nekkid.

I'm beginning to remember this one. It's a retelling of the Russo-Japanese war, except that this time Japan has Sailor Moon and the Sailor Scouts, or something very much like them, fighting on its side.

They also seem to have Space Battleship Yamato, or something very much like it. Interestingly, it has sails. It's not obvious why, though.

Anyway, all the sailor scouts are part of the Navy. (It's interesting how, in Japanese pop-culture revisionism relating to the Meiji era and Taisho era, they always cast the Navy as good guys. The Army, on the other hand, is usually a lot more shady, though there may be a few renegade good guys working for them.)

Yay! Battle Bikinis! They're Russians.

OK, OP over. Now for some plot exposition: "One of the large, powerful countries in the world, Russia. The country that has gradually gained power since the Meiji Restoration, but still remained a weak country in the Far East, Japan. The two countries clashing was plausible from a geopolitical view. Meiji 37th year, 1904, February 10th. The war began. The Russo-Japanese War. The battle progressed and Japan had the advantage. However, the world was looking at a single fortress. The Lushun Fortress, fortified with concrete and weapons. It protected the Russian Pacific Fleet and didn't budge against any attacks. Unless Japan conquered the fortress and destroyed the Russian pacific Fleet before the Baltic Fleet arrived to reinforce the Russians, they would lose control of the seas and lose. However, a great evil beyond the comprehension of men lurked behind the impregnable Lushun Fortress."

So much left out of that. The reason for the war was that Japanese imperialism and Russian imperialism came into conflict because both of them wanted to make Korea and Manchuria into vassal states. Japan started the war by attacking the Russian fleet docked at Port Arthur 2 hours before the declaration of war was delivered to the Russian government. Sound familiar?

What the Japanese remember about the Russo-Japanese war is the battle of Tsushima Strait, and that's pretty much all they care to talk about. They don't pay so much attention to how the war began or why it was fought.

In the mean time, this series seems to be a whitewashed morality play about the war, in which the Russians are allied with supernatural forces of evil which the virtuous Japanese fight to expunge from the Earth and so on and so forth. I really hate it when they do this kind of historical revisionism.

Anyway, let's get back to the show. And here's our first view within the show of one of the girls:

I think that's her butt. And a few seconds later:

That guy may well be the viewer avatar. I'm not clear on that yet. But he isn't high school age. I'm getting hints that he's going to be a teacher at the military academy which the girls all attend.

Another girl gets introduced. This one ends her sentences with desu wa and uses watakushi so I automatically hate her, even though she's got a nice chest. Anyway, she's got a Great Dane named "Antoinette Gandhi XIII". Who, despite the name, is male. Yeesh. She's astoundingly pretentious.

Our hero has another strange encounter with two more of the girls. One of them is dressed as a miko and is placing a curse on the other one. He mistakes the second one for a boy, and she takes his hand and holds it on her breast to prove the contrary.

Then finds some man collecting mushrooms. He, at least, seems sane so our hero asks him where the academy is. The man says, "Follow me." Then he opens a secret hatch in a tree, revealing a speaking tube. He speaks into it, and a hidden hatch opens in the ground. He leads our hero down stairs.

If all this is so blazingly secret, why is he showing all of it to a complete stranger?

OK, turns out that the man is the headmaster and he was there waiting for our hero, whose name is Umakai Shintaro. Our hero became fluent in Russian in university, and then worked for the Foreign Ministry, and lived in Russia for three years. He then quit the Foreign Ministry and went back to school to become a teacher. This is his first teaching position. The headmaster says he'll be teaching a group of girls.

Not surprisingly, it turns out to be the five he encountered outside. (I didn't mention the fifth; it was fleeting.)

The red head is Sanada Momen. She's the one with the panties. (I mean, presumably they all have panties, but she's the one whose panties we've been shown.) She's a ditz. She thinks he looks like her older brother and she keeps calling him onii-chan. (Yikes!)

The stuck up one is Honda Sarasa. The short blonde one that he original thought was a boy is Kato Asa. The miko is Fukushima Kinu. The other one is Kuroda Rinzu, and she seems to have the kind of nobility that Sarasa pretends to.

Do I have to finish watching this? Please, may I stop now? (No!)

His room looks like it's inside a ship, which is confusing..

Momen trips on the way out. Did I get lost and wind up in a show by Studio Fantasia? I thought they had a patent on that pose.

I have no idea who those lolis are and I'm not sure I want to know.

Shintaro crashes out for a nap, and some exposition about why he left the Foreign Ministry. Later, Momen wakes him up. Here's his first view as he wakens.

Then she puts his glasses on him.

There's some inadvertent lap dancing, and an embarrassing fall, and... I really do wonder if Studio Fantasia is responsible for it.

Man, look at the pointy chin on this bishie: If he's Navy, why is his uniform black?

They get attacked. The enemy found them. The "Raimu Unit will sortie!" That being our five girls, of course. Sailor Scouts, assemble!

Momen summons her Lime, which apparently is some sort of combat avatar. So do the others.

Anyway, there's a short combat sequence and the girls win it. Afterwards, Shintaro thinks, "A girl's academy on a battleship. The enemy, which is flying western armor that fly like birds. And girls that control armor to counter them. What am I involved in?"

An interesting question since they seem to have gone out of their way to recruit him.

The next-ep teaser shows the ship taking off, so I guess we're going to find out more.

FORENSICS: So why did I download this? I'm guessing it was the pantsu keyword.

PROSPECTS: I'll never get that hour back and I sure don't want to waste any more hours on it.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Mystery Meat at 08:51 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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