summer 2018 – Anime QandA

Cells At Work! – Full Season QandA Rundown

What’s the important information? Cells At Work! is a Summer 2018 anime that aired 13 episodes between July and September. It is based on a Shonen manga by Akane Shimizu.

What’s it about? The series takes place within a human body and focuses on the daily lives of anthropomorphised cells—specifically AE3803 a plucky but directionally challenged Red Blood Cell and U-1146 a no-nonsense White Blood Cell who always seems to cross path with the aforementioned cell—often defending her from nefarious germs who threaten the body they live in.

This gif pretty much sums up the standard episode!

Why did you watch it? It’s a pretty unique premise for a show, and more than anything I was just interested to see what kind of show this would be!

Did you enjoy the show? Consistently, well that’s not to say it was the most consistent of anime it did have the occasional weak episode but it was significantly more focused and delivered an entertaining experience with ease and expertise expected of a series that’s been around for decades. The fact that this is the mangaka’s first work is all the more surprising! Though clearly those working on the anime adaptation have the experience to deliver a spectacle week after week.

What was your favourite episode? It’s hard to pick a favourite considering how consistent the series is, but Episode 8 “Blood Circulation” had a certain endearing charm to the whole endeavour that made it especially great. It promised a lot, and while in the end the series didn’t deliver on the ~specific~ promise, it still was a worthwhile experience.

What were your most favourite things about the show? Platelets! Ahem, sorry… it’s just that Platelets were a consistent bright spot of the Summer anime season and now that they’re relegated to memory it makes me all the more fond of them. The show is fun and quirky and mirrors certain aspects of Japanese society while never getting bogged down in being allegory.

What were your least favourite things about the show? The show fancies itself as educational—which may be true—but it almost doesn’t need to be. Sure it’s great that a series can entertain and inform in equal measure but the repetitive voice-over that explains in detail the specifics of any given encounter or introduction to a character is overused and halts the action too often. The series is at its best when it just allows its character to interact but feels bogged down in minutiae when it pauses every few minutes to explain something that kind-of could be left unexplained—or at the very least explained by a character in the show and not an omnipotent narrator.

Who was your favourite character? While the Platelet’s will always have a piece of my heart, a ‘group’ of characters can’t ~technically~ be a favourite character as there’s multiple of them. So that’s why Red Blood Cell waifu AE3803 gets the pick from me. She’s just such a hard working cutie pie that I can’t help but love her!

Thoughts on the OP (opening) and ED (ending) and the soundtrack in general? Both are fantastic in their own ways. The OP, “Mission! Ken –Ko- Dai –Ichi” by the cast is an infectious (no pun intended) tune that never fails to set the mood in an energetic fashion. While the ED “CheerS” by ClariS is just straight up a delightfully sweet song that bookends each episode with a smile on my face.

What’s something unique about this show? While the series is about ‘cells’ in the human body they quickly become so much more than that, never before has the concept of making something anthropomorphised engendered me to something so deeply. I felt like these anime cells were actually within me, and I wanted to protect them by eating more healthy and taking better general care of myself. Well, up until the anime ended, and then the bad habits returned. But that just goes to show the power of this anime and the characters, that I could be protective of something that is nothing but artistic license.

What other anime are most like it for the sake of comparison? While it shares some tropes with Shonen action anime there really isn’t any other anime like ‘Cells At Work!’ it is a singular and unique experience.

Who would you recommend it to? Everyone. Yes, while the show might be a little violent for some youngsters, I’d say anyone between the age of 9 and 90 is bound to find something endearing and entertaining about this series.

Sum up the season in one sentence: ‘Cute Cells Doing Critical Things’.

Final score? 82 out of 100.

Previous Cells At Work Reviews:

Who Knew Blood Cells Could Be So Attractive? – Episode 1 Review
Made In Abrasion – Episode 2 Review
World War Sneeze – Episode 3 Review
Codzilla – Episode 4 Review
Rise of the Medication – Episode 5 Review
There’s No Place Like Bone – Episode 6 Review
A Cell On Death Row – Episode 7 Review
Taken To Heart – Episode 8 Review
A Tough T-Cell – Episode 9 Review
Over Staphed – Episode 10 Review
A Heat Stroke Of Good Luck – Episode 11 Review
All Cell Breaks Loose – Episode 12 Review
In Cold Blood – Episode 13 Review

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Swing And A Miss – ‘Hanebado!’ Episode 13 (Finale) Review

Swing And A Miss – An Anime QandA Review of ‘Hanebado!’ Episode 13

What’s the show? Hanebado! Episode 13.

Oh boy, the season finale of Hanebado…you sure have had a like/dislike relationship with this show haven’t you? That’s an understatement, but yeah… suffice to say the characterisation inconsistencies—specifically in regard to Ayano have been a sore point for me and lots of people if fellow bloggers and the #hanebado hashtag are anything to go by!

So how’s this episode then? Do they fix things? Keep things the same? Or just make them worse? Funnily enough, all 3 if you believe it. Though I think that depends on a couple of factors and how deep into this show you’re willing to go.

Okay, so explain how you think this finale can be all 3 of those things—depending on how you look at it—I’m curious… So just a quick recap of what happens. It’s Ayano vs Nagisa final round, Ayano looked like she was throwing the game until she got some encouraging words—she starts having fun playing against Nagisa—the first time she’s had fun playing Badminton in a while. The match gets tied, they go back and forth with deuce and match points, then after an artsy looking interlude Nagisa wins. Ayano regains some semblance of humility in the face of her defeat, still kind of acts like a cheeky spoilt brat but gone is the dead-eyed villain from before.

Nagisa deserved to have an ‘ugly cry’ after such a hard fought win.

Okay… so Ayano’s changed for the better? That would imply some character development? So first of all, on a very base surface level, yes Ayano is now a better character because she’s not a villainous entity of pure evil—she’s just a smug rival with a cheeky attitude. But the problem with this change is that ~this~ Ayano is what should have become meek and introverted Ayano earlier on. There never needed for Ayano to go full dark-side when this happy medium could have saved the entire series! So as it stands, rather than this just being a middle ground gained through character development, it instead feels like a ~third~ personality that’s been quickly tacked on to make Ayano more palatable. This change doesn’t feel earned, it feels like someone realised too late what Ayano’s character was actually supposed to be and just forced it into the narrative.

Ayano’s next evolution is smug/cute. It’s not very effective.

So when I said, “did they fix things? Keep things the same? Or just make them worse?” and you said “all 3” you meant… I meant Ayano is technically fixed as a character. But things are still the same because they are fixed in a way that’s typical of this show—that is to say, not very subtle or well done. And likewise it’s worse because of how damn great the rest of the episode is!

Everyone just looks fed up, kinda like the people watching this show I reckon…

What’s so great about it? Literally anything that’s not Ayano. The sport is exciting and well presented, the soundtrack is breathtaking and there’s an “artsy looking interlude” that I mentioned before that is legitimately one of my favourite pretentious things I’ve seen in anime all season. Basically everything goes black and white, the soundtrack is faded out until all that’s left is a beating heart sound, Ayano and Nagisa’s steady but tense breathing and the occasional sound of a shuttlecock hitting a racket. It’s arguably unnecessary but it’s so damn cool and stylistic that I can’t help but adore the whole scene!

Fair enough! So overall thoughts on the finale of Hanebado? It’s at least better than this show at its worst! I feel like if things had been different and the worst Ayano ever got was how she was at the end of this episode we’d be looking at a lot more positive reviews of this show. But as often is the case, it’s too little—too late.

Like this scene felt like it came out of episode 3, not episode 13!

Previous Hanebado! Reviews:

Sports Anime + Cute Girls = A Better Sports Anime – Episode 1 Review
Emotional Flashbacks & Sausages on Sticks – Episode 2 Review
A Smash To The Feels – Episode 3 Review
Sibling Rivalry – Episode 4 Review
Rivals Are Better Than Villains – Episode 5 Review
Uniformly Improved – Episode 6 Review
Just Like Tennis – Episode 7 Review
There’s No Ayano In Team – Episode 8 Review
Beware of Villains Bearing Backstories – Episode 9 Review
Out Of Bounds – Episode 10 Review
Best and Scariest – Episode 11 Review
Fighting Expectations – Episode 12 Review

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Asobi Asobase – Full Season QandA Rundown

What’s the important information? Asobi Asobase is a Summer 2018 comedy anime that aired 12 episodes from July to September. It is based on a Seinen manga series by Rin Suzukawa.

What’s it about? Hanako, Olivia and Kasumi are three second-year students at an all-girl middle school and are the only three members of the ‘past-timers club’. The series follows their antics in and around their school club.

Why did you watch it? The series promised comedy and it delivered it in spades!

Did you enjoy the show? No other show this season made me laugh as consistently and as hard as Asobi Asobase. While an individual’s tolerance for this type of ‘comedy’ may vary, I found the extreme, nonsensical and borderline insane antics of these three girls to be a rare thing—unlike any comedy I’ve ever seen.

What was your favourite episode? It’s almost too hard to pick because any given episode is divided into either 3 or 4 separate segments, and while the quality can vary between segments no one episode had a complete set of flawlessly funny segments. The closest it ever came and probably the episode that made me laugh the most though was Episode 4 which was filled with such bizarre imagery and memorable sight gags that it definitely made an impression!

What were your most favourite things about the show? It’s difficult to quantify specific things about a comedy series like this as being “favourites” as more often that not its individual jokes/set-ups and pay-offs as well as random and insane interactions that stick out in one’s mind as opposed to any ~specific~ reviewable qualities. Though the rapport between the three leads was consistently excellent and the voice actresses exhibited terrific comedic timing.

What were your least favourite things about the show? It’s almost been talked about too much at this point but Episode 5 had a moment that was arguably trans-phobic (and if not then just stupid, tone-deaf and unfunny). I discussed it at length in my individual review for the episode so I won’t go into any more detail than that but it is worth mentioning as something disappointing in an otherwise excellent series.

Who was your favourite character? Hanako is a singular and unique specimen unlike any character in the history of anime, added to that the range and power of her voice actress and the insane things the script has her saying makes her a character for the ages.

Thoughts on the OP (opening) and ED (ending) and the soundtrack in general? The OP “Three Piece” sung by the three main girls is a soft and sweet little song that lulls the viewer into a false sense of security about what madness is about to ensure—it’s the perfect bait and switch and feels more and more sarcastic every time you listen to it. Perfectly contrasting the light OP is the ED, a dark and menacing heavy metal track “Inkya Impulse” also sung featuring Ikepy & KSKN—and as something of a metal head I can appreciate what a legitimately rocking piece of music it is!

What’s something unique about this show? I don’t think I’ve ever seen an anime so preoccupied with penises—but maybe that’s exactly what middle school girls are like nowadays?

Maeda is a close second for favourite character.

What other anime are most like it for the sake of comparison? The sense of freewheeling comedic abandon is reminiscent of Yuruyuri, however the comparisons end there, as the aforementioned is light and laid-back whereas Asobi Asobase is an electric shock to the frontal lobe. I don’t think there’s any show quite like it but I’d be happy to be proven wrong in the comments!

Who would you recommend it to? Anybody who is into loud and aggressive comedies, with an emphasis on ‘reaction’ based humour as well as some occasionally very crude humour all coming from the weirdest group of middle-school girls you’ve ever seen.

Sum up the season in one sentence: ‘I’ve never taken drugs before but Asobi Asobase is what I imagine having a bad acid trip with a group of insane middle schoolers would be like’.

Final score? 90 out of 100.

Previous Asobi Asobase Reviews:

Laid Back Insanity – Episode 1 Review
Scarier Faces Than Any Horror Anime – Episode 2 Review
It’s All Fun and Games Until Somone Gets Compound Fractures Over Their Entire Body – Episode 3 Review
So Much Butt Stuff – Episode 4 Review
Youthful Transgressions – Episode 5 Review
A Boyfriend Built By Grandfather – Episode 6 Review
Getting It Off Your Chest – Episode 7 Review
Like A Batsu Outta Hell – Episode 8 Review
Brother’s Creeper – Episode 9 Review
Cunning Linguists – Episode 10 Review
How The Cookie Crumbles – Episode 11 Review
Making The Breast Out Of A Bra Situation – Episode 12 Review

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In Cold Blood – ‘Cells At Work!’ Episode 13 (Finale) Review

In Cold Blood – An Anime QandA Review of ‘Cells At Work!’ Episode 13

What’s the show? Cells At Work!, Episode 13.

So here we are at the season finale! Indeed, seems like only yesterday we were at Episode 1 and I was awkwardly confessing my attraction to a Red Blood Cell… ah the memories…

Yeesh, don’t remind me… so how’s this episode? Well, if I’m completely honest—it’s kinda disappointing. This episode has so much padding for time at the expense of almost ~everything~ that made the other episodes so good that’s really a letdown. This show had such a rock solid formula for success in place and while last week’s set up was so good, this episode felt like it was stretching 10 minutes worth of content out to 25.

I mean after all she’s been through she’s entitled to an ‘ugly cry’.

Well that’s certainly not good—especially as you said for a show with such a proven track record of quality. Can you give some examples? Okay so there’s a scene early on when AE3803 and her kohai come across some Cells that are suffocating and need oxygen and the back and forth between them where the cell keeps saying he needs oxygen and AE3803 keeps asking what’s wrong, I don’t know if it was meant to be funny but it wasn’t—it was just annoying. And throughout there’s just a lot of scenes where there’s one or two people walking about barren wastelands and nothing is happening. There’s ways of selling desolation and isolation and a sense of hopelessness that are still interesting but this wasn’t pulling it off—speaking of which it almost felt like the budget was slashed or they ran out of time because during the ‘rescue’ scene there sure was a lot of slapdash and ‘rough’ looking animation work.

They didn’t kiss either, turns out that was the *least* of my issues though…

It’s gotta be bad if you’re mentioning it, you usually hate criticising the animation in things. Only because I feel like it’s sometimes unfair criticism because of the anime industry, plus a great story and characters can overcome nearly any animation deficiencies. And while the show has used “hyper-deformed” caricatures and exaggerated, low-detail close-ups to emphasis an emotion or joke in the past it felt really over-used here. Maybe they were just trying to overcompensate for how dark the previous minutes had been but to me it just felt like cutting corners. And in some respects it robbed the moment of its poignancy, AE3803 and her kohai surviving when ~literally~ trillions of her compatriots died during the Haemorrhagic Shock should have been emotional but it was lacking something, at least for me.

So sounds like the season finale didn’t live up to expectations, huh? Unfortunately, yeah. Due to the episodic nature of the show, this lacking finale doesn’t really hurt the show on the whole, but it is still disappointing that such a solid and usually guaranteed good-time was brought down slightly. The ‘reconstruction’ epilogue was about as close as the show got to getting back on track but by then it was too little too late. Ah well, I’m still holding out for a second season of this regardless!

Nothing disappointing about Platelet’s though! Hope to see you again soon!

Previous Cells At Work Reviews:

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Chio’s School Road – Full Season QandA Rundown

What’s the important information? Chio’s School Road is a Summer 2018 comedy anime that aired 12 episodes from July to September. It is a partial adaptation of a 9 volume Seinen manga series by Tadataka Kawasaki.

What’s it about? Very simply, it’s about Chio Miyamo a below average high-school girl and avid video gamer and the various antics she gets up to on her daily commute from her house to her school. The shenanigans range from strange conversations with her friend Manana to things absurd as encounters with biker gangs, risky parkour and run-ins with a butt-poking elementary schooler.

Why did you watch it? The series sold itself as an ‘absurd comedy’ and I’m all about that!

Did you enjoy the show? Absolutely, it delivered on the absurdity and also solidified it with a truly great cast of characters and a seemingly expanding world of quirky characters that inhabited the series. Even the weakest of episodes had laugh-out-loud moments and imagery worthy of surreal screen caps.

What was your favourite episode? While every episode had a worthwhile and hilarious segment (each episode of the show is divided into either 2 or 3 ‘segments’), Episode 7 which concerned Chio discovering the “joys” of BL (Boys Love) games and trying to buy a magazine about it and then following that up with the first appearance of the butt-poking elementary schooler had me in tears of laughter from beginning to end! Not to mention all the references to the differences between Western and Japanese video games.

What were your most favourite things about the show? Aside from the comedy—which ran the gamut from slapstick, to wordplay, to non-sequiturs, to cringe, to character driven. Chio herself was an absolute joy to behold, the way her mind works was not only frequently hilarious but also surprisingly relatable—especially as a gamer myself.

Wbat were your least favourite things about the show? There were a couple of repeat characters that Chio encountered that weren’t perhaps as funny as the show thought they were, the pervert homeless man especially was a character whose appearance only cheapened the overall quality of the show.

Who was your favourite character? I want Chio to be my girlfriend. Is that weird? That’s probably weird… But seriously, I really love Chio’s general outlook on life—even if it is striving for mediocrity for the sake of living life unnoticed. Plus she’s just cute in that nerdy kind of way!

What’s something unique about this show? Episode 2 just straight up dropped the c-word and I still can’t get over that fact! Yes it was just in text and yes the c-word doesn’t really have the same vulgar/taboo connotations in Japan as it does in the west but I was still flabbergasted to see it on-screen! Amazing and hilarious.

What other anime are most like it for the sake of comparison? For some reason I’m reminded of Yuruyuri, though moreso the later half of the season where the comedy gets more character driven as opposed to absurd ‘sketch’ style. Also, if you want a Western sitcom comparison, it definitely at times reminded me of Seinfeld, in that these people are all kind of dysfunctional jerks, but they’re absolutely relatable.

Who would you recommend it to? Anybody who likes their comedy on the more ~absurd~ end of the spectrum, obviously not Pop Team Epic levels of absurdity but still grounded in reality. Also, there’s a lot of references to Western video games which even if you’re not a fan of them there’s a lot of fun to be gained to just see the Japanese perspective on something that’s apparently very unusual to them that a lot of us probably take for granted as being ‘normal’.

Sum up the season in one sentence: ‘The road ahead is twisted and filled with obstacles but they’re all a part of silly and strange journey that I’m glad to have taken!’

Final score? 88 out of 100.

Previous Chio’s School Road Reviews:

Otaku’s Creed – Episode 1 Review
The Actual C-Word – Episode 2 Review
Full Contact Perineum – Episode 3 Review
Stupid Sexy Smoking – Episode 4 Review
Urine Trouble – Episode 5 Review
The Art of Butt Groping – Episode 6 Review
Public Enema Number One – Episode 7 Review
Sprinter Belle – Episode 8 Review
Pipe Dreams – Episode 9 Review
The Sweeter Life – Episode 10 Review
Sleeping On The Bank Job – Episode 11 Review
No Panties, No Problems! – Episode 12 Review

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Fighting Expectations – ‘Hanebado!’ Episode 12 Review

Fighting Expectations – An Anime QandA Review of ‘Hanebado!’ Episode 12

What’s the show? Hanebado! Episode 12.

So what happens in this second-to-last episode? Are you still complaining about inconsistent characterisation? Yeah… more or less, and I’m kind of sick of complaining about this show every week, as I’m sure are the readers of reading said complaints.

Well that kind of puts you in a sticky situation, because you have to talk about something? I mean I could just objectively talk about things that happened in the episode and whether I thought they were good or bad rather than repeat the same rant over and over.

That could work, I’ll be sure to cut you off if you stray and start ranting! Appreciated.

Nagisa, still the only character I’m rooting for!

So what happens in this episode? Well we get a bit more context about how Ayano’s mother left in the form of a flashback and yeah, Ayano’s mother is just as awful as we already knew. Speaking of flashbacks, there’s actually a heck of a lot of reused footage in this episode, maybe like 15% of the entire episode is stuff from previous episodes just rearranged into montages and it kind of is a detriment to the episode in more ways than one.

How so? Well towards the end of the episode we get a lengthy montage showing how Ayano was in the early episodes, you know before she turned into a dead-eyed monster, and it goes to highlight how much better her character used to be and how much better this show was in-turn. And I don’t know if this little montage was supposed to show a journey, because all it did was show how abrupt and out-of-place her character decline was.

Getting dangerously close to ‘rant country’ best turn back! Right, sorry.

This version of Ayano is less fun then “dead-eyed monster”.

So aside from the reused footage what else happens? Just more of the match between Ayano and Nagisa and it’s expectedly great—you know the parts where Ayano’s not antagonising people—its exciting and well animated, the music is fantastic and the match is easy-to-follow and even a little bit tense! Ayano wins the first set, while Nagisa claws back the second having tired out Ayano by playing in the opposite style than her opponent had prepared for. Then the third set comes and Ayano kind of just gives up—only to be cheered on by her teammates and of course they’re going to push a ‘the power of teamwork/friendship’ redemption arc for the final episode and nope, not having it!

You can just sense the “Tch!” just wanting to pass her lips!

And that’s your prediction for the finale I take it? Yeah, I mean other commenters had seen it coming a mile away and it’s annoying because you can’t devote so much time and energy into turning a good girl into a bad girl then turning her back again! Or maybe you can, I don’t know, it’s not my anime it can do whatever the heck it wants with its characters! Oh well, only one episode left now, let’s see if they can redeem their mistakes in any way or just screw it up even more!

Previous Hanebado! Reviews:

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How NOT To Summon A Demon Lord – Full Season QandA Rundown

What’s the important information? How NOT To Summon A Demon Lord is a Summer 2018 harem/fantasy isekai anime that aired 12 episodes from July through September. It is based on a Light Novel series by Yukiya Murasaki and was also adapted into a Manga series.

What’s it about? A shut-in gamer finds himself suddenly transported into a fantasy world that loosely resembles his favourite MMORPG. Their two girls—Shera Greenwood an elf and Rem Galleu a pantherian (cat girl) are the reason for his summoning as they intend to take him as their servant, but due to possessing the same abilities as his in-game character his ‘Magic Reflection’ passive turns them into his slaves instead! Confronted by this new world and in the body of his character Demon Lord Diablo, he decides to more or less go with his new life, making use of his vast knowledge of the game while trying to help his new companions with their various issues.

Sometimes Diablo uses his “evil” voice a little *too* much.

Why did you watch it? Despite having a fondness for the isekai genre, I was moreso as I often am, drawn to the series due to the poster art (specifically the two female protagonists)—sometimes it’s as easy as that to win me over.

Did you enjoy the show? I enjoyed almost everything about this series, to the point where it was occupying my thoughts even in the interim days when I wasn’t watching the show. The characterisation, character designs, voice acting and interactions were among my favourite of any show this season and of almost any show full stop. I was immediately drawn into the world and never wanted it to end.

I mean how else are you supposed to eat a sausage?

What was your favourite episode? While a very consistent show the episode that I felt had the best character moments and ticked a lot of boxes for me (no pun intended) was Episode 6 “Slave Market”. Not only was the fan service particularly good but it also helped flesh out some of the particulars of magic in this universe which would be important going forward and contained important character development, particularly with regards to Rem and Shera’s friendship.

Shera has some pretty adorable aspirations.

What were your most favourite things about the show? I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t mention the fan service—which was a personal highlight, but also the emphasis on friendships between the three main characters, driving home messages about personal autonomy and living a life you’ve decided to live as well as the constant humorous contrast between Diablo’s brash and aggressive outer persona and his inner meek true self.

The action is pretty damn cool in this show too!

Wbat were your least favourite things about the show? There was very little I didn’t like about the show but if I were to chose I’d say there were a couple of characters who were at best undeveloped and at worst superfluous such as Sylvie, Medios and Eulerex.

Who was your favourite character? Not only is Shera best girl in this show, she’s also my number 1 best girl of the whole Summer 2018 anime season!

What’s something unique about this show? Almost notorious for it at this point, and suffice to say this is a slight spoiler but Episode 10’s ‘awakening’ of the Demon Lord Krebskulm from within Rem was eye-opening, unexpected for some, “too far” for others but whatever your opinion there’s no denying it was pretty unique among non-hentai anime!

What other anime are most like it for the sake of comparison? While not as consistently light-hearted or comedic in tone as Konosuba the two definitely share some similarities.

Who would you recommend it to? Any fan of the isekai genre who isn’t too perturbed by the presence of fan service and harem shenanigans in almost every episode plus for people who like character-driven fantasy with an emphasis on the personal relationships between the adventurers.

Sum up the season in one sentence: ‘Who needs a harem of sexy women when you have friends like these—who also happen to be sexy women’.

Final score? 94 out of 100.

Diablo vs Krebskulm in Episode 12 made for some impressive imagery.

Previous How NOT To Summon A Demon Lord Reviews:

Is It Wrong To Suck A Cat Girl’s Ear In Another World? – Episode 1 Review
The Grope Debate – Episode 2 Review
Listening Is A Heroic Trait Too – Episode 3 Review
Unlimited Power/Limited Stamina – Episode 4 Review
Reigning It In – Episode 5 Review
Sexually Liberated Elf – Episode 6 Review
The Slimes That Bind Us – Episode 7 Review
Down The Rabbit Hole – Episode 8 Review
Holier Than Maou – Episode 9 Review
Something To Moan About – Episode 10 Review
Krem Is Mightier Than The Sword – Episode 11 Review
A Slave To Sweets – Episode 12 Review

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Making The Breast Out Of A Bra Situation – ‘Asobi Asobase’ Episode 12 (Finale) Review

Making The Breast Out Of A Bra Situation – An Anime QandA Review of ‘Asobi Asobase’ Episode 12

What’s the show? Asobi Asobase, Episode 12.

Another season finale, huh? How’s this episode? You may recall me ‘lightly complaining’ about how I wasn’t too keen on the continuity that this show had been injecting into the series—specifically Episodes 10 and 11 which had sort of a lead up to the cultural festival loose plot thread.

I recall, yes. So is this episode all about said cultural festival? Nope! It was never mentioned again and I couldn’t be more glad! This show is so much better when every aspect of any-given segment is completely unpredictable and that’s more or less what we get in episode 12 a glorious and insane return to form!

Uh-huh, well that’s good I guess. Does that mean all the segments are good this time? I said a return to form not the best episode ever… two of the segments—the first two—are among the funniest the show has ever produce, the last two are slightly weaker though I really did appreciate the final segment for being somehow even more inane than anything else the show has done and ending on such a meta-joke.

We’ll get to that, what about the first two segments? More detail please. Well the first segment involves a baby—one of Sensei’s friends has brought their baby on a visit to the school and for plot conveniences the teacher has to leave the baby with our 3 girls and uh… well let’s just say this baby may or may not be a reincarnated pervert mafia don because the things this baby says and does and the girls reaction to them is truly priceless!

Bet you’d never expect a baby to say that!

Right? And the next one? After a particularly sweaty P.E. class the girls are changing and the flat and ever sports-bra wearing Hanako gets a bad case of bra-envy when she sees Kasumi’s cute bra and this could possibly be Hanako at her most lunatic and it’s absolutely glorious. Later Hanako’s looking on a bra site for something pretty with the intent on making her “bra-debut” only to discover that due to the way chest sizes are measured, she’s not an A-cup like she presumed but the smaller AA-cup, suffice to say that doesn’t sit well with the poor girl…

This whole scene was magic as Hanako went more and more insane.

I see, and the third segment? I couldn’t even remember the third one until I looked it up, which should speak of its memorability. It’s not a bad segment it’s just a joke that’s kind of been done before by other shows (and I couldn’t possibly think of an actual example so take my word for it) where Olivia is playing a new mobile game and it looks all cutesy on the surface but it’s actually a super violent and sadistic shooting game. It did bring back a character we hadn’t seen since Episode 3, the president of the Shoji club who ended up getting compound fractures over her entire body—and that was a fun reference if kinda pointless. Though it’s worth mentioning the segment itself is called ‘Fairy Tale Battle Royale’ and I can’t help but think someone naming the segments was just trying to cash in on some of that sweet SEO with ‘Battle Royale’ games being all the rage at the moment.

At least they didn’t get called the c-word by their fellow online gamers like Chio did!

Aren’t you doing that too by even mentioning it? …so what if I am! Jeez! I’ve got to make a living somehow!

And the final segment? We’re introduced to a hand-drawn 2v2 game called ‘Paper Wars’ in which players take turns drawing something to try and defeat what the previous team has drawn—oh and Maeda’s there because we need that Maeda fix in our finale! It’s a short segment with a bunch of silly images and accompanying “powers” that they describe each character having with each character becoming more and more overpowered in increasingly ridiculous ways than Hanako observes “how do we make this end?” and then the show cuts to the end-credits. Absolute perfection! I couldn’t think of a better way to end this series, it’s dumb, it’s over-the-top, it’s meta, it’s Asobi Asobase!

The perfect image to leave this review of this absurd series finale on.

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All Cell Breaks Loose – ‘Cells At Work!’ Episode 12 Review

All Cell Breaks Loose – An Anime QandA Review of ‘Cells At Work!’ Episode 12

What’s the show? Cells At Work!, Episode 12.

And what’s this episode about? This is the penultimate episode—part one of a two part season finale—and the first half of the episode kind of gets off to a slow start and I was a little bit confused about why we were having AE3803 introduce her new kohai (junior) to literally everyone who’s ever been on the show. I mean not that it’s not absolutely adorable watching AE3803 getting flustered and perturbed by how cool, calm and collected her kohai is but I was ~kind of~ struggling to see the point—and then shit got real…

Oh? Like something out of a disaster movie a bomb goes off, the shockwave evaporating buildings and sending debris flying—the whole place goes into a panic as bodies are strewn everywhere and alarms are sounding.

Oh no, what’s happened? Well the body has taken life-threatening injuries to the head region and as a result everything is bad—the immune cells are being deployed to the site of the incident to make sure germs don’t get in, and the platelet’s are being mobilised, meanwhile blood pressure is skyrocketing meaning our protagonist and her new junior are finding themselves in uncharted territory.

So how’s this ‘serious turn of events’ justify the low-key start aside from being a contrast? Well for one thing it kind of comes out of nowhere, sure we knew something bad was about to happen by virtue of the episode’s title but I don’t think anybody expected it to this extent. Not only that the seriousness of the tone kind of hits hard—like it’s not mucking around, this is legitimately devastating and confusing and terrifying for the cells, which brings me to probably the most important part at least from a character point of view.

And what’s that? Despite all the chaos, AE3803 remains calm and collected—almost the opposite of what she normally is, while her kohai is all manner of panicked. And it’s not just some out-of-character change for AE3803, she’s been through this to varying extents—she’s practically a veteran by this stage, so it makes sense that she’s composed in the face of this emergency.

Anything else you wanted to add? Before all the ~shit~ went down, there’s a moment where White Blood Cell looks back at Red Blood Cell and it was such shameless ‘ship bait but I still loved it! My new goal for this series is for Red and White to share a kiss by the end of the season, maybe I’m expecting too much but I want it so bad now!

Find someone who looks at you the way White Blood Cells looks at Red.

Uh-huh, so how’s the episode overall? Probably one of my favourites, if only because the dramatic shift between light-hearted episode and super-serious episode was pulled off with such gravitas and flawless execution that it was hard not to be awed—hopefully next week’s conclusion will be just as excellent!

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