Is it time for our favorite duckface to posture around and kinda fight an invading force where nothing actually really gets permanently fixed? Why I think it most certainly is!
So how about we just jump right in and do this review? Because lord knows the plot isn’t going anywhere.
Okay, so remember last episode where one of the four Akatsuki rejects looked like he got defeated by the guy with the spear?
So it looks like our heroes actually managed to take out one of the four guys! Wow good jo-
Oh wait…silly me. Apparently getting ran through by a blade just…makes your..robe come off? I..what?
And then of course another evil black trigger shows up and takes him away.
See, this is why I get really mad at shonen shows. They kind of have this tendency to do a “ah you may have beaten me but I’ll beat you next time!” (runs away). All it does it make the battle they just fought entirely pointless and make me roll my eyes as I realized I could have been doing more productive thing with my time than watch a fight that ultimately resolved nothing.
Meanwhile Konami’s still fighting the old guy who’s kind of just standing there and doing nothing. The big guy from the Tamakoma branch shows up and tells her to go and he’ll handle two of the humanoids. She leaves and then the old guy’s like
Oh FUCK YOU old man. I fucking hate this trope. Don’t get me wrong, I love Konami and don’t want to see her get hurt but the whole “I won’t fight women” thing, that just irritates the shit out of me. It’s sexist and honestly, I think it would have pissed off Konami to hear that. Shes a fighter. Your enemy could be an old person, a kid, a fucking squirrel, it doesn’t matter. See, this is the reason I got disgusted with Sanji from One Piece and why I don’t like him anymore. Fuck you old man.
That’s when retard mcneedseyesdrops shows up at the Border headquarters to fuck up the normal/non trigger members of Border’s day.
The people at the evil base are like “Hey, should we let this guy just do that? It’s not in the plan.” and the others are like “ah fuck it, let him do what he wants.”
How did this guy even GET a black trigger? Who’s like “man, this is a really great guy. I’m going to die and make myself a black trigger for him. What does he like…..do community service on weekends or something?
Then we cut back to the big guy who is having a long drawn out battle with the two dudes. Long story short, He gets beaten by the old guy but manages to stab him in the leg.
The two guys then run after Wet blanket and Chika. They catch up to them but Duckface and Jin show up and get in the way, and that’s where the episode ends.
“Ow! My old man sternum!”
If you couldn’t tell, this is one of THOSE episodes. One of the ones where there’s a bunch of action, but nothing really happens, and that stuff that does happen just pisses me off.
At first the guy who gets impaled with the spear get up and is like “welp, I lost, time to go home.” The only possible explanation I have for this is that his crappy Akatsuki cape is his trigger and when it’s destroyed he goes back to normal, which is just as frustrating because that means that he just gets to walk back and then come back later and fight again. That’s the thing, I don’t WANT to see this guy fight again. He’s not interesting, he’s not fun, in fact, NONE of these villains are even REMOTELY interesting. They’re all dead-eyed boring stereotypes.
The task of good storytelling, especially in shonen shows is to not only have interesting heroes, but villains as well. There is no problem with villains having hidden and ulterior motives, but you have to make the watcher INTERESTED in what’s going on. Either to feel sympathy for your villain or to make us love to hate them. But there has to be SOME connection. I don’t care a single thing for any of these guys. There is no build up for these guys and they kind of just literally appeared out of nowhere. They’re not imposing, they’re not threatening, and I don’t care about them.
As a comparison let’s take Raditz from Dragonball Z. He randomly shows up out of nowhere, attacks the heroes even though he’s outnumbered and whoops their face in. With him, there’s a sense of dread and a real threat. So much so that Goku died to to defeat him.
In THIS show, there’s no sense of urgency to defeat these guys, I don’t really FEEL like anything’s at stake. These guys seem more like a minor annoyance than an actual alien invasion.
I have called this show before “Baby’s first shonen” and I feel this episode proved that it’s more apt of a title then I realized. 28 episodes in and no one has died, nothing’s really felt like it’s been at stake and it feels like even the show isn’t taking this seriously. I seriously hope this show makes a sharp turn soon because as of now, I’m severely losing interest. If they’re just going to keep doing “I’ll run away but i’ll defeat you next time captain planet!” motif, it’s not even worth watching until something decisive happens.
I do not want my episodes cut up with flashbacks inside of flashbacks. I do not want random people talking about nothing. Have them beat the villains and call the battle a day. THEN you can bullshit about nothing.
Show us more of the old guy’s evil cut up stick
Not jin talking to people in a cafe for five minutes in a flashback.
Long story short, this episode didn’t do anything and it was boring.
Episode 4.5/10
-Hideki
P.S. I applaud them for FINALLY giving us a new opening. Only problem? It’s not very good.
I guess I really differ from your opinion. I find the characters interesting, and the villains as well to a certain degree. I enjoy this series and look forward to it every week.
You’re right, this is pretty much baby’s first shonen. And that’s not a bad thing. It just means that we as watchers can’t expect it to produce things that it’s not intending to produce. That would be like a watching a comedy show and being angry that it’s not showing gore. That’s an unreasonable request.
What I find really interesting in this series is how it differs from the popular shonen’s that are out there. It breaks the mold, so to speak. People here don’t really have powerups or hidden abilities. Everyone has the same tools (blades, guns, etc), which makes the tension of the fights, and the main focus, be on strategy and teamwork, and skill rather than power. The exception to the rule are the black trigger users, which is why they are much more dangerous.
So yeah. I like this series a lot. Sure, people don’t die, but honestly not every series needs people to die. I also don’t view episodes as standalone, and rather see them as a continuation of a whole, in terms of pacing and storyline progression. So I’m fine with slower episodes, since they set up the next sequence of events. Plot-wise, I find the storyline very entertaining and so far, everything has made sense. You’re entitled to your opinion, but just don’t be expecting a Black Bullet-type show from every anime.