My health insurance doesn’t cover this.
Impression
I won against Maya!
| WIN | LOSS | DRAW |
| 1 | 1 | 1 |
I can’t seem to decide on who the best Chimame is, between Maya and Chino. It doesn’t help that they all invoke different kinds of hnnngg, although that’s good in its own way – Maya doesn’t have that pure, fluffy ‘mofu mofu’ feel that Chino does, but as an energetic, genki loli with a fang she… does things to me in her own right. And she’s short-haired too, I think there’s a general deficiency in the industry of short-haired lolis. Sorry, I’m conscious that this is starting to sound weird.
As you may have guessed, the main purpose of this post is to advertise the advent of the second coming, otherwise known as the day when the full versions of both the OP and ED grace us with their presence. No-Poi was out on Monday if I remember correctly, but I wanted to wait until Tokimeki Poporon appeared too – so I could talk about them together. I’ve never really talked about anison before, but this is quickly rising to meme status amongst Gochiusa fans so it’s worth mentioning. In general, both of them carried themselves to the end well enough, like I’d expected – it’s the biggest hurdle really, so it’s thankful in a way. It didn’t do a Parasyte for example (I am aware this and that are on completely opposite sides of the anime spectrum as you can get, but there we are) in which had the band, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, do a vaguely lyrical OP for the first 90 seconds before lapsing back into their traditional screaming for the rest of the song. Which, in my humble opinion, ruined the entire thing.
Beyond that, what I was really after was a nice change to the backing instrumentals for the second verse, which tends to be really fun since they often mess around with the instruments and rhythms then. It was a pleasant surprise to see individual versions though, which I don’t remember having for either Daydream Cafe or Poppin Jump. I have to say, while I was really looking forward to individuals for the ED, it ended up feeling really weird hearing them sing it by themselves. It sounded a little… incomplete? I don’t know, it seems like Tokimeki Poporon is most hnnnnggg with all three Chimames together, since the combined version is godly.
HAATO MOFU, MOFU
ATTAKAI KIMOCHI
OSUSOWAKE, SHIII TAAAAAIIIIII
I don’t feel that way for No-Poi at all, especially for the Chino version. The Chino one is perfection. My first reaction was holy fuck this feels SO ILLEGAL. I wanted to pause the song because it felt like I was overdosing on something. It was also the first one I listened to after the main one, which may have raised my expectations for them a little too high – I expected Cocoa and Rize to be good, and while Rize was great Cocoa was only okay. Chiya’s sounds very onee-san like, and Sharo sounded a little less Sharo-like than I thought it would. But seriously, the Chino one. Minase Inori is incredibly talented, having sung GENOCIDE AND GENOCIDE last season as Carol from Symphogear – who was a character filled with lots of hate and negative emotions. Going from that, to mofu mofu Chino? That’s some amazing range for a newbie VA – when Hanazawa Kana started, she had literally one voice. I haven’t been in this in love with a voice since my eternal seiyuufu Yuuki Aoi.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x38ri0x
https://soundcloud.com/knighteo/no-poi-chino-ver
As for the episode itself, I think the Chimame-tai have been elevated to full-time cast members. I am okay with this. And by ‘okay’, I mean I’m internally cheering. Sharo was surprisingly cool in their presence actually, I was almost waiting for her to embarrass herself adorably. What we’re seeing is a hierarchy of sorts, in terms of age – you have four of the main girls in the high school camp, and the Chimame-tai have been adopted as their (read: Cocoa’s) unofficial imoutos, with Chino increasingly being in the Chimame camp. And then above the girls there’s Aoyama and hopefully Mocha. I wonder what she’s like? I’m hoping she’s a super onee-chan, although whether that means a super siscon or the ‘ara ara, ufufu~!’ type I’m not quite sure yet. But maybe she knows the difference between the theory of relativity and the special theory of relativity.