Active Raid ep 2 [ Definitely Not as Bad as Those Guys ]

I will start off the bat by saying the largest issue I have with Active Raid is that the characters are almost a homogeneous being. While I enjoy every character and the tropes they present I usually classify them by those said tropes: Asami being ‘girl who wants to change everything but will eventually show me the truth of this show is as simple as the way it is already presented’ but given that title is incredibly long and impossible I decided to watch the episode again and I actually remembered most of their names. Sort of. It was incredibly difficult to remember this show’s ‘Orihime’. You know the like, well endowed orange to brown haired women with a more lackluster personality while being approachable and in this case, determined for something.

The aforementioned ‘Orihime’ is named Rin (named after a fish nonetheless, if you look up her whole name) and we get a glimpse into her slightly typical life. It makes perfect sense that one of the mentor type characters is genuinely. . .okay so she is Misato from Evangelion. I promise I’m not explicitly looking for tropes everywhere but she had an interaction with a man and likes to drink and sleep in late. Until this show starts making me cry and gets over its troping I’m going to hit it with the trope naming bat and roll with it. That being said, I love the tropes in the show and I think it only works because everyone with tropes is hilariously accurate while also an inversion. The main character is constantly trying to prove she is better than everyone in the team by not causing destruction and never messing up: often times simply doing the exact thing she refused to do. I don’t care much for Asami but it is always fun to watch her insist her superiority and be foiled again and again. I’m hoping this will happen for the rest of the series until she sees Takeru and Soichiro as her allies instead of her rivals.

Rin has been serious from episode one about the mission, while maintaining that pleasant personality she is meant to have with her appearance, and it even translates into this episode when she is willing to let her sister potentially die when her school is attacked in order to make sure the plan happens efficiently and everyone is paid the same respects in terms of rescue. While I appreciate that the episode was made in hopes of showing Asami that her ideas about her job are misinformed and conceited, I think that focusing on Rin and Asami made the show a lot more lackluster than last episode. When we had more of Takeru and Soichiro I was laughing at puns and arguments, but when we had more of Asami’s butt headed idealism I found myself bored until she inevitably failed and did the things she mocked everyone else for wanting to do. (*MY* Willwear is super special and *I* can do this mention being key offenses)

Even though Rin and Asami aren’t quite as interesting to me as the rest of the cast, I think the show is still growing and has a lot of room to continue down a positive path. The animation is still stunning and completely eyecatching (though for shame, some of the panty shots were not perfectly drawn. Offended.) while the voice acting is distinct and typically well delivered. I’m excited to get back to some of the more interesting characters next episode, but I can’t chalk it all up to Rin and Asami. A good portion of this episode was devoted to Hinata, Rin’s sister, and her very boring classmates. I understand why it was done and therefore I won’t complain, but it does make me feel a little more forgiving to consider it might not all be the failure of charisma in Rin and Asami.

Here’s hoping for more shenanigans! By the way, we got a first look at our villains in episode 2. Lets see if you can spot them in the gallery!!

Oki