Active Raid Episode 3 [ Auto-Tune Idol Moe Moe Madness ]

Every episode of this show makes me think I hate it, then I love it, then of course I think it’s the stupidest show ever, and then finally makes me think that it is exactly what it wants to be and that is something to applaud it for. Asami has to start the episode embarrassing herself in apology for the destruction she caused which is beyond humorous and the show is finally starting to soften her successfully. I feel as if they were trying to do it in the prior episodes but they were really lagging behind. This was also the first episode to show this series might not be an entire gag: there are several moments of serious content that made me pause and celebrate because as has been notorious on this blog- I cannot cover straight comedy. There is something about being genuinely entertained without a hint of sadness and suffering that makes me unable to talk about it- maybe I’m just a morbid person.

The most interesting parts of the episode were twofold: Finding out the major villain is a terrible person with psuedo-slaves he calls names and finding out that the idol popstar in the show was a boy brought me anger for the former and absolute joy with the latter. Who knows, by the end of this I could love the villain for his kooky main character sabotaging antics (I won’t, he reminds me of a lamer version of Akura no Ou from Kamisama Hajimemashita) but I’m not gonna bet my cookies on it. It was hilarious watching him hack people and watching them fail at coordination, but otherwise he’s just some hacker.

It was kind of sweet to see the Willwear user this week. He was basically made out to be a creeper who loves Amu and demands their time and personal singing, but Amu immediately is like “I’m meant for everyone, don’t make me dislike you” and in complete opposition to the crap we normally see the guy starts crying and goes ‘you’re right’. Crap. I really love this 36 year old loser, he is probably one of my favorite things about the episode. He spends the whole episode fighting the control of everyone involved in order to just leave and respect Amu’s wishes.

It’s so hard to explain what this show is doing. To sum it up is as easy as: Bad guys try to make good guys look destructive and foolish on national tv. To stop said embarrassment one of the Willwear users gets auto tuned and pretends to be an idol which gets broadcast on tv. That’s it that’s the show! Yet it is so much more. It’s campy, it’s crazy. Before it was clearly a play on Sentai shows, but now it’s expanding into outright parody of what seems to be anime themes in general. Maybe I’m getting my hopes up too much, but even if it is just a sentai parody I enjoy watching tropes being presented and tweaked. Already characters like Asami are much more fun to watch.

I’m growing more invested seeing there is something serious to this show: but I don’t know how far it will go. While the ideas were more serious the tone shift was not always properly displayed. I’m anticipating many more hijinks before we get proper shifts in tones or theme changes, but I think I can be patient.

By the way they destroyed places again. This is a pretty big deal so. . .there you go.

Oki