Keep Shiro safe!
Impression
Why is this show so lewd? No, that’s not exactly the right question. Why are there so many toilet-related lewds? Most of the time the fanservice (if that’s even the right word) we’ve gotten has been fairly standard, from swimsuits to bath scenes and all that. On occasion a line is crossed into unusual territory, and at this point I have a feeling there’s someone with a toilet fetish on the writing staff. I don’t… hate it exactly, but the combination of cute girls and toilets is just something I’ve never really thought about. It’s a new experience I guess. I’m not used to it, and there’s not a lot I’m not used to. I’m sure it’s a legitimate concern on long-haul ship voyages – but aren’t you supposed to gloss over real-world issues like that?
First it was the lack of toilet paper, and now they can’t flush or shower because they’ve run out of fresh water. Why was this even a thing?! Even if this ends up being mentioned in an episode for whatever reason, aren’t you supposed to just mention it and move on?! Why are there girls staring forlornly at their panties and not wanting them to smell like seawater because its now harder to do the laundry? Why was there even a scene with Kuro sitting on a toilet and having the bidet spray salt water right up her butt? And then yelping? I think it was her butt, I’m really not sure. It’s all too lewd. Do I want to know exactly why she could tell it was salt water, as well as why it even matters? Does it… hurt when you get salt water up there? It’s never a concern when people swim in the sea, at least to my knowledge. If you taste it, then sure you can tell the difference, but… maybe she’s just sensitive there? Okay I’m going to stop now. I didn’t think it could get any lewder once they’d restored their toilet paper stocks, but then they pull something like this out (followed by scenes of them all showering in the rain). And then Mei and Tama even said they hadn’t washed for three days. Is this level of fetish pandering even allowed?
Anyway. I thought it’d just be a storm episode this week but it ended up being rather serious once it got the obligatory slice-of-life segments out of the way (although I hesitate to classify toilet lewds as ‘slice-of-life’). We had no idea Akeno’s parents had died in a shipwrecking, much less that her rescue was the reason she wanted to become a Blue Mermaid (you’d think that after developing a trauma of that night, it could have just as easily justified her not wanting to go near a ship ever again). It also explains why she places such a high value on saving people and the relationships around her, even at the cost of her duty as captain. Part of me was glad that she kept her promise to Shiro, but I really really wanted her to head out and save Shiro after she got stranded inside the sinking ship – we haven’t had any deaths so far, and are quite unlikely to have any at all, but it was really scary. It must have been terrifying for Shiro, especially after her flashlight went out and she was stuck in the darkness, in a cramped ventilator just waiting for a rescuer that might never find her. Her oxygen might have run out, or that ventilator might have been flooded – and it was all because of a cat she didn’t even like at first. You know, the couple who prompted her to go back inside were fucking dumb. They didn’t even specify it was a cat, and made a young girl search a dangerous capsizing ship by herself when she didn’t even know what she was looking for. I was just as worried as Nanoha. It would have been terrible if something bad had happened and they weren’t able to make up with each other.
Kuro looks pretty butthurt (literally, haha) that they’re now on good terms again though. I wonder if she’s going to incite some sort of mutiny or try to frame her somehow? I don’t know the extent of her dislike for Akeno, and conversely, just how far her blind adoration of Munetani-san stretches. I can definitely see her going overboard and doing something which gets her reprimanded by Shiro, and she’d try to justify it by saying she was doing what she thought was right for the ship because Shiro would be the better captain and all that. We’ll have to see.