Wait a minute, was that opening scene with the villains a Kaze ga Tsuyoku Fuiteru/general Hakone Ekiden reference? An entire planet’s worth, in fact. Two, if you count the fact that the main planet of the episode is called “Haccone” (which is a kappa planet as opposed to anything to do with running, so that’s fun). Damn you RobiHachi, you’ve just bought yourself another episode.
But no seriously, this episode was a big improvement compared to how the previous few have been. It wasn’t anything stellar, but it had a fun, zany feel that reminded me of the Mars episode in that it seemed to have a lot more effort put into it. Haccone is a super pretty planet and the animation looked a decent bit better than it had before, so it ended up feeling like less of a chore to watch than the last two episodes did.
I am still weirded out by how hard they’re going with this tourism theme, though. I mean, space tourism is an interesting concept for sure, but when you get down to it it’s more or less “regular tourism… in space!”. And you can’t really get a lot in the way of story out of something like t
hat.
Having said that, there was a little more going on with this episode, and the whole visa plot was reasonably entertaining. I actually did get a laugh out of the punchline of the episode, i.e., Isekandar being a visa-free zone (Isekandar sounds weirder and more sinister with each passing episode and I’d really like them to just get to exploring it already), and I enjoyed the dorky wombat crime boss gag as well.
I felt like there were a lot more fun character moments than there have been in the past while, especially with Hatchi who was having a particularly cute 20 minutes this week. Him accidentally stealing the tourist girls from Robby was one of my favourite moments of the series so far. Honestly though, Robby really, desperately needs to stop yelling about how straight he is every 5 seconds. Aside from the fact that it’s tiring as fuck watching him pine after every woman he sees, he is fooling precisely nobody. Actually, Robby could do with less focus in general. It seems like everything revolves around him and his shenanigans, and Hatchi remains this ultra-passive entity who just goes with the flow. I guess maybe that’s just how he is, a flow-goin’ guy. But I’d like to see him take the reins at least once before the series is out. There’s time, I guess, and we’re definitely going to hear more about his mysterious upbringing. It seems like there’s an awful lot of plot for them to get out of the way in relatively little time, come to think of it.
I hope we get a little more of the villains next time, which is absolutely not something that I thought I would be saying when this series started. But I’m actually finding myself enjoying their scenes more than the main cast’s. Robby is starting to get a little bit exhausting. And hooray, Isekandar… soon? Maybe?