RobiHachi Episode 6

Boy, this episode is fanservicey. Wall-to-wall phallic symbols. Enough butts to rival Sarazanmai (honestly, I cannot stress enough just how many butts featured in this episode. Surely over 100 if you count the crowd scenes). Nobody has a shirt on at any point. Not a single female organism on this planet full of ripped guys (plus one very feminine but otherwise forgettable Guide Boy). It’s not my thing, I’ll grant you, but you’re in luck if it is. Like seriously, any fujos who had been sitting waiting for the payoff, here you go.

This whole episode kind of feels like a fever dream. And I don’t necessarily mean that in a good way because structurally, the thing is a mess. They’re on the eel planet, and our heroes and villains have finally crossed paths. And everyone’s on a mad eel binge because Earth’s oceans have been ravaged by overfishing in this universe (which I guess is probably a pretty sound prediction). Other than that central thread, the plot is nonsense and goes absolutely nowhere, but at the same time it was pretty entertaining. Yang running after Robby all roided up on eels because that’s a thing that eels do to you apparently, the sheer blatancy of the fanservice, the entirely uncalled for ass jokes… it’s lively, at the very least, and a welcome change from the usual, even if it is muddled as all hell.

At least the show is self-aware. And it made me think of that Mighty Boosh Eels song, which I haven’t thought about since roughly 2012. So that’s nice. You know what it is, though? Every episode feels like a first draft. The writers probably bang out an episode script in about the same amount of time as it takes me to finish a review, and it shows. And keeping that in mind, I guess it’s really not a bad effort.

God, the show really kicked the gayness up several notches with this episode. And yet Robby’s still going on and on about hot girls at every opportunity. This Yang/Robby relationship is veering into the deeply unsettling, though. Not that Yang being in love with Robby wasn’t weird to begin with, but the weirdness has escalated. Case in point:

Uhhh

I’m just going to sit here and hope this doesn’t veer into sexual assault territory. Because Episode 6 was not very reassuring on that front. But I will say, it’s at least nice to see the plot kicking into gear, which I think happened in earnest with this episode. We’re almost at Isekandar (probably), we’re going places. It’s a shame they had to wait until the series was almost halfway through to get to this point, but better late than never. I hope next episode can keep up the energy, because that’s really all this show needs to be reasonably watchable.