My favorite part of the episode was Lettuce acting as a rock. Good job~
So wow, the problems I was worried about before got worse with this episode. I really didn’t want them to rush things even more than they already have but this had to be the fastest paced episode we’ve gotten so far and it’s really making me nervous. It also doesn’t help that the animation looked worse this time as well, and again I have to point out how I feel about the voice actors.
So now with Pudding in the fray, the girls are going to go after and awaken their fifth Mew Mew member, Zakuro Fujiwara – an incredible singer and actress who’s very famous and has a fan in Mint. Well, a simple fan would be an understatement. Mint is completely obsessed with her and is more gung ho about this mission than the previous ones for obvious reasons. Through lots of research, Mint uncovered that there will be open auditions going on for a show Zakuro will be in and since she will judge the auditions, the girls take this chance to enter and try to get as close to her as possible. Pudding is left out because she’s too young, but she crashes the party later anyway.
We opened this episode up with Ichigo being stupidly happy about her choker, and her seeing Ryo in a different way, but this episode was mostly about Mint and her mission to awaken and recruit Zakuro. We’ve barely had any spotlight on Mint so I guess it was nice that this episode was mostly about her and showing a different side to her personality, as well as us getting to know her such as her being a good singer and a talented dancer. Mint is typically seen as a bit of a snobby princess, always having a cup of tea while Ichigo is working in the cafe. She’s a little sassy (but nowhere near like in the original) and she’s calm and serious as well, so seeing her character totally flip this time was entertaining. In fangirl mode she’s pretty cute, losing herself in passionate tangents as well as daydreams that are just so out there. She’s a lot more self conscious of herself and her appearance and it’s endearing. She’s cute and it was fun, it’s too bad that this was not a good episode. Also, we’re still missing how Mint even came across and met Ryo and Keiichiro. There’s still a lot we don’t know about those two anyway and they hinted that we’ll learn more about Ryo eventually, but even though this was a mostly Mint episode, it still feels sort of surface level.
Zakuro is a gorgeous and very cool character and she acts like how I remember from the little bit I saw of her in the original. She’s serious and reserved, but she’s incredibly talented. I have to say, I thought it was funny that we suddenly got thrown into a music video during the middle of that performance but that song and her singing were pretty great. And those outfits and the sword gave me strong Shoujo Kageki Revue Starlight vibes so that made me happy. The auditions weren’t much to write home about but they were amusing more or less. Again, Lettuce getting the role of a rock is still funny.
However, the episode was extremely rushed. Zakuro’s transformation was basically two seconds, Kish disappeared as fast as he appeared and he barely put up a fight. Zakuro barely reacted to everything that happened on the roof and questioned nothing, turning down the girls and hurting Mint’s feelings by calling her annoying and then leaving. Ryo anticipated this and this is going to be an obstacle the girls will need to overcome, so this won’t be the last time we’ll be seeing Zakuro anytime soo.. Like I had said about Ichigo’s voice actress a couple episodes ago, I felt the performance for Zakuro was very off. Again, nothing against these new girls. They’re all young and new and I hope for the best in their careers, but I felt like Zakuro’s actress was trying too hard to make Zakuro’s voice deep and it didn’t sound natural. It was really forced and it made things sound really awkward, even when she didn’t have that many lines this episode. Of course this isn’t the fault of the voice actress but with the voice director, because these girls are new and are debuting with this project. I definitely expected Zakuro’s voice to be deep but nothing like this. And Zakuro herself was fine and all, very standoffish. Her comment towards Mint at the end sort of came out of nowhere since they had barely talked to each other. If the two had maybe spoken with each other more before that rooftop fight totally in fangirl mode, then maybe I would have felt more of an emotional impact with the “You’re annoying.” line, but I didn’t. They barely interacted and Mint’s reaction was maybe a little too dramatic. But I guess I can understand it. You meet the person you’ve admired for so long, only for them to basically spit on you. Never meet your heroes I guess.
But Zakuro is the fifth Mew Mew so the girls need to recruit her somehow. Zakuro seems to be dealing with her own issues however, so we’ll see how the group will come together.
Some Maya Tendou vibes~
