Week in Review, 6/8 – 6/14

I watched anime this week. Isn’t that just nifty?

Go! Princess Precure, ep. 18-19

Princess Precure has been dragging for me lately, as anyone reading these posts may’ve guessed. It’s obsession with material wealth and fame was starting to become so overt as to be off-putting (the episode where the locals were merrily gushing about how wonderful Minami’s ultra-rich older brother was was pretty barf-inducing, as was the butler in an earlier episode whose greatest dream was to be the perfect butler to his employer), and the narrative was going turgid. After the introduction of Princess Twilight to liven the proceedings up a little, it all got boring again pretty quickly.

As such, I was ready to write it off, but decided I’d give it one more episode, although I wasn’t in a rush to get to episode eighteen. Luckily, and maybe in the long-run unfortunately, episode eighteen has a lot of energy and an excellent fight scene in which Twilight herself fights. Episode nineteen is far duller by comparison, as it is largely a holding pattern for the Precures, but with some more development for Twilight with her discovery of a Dress-Up Key after some mild introspection on her part in the wake of being scolded by her mother. And, while the Precures are just killing time, they do learn that Prince Dios  Helios Kanata has a younger sister… not that her identity seems too mysterious on the whole. But I think I’ll avoid giving it away for now.

(Actually, as long as I’m writing about this show, wow, was Kirara’s mom a total asshole or what? “Oh, she was just trying to distract her from her stress!” Then why the hell didn’t she just take her to a movie or an amusement park? Geez.)

Show By Rock!!, ep. 1-3

Well.

Well.

You know, even having read a lot about how bizarre SBR was when it first aired… geez, this show starts off a really bizarre. Unfortunately, though, for all its oddities, it loses its weirdness steam fast, sliding into the grave of the also-ran idol band shows (that it shares tomb space with Bakumatsu Rock just goes to show that a strange premise isn’t enough to float a show on alone). For a show that has Shirobako’s Tarou voicing a hot-pink, heart-shaped guitar, that is surely a letdown.

Already dropped it! I’ve said it many times before, but idol shows bore me, and this one is really no different.

Sound! Euphonium, ep. 10

Well, I knew something like that was coming – all those saying this was the second coming of Hyouka sure hit that one on the head! Even suspecting that any implication of homosexual romance between our lead and Reina would get drop-kicked into the deep blue sea before the show ended didn’t prevent me from some sense of disappointment, mind you. This was something that made me a bit leery of even trying to show after the internet collectively combusted over episode eight’s final scene.

On the other hand, we may still avoid the straightening of Kumiko, since we saw next to nothing of Shuuichi in this episode. With only two episodes left to go, that would seem to reduce the chance that the two will be chucked together. However, whether this means we can settle on Kumiko being queer is another matter, but at the very least I’d prefer they weren’t paired off since the show hasn’t really constructed their relationship in a way that it’d feel legit. She’s willing to chat with him about stuff related to band, which is an improvement over her complete lack of interest in interacting with him at all at the start of the show, but that surely can’t be counted as proof of a romance in the offing.

While part of my annoyance over Reina’s confession here stems from my preference for her getting together with Kumiko, I’ve also got a lot of consternation about the substance of her crush. I despise teacher-student romance, ughhhhhhh! UGH! Blech and vomit! No thank you! Sure, there is no sign that it’ll ever blossom into a relationship, the specter of it alone is odious to me, particularly as Reina is meant to be considered one of our Mature characters. And it’s disappointing to me because, ugh, come on, couldn’t we just have had her end up at the school solely because she admired his skills rather than it being she admired his skills and has a flaming crush?

Oh well. At least Ribbon-chan keeps up her whole “being the most terrible person in the room” arc. She is horrid, but I do genuinely feel some sympathy for her. She’s painfully immature, and extremely short-sighted; she is clearly troubled as things get a whole lot more serious and beyond her control when she steps forward to accuse Taki-sensei of favoritism. Sow a wind, reap a hurricane. (By the way, maybe of some interest – Ribbon-chan’s voice sounded familiar, and, lo and behold, she voiced Chocolat from Yumeiro Patisserie, fittingly enough.) In five years, Ribbon-chan’ll be the woman who swears off class reunions for the rest of her life.