Pew pew pew! I’m totally a lighthouse and not an interpretation of the Tokyo Sky Tower!
I’m soooooo naked!
I’m so angsty I watch my pornography on the roof
*POW* *BOOM*
I knew I should have worn clothing more appropriate for a secret mission!
There is no way of reviewing humour. It's always personal and at the mercy of such fickleness as "I wasn't in the mood". Enough then to say that Baka Test is my kind of humour; the kind where the jokes are obvious from the setup but the punchline is so much more over-the-top than expected. The kind where the minute-to-minute plot is irrelevant as long as the laughs keep on coming. The kind where with all the rules established, it's just a case of exploiting the environment.
I called the first series a "thigh-slappingly hilarious comedy" and the second is no different, primarily because there is nothing new here. No great switch-ups or new characters only more of the same but tweaked and intensified. The reliance upon Hideyoshi's effeminate appearance is dialled down and tertiary characters such as Akihisa's and Minami's siblings are sidelined for a greater focus on the core love triangle. It's here it's at its weakest with a lengthy foray into Minami's move from Germany and then a confession that leads to confusion that leads to drama that eventually leads to a reset. Lacklustre and bereft of the sharp eye that makes the comedy so great, it's dead weight when compared with the homosexual overtures from Miharu and Toshimitsu that manage to be more genuine despite being played for laughs.
To resurrect their Blood franchise, Production I.G. enlisted the help of CLAMP to spawn the latest entry, Blood-C. Beginning like a relic of the past with stereotypical do-gooder Saya, candy-sweet twins, a mysterious café owner and flowery nonsense spouted by an unseen narrator, the opening episodes settle into a comfy monster-of-the-week format with a dash of playground idealism. Then people start to die. A lot of people. Starting with innocent bystanders then progressing to, what was assumed to be, main cast members, the carnage is relentless - the final episode a murderous orgy of violence and bloody slaughter set to a grand orchestral score.
It's certainly unexpected.
The first time the show springs a meaningful death - not overall-wearing red-shirts - it is brutal, unequivocal and has all the trademarks of a hideous dream sequence. Amazingly, it's to the series' credit that this discord is maintained. Even the denouement, a clever in-context breaking of the fourth wall, feels like protagonist Saya is should wake with a gasp and clutch at a fevered brow. The ribbing of so many tropes is elegantly done, whether it's the ethereal dog's comment on Saya's lack of prudishness or the hardened father's love of sweets.
Usagi Drop proves that good characters and a solid story never go out of fashion. It divorces itself from so many anime tropes - big eyes, sparkles, eyecatches - that it seems hard to understand why it was animated in the first place. With both the time-spanning manga and feature film recently released, like Kimi ni Todoke, you can now pick your particular brand of drama. But as the curtain closes on the final episode, it's obvious that without the watercolour palette, Rin's sparrow smile and the abstract perfection of animation, the series could only be half as charming and half as endearing.
The story cheats somewhat by placing Rin as a cogent six year-old rather than a bratty teenager or howling babe, either end of that spectrum and moments such as losing one's first teeth, or going to school for the first time are lost and replaced by times far less adorable. Similarly Rin's demeanour as a mature proto-maid and Daikichi's chronic sensibility smooths over a lot of the abrasiveness that adopting a growing child would entail. Like all good stories though, it is brevity that keeps the story tight. Eleven episodes means omissions and dangling threads are many, but crucially these do nothing to alter the warmth at the heart of the series.