It’s time for the movie to begin, but there’s some romance continuing to blossom in the rain filled air.
What They Say:
It is the first day of summer vacation and the first day of the movie shoot. Remon tells the crew that the movie is about an alien, who comes to earth, and has an encounter with a boy. After a tough day of shooting, Tetsurou drops a bomb on Kaito.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As the series muddles along, it’s hitting that amusing point of self reference in a way where you wonder just how much certain parties know about the truth. With summer vacation having arrived, the gang is under Remon’s control now as she’s wrapped them up into her filming of a movie and she intends to right it for all its worth. While only Kaito and Ichika know the truth about what’s going on, Remon has designed a movie that revolves around an alien girl that has come to Earth and the young man that has fallen head over heels for her. Of course, there are differences, but putting Ichika into the role of the alien certainly is a bit blunt. It’d work better if they used someone else since they could play off of it more instead of going for the overly obvious route.
A large part of the episode focuses on the group going through the motions, especially with Ichika being all awkward and not terrible capable as an actress. That sets some of the mood since it’s cute but fluffy and in the end it’s pretty darn tiring for everyone involved as the shoots go on for awhile and there’s plenty to do. That does leave Kaito and Ichika a pretty good amount of time together at night when the recuperate from events and talk about what’s been going on. The continuing moments of bonding between them is one of the main things that happens in each episode and this one is no exception when you get down to it.
A little more is thrown into the mix as is expected as Kanna is starting to realize she’s losing her shot with Kaito and tries to figure out ways of getting closer to him. Bringing him some food in a heavy rain storm isn’t a bad idea, but she has to spend the time with Ichika as well. And unfortunately, she can’t really bring herself to hate Ichika since she’s just so friendly and outgoing. The worst enemy is one that you get along with. What does work out though is that we get some good time between Kanna and Tetsuro as they get caught in the rain later on and you can tell easily that there’s plenty that can go on here, if only the timing was right and people were proative in talking about how they actually feel. Kanna ends up becoming the most sympathetic character in the series easily after this.
In Summary:
I really still don’t know what to make of this series. I really do appreciate it on a technical level for what it achieves with set design, mood and atmosphere. I love the colors and depth to it and the way it can evoke a lot of feelings and emotions. But the characters continue to be bland overall and only now are any of them like Kanna starting to be even mildly interesting. The setup for the show is tried and true but it’s stuck in the shadows of better executed and more engaging series. There’s things to like and if you haven’t seen a ton of shows you can easily get into it, but it’s mostly still a by the numbers production. Executed well but with no real heart or emotion in it yet.
Grade: B-
Readers Rating: [ratings]
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.