Just go with the flow. Just go with the flow.
What They Say:
Duck, has declared martial law on Enoshima and are hunting for Haru and JFX. After a fail attempt by Koko and Haru to stop JFX, Haru becomes the alien villain to save his friends.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the series having always had that surreal air about it, things have gone pretty much off the rails from the start here as Duck has arrived and those forces are brightly aligned to do what needs to be done. They’ve made quite an impact on their arrival here as they go around town in their massive vehicles and their biosuits going on about how the humans in the town of Enoshima are being controlled by some organism and nobody is allowed to touch water until further notice. It’s a pretty strict level of enforcement of forced drying events which doesn’t play out well for any of the ordinary citizenry that get caught up in it.
While everyone is trying to figure out what’s going on, and find Haru since he’s nowhere to be found, Haru and Koko are getting ready to do what needs to be done in order to save their friends, even at the expense of a chance to go home themselves. While the pair do the best they can, it just turns into a disaster, one that has Haru almost withdrawing into himself after it plays out. Watching that unfold as Yuki makes the decision to go and find him after an encounter with the Duck forces that ended up drying him down is well played, giving us a look at the pluck of youth and the bonds of friendship even in the face of an entire town under siege by these unusual people and their mission.
Naturally, events start to pretty much overflow here as you have the yellow suited people running around drying people, Yuki and Akira talking things out and Natsuki trying to figure out what’s going on. And poor Haru has gone over the edge after their attempt failed and it’s now messed up his mind, making him seem like a villain as he gets all classic supervillain in his approach and dialogue. It’s a kind of comical approach that’s used as people are told aliens are invading, manipulated into an evacuation and ends with a lot of time spent eating food at a mall. Throwing Akira confronting Haru into the mix just adds to the oddness of it all, leaving you on uncertain footing when dealing with what’s going on. Events play out in good, fun fashion here, but it moves so quickly and feels so fluid that it’s hard to tell where it’ll go and, in some cases, what’s really going on.
In Summary:
Of course, everything does eventually turn to fishing, which is expected and yet still amusing to see. The bonds that the boys have shared will definitely be something that comes into play as the series nears its end, so it’s no surprise that even someone like Akira has really made a change in himself by spending time with Natsuki, Haru and Yuki. This episode feels like it’s a bit over the map with what it’s doing, though the foundation was laid down a bit before, it’s just that it’s almost so garish and bright, contrasting the different kind of brightness that we had before, that it’s rather off-putting and first and comes across as very out of place.
Grade: B
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.
