A new version of Medaka debuts.
What They Say:
Medaka-chan is gone; there is only Kurokami Medaka (Rev). The first act of Medaka (Rev) is to disband the Student Council, marry Oudo, and complete the Flask plan. With an emotionless Medaka, who can stop her?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With Medaka spirited away previously, her return, early according to Oudo, introduces us to a revisioned version of her that’s definitely not what Zenkichi expected. She’s powerful to be sure, but as he says plainly, she’s been brainwashed. He’s completely sure of himself, something that has been his existence from the beginning, but Medaka is ready to turn that on its head. She refutes that she’s been brainwashed but instead has been fully awakened to her true potential now, and that’s put her in a different personality mindset, one that doesn’t seem right to the student council members, especially since she’s joining the 13th Party and telling them to participate in the Flask Plan.
Not surprisingly, the student council members aren’t all that interested in doing this, which makes it easier for her to simply let them go from the council if they won’t help her become the superior being that she knows she is now. It’s not a surprising take on Medaka in that a click like this would happen with her personality, but it takes an already kind of mild character personality and makes her completely uninteresting, especially pairing her with Oudo for a good part of it. There’s naturally a bit of fighting that’s involved in the discussion, which is amusing since she’s in her straightjacket, but Maguro makes it clear that because of her personality in either form, nobody is able to really teach her anything and she just does what it is she wants to do no matter what.
While that back and forth dominates the first half, the second half wants to give us more of Medaka’s background as a young child and how her formative years were pretty strange for those not of the same world. It does touch a little bit on her abnormal ability and how it impacted her, especially in the way she was so self aware so early on about everything and whether her life really has any meaning to it. It all cycles back to the present of course as those things are all part of who Medaka is, and with its strong ties to Zenkichi of that time all those years ago it opens up something within her while they fight. It may be predictable, but it does play out decent as it goes on, especially with Medaka fighting while tears fall from her eyes as she does her best to strangle the life out of him.
In Summary:
Medaka Box Abnormal has a decent episode here but it is largely going through the motions. The events that play out with the reworked Medaka arriving on the scene here is not something that will last long as we all know and the idea that it would be self contained is not a surprise after she was off screen for an episode. The show doesn’t want to mess around with its main star too much. The reinforcement of Medaka’s past is decently done and we do get a strengthening of the bond between her and Zenkichi that has been brought about a few times over the course of the two seasons to where it is now. I do like that the two have been close since childhood and we’ve seen a few ways that it progressed, both in their youth and in more recent years, but it’s just used as the simple way to get her back into place too quickly, which it has to since the show is running only so long.
Grade: C
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.