Enter… grandma!
What They Say:
Shinichiro Asano is a penniless high school student who decides to look for a job in order to pay his rent. His teacher suggests that he find work doing housekeeping. While working for the Shimazu family, he meets Sakuya, a beautiful girl who comes off as a bit crude and selfish. But Sakuya is also the 37th head of the Shimazu family and works as an exorcist, capturing and eliminating unwanted creatures. One day, Shinichiro accidentally frees one of these creatures and they must cooperate to recapture it. less
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Now that we’ve had a few minor reveals, ISUCA is moving quickly towards its conclusion with it being just a ten episode season. And that means a few key points have to be hit in order to hit all the usual notes that a series like this has done. While it’s not been overly condensed due to its episode count, it’s avoided a few familiar filler-familiarity episodes and that’s worked out fairly well for me overall even if the show itself is pretty weak. But now that we have our opponents name set and things escalating in a decent enough way as well as bits of the past having been highlighted, things are about to get serious now. “Serious.”
Of course, it’s not going to get right to that serious stuff and instead has to deal with Sakuya keeping her distance from Shinichiro and Shinichiro’s only male friend trying to get him to be all pervy. His lack of being pervy is him being serious though, or at least that’s how it should be viewed. Not surprising either is that the first half deals with a few things, including a strained relationship between Sakuya and Shinichiro, which will get fixed quick enough now that Isuca is making her move again and toying with all them because of her heightened power. With more places falling to her attacks, it’s certainly getting serious, but Sakuya and her group are unable to seemingly do anything about it.
The show does spend its time prepping things for the finale, and that means bring in one of the bigger eye-roll moments I have with a lot of shows by having Sakuya’s grandmother arrive. She is, of course, younger looking than Sakuya and is dressed like a middle school kid. That just reeks of awfulness in so many ways, especially with panty shots, that it just kills what little tone the show it has since it does in its own way just expand on the harem idea. Thankfully, she gets taken down by Isuca in a surprise attack, which helps to rally everyone to going up against Isuca even more. It’s a weird bit of sudden violence, but the show has had so many pacing and tone issues from the get go that it doesn’t surprise me. With a little twist thrown into the mix about said grandmother, the bulk of what we get in the final act here of the episode is action, which means it follows every. other. episode. this. season.
In Summary:
The penultimate episode of the series largely plays out the same as most episodes of the series, but with the difference in knowing there’s only one more left. Which is a good thing as this series has been a slog to get through. There have been cute and fun moments at times, but this episode just shows how formulaic the whole thing is once again and that there’s no heart to it. Everyone is so superficial and paper thin that it’s hard to get invested in anyone even a little bit, and combined with mediocre at best animation and designs, it all falls apart far too easily. There’s not much here that stands out other than the introduction of Sakuya’s grandmother, but there’s enough of a cheat in there that it’s very easy to be dismissive of it all.
Grade: C-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
