Pool episode. Need we say more?
What They Say:
Stormy Games
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Life as a young man in the Tenbi Academy is one that certainly comes across as having its own difficulties to be sure. With a number of these young men, they’re looking at their time at Tenbi to be a thing of the ages that will be a big part of their memories as they grow up and go out into the world. So they want to enjoy every moment of it that they can and push back againts some of the unfair things that have been decided. Namely the separation of certain classes, like swim class. Their ploy is certainly obvious but they do attempt to come up with a way to make it sporting. What they come up with is something better than volleyball as they opt for a water horse competition in the pool of boys versus girls.
This, naturally, leads to an immense amount of fanservice, starting with a good number of the girls changing into their swimsuits while complaining about the changes to the school since more and more boys have applied and upped the annoying quota. It’s blatant but it’s part of what’s driving the show so I love when they do go whole hog with it, even if they do white out far too much of it. While the skin is a big draw, the fun for a lot comes from the general sexuality of things and we get that in spades beyond the changing room as the tight swimsuits and copious amounts of cleavage make for easy shots to make. With the silly personalities of some of the girls, this gets played well as the water horse matches get underway.
Unsurprisingly, the match between the two sides occupies the bulk of the episode with plenty of still shots and lots of long shots of everyone going at it in the water. I have to admit that I’ve always liked this particular water sport and they have good fun with it here and even go to the obvious route towards the end, though with a neat twist. A battle between the boys and girls has plenty of tradition in the world of anime and Maken-Ki really doesn’t deviate all that much from it, and I’ll even say that most of the fanservice is in line with what we’ve seen over the last several years at the least. It’s smutty in its own way but is still largely filled with fun and little in the way of importance outside of just throwing the boys versus the girls again.
In Summary:
Maken-Ki goes for the tiniest sliver of plot here at the very end that you almost wonder why they even bothered. All the fun here is in that we’ve got a pure fanservice and fun episode here dealing with the boys and girls as they battle it out in the pool. There’s a lot of skin, a lot of swimsuits and plenty teenage angst over the boys abilities to actually get closer to the girls. It’s the kind of episode that is pretty trashy in its own way because there’s no real meat to it, but I’ll be damned if Maken-Ki wasn’t a good bit of fun here. When the show focuses on this rather than the too-serious and hard to take serious material it manages to work very well and leaves me grinning from ear to ear.
Grade: B-
Readers Rating: [ratings]
Streamed By: Nico Nico
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.