Isn’t it a little late to be introducing the characters?
What They Say
It’s the Mediator’s first day of her new job and she is already a god.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The elation of last week begins to crumble as instead of building off the previous episode’s truimphs, Humanity Has Declined decides to go full-bore Haruhi Suzumiya.
It’s always been clear that the chronology has been scrambled, but this week’s episode, episode 10, appears to be the canonical first episode, so that it doesn’t even have the OP and ED animations, but goes for an extended prologue and conclusion.
This would have been great for episode 3. You have the two factory episodes, starting things in the middle of the action, and then you go back to the beginning and explain the scenario. What the Humanity Has Declined staff hasn’t seemed to notice is that their show is almost over.
Going back and introducing the characters now feels pointless.
The backstory is without any surprises, either. Watashi goes to school to be a mediator, so she doesn’t have to work in the fields. She returns home to her grandfather who gives her orders. He tells her to go find the fairies, and she can’t find them. Then she decides to bring along some sweets, and what do you know, it turns out the fairies really like sweets! As was established in episodes 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 previously.
It takes 7 minutes and 48 seconds for the fairies to first appear, and 11 minutes and 3 seconds before they speak. If we were supposed to be surprised by their intelligence, their goofy sarcasm, or their funny voices, the surprise has long been taken away. We know all of these characters, we know all of the character development patterns, and we can guess the inevitable punchline.
The story this week involves Watashi kidnapping some fairies and deciding to give them names. They mistake her for some kind of god, and end up building a statue to her in thanks for providing names.
This would have been much more effective had it not come after last week’s episode, where the Fairies declared Watashi their queen, she embraces it, and grows corrupt on the power. By the time this “first” episode has aired, it’s been topped in almost every way.
So here you have a perfectly good first episode, utterly sabotaged by using a serveral-years old gimmick that adds nothing to the show. And I just have to ask, “Why?”
In Summary
A solid introduction to the characters and world made pointless by coming at the end of the series after we’ve already figured out the characters and the world. Why? Why would you do this? Either make this the first episode, the third episode after an in media res story arc, or don’t bother at all. The episodic nature of this series makes scrambling the timeline utterly pointless. I’m just flabbergasted at how one of the most promising summer shows has just been sabotaged consistently throughout its run.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment: Sony VAIO 17″ HD screen
