When in danger, strip down. So sayeth Miu.
What They Say:
The epic battle between Akatsuki and Phil Burnett continues. Meanwhile, Miu struggles with the notion that she’s the cause of all the trouble in both worlds.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the ranking battle now pushed to the side after some less than quick thinking in the previous episode, everything finally landed in a position where Akatsuki now gets to fight. He’s had some mild moments here and there, but mostly in the series he’s come across as a somewhat perverted older man protecting a younger woman while seeing what he can score elsewhere. With Burnett having crossed over to now go after Miu, it’s set off his protective nature in a big way and he’s launched a straight on attack after seeing how damaged Miu seems. Of course, she’s kept safely to the side as the two of them go back and forth with Burnett throwing in a few verbal barbs here and there to throw off Akatsuki.
Burnett’s got his reasons for doing things and his lengthy info dump on why he’s doing it, pointless as it really feels since the core story has been long ignored, is all that Akatuski needs to here so he can make his move. Amusingly, there’s an interlude of sort sin the middle of all of this where the second half largely deals with Akatsuki and Miu getting close, with her mostly naked through “circumstances,” and the two of them have it out a bit while she copes with the poison in her system that came from Burnett. It’s the kind of stuff that works on some level in bringing the two closer through some grumbling on her part over how he’s handling things, but it’s mostly just a big way to marry the fanservice with the emotion to try and make it work. Which it doesn’t.
In Summary:
The action is decent here when it’s used, the fanservice is certainly fine and the emotion that comes out works as well with what Miu is working through. The combination of all three does not work though, and certainly not ten episodes in. I keep coming back to this point where if this was all laid out in the first three or four episodes, then some fun and then the move by Burnett, it would be a bit smoother and more engaging. But with so many episodes dealing with vapidness and fanservice, shoehorning in a story at this point is empty and pretty much distracting. It’s not what the series has been since the first episode and the shift back doesn’t work, leaving this to be another frustrating experience.
Grade: C
Streamed By: FUNimation
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.
