What They Say:
Unable to find her panties, Anastasia decides to go commando for the rest of the day. Arisa gets frightened by something she sees outside of the dorm and the group decides to investigate the source. All the while, Kaoruko sleeps in a feverish slumber.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Sometimes a problem does come up that’s very much of the real world that you can relate to. Or at least a number of women I know have admitted to having anyway. For Anistasia, she’s not exactly the cleanliest of residents in the dorm and as we see here at the start, it’s gotten so bad that when she got out of the bath, she didn’t have any fresh underwear to put on. Quite the dilemma for a proper young woman, albeit one that doesn’t clean or do her wash often enough. So the only thing to do is to just go without, especially when you hear something that calls your attention. The amusement comes in how she realizes after a couple of minutes of just how… refreshing it can be. Which is fun to watch with a character like her.
That panicked call that drew her out was Arisa, who was out back and claims she saw something scurrying around in the darkness. That eventually gets all of them to go together with Akito in the lead trying to figure out what it is. He’s got a healthy sense of fun about it but the girls continued to get scared (while Anastasia continues to get excited in amusing ways) while walking through the woods. In fact, it gets to go in some amusing directions at times, including her riding on his shoulders without him knowing what’s going on. But being the man that he is, he just feels that something is ever so different, especially since he had all the other girls on there at first. The woods trip itself is alright, but watching Anastasia deal with her problem throughout it makes for some very good fun.
While that works well, the rest of the episode shifts to some less than interesting material later on that has Anastasia and Akiko spending some time together. There’s some mildly interesting material as Anastasia gets a better feeling for her, but for the most part it just feels a bit like passing the time. Akiko for her part does get to spend some time with her brother, and that gives us a bit of material where she’s all lovey-dovey with him and he does a decent job of rebuffing her in the politest of ways, which is probably the worst thing he can do at this point since it still encourages her on some level. Add in deliciously brief bit with Karouko and you get a second half that doesn’t live up to what the first half worked with.
In Summary:
OniAi continues to be one of those guilty pleasure shows that I do wish worked better as a whole. The segmented aspect of the episodes tends to work in its favor since if something doesn’t work, it doesn’t drag the episode as a whole down. This one has some very fun stuff at the first since Anastasia is my favorite of the girls and she has some fun to deal with when she’s going commando. The second half just feels less focused, less humor and even less naughty material that is the shows bread and butter. Without it, it’s just bland and uninteresting. I do like the series as a whole though but wish that it was able to be just that much better so that it would have more consistent fun and silliness to it.
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.
