It’s over!
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.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The arrival of grandma in the previous episode brought a touch more context to events going on with Isuca, but it wasn’t anything that couldn’t be sussed out easily enough since there’s nothing remotely original in this series to begin with. It’s been so fully interchangeable with other shows for decades that all it has going for it is its fanservice, and even that has lagged behind in huge ways. The show naturally has brought everything to this big point now as we get to the end of the ten episode run and it has to wrap up things, to a degree, with what’s going on since there haven’t been many (any?) ten episode first seasons that made it to another season under what Kadokawa has been doing.
Naturally, there’s a good bit of action to this episode because of its place in things, but it’s also well spaced out so that it doesn’t break the budget. Isuca gets to rail about her anger over the Shimazu clan and all it represents, but there’s naturally these moments where Sakuya starts to realize that as problematic as Isuca is, she may be justified in certain instances and interpreting things in a way that just makes it easier to do what she’s doing. But the moment she hurts Shinichiro? All bets are off and the violence really gets underway. And, amusingly, as they deal with the dragon-lizard thing, they discover that its blood is acidic – but only towards clothes. Suffice to say, it’s one way to get the amount of clothing reduced in the show.
As expected, there’s some mild material that, amid all the danger, has Shinichiro confessing certain things towards Sakuya and that he has strong feelings towards her, and gratitude for what she’s brought into his life, and it helps to push them together more intimately, which in turn saves the day. But honestly, the show has done so little to really make either of these two characters interesting, it’s like watching two leaves smack against each other and confess their feelings. There’s simply nothing there. And it’s all done while Isuca waits outside, thinking her initial attack did them in. The show takes the natural ramping up you’d expect, complete with Isuca’s own outfit getting torn a bit, and Sakuya and Shinichiro coming together in unison to defeat her. It’s done so by the numbers that it’s pretty mind numbing.
In Summary:
While there’s the prodding of something larger going on here, which is a given considering the manga is ongoing and this is mostly the opening chapter of events, ISUCA draws to a close and it’s later than it should be. Realistically, this might have been a decent six episode OVA series twenty years ago, but today it’s just one more brick in the wall of bland stories with milquetoast characters and nothing compelling to say. I had a bit of hope for it early on as fans of the original work talked about the fanservice side which could give it a hook and something to smooth over the blandness with some color, but the end result here is something without any style, without any heart and without anything to say. It’s entirely forgettable and will likely remain so, even if they do attempt another season of it down the line. An OVA tied to the manga is scheduled for later this year, but even that’s just being done for pure fanservice as a swimsuit episode, so that’s meant to just appeal directly to the manga fans.
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.
