Studio Trigger steps into the short-form world.
What They Say:
Luluco is a normal junior high school girl whose father is a detective at the space patrol. One day, she visits the Ogikubo branch of the space patrol to save his father who is suddenly frozen. But she happens to be assigned as a space patrol by the chief director Overjustice. Wearing a space patrol suit with strange functions, will she able to save her father and keep the peace of Ogikubo from space criminals? And will she fulfill her life as a junior high school student, including love and study?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The Ultra Super Anime Time block has provided for a lot of good shows overall, especially in the previous season where they went big with some great variety. With this show, we get Studio Trigger looking to have a lot of fun with things. The series revolves around middle school student Luluco who lives in an area where aliens have immigrated and set up shop alongside everyone else. Her life is fairly normal in a lot of ways as we see at first with her father, allowing for the kind of comedy that Trigger did so well in Kill la Kill with design and exaggeration, combined with the sharp and brutal writing that lets Luluco really get under her father’s skin.
Of course, the show also shows us how bad and crazy things can be when her father accidentally eats something from the aliens ide that actually ends up freezing his whole body. That she shakes him so hard he falls over and shatters a bit results in some great humor with her panic and overreactions to it all. That has her going for help from the Space Patrol but it ends up being a situation that will cost a lot of money, hence being offered a job there to serve as an undercover agent to help out at school. It’s a “standard” setup in a lot of ways and you can see the way the structure is going to work in a basic sense. And it does work, largely because of the mixture of Luluco’s disbelief at what’s going on half the time and the weirdness of the situations. It’s an idea setup for Studio Trigger to work with to showcase their wacky side and an anything-goes kind of approach. It’s like Panty & Stocking without the overt sexuality.
In Summary:
Studio Trigger has set themselves up right here with what they want to do and I can definitely see it being very appealing – in doses. This is the kind of show that would just overwhelm me if it was a full length episode by simply being too much. With it coming in at just about six minutes when you excise the opening and closing aspects, it works to hit a lot of humor, weirdness, and wackiness in the right way. It’s ideal for the short form format and Trigger has a good sense of it here, something that other shows can take a few episodes to really get a handle on. There’s a lot of potential here for fun once it gets things established and if we do get a growing supporting cast for it that adds a little more nuance. I already love her father, but that was a given considering the way he presents himself – eyebrows and all.
Grade: B+
