Buttack on Titan?!
What they say
Nozomi Kaminashi is a fantastic gymnast, and in order to help her family out of poverty, has decided instead to become a competitor in a new women-only sport, Keijo. A lucrative endeavor, Keijo is a popular gambling sport where female players stand on floating platform on the water and must push other players off by only using breasts and buttocks. Will Nozomi be able to make it big in the world of Keijo?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
This episode starts out with a heartfelt scene from Aoba. Heartfelt and tear-filled though it may be, I don’t think I can get over the fact that she was crying about how her Gate of Bootylon failed to land her team a win in their battle—and speaking of battles, it’s finally Nozomi’s time to shine in the last battle of the tournament. Of course, what battle would this be without the rival who was introduced at the beginning of this arc?
Maya Sakashiro. Blonde hair. Red eyes. Age 20. She’s ranked second within Suruga’s school, and with good reason. She’s got some super shōnen butt technique that allows her to negate all of Nozomi’s attacks. Maya isn’t the only one battling, however. With her are three others: The Cool Beauty, Big Bertha, and Wannabe Sirzechs. Each of them has a unique ability, and one of them even has a technique named Attack on Hip, an obvious play on a certain anime about giant naked people eating little clothed people.
This battle takes place on a land built like an ancient, Japanese castle. Of course, Nozomi starts the fight off with a bang by going straight for Maya. Meanwhile, Kawai and Rin face off against Wannabe Sirzechs and The Cool Beauty. Both battles are intense, filled with all the goodness one would expect from a tournament-style anime, plus a healthy heaping of fan service. Actually, given the mask-wearing Sirzechs Wannabe, I’m kinda surprised there was no Jet Stream Attack, which I had been expecting. Even so, we did get to see her and The Cool Beauty combine, and not in a DBZ style way either.
Nozomi is in perfect form during this episode, a real fool, and I mean this in a loving way. She honestly reminds me of all my favorite shōnen heroes growing up. Her personality, the way she fights as a keijo player, it’s all reminiscent of characters like Naruto Uzumaki, Monkey D. Luffy, and Son Goku. Watching her audacity during this battle made me laugh so hard. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone who was willing to stick their face into someone’s butt crack in order to discover the secret to their opponent’s technique.
Because there is one episode left before this series ends, this episode ends on a cliff hanger. I can’t complain too much. They’ve built up a lot of up. I’m expecting the next episode to be explosive. If there was one issue I had with this episode, it would be that the quality of the anime’s artwork dropped. I noticed it almost immediately, but there are several instances where the character’s feet lack toes, which means they look like blobs. While that’s fine during intense action scenes, it looks odd when characters are standing still. Outside of that, this episode was a blast.
In Summary
Outside of the slight drop in art quality, I really enjoyed this episode. It had everything I was expecting, from Nozomin’s outrageous antics, to intense battles, and it even had shonen-esque speeches about friendship and winning together. The episode has a strong beginning and ends on a cliffhanger that’s as frustrating as it was intriguing. I can only hope episode 12 lives up to the hype.
Grade: A
Steamed by: Crunchyroll
