Ah, a maid cosplay cafe where the maids are intentionally rude and hostile towards their customers…
What They Say:
Thinking he is doing him a favor, Orito invites Ayumu out to a restaurant run by the vampire ninjas, which offers a full course of unsociable service. Afterward, the two of them engage the ninjas in a mood-changing contest, to win the cost of their meal.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With some fun had recently about Ayumu’s problem in being seen and his attempts to get away from it all, the show definitely had some fun with events but also felt kind of listless overall. I liked the idea of everyone finding this out about him, even if they don’t understand it, because it played up the technological realities of the day and made for a more challenging environment. Ayumu’s reaction was pretty normal so seeing him retreat into things a bit and just now having fun with his model kits and the like as he tries to put more distance between him and the event is rather fun. Especially since the others alternate between mocking him and being totally into it, especially since he’s building a massive Full Metal Panic layout.
In an effort to get him out of the house a bit and do something a little different, Orito is suggesting something quite intriguing when you get down to it by taking him to a specialty restaurant. The place turns Ayumu off at first since it’s a cosplay restaurant and he’s still smarting from all the pictures that were taken, but there’s much more to the place. While it seems like a normal cosplay place at first, once you get beyond a certain curtain, it’s instead a darker and more ominous cosplay place as the maids there are pretty dismissive, rude and unsociable as they put it. And it’s run by the vampire ninjas which just has Ayumu rolling his eyes at first but then starting to fear the whole thing even more.
There’s a lot of time spent with some of the silliness of all the vampire ninjas in there and those that aren’t able to deal with it well, including Haruna stepping in to play for awhile and completely having the right attitude. It is cute since Haruna in particular uses it as part time work and just has fun with it, but you also have to really feel for Ayumu who just comes across as more and more worn down with everything that’s going on. Which in turn is how I find myself feeling about this season so far. There’s always the kind of violent harem aspect going on here, made even more intense with this particular location, but it’s just going through a series of seemingly pointless motions for the majority of it.
In Summary:
While I had a lot of fun with the first half of the first season with the characters and their quirks, it was the second half that lost mere. This season, the first half is coming across as pretty pointless so far and it’s just reducing the enjoyment episode by episode. I do like the characters, but it’s essentially spinning its wheels at the moment. It may be fun for an off chapter here and there in the manga, but in this incarnation of it we’re just going for sometimes silly gags and little more than that. It has moments where I am smiling and enjoying it, but the more it seems like it’s not going to try and go anywhere – either with a story or real character development – the less I become interested in 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.
