Concrete Revolutio #7 – Remember a few episodes ago, when Earth Girl showed up to save the day for someone? No? Well, it was only a cameo of a few seconds, but with her reappearance, and the detective club with the giant robot featured in the preview for next week, Concrete Revolutio is proving that it introduces nothing it doesn’t mean to expand on eventually. Which means we’ll all need to keep an eye out for those psychic investigators to pop up again. (You noticed they were Earth Girl’s family in the dream at the end, right?)
With another fairly straightforward story, we can sit back and enjoy the shout-outs to other superhero shows. Earth Girl herself is an obvious riff on Astro Boy. The leader of the Diamond Eaters, with her slinky black getup and mask, is the alternate-universe sibling of Doronjo from the Yatterman franchise. And, most significantly in a show which critiques the use and abuse of mass media, Kikko’s backstory is very similar to that of the heroine of Magical Princess Minky Momo.
In that show, Princess Momo (or Gigi in some translations) is sent to Earth to strengthen the connection between her fairytale kingdom and the human world, which she does by bringing happiness to others. Minky Momo is remembered as one of the best of all magical girl shows, but also for its sudden ending. Although the show was popular across a broad demographic, the toy company that was one of its major backers pulled out because it wasn’t shifting enough merchandise. So the makers of the show had Momo die in the final episode after being run over by a truck full of toys.
Like Earth Girl, Momo did her good deeds for a reason that was not ultimately altruistic. And what Ullr says to Emi at the start suggests that Kikko isn’t just on Earth to be educated about living among the commoners. Collecting souls, did he say?
(Daisuki – ADN – FUNimation – AnimeLab)
Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans #7 – This show is settling into a regular pattern of alternating battle episodes and more introspective ones. So it’s time to break out the fighting suits again as our heroes come to blows with Teiwaz’s representatives. Akihiro finally gets a chance to shine in a two-against-one fight, but the hierarchy of heroism remains intact as Mikazuki gets to deal with somone being set up as a more significant character.
After all the shooting, what brings the Turbines around to Tekkadan’s side is Maruba’s unfortunate remark that the kids may not have chosen to get their implants entirely of their free will. This is apparently not done even in the semi-civilized pirate world.
So it’s yet another shipload of new characters piling into the story, but again, the show is doing a decent job of keeping the ones we need to keep track of distinguishable from each other.
(Daisuki – Gundam.info – Crunchyroll – Wakanim – AnimeLab)
Kagewani #7 – Another week, another Kagewani pitting fairly intelligent characters against a horrifying monster. As always, it’s wonderfully atmospheric and great at making you root for people you’ve only known for a few minutes. I could write the same review over and over again…
…except for that bit at the end. So have the monsters always been with us, or was there a previous outbreak? Professor Bamba doesn’t look old enough to be anyone’s great-grandfather, but I do wonder if he’s a relative of the same guy who had that old book.
Utawarerumono: The False Faces #7 – If there was one simple way the stupidity quotient of this episode could have been lowered by an order of magnitude, it would have been to not put a giant spoiler in the freaking episode title. At least let us enjoy a bit of mystery, huh?
So, it’s 20 minutes of predictable hijinks as the spoiled princess runs wild and Rurutie introduces half the female cast to the world of fujoshi. What do we learn in the process? Well, um, there’s a princess, and there are generals, and, okay, Haku does have a point that if the centuries-old emperor can produce princesses, there ought to be more of them about.
OTOH, in praise of spoilers, one of those new generals appears to be the big baddie from the opening credit sequence. Hopefully this is a harbinger of better episodes to come.
