badger11’s take on anime

Hey, wow, Taiko falls in love. Hard in love. The team gets lead to a plaza in Akihabara where a group calling itself Shuyuukai (Commitee of Concern for Akiba’s Future) and lead by Akada Shunichiro. Akada starts to deliver a speech concerning who being a withdrawn otaku is wrong. As he’s delivering his speech, an all-girl band interrupts his speech with their particular brand of emo death punk music. Akada tries to appeal to the band to let him finish. Kaira, the leader of the band ignores his please of gaining understanding through talking, Akada’s group is forced to back down. As the band plays, Taiko becomes attracted to Kaira as she sings.

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Ya know, every time I see Primula, I think of the tasty Norwegian cheese spread and the even tastier Norwegian mayonnaise that I grew up on.

I suppose its because this version of the show is more of clip job that we don’t see any new material. Too bad. Its like watching a Quentin Tarantino film on a television network. You know the network has edited down most of the interesting parts and yet they’re bragging about how they’re pushing the edge of broadcasting. And yet, Kaede the in psycho-emo mode was pretty interesting to say the least. The way this episode was edited makes it look like Asa collapsed from Kaede’s assault, but since its a clip show and we’ve seen that Asa had problems as a kid, I wouldn’t be surprised if that was a returning issue that just happened to coincide with this episode.

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After a sad start to this episode, Akira uses her winnings from the cage match to rent a small office space in Akihabara. She convinces the team to start a business. Page gets the idea to have the Akihabara@DEEP company act as “troubleshooters”. They’ll help solve any problems they may have in Akihabara. Yui had told them that the reason why she helped others was that “In the process of saving others, we save ourselves“. With everyone on board with the idea, Akira, Box, Daruma, and Taiko head out to hand out flyers to advertise the company. Akira is the only one handing out flyers because any male that passes by the group ignores the guys. That is until a girl asks for a flyer from Box.

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Great montage music in this episode, but I’m surprised that in some ways this show does actually rely on the manic energy of Manabi. While I liked what I saw of Mikan and Mei getting closer as friends, I’d call this more of a filler episode. I enjoyed the music more than the actual story. I blame Nodame Cantabile.

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Apparently Nodame has a mean right jab as she cold-cocks Streseman. Because she convinces everyone to let Chiaki conduct, we get to see that, as a conductor, he is adept at the technical side of conducting. Despite the complaining, even Masumi notices that the orchestra is still not up to the task. Being technically accurate doesn’t substitute for experience and the tricks of getting the best performance out of the musicians. While both Chiaki and Streseman both have the ability and the respect for the music, its obvious that Streseman also has respect for the musicians, something that we will undoubtedly see Chiaki learn over the course of the show’s run.

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I think I know what Ayu’s looking for. Either that or I’m too damn cynical. More on that later. It seems that we’ve pretty much been given a clue as to what happened to Ayu. Not surprising since the clues were there from the first episode as j.valdez mentioned. And the climax of this episode affirms that conclusion. So Ayu seems to be more than just a ghost, but is she a spirit (for lack of a better term) that doesn’t realize her situation? Is she a spirit that can cross between realms but has no knowledge of the other realm? Well, its been said before that this is a city of mysteries.

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