Hello again everyone,
Today as second post we'll talk again about the best fanservice series of this summer season 2011 named Mayo Chiki that with the introduction of a really interesting new character (and some masked introductions of another character as well) is improving the whole outlook of the series from stable to positive. (Oh, I feel like a rating agency recently)
Yes, because in this episode we get finally the full introduction of the tsundere character of the series in the form of Usami Masamune, a rather timid girl part of the Subaru fan club and declared "enemy" of our protagonist.
Why she's an enemy? Well, because Jirou is the first human beside Kanade to befriend Subaru. Even if from the looks of it, its more like a crush of Subaru toward Jirou than a simple befriending. Especially if you consider the scene of jealousy after Subaru get to know that Jirou is "dating" Usami.
She is, by the way, the most cute/hot girl of the bunch as far as character design goes (at least for me) and the general personality is, while clichè, very interesting to watch. I'm really curious if she'll become part of the harem of our protagonist as well instead of just pursuing Subaru. I don't know why, but I always lose myself when it comes to this kind of characters...
The episode manages to deliver great jokes like the "there is something there that I want" line from our protagonist toward Usami (misunderstandings are like always, the best way to do comedy in a fanservice series) and the whole experience is of an enjoyable comedy.
This series is actually a lot more enjoyable than many other series of similiar genre (like Hoshikaka and similiar) thanks to an approach more focused on making the viewer laugh/get-attracted-to-the-girls rather than the bleak romance. (that is by the way still there even if very light in quantity)
Apart from the introduction of Usami, this episode create some conflict between Subaru and Jirou related to their promise of going out together the day of the cultural festival, but hopefully everything will get resolved as soon as Subaru knows that Jirou was doing it just to save her female identity!
I'm curious in what position will take the new final girl Nakuru Narumi that is costantly spying on Konoe and Jirou without really showing itself. Another Subaru's fan? A Jirou's fan?! I'm scared both way especially after the last Dantalian no Shoka's episode.
The animation is decent, but the more time it passes, the more I find myself a little depressed that they changed so much the style from the original style of Seiji Kikuchi from which many of the wallpapers I posted till now are based on.
This is especially true when talking about Usami, she looks like a totally different girl between light novel and anime. The change is too deep to be justified by using a different designer, the manga, for example, is more similiar to the light novel original style!
By the way the character design has an extreme similiarity to the Baldr Sky visual novel series (that I loved by the way). A similiarity that is so evident that I want to take all of them home! Subaru is pretty much the carbon copy of Rain from Baldr Sky, only with short hair, while Usami looks to share some similiarity to Dr. Noi of the same series!
What else to add? I'm looking forward future episodes hoping they'll manage to keep this level of comedy/fanservice for the rest of the short series (12 episodes is the length of the whole series)
See you soon,
feal87