Hello everyone,
Let's go to talk about the fifth and sixth episode of Baka Test to Shoukanjuu II, an anime series currently in air in this summer season 2011 that is somehow forgetting his own origin to focus on a pure violence comedy style revolving around the four couples created in the first season storyline that is Shouko/Yuuji, Yoshii/Himeji/Minami, Kudou/Tsuchiya and in the end Everyone-else/Hideyoshi.
Why I'm talking about forgetting his own origin? Because in these six episodes we saw very little of the originality in ideas and execution shown in the first season like for example the whole class battle concept that was quite interesting and could be developed a little more in this new season especially as they have a rather strong and well developed cast of characters to base their stories on. (I don't know if the content shown till now is canon in the LN, but I'm still unimpressed)
Most of the jokes, instead, in this season revolve around Yoshii and Yuuji being tortured by the triad Himeji, Minami, Shouko while unable to do anything to defend themselves. Just being unilaterally tortured, sometimes without any real reason, sometimes even without a reasonable punch line to get a laugh to. (These two episodes were particularly bad on this, gratuitous one-sided violence is not funny!)
Another "bad" note of this series till now is that even if having a rather nice cast there is no real fanservice (the scans from which they make the wallpapers are an exception) if you don't count, of course, my lovely Hideyoshi as a fanservice target. (if you do, don't worry. I understand your pain!)
But let's go and examine each of the two episodes. The first fifth episode focus on the discovery by Yoshii of an unknown person in the school that is menacing Yoshii with photos stolen of his maid look of the previous episodes and Yuuji by giving to Shouko an audio message stolen with a marriage proposal causing Shouko to be almost ready to introduce him to his father.
The sixth episode following on the same track with Yuuji and Yoshii rallying up the males to conquer the female bathroom and discover who is the real culprit behind the stolen photos (that as far as we got to know from the investigation by Tsuchiya looks like it is a female). All three battles are obviously losen by the males with great joy for Himeji and Minami that are now able to torture Yoshii even more than normally!
While the whole outlook of the series is positive and the enjoyment level is still one of the top of this season (most of the jokes just works and the violence can be "forgiven"), I still have somewhat a bad taste that hopefully will go away with the future episodes.
Judging from the eyes of one that like me has read the manga, the whole anime series looks strange. Almost out of place, as most of the events are narrated in a rather different way (just rewritten from scratch in some occasion). Especially Akihisa and Yuuji are shown as completely different in abilities in the manga making them less idiot than what the anime is making us think.
Akihisa was able to take a B class level user with his evasion capabilities right from the start (during the battle against the B class at the beginning) and Yuuji had B-grade level of score after starting to study to face the upcoming class battles (just some chapter after he lose with A class in the elementary school level test). Shouko was also much less abusive in the manga, while remaining extremely obedient to any order given out by Yuuji.
I'll keep watching this and we'll probably do another post on it in the future. Let's hope they'll be able to improve with the second half of the series that'll start next week!
See you soon,
feal87