Sept. 27, 2011
Occupant
The Internet
Dear Occupant,
Hello! From our research, you have been watching our latest anime, Kamisama Dolls! Thank you for tuning in! While our best and clearly most talented people went to work on Mawaru Penguindrum and Natsume Yuujinchou San this season, that doesn’t mean we neglected Kamisama Dolls in any way!
Hey, look, once again the only good parts of this series are the bits where Kuuko acts like a nutter. So, of course, she gets roughly a minute or two of screen time, and then she’s gone again. Kuuko’s like the wind, baby.
Kuuko’s not really a great character in the traditional sense of the term — like just about every character in this series, she has little depth at all. But she’s enjoyable because she actually injects a sense of chaotic fun into the series. Who else can you count on to smack rapists with golf clubs, shoot major politicians and run away hand-in-hand with almost-rapists? Everything in this series is so god damn dour, which is fine when it’s actually pulled off well — but week after week, the show tries to cash in chips it hasn’t earned, and it does so with cheap, stupid drama.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
Two writers walk into a bar. They sit down and order some drinks. One writer says, “Man, we’re so close to the finale! There are so many plot threads to tie up — we haven’t even touched the evil village elders since a few episodes ago. I’m not even sure what the point of this story is anymore! How are we going to deliver a satisfying conclusion to the few people left who are actually watching this show unironically?”
The other writer sits down, takes a sip of his drink and puts the glass down. Then he says, “Why worry about that shit when we’ve got TITTIES?!”
So, surprisingly enough, I actually liked this second flashback. Even when a series is annoying me, I can have an open mind if something good shows up!
There are a couple of reasons why I like it: First, it’s relatively simple. You have the three main players: Kyohei, Aki and Mahiru. There’s a straightforward scenario: The kids come across a cave with bad vibes coming from it, accidentally awaken a killer kakashi and try to fend it off and not get lasered the fuck out of existence in the process. There’s no silly bullshit drama. Just plain survival. Many stories are at their best when the drama is lean; at least for this episode, that’s definitely the case here.
KANA HANAZAWA OUT OF FUCKING NOWHERE
So, hey, here’s another character for the series to introduce and ultimately do fuck all with as the story goes on. It already has no idea what to do with the characters who are already here. Kuuko showed up for the first time in, what, two or three episodes? She does her normal Kuuko routine and then, sayonara. The detective shows up and fucks around without making any tangible progress, even though we’re supposed to believe he’s oh so dangerous and wily and getting closer to The Truth by interrogating a little girl. Koushiro forces Kirio to make up with Utao, and it’s supposed to be of interest because, ummmmmmm, actually I don’t know why. I guess it’s a big deal for these rival factions to play nice with each other, but the anime is asking the viewer to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to this rivalry. The one bone thrown the audience’s way is the cartoony nonsense in the flashback episode.
I know this scene is played off for laughs, but is it any surprise that Kyohei’s mom is apparently a heavy drinker? If I had to spend my time in this shitty, boring village with Kyohei’s oh so charismatic father, I’d turn to the sauce every so often, too. There’s also the small matter of Kyohei’s mom being involved in an anime that is crapping on what little promise and intrigue it had in the beginning.
This has been hit on in other places, but the anime is really spinning its wheels right now. A story can live on intrigue for so long before the audience needs an actual reason to care — it doesn’t even need to be 100 percent plot-related. Just give a reason to care about the characters dicking around. (And, no, last week’s episode does not count, although I guess it gets a gold star and a condescending pat on the head for effort.) This week . . . nothing really of the sort. The first half is an utter waste of time; more stupid comedy and an aside in a typhoon reveals nothing of worth except that Utao has improved with Kukuri. Her fight with Aki later in the episode showed that, as well, so really, everything that exciting adventure offered was worthless. But it did waste time! And that’s what really matters.
So I guess this is a different traumatizing flashback than the one with all the exploding shit we saw in the first couple of episodes? I will laugh if we get another rainy day flashback episode to tell that story.
This flashback concerns the story of how Aki got jailed for life and Kyohei went “Wow, fuck this shit” and quit being a Seki. The episode pushes more of the sinister nature of the village, and also puts Kyohei and Aki through trials they were not yet mature enough to endure. This isn’t a bad theme to work with, and it actually could have been good if the actual content of the episode and its execution weren’t so silly and ham-fisted.
“. . . This village is totally fucked in the future, isn’t it?”
All the violence and unnerving suggestions about what’s going on underneath the surface of the village are put on hold this week for a look into the more peaceful, everyday life of the people who live here. Apparently a favorite past time in the village is awful comedy. Finally the rural folks have something in common with the city slickers! Seriously, though, the comedy is doing nothing for me. We already know Utao is childish and out of her league right now as a seki and future leader; the tripping is just a dumb cliche. And the bra and panties stuff during the flight back home is just embarrassing. All I can do is beg for the crappy comedy to stuff, but I know more will come. Sigh.
Credit where it’s due: Caraniel came up with the title of this post.
Anyway, hello villains! Or apparent villains. If a guy’s missing an eye and has a foot-long scar running along his head, then he’s probably not a nice guy. (Beating a child with a cane — no matter how big a jerk that kid is — would also seem to indicate this.) And you have the soft-spoken woman hidden in the background; she’s not even seen until Koushiro and Kirio leave the room, even though, presumably, she’s there watching everything that happens. Then the focus finally shifts to her in the shot above. Maybe some foreshadowing that she’s the one pulling the strings? Or I could be overthinking it and/or giving the show too much credit. We’ll see.
Aside from the different hairstyles, different hair colors, chest that is roughly half the size of Hibino’s . . . ignoring all that, then yeah, they’re basically the same.
This is a very jarring episode, starting off with the drama, then leaping into comedy and then dropping a couple of drama bombs at the end. I enjoyed all the stuff with Kuuko being an utter nutjob, but it’s tough to take Aki seriously as a villain after all that, even though he escaped without much trouble. But he’s also getting his ass kicked by other villains and whatnot, as well . . . I was kind of leaning this way before this episode, but I doubt Aki ends up being the big bad villain in this series. There’s gotta be someone higher up who’s the real bastard in the village, and Aki and Kyohei will both be against him or her, except of course Aki is doing his thing through dickhead means. White-haired man can’t go about his business like a decent fellow, right?
UNMEI KAIHEN 