Subculture Anime Blog

OP: “Atashi dake ni kakete” by Omokage Lucky Hole – Is this going to be the first Shaft OP that I don’t absolutely love? While I don’t think it’s particularly terrible, I just feel like both the song and animation are a couple decades behind. This is probably intentional, but still….

Summary:

Arashi wakes Hajime for work, and after doing so, she learns of the special strawberry he has conjured. As Hajime explains, this is a strawberry filled with spices to use against his enemies. Hajime notices that there is currently only one strawberry, however, when there were supposedly three. As he and Arashi learn soon after, Hajime’s grandfather had suffered from one of them recently. Shortly after Hajime and Arashi reach their workplace to meet their usual coworkers, a shriek is heard from outside. This leads everyone except for the couple to check on the emergency. After getting changed, Hajime and Arashi serve their usual customer Hideo. As Hajime does not have a particularly good relationship with him, he asks Arashi of a favor – to take him back in time to retrive one of his strawberries. The two certainly do this, and in the end, it is the shop’s owner that causes Hajime’s plan to succeed against Hideo.

Hajime prepares to carry out his plan against his next foe, another regular customer named Takeshi, but he panics when one of the two cakes in the cooler is missing. As he learns that the cake eaten by Takeshi is not the one that contained his special strawberry, he and Arashi are forced to search for who had taken the other one. The two eventually learn that it was Kaya who did, but she has seemed to lose sight of the said cake as well. With this, Kaya searches enthusiastically for her beloved cake by traveling through time with Jun. At the same time, Arashi and Hajime do the same in order to prevent her from eating the rigged strawberry. Both couples suffer from complications of existence, due to their traveling back so close to the present that their two bodies cannot exist next to each other, but Kaya eventually succeeds in reaching her cake. Despite her happiness, of course, she actually suffers from the trap Hajime had laid for someone else.

ED: “Kirari Futari” by Ryoko Shiraishi – As simple as it is, I like the ED a lot more than the OP. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen live shots used with animation this way, and it kind of reminds me of Karekano.

Preview: The summer continues.

Impression:

Oh man. Welcome back, Shinbo. After the disappointment that Maria Holic was last season, this is the return to Shaft-ness that I needed after being spoiled by Zetsubou Sensei so many times in the past two years. It’s probably common knowledge by now that this series is being adapted from the Jin Kobayashi (of School Rumble fame) manga, and it certainly shows in the character design. While the designs themselves bothered me slightly while reading the manga, as I had actually hoped that Shaft would take their own liberties with them, they ended up being just fine after actually watching this episode. Shaft indeed did take their own liberties with other things, however, as this episode was nowhere close to being like the first few chapters of its source. I suspect that we will eventually get to the original plot at some point (episode titles hint at non-linear storytelling), but sending us straight into the fun stuff certainly helped to make me appreciate the series more (the first chapters of the manga are actually quite boring).

I’m already loving both Arashi and Kaya, as well as appreciating Hajime a lot more now than I did than while I was reading the manga. The high paced humor was just as great, as I felt like this was what The Girl Who Lept Through Time would have been if it was a comedy. I loved simple things like the comedic facial expresions, and while things like the SZS parody are overplayed, they remain hilarious none the less. Needless to say from a resident Shaft-tard, I can’t wait to see more.