What have I gotten myself into? Herpestidae Watches Majikoi Oh! Samurai Girls! [Archive]

View Full Version : What have I gotten myself into? Herpestidae Watches Majikoi Oh! Samurai Girls!

John Cribati

2012-03-16, 11:12 PM

Alright, once again, another one of my watch/readthrough projects. I have a bad track record with this kind of thing, but I just watched through three short anime series over spring break (one of them straight through today), so this time, I'm gonna see if I can keep the record going, cataloguing my thoughts as I go along. This is a stream-of consciousness type of review, and I'm essentially pausing at anything I want to make a comment on.

So, without further ado, watch as I enjoy and/or suffer through Majikoi Oh! Samurai Girls!

Episode 1: Come at Me, Seriously!

We start in a forest. Two girls are running away from a helicopter. One has an eyepatch. Okay.

And immediately afterwards, we're dropped into the middle of what appears to be a mock war. Complete with wooden Katanas. And that helicopter is not what's being run away from (poor syntax notwithstanding); It's a news helicopter, where the reporter exposits about Kawakami academy, which fulfills its physical education requirement via martial arts classes. And apparently this mock war has to do with some dispute between/among the students; the kids with the worst grades are fighting the kids with the best.

And the Blue (smart people) army includes an entire squadron of maids. Just thought I'd point that out.

It also looks like one particular girl in the dumb class follows the rule of Conservation of Ninjutsu, because she just sent like 20 others flying. (Note: This is a co-ed school. Yet it seems that guys only a girl can hit a girl. Because otherwise it's abuse or something. I don't really like this trope, but I have a skewed point of view when it comes to hitting girls. So meh.)

That sidebar besides, this is Kawakami Kazuko, who I am now imagining with a facial disfiguration of some sort, thanks to the last two syllables of her name.

And then, two seconds later, a pink-haired girl with a rapier (Seriously? In a Japanese High sch- oh, her name is Christiane Friedrich. Proceed.) literally blows away a squad of guys. So... magic martial arts, then?

She almost gets shanked in the back by another guy, who gets pegged in the ribs by a girl with a bow and arrow. This is Shiina Miyako, whose arrows apparently produce some kind of shockwave, so either I was right about the magic, the students are just that tough, and/or this school is about to get sued out the ass.

Somewhere else, Mayuzumi Yukie is doing some sword beam nonsense.

Note that all the people I named so far are on the dumb side. I'm not sure what that says. Then again, the last show I watched where students were ranked in class by grade was Baka Test, and thedumb class only had 2.5 girls out of 30 students. Himeji belonged in the top class, but got sick on the day of the sorting test and failed by default. Minami just moved back from Germany and forgot how to read Kanji while she was there. Hideyoshi is the .5 because looks enough like a girl that he incites nosebleeds.

So yeah, I'm kind of sort of glad that it's okay for girls to be stupid in this one.

Wow, that was a Massive Sidebar.

Anyway, now we cut to the head of the Red Team, Yamato, who proclaims that the girls from before are their trump cards, played early because the Blue team wouldn't expect that. And then a robot named Cookie hands him a soda.

... I'm only two and a half minutes into this thing.

Anyway, back to the two women from the beginning. They get jumped by Kawakami Momoyo, who is apparently the strongest fighter in the school. Also, I know that her name has something to do with peaches.

Apparently, Momo put Yamato in friendzone level 9000 a while back.

Also, Yamato is the Prime Minister.

Clearly, I should just stop asking questions.

More fighting, then back in the news helicopter where the rules are explained.

1: You have to capture and restrain (redundant much? I mean, if you've got him restrained, it means you've captured him already) the enemy leader
2: You have to use the school-provided weapons, which don't kill, but hurt like hell. (Another comparison to Baka test; perv with camera. He's taking pictures of girls in vaguely sexualized poses. Because they're severely wounded. And behind him is an otaku who wonders why he's all worked up over 3D women; 2D women are obviously where it's at. It's funny because this is an anime! I'm also reminded of the guy who holds the world record for... ahem... being in his bunk. Yes, that title exists. People actually hold competitions for this kind of thing. It's on youtube. The guy, not the competitions. The trophy is shaped like a hand and everything.
3: "You may call anyone who is on campus to help." that is a direct quote. You all see the loophole in that, right? I don't have to say it? Cool.

Anyway Smarties outnumber Failures 9 to 5. Because they called in favors.

So anyway, on the war front, Failures are falling back, and the Smarties commander pursues, even after he's told that this is likely (and obviously) some sort of trap.

And then the Failures pull a 5-way ambush/pincer maneuver, with the retreaters turning around to make a sixth wave. Then a seventh group ambushes.

And we flashback to Yamato and Momo again, with some childhood marriage promise... thingy? that was alluded to the first time. Apparently, the Prime Minister thing was an inside joke between them, and Yamato was rejected (in the previous flashback) because he'd said that he didn't want to be with her unless they were equals in intellect.

And we're back again. Apparently, those two ladies from the beginning have taken out one of Red's main groups, and the maids are directly advancing on Red's base camp to get their commander.

And they plan to burn it down.

No comment.

And then there's a really dark-skinned black girl. Whose face looks like Jynx.

Anyway, Yamato totally predicted that Blue would move to attack the base, so stationed Yukie there. Even though she was clearly on the field at the start of this thing.

Also, she attacks the maids and their outfits get damaged. Welp, you had to get your fanservice somehow, I guess. At least it's not some Ikki Tousen nonsense where people get their clothes punched off.

The head Maid calls for the archers to take her out... but Yukie found them all and took them out five minutes ago. And then more ninja maids show up to get blasted away by a shockwave.

Then the commander sets off some flares and we're told that one Blue squadron turned on the army.

And then we get some more war scenes, including a bunch of OOTS Rogues in red, popping out of the woodwork to yell "Sneak Attack" as they take out an isolated Blue Squadron. Then, as some Blue archers Blot out the sun to make the squad flee, Miyako snipes them from an island in the middle of the river, a good half mile away. She's got a longbow, though, so the retaliatory strike can't reach her. And then she launches an explosive round at a group. I'm not sure how seriously to take this anymore.

Anyway, another blue squadron shows up... and then switches colors. Kazuko gets a video text of Yamato spanking a female Blue general. Nonchalantly. With boinging sounds. And it's on Youtube already.

Anyway, Blue's commander takes the fight to them, and he's about to get stomped when Momo shows up to wreck Red's day.

And then The Blue commander's sister jumps out of a helicopter, and she and Yukie take her on. Then there's more magic, Momo showing off fire and freezing abilities.

And then a new challenger approaches: Matsunaga Tsubame. Yeah. Not questioning. Anyway, these three are keeping Momo busy, while Yamato makes a Suicide run at the Blue commander (The red commander is a little girl for some reason). Important thing to note: Cookie, the robot, is also a transformer. With a light saber.

And since Yamato is Momo's student, everyone wants a crack at him, so that thins the defenders for Red final charge. Which ends up as a man-to-man brawl between the Blue commander and... some guy. Didn't catch his name the first time. And Nameless guy wins. Also, Momo's Ki attacks or whatever also give her the power to blow up. Because.

And then Yamato, having finally proven his intelligence or whatever, asks Momo out again. She says... and I quote "I see you as a love interest. But if I had to date you, I'd rather you just stayed my student."

...
...
...
...
...
http://files.sharenator.com/jackie_chan_meme_Women_say_part_1-s618x1106-263555-580.png

Anyway, the war is over and I'm wondering if Hulu fouled up and gave me the last episode first.

I'll find out tomorrow, as it's midnight right now and I'm actually tired.

Hopeless

2012-03-20, 06:50 AM

John Cribati

2012-03-21, 04:35 PM

Episode 2: Complete the Mission, Seriously!
Snarky Subtitle: Yo Dawg, I heard you like Boobs so I included a bath scene.

So... the first minute of the episode consists of Shiina, our archer from last episode, sneaking into Yamato's futon for some sexytimes. And taking that whole minute to realize he's been replaced with a Ninja Log.

And then... a mime is auctioning himself off for meal tickets to some students for some reason? He talks about being lonely, not having a partner, and then offers fifty meal tickets, so I can only assume that that's what he means. I can tell that this post is going to be hella disorganized. Anyway, Yamato of all people says he'll do it for 144 tickets. I really hope they're talking about fighting.

We finally see the OP for this show. It's your standard J-pop/J-rock opening with group and action shots of the characters from last episode, but it focuses mostly on the five girls. Shiina, Momo, Yukie, Kazuko, and... Rapier girl. Katherine? I only remember that her last name is Friedrich. But Hey, I'm 4.5 for 5. Not bad.

After that, we're back with the Main female group, along with Yamato, Cookie, and... two other guys (at least he black guy doesn't look like Jynx), discussing what they're going to do with the meal tickets. I still don't know the kind of challenge that's going on. Essentially, Yamato asked for a multiple of 9 tickets so that he and the 8 others in the group could share them. And he expected some guy named Cap not to show up (he didn't, yet) which is why he chose a multiple of 8 as well. And we get a gag about Kazuko counting out how much they'd each get if Cap didn't show (which is exactly what I did; it would be 18 instead of 16). She's doing this for the rest of the scene because she's dumb.

So. Anyway, Matsukaze, Yuki's talking horse pendant... thingy blurts out that if they win the meal ticket's there'd be fewer chances for her to make box lunches for Yamato (All of the girls in the room want him, natch). Apparently, there's a God trapped in there that only Yukie can hear (he gave her warnings during the war last episode; I should have mentioned that, shouldn't I?), but nobody believes her.

Anyway, after some belligerent flirting from Momo, (and the outline of a nipple through her skintight suit), Yamato finds a mission to do. Somehow. Because that's apparently what they pay students at a Ninja Academy for. I find this odd because they never said anything about that before; we just spent four minutes discussing the meal tickets and then whoop, mission time! Anyway, they're looking for a their history teacher's missing dog.

We watch them discuss their plan to find said dog, and get some shots of the neighborhood they're in. And it's at this point, two minutes into the scene change, that I realize that the mime is their history teacher, who is paying them to find his dog.

I'm not a stupid person. I learned to read when I was 2. I was in the top 7% of students in the United States in Elementary and Middle school. I hold the record at my high school for the highest SAT scores. But the dialogue and scene changes never gave any hint that the scene of them looking for a dog and the scene with the mime were even remotely related. All it would take was a "Hey, we're getting 144 meal tickets to find this guy's dog." But nope, I literally had to use context clues to figure out the plot for this episode.

I rewatched the scene to make sure, and the part that was necessary to comprehending the coherence of the scenes is shoved in after 2 and a half minutes of character exposition and nonsense, and so remarkably easy to gloss over.

There's a reason for this, though:

It's so we get a "Momo is violent" joke; She's mad because she was promised a mission where she could beat people up. Because Yamato apparently never mentioned that they were looking for a lost dog while they were all gathered in the room, but waited until they were on the street. Even worse, Yamato has a handful of "Lost Dog" posters, which would have had to get printed somewhere. And the whole group minus two are on the street right now, so they had to have been there when he got them printed, which means the joke doesn't work at all.

Back to the plot. If you could call it that. Chris suggests (jokingly) that Kazuko, being a bitch, should be able to discern what the mime's dog looks like from the blurry photo on the flyer (Aside: The history teacher came off as a bit of a Camp Gay guy. I was wondering why he would only have a single picture of his dog, and a blurry one at that). She then sniffs the poster to see if she can track him. Because we've established that she's an idiot.

And lo and behold, the dog shows itself. Shiina is about to shoot one of the stunt arrows at it, loudly declaring her intention and causing the dog (who apparently understands Japanese that well) to run off, and a chase scene begins.

The dog runs underneath some wood that's blocking an alley. Only Yukie has the sense to cut it down. Everyone else decides to use Yamato as a stepping stool. Then the dog showcases his platforming skills by wall-jumping onto a roof (Cut to the History teacher, saying the dog is a "special breed"). They split up to look for it.

We then cut to a department store, where the dog is bothering a woman who is trying on clothes. Kazuko barges in and fails to get it. The scene is repeated in another room, with another girl changing, and Chris barging in. The third time is, obviously, the charm here; Yamato successfully gets his arms around the dog. And Jynx from last episode is changing in there. Cue Megaton Punch, and the dog getting away.

Then we repeat the scene with an ice cream parlor; The dog knocks over a random woman's ice cream/parfait/whatever you want to call it, and Yukie chases after it, apologizing. Then it knocks over another one, and Shiina apologizes for it. Then the dog knocks over Jynx's ice cream. Yamato catches the dog, and gets punched again, and the dog gets away again.

Note here that those two random women were all given names (which I didn't care to remember, but still...), while I still have to call Jynx... Jynx.

Cut away from the bad jokes, and there's a meeting between a maid and a white-haired lady, probably concerning the two random women from the mock war last episode. They're going to send in a squad of people to stop them from finding something, I guess? I couldn't really follow it.

Cut to nighttime, where the 5 girls are taking a bath and discussing their failure to catch the dog. I don't know why they had to be naked for this scene, but hey, that's anime for ya. At least it's on Hulu, where they don't let nipples interfere with the plot (or, in this case, lack thereof). And yes, I am grateful that Hulu censored this scene. Because, frankly, if I wanted to see an anime girl's naked breasts, I could look for that elsewhere.

Plus, the last time I watched an uncensored anime that hulu carried, two underage-looking girl demons were magically stripped of all clothing. By a fourteen-year-old. Who is the main character. And this was played for fanservice. So yeah, never again.

Past that sidebar, we get more of all these girls (Except Momo) saying how much they want to ride Yamato into the sunset. Momo gladly interrupts the line of conversation, and then.... the dog shows up, right in the bath, leering creepily at them. The worst part is that they stand there looking at it for five seconds before they start chasing it (stark naked) through the halls.

Shiina pulls her bow from Hammer Space and shoots an arrow at the dog, who then Matrix dodges out of the way (He does the Neo pose and everything) without even breaking stride. Three times in succession. it was admittedly kinda cool. She deduces that the dog was trained in martial arts (because in anime, the phrase "everyone and their dog does X" is taken literally). Momo rejoices, because she now has free reign to beat the crap out of this thing.

They chase the dog down a dead-end hallway and into a room, where they all, well, dogpile it.

I don't have to tell you whose room the 5 naked girls just barged into, do I? Good.

They all beat him up. I'm not going to get into how wrong that is, but I want to note that it's left ambiguous whether or not Shiina took part in the beatdown. I say that because she went into his room naked at the beginning of this episode, and not three minutes ago proclaimed that she'd gladly show him any part of her body he desired to see. But I'm never told that she wasn't in on it too, so I can only assume that she was. This is obviously inconsistent with what little established character she has.

Once they get their clothes on, they chase the dog to an abandoned factory getting the attention of some ninjas. Shiina pins the dog to the wall with an arrow outline and Yamato notices some weapons lying around; bullets, grenades, etc. Chris, being foreign, knows all about this kind of stuff, down to their model names. Of course, all these foreign weapons are illegal in Japan. So the ninjas send the The Men In Black to snuff out the meddling kids and their dog. Momo is ecstatic, because now she can club them all the death with a minigun.

The first bit of the fight scene is hilarious, because not only is Momo dodging bullets while wielding a Gatling gun as a club (good hilarious), but the four guys she's fighting take forever to point their guns at her (bad hilarious). It's almost like a poorly written sex scene, except with fight choreography. Momo dodges bullet, slaps guy with Gatling gun. Other guys point guns at her (she's standing still while they do so). One of them fires. Momo dodges, slaps him with Gatling gun. Rinse and Repeat.

Yukie gets points for slicing a bullet apart in midair, and after she's done with her group of guys, she announces that she used the dull side of her katana. So it's okay because they're still alive! Despite all the internal hemorrhaging and bruised internal organs that comes along with getting hit by a dull katana blade.

Three guys have Yamato against the wall, when Yukie shoots her arrows into their gun barrels.

Let me explain how ridiculous this is.

Yamato is against a wall. Shiina is ten or fifteen feet to his left. The three gunman are forming a crude half-circle around him: One directly in front, one 45 degrees to the left, one 45 degrees to the right. The guns are all pointed directly at Yamato. There is literally no way to fire an arrow directly into any of the three barrels from Shiina's position Without curving it, which arrows simply do not do. Not to mention that these were still stunt arrows for some reason, whose tips are too thick to fit in there anyway. This is worse than Sokka's boomerang.

Anyway, 20 guys with guns just lost to five guys with melee weapons and one with a bow and arrow. Kind of like Stormtroopers, they were. Momo is about to question the only remaining one, when the three ninjas show up. These ninjas are no joke, more than a match for our group (Except Momo, who breaks a stone hammer with her fist), and only leave because some guy offscreen whistles for them.

Then a grenade gets dropped, and Momo punches it. As the show cuts for a commercial break, the entire warehouse explodes.

Except not really. Momo punched a slab of concrete out of the ground and put it on top of the grenade to shield them from the blast. Because it's not like that would cause concrete shrapnel to fly all over the place or anything.

The other 4 girls, of course, had tackled Yamato to the ground to shield him from the blast, Kazuko and Shiina being the ones who succeeded what was obviously a race to see who could press their boobs to his face. Then, because of said face-to-boob proximity, Momo gets jealous and punches him. Despite the fact that guy poured his heart out to her, said he loved her, and she turned him down.

Momo can go die in a fire.

Some time later, the group is walking along, expositing that they called the police, who assumed that it was a gang smuggling ring or something. Then Shiina remembers the dog mission.

And lo and behold, Cap shows up (He was the random guy who KO'd the blue leader last episode), with the dog eating out of his hand. So now he can get his 16 meal tickets despite not doing a shred of work.

Momo is concerned about the ninjas because of the fighting style they used. Cut to said ninjas, with their boss and another guy, saying how since some of the shipment of weapons was destroyed, they have to go get more.

Thoughts:

I am well aware that this is a Harem anime and I shouldn't expect much. But most of the Harem anime I've already watched were already way better developed than this by episode 2.
First of all, the series starts with the harem. This is bad, because not only do we not get any proper introduction to the girls, we're going to be wasting plot time discussing why each girl likes him so much, or whatever. It usually goes that guy meets one girl every episode or three until the harem is filled up, slowly (and accidentally) seducing all of them. And don't tell me it can't be done in 12 episodes, because Nagasumi from My Bride is a Mermaid already had three of his six harem girls around his little finger by episode 3 (or maybe it was 4?).
Second from that point, None of these girls have a personality beyond "boobs + fighting + X".

Chris is "Boobs + fighting + foreign."
Kazuko is "Boobs + fighting + stupidity."
Momo is "Boobs + fighting + Sadism."
Shiina is "boobs + fighting + pervert"
Yukie is "boobs + fighting + shyness."
Beyond anything that pertains to their one specific character quirk, any line said by any of the girls could have been said by any other girl.
The harem antics are... odd. Momo, not wanting to date Yamato, has no right to treat him like she does, especially if the only reason for it is that other girls are flirting with him. Not to mention that even though all the girls- by their own admission, mind you- want to jump his bones, they get mad at him when they barge into his room naked. I understand if it were the other way around and even then, only on the base level. But it was their error. Yamato was just minding his own business, and they should have known this was his room, especially the one who crept in there in the middle of the night. Aren't we supposed to like at least one of these girls? because with Heartbreaker Momo and pervy Shiina and just-sort-of-there... everyone else, I'm not seeing the attraction (beyond the physical). Or is this some subtle deconstruction of the standard harem shows that play it out but are trying to show how stupid and sexist the entire concept is?
The gang violence/whatever subplot remains interesting for now.