Finally. It's been 11 days since I watched the first episode; what kind of blasphemy is this? But it had to do with "early screenings" and "fail groups failing hard" and all... (More at the very end, if you're really curious about the second thing.) I'm watching HorribleSub's 720p version, by the way. They (by which I mean Crunchyroll) seem to have translated the blue names, so I'll check out ep01 by them too. I really need visual guidance for the characters.
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| OP and ED were completely different. What was that in the first episode, then...? |
Overall, it was a pretty slow episode that didn't really advance the plot, and only showed two of the male leads slightly more in-depth. (I'm not complaining; Narita is by far my favourite right now, so it was good to focus less on Haneda. Lines have been drawn.) With far less ecchi scenes this time, I wonder if this anime might fall a little flat...?
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| Unseen hero: Karura Itami, #2. |
First of all, there's more than the three male leads we saw the last episode?! In fact, they get numbered pretty handily to (in presentation order): Haneda (seen) at #3, Chitose (seen) at #4, Narita (seen) at #5, and Itami (pictured, unseen) at #2. This might have something to do with candidate registration order? Or "closest to becoming King"? (It's not alphabetical order, because "na" from Narita occurs before "ha" from Haneda.) I'm trying to not check out the game in order to allow the anime to single-handedly build and destroy my thoughts.
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| Now we know; the main leads are at least acquaintances. |
Honestly speaking, this episode felt much slower than the first one. It was less info-dump, instead focusing on Narita and Chitose (in that order), although it did still introduce new things to us (i.e. Narita used to be [or still is] a delinquent, Chitose is a freelance writer, etc). There was a distinct slice-of-life feel in the scenes, which caused me to tune out at points. I expect slow episodes in anime from time-to-time, but I genuinely hope it doesn't continue and destroy this anime's potential.
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| Finally, something I really wanted to know. It's short for "Dracula". I now wish I didn't know. |
There's less fanservice in this episode than there was in the first one; other than the first scene (which, to be fair, was apparently "due to popular demand"...lies...) and the commercial cuts, it was pretty limited. It made focusing on the episode much easier...although there wasn't much to focus on this time, with pretty flat jokes. (Or maybe I need to understand Japanese better. Still, I understand that "bloomer" and "blues" are pretty similar and the joke wasn't good.)
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| Look at the symbolism. >_> |
There's still plot hints, considering both Narita and Chitose said, "May peace prevail in the world," while looking at the moon (and the little we saw of Haneda at the very beginning had him fighting armoured warriors in his knightly outfit). However, its potential weakness is showing through; I had to ignore the fanservice last episode to see the plot better, but with the fanservice toned down this episode the plot seemed dimmer. That's pretty annoying.
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| Interesting. Not even going to pretend it's a nosebleed, hm? |
(As an aside, I'm glad they don't try to pass off the ero-ero as nosebleeds. It has always bothered me; the human body can't lose that much blood and still be so healthy...)
Nonetheless, it's something I'm still interested in and want to watch. It seems like there needs to be a precarious balance between fanservice and plot for the story to work...or maybe, like I'm hoping, this was just a slow episode and it'll pick up next week.
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| He wants to join Narita's harem...? |
By the way, the MSPN shiet that occurred was hilarious. From what I gather, MSPN is/was a new fansubbing group whose first project was set to be OreTsuba. However, after random stuff happened on the release day (including a guy named lilgh0st hijacking the irc channel), the group leader, Linx-san, asked Gotwoot (an established fansubbing group) for some assistance (they were missing some of the roles). According to Gotwoot, they ended up doing 90% of the work and Linx-san still wanted to release it under MSPN instead of joint credits. Gotwoot ended up releasing it under the name "lolgh0st" (after the channel hijacker, no?) and washing their hands clean of it. MSPN was unable to band together (perhaps added to the discontent was the re-occurring channel hijacking), breaking up a few days later. (This led to HorribleSubs being the only source for me.)
I'm not going to pass judgement in an event that I don't even know everything about, but it was just pretty funny to me.
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| Graffiti during Narita's scene, although it's really the episode title. Pretty cool. |
Lastly... (I tried to keep this short, but I feel failure.) It seems like OreTsuba is the official short-form for the name. The first pic shows OreTuba as graffiti, but that's clearly OreTsuba. My reasoning: 翼
(tsubasa) would have the furigana of つばさ, where つ is the third of the line "ta chi tsu te to" which should be "ta ti tu te to" but the Japanese can't make some of those sounds (
hiragana). Some better research by the animators would've been nice, unless there's an inside joke I don't know. Nonetheless: I called it~
~Aaro off
