#watching anime

I completely forgot this entire sequence from the manga, though the wiki confirms it was there (chapter 6). 

I think this is my favorite episode so far. It’s just so ridiculous, and yet has so many cute details, like Yor in the background all the time, waving drunkenly, or Anya’s deadpan “save me” delivery. The best part though is definitely Loid. He’s SO embarrassed by all this. At the same time, he also keep nitpicking about the supposed plot - why is there a witch, why does she use physical attacks, why does Anya call him dad at the end when he’s supposed to be the Bondman stand-in… Oh Loid. 

Second best was Franky’s dedication to being as over the top in the role as possible. Third best was the agents who are all like “I don’t know what’s going on here, but if I get to fight Twilight-senpai, then I’m in.” 

On the whole, the adaptation has been quite nice so far. It seems they’re doing roughly one chapter per episode (which makes sense since the chapters are quite long and there isn’t much stuff that can be compressed), so I guess the first season will probably end on Yuri’s introduction? He’s in the ED, and the chapter counts to the end of his arc line up almost perfectly, up to halfway through chapter 14, it seems like. (After that is the little merit stars stuff.)  

Currently, the manga has just passed 60 chapters, so there’s definitely enough content for several seasons. But given the production values and such, they definitely won’t be consecutive, even if they are greenlit. On the one hand, it’s nice that they won’t overtake the manga before it’s finished, but on the other hand, it’s also unlikely that the entire story will be adapted in the end. Which is too bad, I’d like to watch it all, haha. 

6 episodes of the OVA, 14 episodes of the TV anime, 12 more episodes of Dash. It was an interesting experience, in a sense. 

All three series are made on the basis of the same manga… in theory. But they are all extremely different, in tone and just in terms of the basic stuff like character roles and personalities. If there is anything I would compare it to, I guess maybe the various takes on Tenchi Muyo? 

In terms of tone, the TV anime is pure fluff with nothing serious at all, Dash tries to be serious with only some really weirdly placed comedy, and the OVA probably goes most similar to the manga (I assume) and is kind of in the middle. 

But another way to look at the differences is in terms of the emotional focus, which generally expresses in what relationship is focused on in the climax. 

For the OVA, it’s the Natsume-Mishima family and more specifically Nuku Nuku’s attempts to reconcile Akiko to heal the fracture within the family. So the final episode has Akiko finally acknowledge Nuku Nuku (”who would have thought a robot could have such a kind heart”) in between the robot of the weak. The OVA generally comes off as the most cohesive version because everything ties into the family, whether it’s Nuku Nuku’s origins, Mishima corporation, the main conflicts, etc. 

For the TV anime, it’s the relationship between Nuku Nuku and her high school class. Most of the hijinks throughout the series feature the class members, and the climax has Nuku Nuku reveal that she’s a robot to everyone, at which point they confirm that they accept her as she is (because they’d already figured it out, she’s not subtle). The TV anime probably suffers most from the fact that the classmates are all kind of boring one-note cliches, so the hijinks that make up basically the entire series are generally just not very interesting. Even so, some of the humor can work at times. 

For Dash, it’s (sigh) the romance between Nuku Nuku and aged up Ryunosuke. The problem is that, unlike the other two which were comedy fluff with some character moments, Dash is plot-focused. And the plot is about Mishima and their various unethical experiments. (My face when the second to last episode started going on about the founder keeping himself alive with illegal genetic modification and the board of directors being clones) Except that Dash removed Ryunosuke’s connection as Nuku Nuku’s owner, Kyusaku as the creator of the robot body, Akiko as the founder’s daughter…

You could also say the focus is Nuku Nuku’s self-actualization and choosing to go beyond just following the orders of her creator, but her creator only shows up in the last two episodes, while she peppers in a lot of “Ryunosuke-san” in her dialogue and her “last memories” are all of Ryunosuke. Plus, they made a very deliberate choice to age him up because it was explicitly a romantic relationship they wanted to push (and Ryunosuke is the narrator most of the time), so it’s like… the most important thing is Nuku Nuku’s self-actualization, but we’re going to see it through the lens of this horny teenager who has the hots for her and she kind of comes to like him too. I guess it’s a kind of “finding a lover is proof of achieving adulthood and moving beyond the parents” thing…? 

Except, you see, the romance is, uh, not good. Ryunosuke is a whiny, self-centered brat who likes Nuku Nuku based on love at first sight and a whole lot of horny. Nuku Nuku spends most of the series being extremely naive, submissive and kind of weepy because her memories were sealed. Their relationship really comes across as tepid at best, and Ryunosuke’s detachment from the plot focus gets really noticeable toward the end. He can’t react to the robot reveal because there’s no time and he can’t even say anything meaningful about Nuku Nuku’s personal crisis and choices because he has no direction to approach it from. He’s the POV and his relationship with her is the most important one, but the actual meat of the story is her personal choice, which he has no participation in, but he’s gotta be in the last scenes, so……. yeah. 

With this kind of confused and split focus, Dash comes out the worst of the three. (The fanservice doesn’t help.) Funny enough, it’s also the one furthest from the manga, so I wonder what that could mean.