Nijuu Mensou no Musume - 09
Aah! And things went so well for this series! What the heck were the creators thinking at that fight-scene?! Suspense of disbelief is very important for this series, because it’s dealing with the topic of a child prodigy, which is very easy to overglorify in anime. In this episode, Chiko and her new friend have to fight against two grunts that are after Nijuu Mensou’s treasure map for God knows what reason. The way the first one goes down is already hard to believe: one judo-throw by someone who has just been practicing Judo for a year (which reminds me, has Chiko been continuing her judo-training ever since she got back?) will not knock out someone for hours. It’ll startle them a bit at most, especially considering how he was a full grown guy.
Still, that could have all been ignored if not for the blatantly insulting way that the second one went down: he takes Chiko’s friend hostage, so Chiko uses a hand mirror to blind his eyes. If that wasn’t enough, Chiko suddenly is also able to deal out powerful kicks from nowhere. Still, that also would have been sort-of acceptable, if the guy wasn’t stopped in his tracks by some toys that Chiko’s friend threw at him. He even got knocked unconscious because he simply slipped. No amount of explanation is going to set that one right…
I’m going to see this one as a bad day for the creators. Possibly a bad writer was in charge of this one and not the amazing previous three episodes. Thankfully, the parts about Ken made this episode at least a bit worthwhile: we actually see confirmation that Nijuu Mensou is still alive (dressed up as a police-guy), and that he never attempted to contact Chiko. It also took me quite a while to find out that half a year has already passed. I originally thought that Chiko would grew up to like fifteen years old, but it turns out that the major part of her story will take place at the age of only thirteen. I hope that her hormones won’t get in the way of good storytelling.