This sereis just continues to defy my expectations. It’s so incredibly fresh and imaginative; it takes nothing for granted and really goes with its own direction, rather than relying on a bunch of clichés. Of ocurse, I’m not sure how the rest of this sereis will turn out, but out of all the shows that aired this year that are longer than 13 episodes, these first six episodes stand amongst my top 3 favourites, along with Phantom and Konnichiwa Anne. I’m not going to say that this is one of the best shows of the year: first I need to have seen the second half of this show for that, not to mention that shows as Phantom really began to pick up after this point, while Konnichiwa Anne went south so anything can still happen. But oh, I love this show so far.

And guess which characters were fleshed out with this episode? Norotei is the focus of the second half of the episode, which does make sense. It’s great to see her with a bit more detail, since she wasn’t really in the spotlight before. The first half however, focused on the background of that other Meat-guy that Colio was with. Holy hell!? I thought he was only a minor cardboard character?! These creators really want to give everyone the chance to tell their story, don’t they?

What I loved about this episode were the differences in everyone’s beliefs: the gap between young and old. There were the leader of the church and Segal with their twisted mind of killing, versus Colio’s friend, who has nothing to live for and hasn’t experienced anything. Then there’s the naive Norotei versus the battle-hardened Hamyuts. It’s a very nice view on experience versus rookies without copying what any other show has done before. Excellent.

However, as much as I love this series, I am going to have to be a bit critical here. With as much details that this series puts to its fights and battles, I was a bit disappointed at how weak that bad guy’s powers of electicity are. With shocks that bad, it’s a miracle that Minth survived. That thunder felt more like media thunder than real thunder. A chance missed.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

This time: a baseball player. It’s interesting how every episode of Kuchuu Buranko deals with the media of some sort. This formulaic format limits creativity: unlike Aoi Bungaku the variety isn’t really this series’ strong point. Instead, what it needs to do is make the whole series greater than the sum of its parts. The best example of how this is done right is Jigoku Shoujo. At this point, it’s a bit too early whether Kuchuu Buranko will be the same but there’s an actual good chance that it will pull this off.

What I mean by that is the following: this episode was very similar to the previous one: a writerbaseball player is very popular, however he experiences psychological problems off of it. Parallels are drawn between him and a different writerbaseball player. Irabu meanwhile tries to take up writingplaying catch-ball and he eventually gets cured by realizing that he was wrong in his stereotypical assumptions.

After four episodes, I finally realize that the similarities of the stories isn’t lazy scriptwriting, but instead meant to be that way. This episode wasn’t meant to stand out with its story, but rather with the subtle difference with the previous story. Ignoring the second episode, this series has been about people who are very successful at what they do, but just have a problem as they’re at the height of their popularity. It could be failing to cooperate, or simply forgetting the past. They’re so focused on the right now that they sometimes forget what they already accomplished.

The big difference between this series and Mononoke: Mononoke’s individual series had a lot of depth, but they were straightforward and standalone. Kuchuu Buranko on the other hand isn’t that deep with its individual cases, however they have overlap, they’re not straightforward at all. There are two ways in which you can watch it: just watch an episode brainlessly, and end up with a rather boring series about a bunch of depth-less people, or you could try to look behind the exterior, and try and find connections and hidden meanings. And that’s why I like this series.

Also, is it me or did that kid have a Bake Neko t-shirt?
Rating: * (Good)

Ah, so after the initial blast and fast pace, these few episodes take a step back in order to build up for the second half of this series. It’s a tried and true formula, and these episodes despire their quiet nature are still well written and make use of their time to develop and flesh out the characters a bit more. All that’s left now is to see whether the second half can deliver on the promises that are currently made. But yeah, with this series something really weird has to happen for it not to turn into something special.

It’s interesting how the mother/caretaker/whatever of the goth loli contractor twins paid a small visit to Misaki, of all people. She must expect a great deal from her to do such a thing, considering how she seems to be after Hei or Shion. This episode also showed the nature of the device that was used on Hei, two episodes ago: it’s a device to kill contractors. So yeah, I think we can pretty much call Hei’s sister dead now. Because Hei wasn’t a contractor, he was able to survive, but the star of BK-201 (a.k.a, his sister) is gone now. A very daring move; you don’t see much superpowered series in which the lead character loses his special powers seemingly forever.

I’m also glad to see that Suou’s Gun needs to be maintained, and her ammo isn’t limitless either. Very nice, because you really see too many anime which take their weapons for granted. In series in which characters fight once in a while this is excusable, but in action series where people fight in nearly every episode, it’s sometimes a miracle that their weapons don’t break, jam, shut down, et cetera. While this obviously doesn’t destroy a series’ credibility, it nevertheless is a very valuable addition if some attention is put on it.

The next episode is probably going to make an end to the quiet times in this series. We’re not still sure of the exact details, but something tells me that Misaki saw Hei’s plan coming, and prepared a dummy of some sort, which caused him to get locked up. The submarine shown at the end of the episode was probably meant to carry the real goods, and it’s indeed a good test for Suou whether she can carry this series as its co-main character.
Rating: ** (Excellent)