Friday 30 April 2010

Senkou no Night Raid - Episode 4

After building in some fascinating twists, turns and revelations to Senkou no Night Raid's overarching story, I was looking forward to seeing where it would lead in episode four. Was being very much the operative word on this occasion.


Rather than continuing where the last instalment left off, we're instead dumped into a pointless side story involving Aoi and Kazura, as they first photograph a bunch of food for the restaurant owned by the girl who puts them up (or should that be puts up with them?) before losing the undeveloped film containing not only those shots but also those of their bosses holiday. Thus, the pair of them race around, using their connections and the like to find the likely culprit for the theft of the photos, only to find that they'd been taken by a cat. No, really. I'm sat here watching a series set in a controversial time in Chinese and Japanese history and featuring special agents with super powers, yet I've been presented with an episode about photos of food being stolen by a cat. Why do you do this to me, anime? Why?! Why?!?!

Of course, I could make excuses for this episode by mentioning how it depicts the relationship and dynamic between Kazura and Aoi, or point to the brief discussion where Aoi makes his disdain for Japanese actions in China apparent, but such trifles simply aren't enough to save an episode that was quite frankly a waste of my time - It was exceedingly poor at comic relief, and there certainly wasn't much more that it could offer beyond that, while even the animation took a nosedive. It's almost as if the producers wanted a week off and simply didn't care about this episode, and by extension neither did I. I know I rail against filler in anime often enough, but this was poor even by filler standards - Just extending those still shots of food to fill the entire episode would probably have entertained me more than this drivel.

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