So we are officially on Squid Girl's home stretch. I've got to tell you: For the past 12 weeks (and the 10 months of intermittent reviews before them), I have had quite a bit of fun talking about anime, on a place where people can actually listen to my inner thoughts. I really like this... and maybe I should have taken at least one week off by now, but I feel that this commitment speaks volumes about my work ethic. Because this is what I like to do. And now, onto the beef.
So the first segment starts with the three stooges playing Subaru WTF Kart, but one of them gets mad at losing the game and chucks their handheld console into a wall, breaking it. And they shout "son of a bitch"... which is another point for intense swearing. Therefore, they decide to create a new handheld video game console... one which can survive basically anything. And so their MIT certificates go to work in creating... whatever the new machination is. I guess this involves the legend of Nintendo consoles being manufactured with an indestructible substance, but this time, it really is indestructible. Except, instead of playing them theirselves (playing themselves), they give the consoles to Eiko and Squid Girl... for no particular reason. But I guess it's all good fun, and they need to pay Squiddie back somehow.
Instead of having just a dinky kart racer, the new device has its own video game offerings, such as... a clone of Super Mario Bros., with a self-insert main character. Unfortunately, the console is as hard to break as it is to use. The buttons take a ton of effort to press, and even then, you're gonna have to use them to play a very hard game. This particular effort is more along the lines of I Wanna Be The Guy, where everything "will* kill you, even if it doesn't want to. Even falling from a big enough height is enough to make you implode into a cloud of blood. Eventually, Eiko gets fed up with this game and decides to play something else. She and Squid Girlie team up for the handheld's RPG offering, where a squidvader and a dashing warrior girl team up to... defeat evil beings. And I guess Chizuru is a nun again. They (not Chizuru) encounter annoying NPCs based off of their friends. This game is also hard, and complicating matters is that it's supposedly free to play. Eiko doesn't want to pay to get to the final boss, so she promptly chucks the handheld at a wall... and destroys the wall. After playing these shitty games, she takes refuge in her SNES-style home console... but due to the force required to use the handheld, she uses enough force to break it almost instantly. Ha!
In the second segment, Ayumi wonders why she can talk to Chizuru so well. She does have alien-like tendencies, as well as superhuman strength to go with them, but even she doesn't know what the heck is up with her physique. In an attempt to stop attracting so many eyeballs, she starts to act normal... well, normal in air quotes. It takes all of her strength to fall like a normal human being would, and even then, she ignores sticking the landing in favor of something more elaborate. She also cuts her food slower than usual, but this makes Eiko think she's slacking off. Overall, it's a segment that teaches a valuable lesson: If you happen to be gifted, people might think you're out of this world... literally! Oh, and there's an extra part added on in which has Sanae rushing Squid Girl (yet again), and then most of the peoples shift their attention to her alien-like dodging qualities.
For Segmento Trio, Squid Girl inadvertently gets forgotten by Eiko, Chizuru, and Takeru, and she takes this as an opportunity to play hide-and-go-seek. She sneaks around, like a sneaky sneaker for Operation Sneaky Sneaks, but she only gets far enough to be seen by Takeru only. He decides to play along with her, but then Squiddie endures an ominous countdown! Which is just for the chicken. The segment is pretty entertaining even if it's disjointed, and it also shows off another way Squid Girl can potentially inkvade mankind.
In addition to all of this, with the episode being an OVA, it seems to have received an animation bump! Yes, even something as simple as Squid Girl waving her tentacle back and forth feels more fluid than anything in either prior season. But the show really shows its true potential in the first segment's RPG-world scenes; they're completely new and feature rather lavish art. The apparent throwaway scene in the second segment also impresses, with Sanae's ninja-like reflexes being animated very well. Combine all of this with the humor, and I dare say this show still has some life left in it. This was definitely a step back in the right direction after Season 2 sometimes misfired, because I enjoyed all of this special OVA experience. 9/10!
Stray observations:
Ending credits: Will these OVAs have different ones? Well, this one featured chibi-style clips of Eiko and Squid Girl doing various things. I think there was a callback to when Squiddie tried to eat Eiko in her sleep.
The opening credits have also changed for the OVAs. ULTRA-PRISM, the group from the first season's opening, is back once again, but the track this time is too poppy for my tastes. Where's the awesome backing guitar track that breaks out during the opening? Or the rather frenetic song structure? At least the animation for it is great, owing to what I said above. Overall, I think S2's theme is the best.
The segment title reveal is also different, and it's the most lavishly-animated yet: They rise from a CGI ocean, with dramatic sound effects to go around.
One of the other games loaded onto the portable is "Takeru's Challenge". I will give many points to whoever understands that reference.
I like how the handheld has very visible grid lines on the screen, but the actual sprites have a lot of detail.
Why does RPG!Eiko have such a highly-exposed midriff? The outfit makes her look like a belly dancer.
When you prepare the food so slowly, it makes me think you're so... adequate. Wouldn't having multiple supernatural creatures be better for business?
The animation bump is so noticeable, even Squiddie's stealthy movements in the third segment come off as being wonderfully fluid.
So, I don't know if you've noticed, but there are three OVAs. Crunchyroll has two of them licensed... but the third one? It's out there... floating in the void. I don't know if I'll cover something you can only find on KissAnime, but regardless... it's shiny. With eyes made of hard plastic. And blue hair...? BLUE AS THE NIGHT.
Content rating: TV-PGLV
Oh boy! Another one of these.
So as I mentioned before, the first segment had the one use of "bitch" from Clark, which is just the second in the whole series. Maybe the OVAs can have more swearing because of their exclusivity? Meanwhile, the violence came from the video games Eiko and Squiddie played. In the first one, the characters bodies explode into a cloud of blood while their limbs blow off. Despite being surprisingly intense, it didn't faze me enough to break out a TV-1 4 rating. Meanwhile, the RPG had your typical swords-and-sorcery violence. Also notable was when Chizuru ate one of Squid Girl's "weiners"... yeah. Isn't that just begging to be taken the wrong way? Squiddie hid under a table while Chizuru just snapped them up. It won't displace this classic moment in my pantheon of extremely unfortunate comments, but it comes close.
Ratings screencap: From the second segment. Ayumi gets another appearance, and so does a beautiful plate of food.
1298826
3931
