So, Steven DenBeste’s been watching Girls Bravo lately, or rather he’s been fast-fowarding through it, looking for ‘the good bits.’ He’s not really impressed with it at all, but after reading his comments, I’m a little disappointed in the review.
We understand that the Fukuyama character sucks. We understand that the tropes and clichés overwhelm this story. We understand that the male lead is a putz who gets beaten up a lot, often by the girl next door, and that the tastelessness of the series overwhelms the humor. We get it, already, Steven! Now tell us the important stuff:
Is the banana scene as good as Chris says???
Inquiring minds want to know….
Update: No, no, no! Not the encoding artifacts, the banana blowjob from the second episode! Sheesh…. (ok, I admit it, my inner geek was happy to see an explanation for the fuzzy pictures, and wonders if it was the same problem caused the fuzzy scenes in UFO Ultramaiden Princess Valkyrie Steven complained about before. But my geek is like that.)
It’s not the same problem with the video that I was complaining about WRT Valkyrie. That was a mastering problem where they seem to have deliberately imposed a blur filter on the video image during the mastering process, as best I can tell.
As regards the banana, please don’t make me go back in there! Please, please, please!
Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!
Ok, fine–if you can blame J.Greely, then I can blame you, if I have to buy it to find out! 🙂
(Seriously though, I think I’d be embarassed to watch this show. I mean, tentacle rape in the 2nd season? That isn’t harem, it’s hentai!)
Problem is, I skipped over the banana sequence so I don’t really actually know much about it. I just saw a few glimpses.
You skipped bananas to watch Daphne? Oh well.
Daphne definately looks grim & gritty to start, but then gets much lighter. However, my enjoyment of the show was significantly lessened by the fact that all the women are total bitches or ditzes. Yu goes around in a homicidal funk all the time, Gloria is just a domineering-but-stupid appetite on two feet, Rena is the cold, calculating bitch who will use any weapon, including her own body, Shizaru is too naive to be in that job (plus, she’s on the way to becoming a crazy cat lady), and Maia… well, she’s got no business hanging around Neriedes, and they’ve got none hiring her.
The whole point of fanservice is to use sexuality to pander to the audience. As the feminists would say, to portray “the woman as sex object” independant of any of her other merits. (We’ll just sweep yaoi and the entire Inukami! series under the rug for the moment.) But to achieve that goal, the object has to be desireable. I think this show may do more to subvert that feminist argument than anything I’ve ever seen– because by halfway through the show, I didn’t care. If they were real, you couldn’t pay me enough to risk my life in bed with any of those women. Their non-sexual traits far outweighed any physical attraction. It crossed my mind that it might be deliberate, but I don’t think the writers were being that tricky, they just wrote women so quirky as to be repulsive, thinking it would be good comedy. It wasn’t.
Edit: Now as to issues with the plot…. well, lets just say I had them.
When I saw Gloria, her costume and the general skin/hair color scheme made me think of Liru in Magipoka. Except that Gloria is nuts, and doesn’t have those adorable wolf ears.
I assume that Yuu is the one in the prison cell at the end of episode 4. Just from those few seconds and the images of her in the OP, she seems to be more kinds of crazy than the rest of them put together.
Shizaru reminds me of Eirote in Scrapped Princess, but maybe she gets more nutty later.
I’m going to stick with it for a while more, but so far I haven’t seen anything that hooks me into wanting to watch the whole series.
It’s pretty episodic for a while. I probably should have written a full review… needs to go on my to do list, along with Dual and a few others.
Edit: yes, that’s Yuu. She got there because she assaulted a police officer during a mission. She’s quiet and crazy. Gloria is noisy and crazy. Rena’s calculating and crazy. Shizaru (Shizuka? Don’t remember, don’t care) is just naive and a little crazy. The office manager is a doormat and crazy to still work there. And Maia’s desperate and crazy to be anywhere near these people. More that that, I won’t say until after you decide to watch all of it or not, or I’ll put it in blackout if I do. Right now I’m trying to get started on a “Worst of 2006” post. There was so much to chose from!