First Impressions / Sasami-san@Ganbaranai

「まだ本気出してないし」 (Mada Honki Dashitenaishi)
“I’m not even serious yet”

Friendship huh? Well I guess with Sasami now attending school it was going to be something that would come up at some point. For some people, making real friends is hard. Now imagine being a god and a socially awkward hikikomori. Either a free ticket to awesome or horribly problematic depending on how you choose to look at it I guess.

There was something strangely funny about hearing the drawbacks to making friends with the power of a god from Tama of all people. She’s an odd one really, and not just in her physical appearance compared to her age. Her occasional wisdom belies both her supposed age and the age one would expect from her physical appearance – this isn’t the first time she’s said something rather profound. If you have power over reality, you can never really know whether the people who claim to be your friends are actually your friends or merely under your influence. This is true even without godlike powers – wealth, social standing, and prestige are all things which grant power, and with that it becomes harder to tell whether friends are truly friends, or whether they have some other goal. Okay so that sounds really paranoid, but it’s something some people actually experience.

This episode was massively less weird than last week’s, but it did present some interesting stuff. There are parallels throughout the entire episode between Sasami and the myriad gods – in a sense both parties experience exactly the same things but from different sources. Take for example Kagami’s cold rejection of Sasami’s friendship and note that by choosing Kagami, Sasami essentially rejected all of the myriad gods without even sparing a thought for them. Cold. This leads into jealousy – the myriad gods wish to crush Kagami since she was Sasami’s chosen friend, while Sasami felt jealousy and betrayal over seeing Kagami with other girls. They’re going through exactly the same things!

Having a normal school life is a theme in so many different series, in fact it seems to pop up somewhere in almost everything, supernatural or not. It rarely, if ever, ends well and I feel a little sorry for Sasami trying to attain one while harbouring power over all creation and attempting to befriend a robot. As an otaku, her concept of ‘normal’ probably already vastly differs from that of the other students so it’s hardly strange she’d be shocked by their ‘dull’ conversations. There was no way this was ever going to be normal, even putting aside the fact that one of Kagami’s roles is to keep watch over Sasami so that her power doesn’t do funky things to the universe. All I can say is that I find myself unreasonably glad that they managed to become true friends by the end, though the friendship was obviously there right from the start – from Sasami’s ‘I thought we were friends…’ to her incessant rambling about her very first friend to her brother.

And once again, Sasami-san@Ganbaranai leaves me with no idea where it’s planning to go next. This seems to be a running theme each week, especially given how the previews aren’t really previews!

tl;dr: @MoombaDS – This week on #Sasamisan – friendship and betrayal. With gods. And a recovering hikikomori.

Random thoughts:

  • Sasami is cute when she’s nervous!
  • Kagami considers sleeping to be ‘occupied’ – I wonder whether that’s merely her liking sleep or if it also serves an additional purpose as a robot.
  • Tsurugi may act like an idiot at times, but she’s pretty damn perceptive – she noticed right away that something was up.
  • Poor Kamiomi… you never even stood a chance.
  • I love Kagami’s expression when Sasami asks her if they can go to the bathroom together!
  • Some of Kagami’s ‘accidents’ were rather painful to watch.

Full-length images: 33.

Random aside: I released an awesome eight track sci-fi electronic video-game-inspired album! You should listen to it, buy it, and spread the word or something!

 

Preview

End Card

40 Comments

  2. Sasami is cute when she’s nervous!
    I agree with this and when she was begging Kagami to be her friend.

    I love the random sound Kagami makes when she wakes up like the “meow” and about the fight scene it kinda reminds me of Black Rock Shooter and also this, Gundam Strike Freedom anyone?

    And about those kids that Tama was playing with, they sure know what to “eat” hahaha.

    baseone
    Reply

  8. All of the sudden, Sasami x Kagami yuri shipping.

    Also I agreed with Yalvyn there. Give us a proper ED already! Judging from the happy voice of Sasami there, I think I’m gonna like this song very much.

    Kairoru
    Reply

  9. what is this logic even Tamako and Sasami main character tells her best friend Daisuki~ so cute XD , Girl really can do anything but if a man tell his best friend daisuki it will become so Gay.

    pokpok
    Reply

  11. It was a strangely normal episode by SHAFT standards, but it was still a really good one though. Really liking this show, definitely one of my favorites this season. Also, Kagami x Sasami? I’m shipping that.

    8-bitPenguin
    Reply

  12. at first I thought all this was caused because Sasami wished to have a normal school life, so instead she was treated like someone normally would coming from her situation, and being like she is lol, I thought all the happenings to kagami was the myraid deities forcing her to give sasami a real school life being overlooked :c lol BUT I liked the actual storeh better and that hug at the end was so Kyaaa!!

    Akarin
    Reply

  14. The Coming of Age of a God

    Best episode so far (I enjoyed them all) – I hope there’s more like this ahead.

    Obviously the ED is going to be the running joke through the series, but I’m
    hopeful of a real singing ending by Hanazawa Kana, et. al.

    mac65
    Reply

  18. Dawwww, that was so sweet an ending. Kagami took everything on herself to protect her friend. It was obvious that something was after her, but the whole damn pantheon of gods?!

    Is Sasami first year? She talked about only having a few days to make friends, but I assume she meant before the end of the year since her room plackard says class 1 right (group)?

    Bear
    Reply

  19. More and more I’m growing convinced that Kagami is my favorite anime girl of this season. She’s wonderful in so many aspects and HanaKana’s portrayal of this supposedly impassive cyborg is simply spot-on. Kagami’s ridiculously cute when she pretends badly not to be interested in becoming Sasami’s friend and her snarky demeanor makes her the perfect foil for our haughty ojou-sama. Sasami-san@Ganbaranai is at its best when Shinbo sensei doesn’t overreach and tone down the “Shafty” bizarreness, relying instead on character-driven expositions that gently tug our heartstrings.

    I really like your music, Moomba and Point L4 is an album that everyone should take the time to listen to. “Data Corruption” and “TX-RD” are my current favorites. The tunes are quite cinematic, perhaps even thematic and I could somewhat picture the sci-fi conceptual scenes while listening to the songs. Keep up the good work and I hope we can hear more about your inspiration behind the compositions.

    Seishun Otoko
    Reply

  23. Quite liked this episode – not only because it involved character development for both Sasami and Kagami, but also succesfully combining a normal school episode with the supernatural weirdness of this show. The show’s small cast and random plot works in its favor here too, as the episode fits well into the whole (whereas this could be a slower episode in other shows) and I’m interested to see where this will go next.

    Plenty of funny moments again too, especially with Kagami’s snarkyness (her stoic voice really works in the delivery) and the antics of the myriad gods (that montage of their random murder attempts).

    Dvalinn
    Reply

  24. Sooo…. why did Kagami act so cold towards Sasami? Is it because she’s a robot and can’t express many emotions? Why did Tama say Kagami was overjoyed to have made a new friend when she was portrayed as coldly indifferent and annoyed throughout the episode until the last few scenes?

    This was probably the least confusing episode yet and I still don’t fully understand it. Maybe I’m just too stupid for this show..

    ama01
    Reply

  28. Jeez. Sasami just can’t catch a break. I was really feeling sorry for her this episode. It’s like she’s supposed to be the strongest character, but ends up being the weakest. I mean I thought she had control over all the gods so why wouldn’t she just be able to tell them all to leave Kagami alone? Am I missing something?

    sealouse
    Reply

    1. And frankly I didn’t even like this episode. It kind of made me want to hurt something. Maybe cause it was so different than what I was expecting. Of course tsunderes aren’t my favorite characters anyways. It could also be Kagami that I can’t stand. Everything about her seems so forced. Well she is a robot so I guess I can’t blame her for being fake.

      sealouse
      Reply

  30. I’m finally starting to get into this series, great episode and post.

    Thanks sharing the link to your tunes as well! “Drift” rocks, and “Starlight” and “Data Corruption are both spectacular! “Starbound Speedway” is great too – reminds me a little of the RC Podcast Theme which I hope you guys will do more of soon too =)

    Sudachi
    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *