OP2 Sequence

OP2: 「前を向いて!」 (Mae wo Muite!) by 大城あかり(木村千咲)

「もう友達でしょ」 (Mou Tomodachidesho)
“We’re Already Friends Aren’t We?”

This week’s episode was definitely.. different.

General Impressions

Boy, I hope I wasn’t the only one who was caught totally off guard with how this week’s episode started. Besides triple checking that I wasn’t watching the wrong series, can we all agree just how terrible the 3d animation was whenever the camera decided to horizontally pan? Honestly, as much as I’d like to consider myself an optimist, I can’t help but see the first few minutes of this week’s episode as someone in production wanting to make an idol show and somehow convincing their entire team that copying that kind of style would reap some kind of reward.

Real talk aside, this week’s episode overall wasn’t too bad when you look at things from a top-down perspective. Giving a chance for our characters to interact with one another outside of the court, it was fun getting to see everyone being a little goofy. Plus from a plot perspective we received a friendly reminder that the Beach Volleyball Club hadn’t officially been recognized as its own entity. So, through a rather simple series of events, I think things ended in the perfect way to setup for whatever might be coming for us over the horizon. The Beach Volleyball Club can officially be recognized, we have another new character who seems to round things out by being the token tsundere, and we have Marissa back to hopefully whip everyone into shape.

All-in-all, not too shabby of an episode if you don’t spend too much time worrying about the little things. However, I want to take a second to just express how conflicted I am with this show since watching it and then writing about it splits my feelings on it every single time. As a viewer, I appreciate how the show tries to take Beach Volleyball seriously. Sure there might be a bit more fanservice than I’d like to see, but for a show that revolves around girls in bikinis playing with a ball on the beach things could have definitely been much worse. But then as someone who has to write about the show, it’s tough for me not to talk about some of the shortcomings because there’s so much more that this show could be. Luckily, I really enjoy watching this show and that feeling of happiness manages to win out whenever I think about the topic.

In any case, I’ll catch you guys next week where we’ll hopefully see things get a bit more serious. See you then!

13 Comments

  1. It was a low quality opening in technical terms, but it did set the scene for that character. Using cg just lets them do it quickly and on the cheap.

    This is a show that mixes general silliness (including fanservice) and genuine contests, and I’d say whether one takes it seriously is really decided on a scene by scene basis. I’d say personally there’s more I don’t take seriously than stuff that I do. It’s a light fluffy show overall and had that vibe for me from the outset.

    Puffles
    1. I don’t think a viewer needs to take a binary approach to whether they take this show seriously or not. On the one hand it’s full of girls goofing around, and on the other it does have actual character development and competition. Like Takaii I enjoy watching this every week.

      Puffles
  2. About this hideous CGI. We start off knowing almost nothing about Akari other than she’s obviously a bit star-struck, and then we see her at an idol show. Is she really an idol? The show starts off realistically, but then we get the jarring CGI. This is followed by various impossible things – flying, “cloning”, etc. that firmly reveals this to be just Akari’s imagination.

    So basically I think the CGI was a deliberate choice to help clue us in on the unreality of the scene rather than a budget thing.

    Angelus
    1. Yeah, this time the CGI OP was her background and what drives her. I find it okay, but this should be an exception.. or they do it for every new person and the Budget will cry an river.. It is how to make the best effort within the Budget. To become famous and crush the anime or force the studio into ruin is an big selfish price

      Worldwidedepp

Leave a Reply

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