Ajin – OVA – 02

「亜人 OVA2」 (Ajin OVA 2)

OVAs, OADs and such are funny things.  There are so many directions they can go, from adapting bonus chapters of a source manga, to skylarking on a complete random diversion, to trying to be a mini-version of the parent series.  But one way they can always justify their existence is by presenting a difference face of a show – something we haven’t seen before.  They tend, as a rule, to be more humor-driven than series episodes but that doesn’t always mean you’re getting anything new.

By that standard, the second OVA of Ajin thoroughly succeeded in adding to the series’ portfolio (as did the first, though for totally different reasons).  I don’t know how much if any of this was manga material, but it doesn’t matter because the whole OVA was thoroughly delightful.  It was very funny in a way that while totally different in tone from the series itself, felt totally consistent with it.  It’s as if a quite serious person decided to cut up and be silly, and it was exactly the way you imagined they’d act if they ever did so (no matter how unlikely it might have seemed).

The first few segments featured Satou and Tanaka, and were altogether the darker portions of the episode – this was comedy, but black all the way.  Satou reveals to Tanaka his method of fundraising, and it’s a pretty gruesome one – organ harvesting for the black market.  As an Ajin of course, this is quite possible to do over and over, but – yikes.  Poor Tanaka – especially since Satou is as ever the master manipulator.  It’s bad enough when he guilts Tanaka into playing along in order to buy weapons for the grand struggle for freedom, but when it’s for “Speedrunner” – vital so Satou doesn’t get sick from depression and lose his health?  The dude is shameless…

After that the focus shifts to the “good guys” side, where Nakano continues to pine after Izumi and irritate Kei.  Poor Kou’s puppy-boy crush on Izumi is one of the sweeter and sillier elements of a very dark story, and it was thus pretty starved for oxygen in the show itself – so it’s nice to see it get some airtime.  Meanwhile, Tosaki is agonizing over the cost of the operation, which is forcing him to embezzle and about to push him into spending his own money.  He even contemplates packing the boys (who eat like teenagers because, well- they are) into formaldehyde until the start of the operation.

The payoff for all this is the ever-eager Izumi trying to help whatever way she can – her offers up to and including working as at a maid cafe are rejected – before finally having Kuro-chan dig until it hits a hot spring.  The notion here is to safe on water and electricity, I suppose, but the real reason seems to be as an excuse for some extremely rare Ajin fanservice – which the lovestruck Kou stumbles into.  Oh, the irony – at long last he’s able to manifest his IBM, specifically for the purpose of having it confess to Izumi.  Can the Flood Effect be far behind?