First Impressions / Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru

「穴ツッコミじいさん」 (Ana Tsukkomi Jiisan)
“The Finger-Pointing Geriatric”

I never thought Sore Machi could get weirder. Apparently, I thought wrong. From Aliens to Ghosts this episode dives headfirst into some strange topics. I should have seen this coming – especially since there was a real time traveler last episode. But before jumping into this whole alien and ghost business, I think it’s worth mentioning that “Eroyuki” Sanada might be the funniest male character in this show. He’s the type of guy that uses as many most words as possible to describe a situation – sometimes to the point where he’s too flustered to speak. Even when he’s praying at a shrine for his relationship with Hotori to blossom he manages to end up on the funniest of tangents. As he babbles on he starts thinking of all the dirty connotations his words could have and addresses every single one of them. Somehow I don’t think the Gods are going to neither forget nor forgive his intentions especially when he took the time to explain how messed up his thoughts were.

Back on topic, Aliens dominate the first half of this episode. Somehow Hotori is always involved with the strange and impossible. Like, for example, a mysterious ray gun that can create spherical vortexes that engulf and destroy anything that it touches. While such a weapon couldn’t possibly exist in our world, Hotori manages to stumble on one. While walking home from the convenience store Hotori picks up the ray gun, noting how it feels extra sturdy for just a kid’s toy, and pretend fires it while saying “Bang!” in the cutest voice I’ve heard from her. Besides making a huge crater in the ground she manages to grab the attention of two huge aliens. Literally scared out of her mind and crying out of fear she accidentally fires another shot, this time blowing a huge hole into a nearby apartment complex. With both the aliens and Hotori in awe of the ray gun’s power, one of the alien takes the chance to blow the other one up. As Hotori drops the gun after nearly getting her head blown off, the surviving alien picks up the ray gun and flies away. To make the story even more unbelieveable, Futaba also has an alien artifact as well. This one looking like a laser pointer, it has the ability to repair things that she points it at. As she uses her artifact to repair all the damage that Hotori caused the night before she somehow brings the dead alien back to life – the first half ending as the alien attempts to smack Futaba and Hotori with some sort of hammer thing. I hope you guys were as confused as I was while watching this.

While trying to talk about the first half was ridiculously weird, I found the second half ridiculously entertaining – focusing on Maid-Chou’s (or Uki’s) husband who had passed away. Besides managing to pull out more emotion from me than every other episode combined, I think it had some of the most beautiful scenes in the entire show so far (this is what I expect when I hear SHAFT quality). Besides the great quality in the drawings, apparently someone up in heaven made a mistake when Maid-Chou’s husband passed away. Causing him to rise up and nearly enter heaven to only plummet back down to earth as a ghost. Instead of becoming one of those ghosts who turn evil and grow holes in their chests, he decides to live it up and enjoy being a ghost. Playing with corporeal beings, interjecting into conversations, getting glared at by animals – the usual things ghost do. The story made a full 180 turn as it transitioned to a scene where Maid-Chou is praying to her husband’s shrine. I started feeling pretty sad for old guy, especially since he was so close to his wife but couldn’t reach out to her. It only got worse as Maid-Chou stared at an empty booth inside of Seaside where her husband was sitting at. After a few minutes of blankly staring she tells Tatsuno to place a cup of coffee right in front of her husband. I started getting really excited as she walked straight up to him, thinking that her husband would finally be able to embrace his wife after wandering for ten years…

… which actually didn’t happen since how the coffee was actually for Maid-Chou herself. I never expected to get trolled that hard, especially with something like a wife getting the chance to talk to her husband who has already passed away. Damn this show for being so good at trolling. Remember when I was talking about Sanada earlier? I’m sure he thought he was by himself when he was giving that embarrassing prayer about Hotori. You can bet that entire scene became ten times funnier after finding out Maid-chou’s husband was watching him the entire time.

 

Preview

18 Comments

  2. TROLLLLLLLED. Nah, I saw it coming, but was kind of hopeful they’d pull off a heart pulling scene. In the end, thanks for the troll SHAFT 😛 It was good though, brought a D: followed by a 😀

    FUTABA KON IN A HOODIE kyaaaa @wO

    I loved in the preview, Kon calling out for her mother reference to when they looked after her when she was sick and she was going to kill them all from listening to her sleep talk. Daw LOL. We need more Kon centric episodes ;A;

    Aside from that, I hope Soredemo doesn’t pull off supernatural things anytime soon, that was… way too weird, even for Soredemo.

    fyi, I see where Maaya Sakamoto’s Uki Uki~ in the OP comes from XD It’s all I could think about when the ghost said Maid-Chou’s name UKI UKI~!

    Rei
    Reply

    2. I didn’t see it coming, I totally bought into the whole Ghost thing like Patrick Swayze and all LOL DAMMIT I laughed though when I seen her sit down and have her snack. Through the whole alien thing I kept waiting for Hotori to wake up from a daydream or something. What the hell?

      Breedo
      Reply

    3. Unfortunately (at least for you sir/miss), there are more “LOL, What is this, I don’t even” chapters in the manga. No idea if SHAFT has chosen more of this kind of chapters to animate.

      Jun-01
      Reply

  10. About the alien arc: the manga’s 2nd Volume has a translation for the “alien ideograms”. I don’t want to tell spoilers, but I can say that things aren’t as they may look like. Also, the manga’s chapter ended when the black alien was being rematerialized, while SHAFT put that extra scene in the anime adaptation in which the revived alien apparently was going to attack the girls.

    Jun-01
    Reply

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