Tokyo ESP – 04

Lolanime

Normally I don’t get angry at things that happen in anime (…sobbing uncontrollably over stupid things like the K-ON! ending is a different story), but I was actually kind of upset over Peggy being punched this episode. Abuse everyone else all you want Tokyo ESP, but leave the adorable flying penguin alone.

Wow things got really anime really fast. The entire first part of the episode was just one ridiculous thing after another and I don’t know if that was supposed to be taken seriously or not. I would assume not, since everything from the penguin summoning a shark to Rinka kicking a sumo-wrestler type guy out of the sky into another enemy wearing a suit of armour was just a little over the top, but you never know. Anyways, the series of events seemed to go smooth enough for most of it, up until the ending where things took a turn for a more serious route. Ending off on a random summoning of snakes (which was pretty uh, Monogatari) and the revelation with Minami and Kyoutarou seemed just a tiny bit jarring from “that penguin’s eyes are glowing and it’s smoking at the beak for some reason, what the hell is going on”. But more on the step siblings later.

This was possibly the best development of them all.

In the ridiculousness, a few other important things popped up in the story. A huge point would be the fact that while the plot has definitely confirmed that the glowing fish in the sky give people powers, apparently the flying penguin can also take them away. That probably explains why the penguin is even in the plot to begin with, and this might even become a major factor later on in stopping the esper’s massacre that’s inevitably going to happen. Another point was the giant Japanese god-looking thing over the city. That seemed kind of important, though there’s not much info about that now. I guess the Professor or whatever he calls himself (the guy who was leading the bloodbath in the first episode) is pretty important too, since you know, the whole bloodbath thing. Though that one’s going to have to go to Hoshi in the next post, since he only appeared at the very end and his motives haven’t been totally explained yet.

Okay, now back to Minami and Kyoutarou. His backstory and the fact that one of the main antagonists is his step sister seems a little bit overdramatic (that entire scene where people just stood there shooting each other was kind of humorous), but just about everything about Kyoutarou’s character seems to have been dramatized. I’m not sure if that was a clever move on the author’s part or not (especially since a lot of the characters are just a bit extreme), but it kind of works. Him sulking for half of the episode wasn’t exactly heart wrenching since they’ve left little to no time for the viewer to get emotionally attached to most of the characters, but it should be interesting to see how his relationship with Minami works out later in the series.

The characters were probably better developed in the manga, seeing how Rinka’s implicit trust of Kyoutarou seems like it came on a little bit fast. But then again, maybe it was just as fast in the manga. The story about how the two met was cute though. Murasaki and Rinka becoming BFFs seemed a little fast too, though I can’t see where they could have cut out too much of their interaction considering that they just met. Plus Rinka is a pretty badass person to look up to, so Murasaki’s admiration is totally understandable.

Well, this definitely isn’t the smartest show ever, but I found the mayhem in the beginning of the episode really fun. Yeah, it was silly, but it was entertaining. I have no idea how this measures up to the manga (as you can probably tell from my writing above), but I’m pretty fond of Tokyo ESP so far. …Hoshi always seems so disappointed with this show, so I figure that I’m going to stay clear from the source material until this finishes airing. I’m sure I’d be disappointed too if I read it and knew exactly what they’ve changed or cut out, so I’m just going to avoid that for now.

About Karakuri

University student and the one at Metanorn who's known for wearing glasses. Likes blood, insanity and plot twists, but also plays otome games and adores cute romance anime. It balances out... somehow.