Rokujouma no Shinryakusha!? – Series Review

Everyone Fears the Landlady

It’s just me solo for the series wrap up of 6-Tatami Invaders, the show that probably broke the most molds this Summer 2014 season.

What Was That?

All of the Invaders, now become friends

Our mid-season review was a bit of a lark for this show, with skylion and I doing our best impressions of the voices of the different main characters. Part of the reason for that was that the show kind of defied explanation to that point, and part of the reason was that the show had put together a really good cast of characters that inspired some creativity. It’s rare to have a show that can put out such different characters with different backgrounds, and keep them all relevant throughout the show.

It definitely starts with a bang, with perhaps the most out-there first episode, even just the second half of the first episode, that I may have seen. Ordinary boy finds cheap apartment, joins the knitting club for whatever reasons, and settles in for a nice anime series about his life in school. And then all hell breaks loose in one evening: A ghost shows herself, frustrated that she hasn’t scared him off yet. A magical girl (who noone ever believes is a magical girl) breaks up their fight by crashing through the window. Her subsequent explanation is interrupted by a priestess from a subterranean culture who wants to take over the surface world, and is willing to buy the key apartment from the renter, but her overtures (monetary and otherwise) are interrupted by a space princess (and her conscience) who manages to get embarrassed by the, er, mishandling on the part of the boy and starts a major fight, where she ends up almost blowing up the earth. And after all this mayhem, the apartment supervisor shows up and lays the smackdown on everyone, forcing them to all agree to figure out who can win the prized apartment peacefully. Hence the Corona Agreement is born.

Harumi is the only one that Koutarou’s really even the slightest interested in

So after that bang up beginning, where does the show go? Well, after an initial bit of jockeying to see if someone can win control of the room in games, the show seems to be heading into a harem show. All of the girls seem to be getting more interested in Koutarou, especially Sanae and Theia, but there’s kind of a problem for them: It’s pretty obvious that Koutarou’s eye is pretty permanently turned towards Harumi, his knitting club senpai. And here is where the show gets really interesting for me.

Here’s The Thing…

They even all fight together

Instead of turning into a traditional harem one-upsmanship battle, where all of the girls try to outdo each other for the attention of Koutarou, we actually have their friendships develop. The harem is almost neutralized. It doesn’t really fall apart, but the whole group grows closer together through a bunch of happenings that forge different pathways for each of them. Sanae and Koutarou become very close, almost like siblings. Yurika, the magical girl who truly does have power but never ends up showing it directly, leaving her abilities in question and her reputation as strictly a cosplayer, throws her support to Harumi and also becomes a confidant / partner in jokes for Koutarou. Kiriha, the shrine maiden from underground, becomes the older sister to the whole group, continuing her plan of trying to integrate the underground people into the surface people in a bloodless immigration. And Space Princess Theia, the one who probably keeps the most of her feelings for Koutarou, dubs him her knight and continues to try to get closer to him through shared experiences.

… Including Yurika

And instead of being all pitted against each other, these 7 girls (add in Theia’s majordomo Ruth, Koutarou’s crush Harumi, and landlady Shizuka, who has powers beyond what any of the rest can ken) plus Koutarou become an almost unstoppable force. They join up to stop the war faction of the underground people. They join up to stop the other space princess from causing trouble for Theia. They join up to fight off the Dark Rainbow faction of the magical girls. It was mentioned in the comments for the mid-season review that the source book turns into more of a pan-dimensional romp, and you can certainly see the shape of that being formed in this series.

Yurika, Theia, and Ruth

And I think that that’s something pretty special. It’s really rare to have a harem show turn into something else like this, something that can endure past the harem, something that has interest besides the relative positions of the girls. One might argue that last season’s Kanojo ga Flag wo Oraretara tried to do something like that, but it got far too bogged down in too many girls and too much other story. Rokujouma avoided both pitfalls, having pretty much the perfect amount of effective characters, and letting the story build through individual arcs showcasing the origins and challenges to each of the four main girls, while filling in details about Ruth and Harumi as they go. We never got much other information about Shizuka, an omission I think was more because the show just didn’t get there than because she’s not an important character, but the rest of them were well-represented.

Presentation Impressions

Koutarou, Sanae, and Kiriha (and Korama and Karama)

So it carries the concept off really well, but how does it look doing it? Well, like pretty much everything by Silver Link, it’s a good looking show with few mistakes and good, if not amazing, animation. There are fight scenes which are pulled off with aplomb, good concepts that get carried to fruition, and very good character design. I think the look of the show is excellent. And to go with it, the voice work is very good, presenting 4 almost completely new seiyuu as the main female characters, backed up with seasoned professionals in the other roles. The mix works very well, and I think that special note should go to Nichiko Oomori, Yurika Nijino’s actor. I think that Yurika was a difficult character to get right, because she needed the right combination of simpering, confidence, deference, and almost whining. She could have been totally insufferable, but Oomori hit that sweet spot, and really made her my favorite character throughout the show.

Even Harumi, Shizuka, and Makkenji

The OP song, Koukan Win-Win Mujouken, sung by the four main characters, is a lot of fun, and the OP animation had a special trick, foreground bars to increase apparently 3D depth as the characters interacted with the camera. The ED song, Koi wa Milk Tea by petit milady, an idol unit consisting of Aoi Yuuki and Ayana Taketatsu (who were also great as Kiriha’s haniwa dolls, Korama and Karama), was a good way to end each episode, and is probably the best singing work I’ve heard either of them do (really, neither of them should be singing anything solo, but somehow together they’re better). The show even handled action pretty well, with multi-discipline fights that used each character to the fullest. I thought it was interesting at episode 11, airing on a Saturday where there were big fights in SAO, Mahouka, Captain Earth, and Rokujouma, that the fight I enjoyed the most was Rokujouma’s, with its mix of fun and adventure. No it wasn’t going to be a serious “Will they win?” fight. But it was so much fun: Korama and Karama’s fight for their pride against Jack-O, Sanae giving Koutarou spirit sight, Theia grabbing the attention of the big Earth Robot, and Kiriha finishing it up with a Falcon Punch.

From the first episode, this show really grabbed me. First it was with some irrepressible characters who were interesting and fun. Then it was with fun takes on stories that were not necessarily original, but almost necessary themselves. And finally with the way it came out of the stories: After each one, the viewer could tell that each girl was closer to Koutarou, and he was closer to them, but it wasn’t in a romantic way. Personally, I have to say that my favorite girl was Nijino Yurika (literally “Rainbow Yurika”), who toiled in obscurity, finally earning some respect from everyone else not by her important deeds, which were always key – keeping the world from blowing up, protecting the innocent people, providing power boosts – but were never seen or adknowledged. No, she earned respect by being herself, by being reliable enough, and by being friendly to everyone and always doing her best, even if it was as the horse in the play (she did get a promotion to dragon, tho!). I’d love to see more of Rokujouma no Shinryakusha!? and think it would continue to be a lot of fun.

About Highway

Proving that you don't have to be young to love anime, I enjoy all genres and styles of shows. If it's not hurting anyone else, you should never be ashamed of what you like!