Mikagura Gakuen Kumikyoku 06-07

“btheeeeeee!”

“Oh my goodness, where has Highway been? He hasn’t posted in a week!” I know, you’ve all been worried about me. Well… maybe not. But I did take a week off to have a hole in my tummy fixed, and I couldn’t really sit for a long time. But now I’m back, and we’ll get back into the flow with a couple episodes of Mikagura Gakuen Kumikyouku.

Finishing the Rookie Battle

Gotcha!

This show’s not about the fighting. That’s become really obvious, and I can’t really say that it’s something I mind. Instead, it’s about the characters and their complete inability to surprise Eruna at a party. Well, no on that last one, but it is about the characters. That said, we do get a little bit of fighting as Ton-kyun gets revenge for Usamaru against the girl from the band. He used a nice mix of strategy and his abilities to survive her major attack and to finish her off, and even gives Usamaru a nice tribute with the rabbit ears afterwards. We also get a fight between Tonkyun and Eruna, where she even advertises her “Surrounding Eruna Ichinomiya with Cute Girls” Club, on top of winning with her new ability, Toy Bayonet. Too bad for her she loses completely to Asuhi in the semi-final.

Kuzuryu gets broke

More of the story in episode 5 is about Kuzuryu and his unhappiness. I have to say that we’re probably not going to get anything amazingly original as the back stories for any of these characters. All of them are going to have some reason for disillusionment, and will be dredged out of it by the positivity of Eruna. In Kuzuryu’s case, he was at another school (along with Shigure) that was the opposite of Mikagura, in that it only has sports clubs rather than only having cultural clubs. But Kuzuryu wasn’t in any particular club, instead helping out all the other clubs as a ringer, which led to resentment and talking behind his back, and hence his disillusionment. The resolution to this is not really something that is done, it’s just his observation of Eruna’s spirit as she fights that helps pull him out of his mopiness. It’s both a bit too easy and kind of interesting at the same time, as his ‘problem’ was something that he got himself into, and therefore it’s not really out of the question that he would pull himself out of it. Although it might be giving the show too much credit to think that it’s making a statement like that.

Happy Senpai

Starting a Club

Two girls that Eruna would love to have in the club

Eruna’s found the “first” target for her club, since she’s not exactly catching the idea that the “Go Home Club” isn’t an actual club so she’s still thinking that Seisa is in a club. Unfortunately for her, Otone is a fruitcake. She might be cute, but she’s all weird, with some dual personality (White Otone and Black Otone), and apparently plenty of the self-doubt that goes along with being a newly introduced character in this show. Or maybe not. It’s hard to tell. I’ll be honest and say that putting Otone and Eruna on the screen at the same time, at least the way Otone is now, results in an incessant stream of chirpy yammering that kind of got on my nerves. I don’t really ‘get’ Otone right now.

Smashing the clouds

But thankfully she wasn’t the sole topic of the episode, as cheering up Asuhi after his loss in the final takes the top spot in the second half. The device of having the ragged Bimii give the wrong messages to Asuhi and Eruna was certainly not original, and I don’t know if it worked that well, as I was just wanting that part to be over. But the idea of the party was fairly nice, if rained out. Seisa quietly saves the day, clearing away the clouds with Killing Art and letting them all see the stars for Asuhi. But there’s the mercurial Otone saying that she saw Seisa and the power of Killing Art.

The part where Seisa is betrayed

Otone adds a weirdly sinister tone to the show that I don’t think will hold up. But for right now she brings a presence that doesn’t really seem to mesh with Eruna, as much as Eruna loves the look and personalities of Otone. The two of them just create almost an interference pattern that makes it difficult to watch them together. Maybe as the show moves forward we’ll get more of them slipping into the holes of the other one, less clashing and more complementing. I hope that happens soon.