Active Raid – 02

Calm down, kid. Anime eyes ain’t THAT big.

Yo! I figured I’d go with some more light-on-plot, action series to blog. My school/research workload doubled from the last anime season so I felt like I needed some more “light” shows to keep me from burning out. Active Raid is pretty much exactly what I need – lots of flashiness and therefore not direly in need of me writing in-depth analytical posts.

Active Raid seems to be allergic to creating a story that flows. Instead of following up on last week and explaining more about those hectic events, we’re just flung into a brand new scenario. It’s hard for me to get a grasp on anything when we’re whizzing along at lightspeed with no breaks. Episode 2 didn’t do much to change my “it’s kinda good” opinion on the show because it didn’t really do much different from episode 1. It also opened up with a girl getting dressed, which is not exactly what I want this show to prioritize.

Hmm, I don’t recall the guys having this detailed close-up…

Messiness aside, I’m still a big fan of the cynical approach to police enforcement. Kagari goes into the fray all buoyant with pride from her unique sense of justice and discipline (especially when compared to the other members of her team). She’s so pumped to show everyone her skills! However, she ends up not apprehending the criminal properly because of…pop-up ads. An overbearing tutorial throws widgets at her until it covers her entire screen, in what is described as an attempt to market these extremely dangerous suits to regular joe consumers. Who even needs these kinds of suits marketed towards them!? Anyways, that scene was a highlight for me in the series of face-palmingly stupid ways Unit 8 gets restricted during fights. I love it.

Unit 8 has be flexible due to these unforseen circumstances that can occur at any time. Most of the members are pretty relaxed, and tend to take things as they come, which is probably a result of being in this kind of job for x amount of time. So I don’t think Kagari is really tackling this from the right angle. She’s so rigid that she not only refuses to follow the structure of Unit 8’s orders, but almost everything she does is directly from a handbook or a preprogrammed software. It’s stifling. However, she has a bit of a funny tick to her that makes her strictness end up being her downfall instead of what keeps her in line. Her rigidity is really just a flimsy cover for her SEETHING RAGE.

Kagari is a vicious creature who will blow a blood vessel just from seeing co-workers arrive late, so it’s no wonder she gets so pissed off she roundhouse kicks someone so hard it demolishes an entire building. She is so desperate to follow everything by the books that when things don’t go her way, she goes berserk. It’s like when you slightly move the pen on a neat freak’s desk too many times – at some point they just go crazy and throw everything off their desk before stabbing you in the eye with said pen. Probably.

 After all that chaos, Kagari gets a light scolding by Rin. She tells Kagari something interesting “don’t bring your personal sense of justice to the workplace.” She just wants Kagari to do as the laws say and not really worry about anything else. I’m…not sure that’s the best of advice because then we’re basically on the road to Psycho-Pass here. Anyways, I think what she meant to tell Kagari is that she needs to fucking chill and not impose her strict regime on every little thing. If she were to be more lax like the rest of Unit 8, she wouldn’t have panicked and destroyed another building. Ideally, you need a balance of Kagari and Unit 8 in one convenient package. Afterall, Kagari’s approach isn’t totally wasteful. She has a lot of skills and she was the one to insist on another method that would save Hinata.

Speaking of Hinata, I don’t think that side story about the sisters really did anything for me. First of all, I had so much trouble telling them apart for the longest time that I thought they were actually working at the same job and just taking turns visiting people to cover more ground. Then we see Hinata in danger and I found myself not caring at all. I mean…even Rin didn’t seem to care too much based on how quickly she was like “Well, guess we have to blow everything up!”. I just didn’t feel a connection between them. All we saw was Hinata giving french toast to Rin on the couch, which doesn’t give me a good picture of their relationship. I think this story should have happened a little further along the road, after some relationships had already been established.

AHOGE MERGING COMPLETE

On the plus side, Active Raid is fun. It has a weird dude find a firefighter suit, get high, and then start attacking students with a chainsaw…because I guess firemen have chainsaws???? Clearly we will get back to why these suits are being distributed to people in order to incite criminal activities (I’m looking at you, weird dude who spouts monologues while a tiny child looks bored in the background!). There’s a deeper reason here, but I feel like it will take a while for any of that to come into the light. Until then, it’s a bad guy of the week thing. That’s not necessarily a bad thing if you’re here for fun fights and silly wrenches being thrown into the mix. One week it’s rubberneckers, the next it’s pop-up ads…what will it be next?

About Overcooled

A neuroscience graduate, black belt, and all-around nerd. You'll either find me in my lab or curled up in my rilakkuma kigurumi watching anime.