Masou Gakuen HxH – 04

Aine’s doing her homework

There are times you have to do something in a show, maybe you want to, maybe you don’t, but sometimes they just have to be done.

What Is My Worth

Given all she can

This episode really gets to the core of Aine. She has no past, and we find out that her entire life that she can remember is being a test subject for Nayuta. So it’s no surprise that she can only find self-worth in whether she’s a good fighter, and whether she’s better than Hayuru and Yurishia. Yet their weapons seem to be better fighting the magitech enemy units, and they don’t lose power as quickly. So Aine overdoes it and gets into crisis mode when her hybrid count drops while fighting another Dragorie (I think a Pokemon name is great for that). Kizuna tries to recall her from the fight, but she won’t listen, and eventually faints.

Stupid suit design. No guy would want that thing over their junk.
But then again, he does look like a Ken doll.

I actually thought it was a good choice to not show Kizuna’s heroic rescue of Aine, instead just cutting to her recovering. And he didn’t even fight off a whole bunch of stuff to save her, just caught her before she fell. I actually like that the show is really minimizing Kizuna’s heroism and action, and not make him be the guy who eventually has to beat the bad guy. I mean, it’s still a tremendously sexist setup, but at least it keeps the girls still involved in the battling, unlike most of these shows. Even High School DxD pretty much always has the girls unable to do anything and Issei being the guy that saves them. So I like that Kizuna isn’t the more powerful guy who comes in to cover for the girls.

Aine’s anger at her helplessness

Indulgence

I really liked that they took the time for this kind of tender embrace.
I think really helps direct the meaning of what comes next.

And then we have the part that the show probably had to do, but you hope it doesn’t do any more of. You knew that Aine was quite the self-pitying character, constantly devaluing herself as merely the total of her battle prowess. So you also knew that the show would have to open up that hamper and air that dirty laundry out sometime. This show spends about 1/3 of the time on Aine’s pity party, in a single scene that definitely felt like it went on quite a bit long, only to follow it up with Kizuna’s answer to her with his own tale of woe from growing up around Nayuta. But I thought it was a nice touch for Kizuna’s morale to be brought up in his flashback by his sister, and for him to pass that on to Aine.

Now is not a good time, Shikina

The remainder of the episode went pretty much like you thought it would. Again, the sexy scene was better than pretty much any other show, although it did get a little gropey in the second round. But I thought they kept the emotion and energy of it in line with something believable. And of course they unlock Aine’s Immoral Weapon, which turns out to just not be that interesting. A big gun that blows everything up after taking far too long to charge. Ah well, maybe the others will end up with better weapons. And in celebration of driving the bad guys off, they have a party! I thought they did ok showing the effect of the attack on Ataraxia, with people injured and the place busted up. It just felt weird to have a big party and festival bonfire afterwards.

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So they had to pull Aine out of her pity party, but it’s certainly something I hope doesn’t happen too much, or that they have to repeat for the other girls. Honestly, it wasn’t the best TV, and didn’t really get to the sort of emotional depth that is needed to make it enjoyable to watch. But it did the job, and now Aine seems to be out of the pit of unhappiness. I hope they get back to a little more of the humor next week, because there wasn’t any this episode, although it probably would have been a bit forced in the middle of a battle. I also hope they can find a way to explain that the battles are taking more time, which would give them cover for the girls taking timeouts in the love room with Kizuna. As it is, it’s a bit of abuse of Talking Is A Free Action, and I don’t really want them to continue that the whole time.

Those poor fingers

Some beefy arms and fingers for Aine

Also, I gotta say that the art in this show is pretty terrible. I guess with Production IMS you have a total quality of art + story. So if the story is bad (like Shinmai Maou or Date a Live), you get acceptable key frames. But if the story’s not… awful (hey, let’s not go too overboard) you get this stuff… Personally I’ll take the bad art and better story, but I wish that the animators would actually think more about what they’re drawing. Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do? You’re drawing that frame of Aine slamming her hands down on the table anyway, why not make it look better. Give her some fists to slam on the table, pull those elbows in a little. Close the fingers together when Reiri is comforting Kizuna. Nobody ever reaches out to cup someone’s cheek with their fingers spread like that. This isn’t all on Production IMS, I know. Everyone does it (Honoka reaching out to invite Eri to µ’s in the first season of Love Live! looks horrible with her fingers spread apart, for example), but come on already.