Real Drive - Episode 15

Real Drive has been one of those series that has largely disappointed me, not so much because it's a poor effort but rather because as a concept it holds such a vast amount of potential. Despite that, it's only produced very occasional episodes of worth with rather too much filler, topped off with the cardinal sin of a recap episode last time around.

With all of this in mind, episode fifteen of Real Drive is a rather difficult one to pin down. On the surface, it offers up quite an interesting thought, namely the future of food in a world where everything can be simulated by computers, introducing us to a special food club in the Metal where its members tastes have become so refined that they simply can't stomach normal food in real drive, leaving them to basically starve and die instead - A state of affairs which of course leads Haru to investigate the group.


However, despite this rather serious sounding concept, the entire episode is basically treated as a comedy - We more or less start out with Minamo giving a five minute diatribe against green peppers (I'm not a huge fan of peppers, but even I can't wax lyrical about it quite like that), and then via some misfortune which leaves Minamo having not eaten and thus hungry for the entire episode we get to meet this Metal-based food club themselves. At this juncture the episode becomes almost Monty Python-esque, with some bizarre characters with an incredibly nonsensical dress sense and equally surreal choice of eating locations for their virtual meals. Although I was surprised to see the subject matter given this treatment, I have to confess - It was actually quite funny in its own weird way, so the episode certainly wasn't a complete dead loss by any means.

Overall then, I have to give this instalment a pass mark for bringing up an interesting subject, but more or less breaking with its own tradition in not taking said matter at all seriously, with some decent if slightly surprising results. I really don't know why the writers feel that they have to fit every plot point in exactly with Minamo's own every day life though - I'm pretty sure that we can handle these concepts without having our hands held to such a ridiculous degree.