Thursday 9 October 2008

Telepathy Shoujo Ran - Episode 14

Another two-part Telepathy Shoujo Ran arc comes to an end here, and what's this? It ends in exactly the same way as the last one! A couple of episodes back Ran and Midori had to make some kind of bubble shield thing to escape a landslide, and this time they do it to get out of a fire. As I pointed out back then, this kind of defeats the "telepathy" part of the series name, and while I could maybe let it slide once it really reeks of lazy script writing to use it a second time.

Anyway, sorry to talk about the episode's conclusion first, but I had to get it out of my system before pointing out the various other lazy bits of writing in this story, not least the bad guy who hides in the bushes and shouts "But I drugged your pudding!!!", thus revealing himself in a completely unnecessary fashion, and the entire premise of the episode (the elbow scab of doom or whatever it is) which turned out to be fake, and some kind of cover-up for a bank robbery. This second point raised a big "What?!" from me - Did this girl not bathe at all since the scab appeared? If only she'd washed her elbows, the entire plot would have been revealed and it would have saved us all a lot of bother.


I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that I'm really just not cut out to enjoy Telepathy Shoujo Ran - I still like Ran and Midori as characters, but that doesn't outweigh the fact that they're still doing the same old stuff in every single story arc, using their magical powers (which stretch way beyond telepathy only when it's a convenient plot device) to solve ghost stories that always tend to have a Scooby-Doo-esque ending and that don't rouse any kind of emotion in me whatsoever if I'm honest.

I really hoped that this series could at least prove to be fun to watch, but it seems that twenty-six episodes is simply a stretch too far for a show that already appears to have well and truly run out of ideas.

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