Saturday, 9 February 2013

Sasami-san@Ganbaranai - Episode 5

After another largely bonkers episode last week, Sasami-san@Ganbaranai returns to normality for this week's instalment.  And if you believe that, you'll believe anything...

That said, Sasami is all-set to kick off her high school life very belatedly and she's determined to make the most of it - the first step of this adventure into the normal however is making a friend.  But who?  Given her late entry into the school and her general circumstances, the only thing for it is to ask classmate and resident robot Kagami to be her friend, if only as "practice" for the real thing - a task which Kagami takes to with her usual relish, by which I mean she spends her time sleeping and making deadpan remarks to everything.


There is, however, a problem with becoming the friend of what is effectively the overlord of the entire world - you become the subject of unwanted attention from various other deities.  It's a major problem for Kagami (albeit a somewhat amusing one for us as viewers), but her increased distance to Sasami as a result of this issue leaves our protagonist distraught at her inability to make or keep a friend - little does she realise the struggle that Kagami has taken on for Sasami's sake.

Having missed the mark somewhat over the past couple of episodes, this felt like something of a return to form for Sasami-san@Ganbaranai - a heart-felt but fun instalment that managed to make the most of the viewer's connection to Sasami built up over its early episodes, while also leveraging some simple but effective physical humour.  It's no classic, but it had enough emotion and amusement to ease the episode along when coupled with its slick visuals, and if the series can keep up this kind of level of quality it can at least stake a claim as one of the winter's more entertaining offerings.

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