Monday, 17 May 2010

Senkou no Night Raid - Episode 5

It's been a while since I last managed to snag an episode of Senkou no Night Raid... not that I was in a desperate hurry after that awful fourth instalment. Nonetheless, episode five at least returns us to more interesting matters than photographs stolen by an errant feline.

This time around, it's Kazura who is the real focus of the story, as he spots a familiar face while developing some photos taken by Aoi, managing to learn where he took them but remaining reticent as to why he's so interested in the matter. From here, he takes things into his own hands, trying to track down this fellow named Nishio; an investigation which leads him into big trouble and an uncomfortable night of torture before being bailed out.


Despite all this Kazura still can't let the matter go, and continues to talk with Nishio's girlfriend who still loyally waits for the missing man, before finally catching up to him as he makes his (temporary) escape from an arms deal which is intercepted by the authorities, with a little help from the organisation that Kazura and company works for.

If all of that sounds like compelling stuff, then I've obvious done a far better job of summarising it than Senkou no Night Raid did of actually delivering it. While there were some nice and subtle touches when it came to denoting the relationship between Nishio and Kazura, that did little to spruce up what was otherwise an utterly dull tale which swung the spotlight on a character who is reticent to talk at the best of times and thus left any kind of interesting story development utterly wanting. There might be certain aspects of this series that I can admire a little, but that's nowhere near enough to paper over the cracks of yet another weak episode. At least it was better than that horrendous previous instalment though, I suppose...

2 comments:

  1. Definitely better than the one with the cat...

    Although while Kazura was being beaten up, I was thinking "No, wait, in episode 1 YOU COULD TELEPORT!" and wondering why the hell he didn't get out of there.

    I was reading that an upcoming episode deals with the Mukden incident, so it looks like they're opening that can of worms that's been sat by the tin-opener since the series began..

    I'm wondering if Anime no Chikara is going to be the byword for "Shows with good potential that don't quite realise it"?

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  2. To be fair, I was thinking "just teleport, for God's sake!" in my head, but we've seen in past episodes that Kazura hates using his ability even during an official operation, and he also refused to use it outside of operations last episode, so I guess it's consistent.

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