Star Driver - Episode 19

While Ruri's relationship with her boyfriend is going well (and seemingly involving kissing both with and without glass), there are more important fish to fry for Star Driver's nineteenth episode - namely Wako's birthday.

Of course, Wako spends said birthday with both Takuto and Sugata, who proceed to spoil her by cooking her a curry and giving her... well, some rather rubbish presents to be honest.  With karaoke next on the agenda however, the group's celebrations threaten being ruined by the appearance of Madoka and Kou, with the latter revealing her first phase ability to effectively steal the body of another.  You can probably tell where this is headed, with the two girls stealing Sugata and Takuto's bodies for a while; not that they succeed in fooling anybody, with Wako in particular showing a rather vicious streak when it comes to dealing with these imposters.

From here we move straight on to the episode's big battle sequence, and in keeping with what went before this time around it's Kou's turn to have a crack at Tauburn with her own Cybody, complete with a ridiculous introduction (which is nicely poked fun at by the show itself) and a Cybody with the ability to transform into a jet-like flying machine that looks like it could give her the upper hand against Takuto... until of course he pulls the ability for Tauburn to fly out of his own ass to continue this show's long line of having no idea how to end a battle and choosing to just make shit up as it goes along instead.

In fairness, this was a pretty cool battle sequence even if that ending was so predictable it rather ruined the whole thing, and bonus points to this episode for poking fun at itself on a couple of occasions which amused me somewhat.  That aside, I felt that the whole "body snatching" aspect of this episode was rather a wasted opportunity - not much was done with a scenario that was ripe with potential, and Kou and Madoka were both so useless in their body switching roles that they frittered away the chance to cause some genuine chaos far outside simply messing with Wako's head.

Still, this was one of the more entertaining Star Driver episodes of late that didn't leave me watching the clock and waiting for it to end for once, so that can only be a good thing.  It's still hardly boosted my interest in the broader facets of the storyline though, and at the rate it's going it looks like it's simply going to run out of time to explore them all while it concerns itself with Sugata's cooking, pointless mecha battles and the like.