Friday 13 May 2011

Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko - Episode 5

You might not credit it, but it appears that Meme Touwa has just turned forty... I would say that this could be a sign of an impending mid-life crisis but you can't help but feel she's already slap-bang in the middle of one anyhow.

It seems that this particular period of time isn't only Meme's birthday, as the next thing we know we see Makoto fretting about what to buy Erio for her own birthday.  While Ryuuko refuses to help pick out a present for obvious reasons (obvious to anyone who isn't Makoto anyway), Maekawa does prove more helpful - okay, her choice of present is decidedly odd, but her prediction that it will thrill Erio proves to be entirely well-founded.


Speaking of Erio, her return to relative normality is seen to continue here, as she spends some proper mother-daughter time with Meme before announcing to Makoto that she wants to "return to society" by finding a job.  Between her shy persona and the fact that her reputation precedes her this is a pretty tall order, and her first job interview couldn't really have gone much worse, but as seems to be the case with everything Meme knows just the person to send Erio to for work - enter another alien-obsessed nutter for Makoto to have to deal with.

While Meme's antics can be fun at times, I have to admit that I'm starting to get a little tired of them at this juncture - this week in particular they seem over-bearing over the rest of the series, and being cute can soon turn to being irritating in the blink of an eye.  Still, putting that to one side this show's dialogue continues to be broadly amusing and its characters more fascinatingly mysterious than perhaps they should be, while Erio's plight has some obvious comparisons to the plight faced by NEET individuals in Japan thanks to their tendency to be shunned by society before they've even really entered it.  Which aspects of its story the series will toy with hence forth remains to be seen, but fingers crossed it doesn't involve too much of Meme rolling around on the floor.

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