Friday, 3 June 2011

Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko - Episode 8

Their plastic bottle rocket launching session might be about to get under-way, but before all that episode eight of Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko decides to rewind for a while and tell some of its story from Meme Touwa's viewpoint.

Starting off with her fortieth birthday and the ponderings which that gives birth to, we get a feel for Meme's own take on her daughter looking for a job (and of course how Meme greases the wheels for this to take place) and perhaps more interestingly her own association with the guy who started the whole plastic bottle rocket thing off in the first place.


The individual in question is a former childhood friend of Meme's (even if she can't remember his name) with rather an unhealthy obsession with her - we've already seen him stalking her, but he also wastes no time in proposing to her when they first meet during one of his rocket launching sessions.  Of course, Meme has little interest in the man (and his attempts to woo Meme via her daughter are hugely off-base as he mistakes Maekawa for Erio), but she does seem to have more than a passing interest in his bottle rockets.  As the episode progresses we learn the reasoning behind this, largely to do with her grandmother's obsession with being taken away by aliens - something which clearly had an impact upon her as a child, leaving her feeling the need to "strike" at the aliens in some shape or form in the hope of prevent her death.

Generally speaking (and aside from a couple of great lines), I'm really not sure what to make of this episode - the switch to Meme's perspective was probably a smart move and added an extra dimension to things in its own right, but I still can't really work out or comprehend what is going on in Meme's head at all, mass of normal adult worries and some frankly bizarre ideas that she seems to be.  Still, this episode also at least started to fill in the haps regarding Erio's father Elliot, and I can only assume this episode is part of the show's bigger picture, but until we've seen the rest of the series I get the feeling I'm not going to be able to fully appreciate this particular instalment.

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