Medaka Box - Episode 7

Money is no longer an issue now that the student council has Mogana Kikaijima as their treasurer - her presence in the council office does, however, prove some rather different problems for Hitoyoshi.

As if walking in on Kikaijima in the middle of changing isn't bad enough (and having to pay a fine as a result), the awkward silence which follows is almost unbearable, with our newcomer to the council unsure of how to go about making new friends while Hitoyoshi also struggles for anything to say in his particular scenario.  Cue some rather awkward attempts at social interaction; a spell which is broken only by the appearance of Shiranui, who has a little blackmailing to do.  This does, when coupled with the subject of Medaka, get Hitoyoshi and Mogana talking at least, although it seems that the latter still has some work to do when it comes to making friends.

Onwards to the second half of the episode, we're introduced to an artist who goes by the name of Yubaru - in search of a model for his latest masterpiece, there can of course only be one choice... Ms Kurokami Medaka.  The trouble is, how do you depict the beauty of perfection in any art form?  GAINAX certainly haven't managed to figure it out given Medaka Box's animation quality... Anyway, I digress - after calling upon and then shooting down a number of the school's most striking beauties, it seems that Yubaru has a rather particular eye for this particular piece of artwork, meaning that his eventual model is a decidedly unlikely one; or rather, an entirely likely one as this particular story couldn't make its final pay-off any more obvious from the outset if it tried.

Although the second half of this week's instalment was uniformly terrible and an excuse for another dose of fan service at best, I will confess that the first half of the episode got a few laughs out of my thanks to some snappy dialogue and decent gags to at least paper over its otherwise predictable premise.  Simply making me crack a smile is a major improvement for this series, so a couple of outright laughs is stellar progress - of course, for any other show this would be par for the course, which shows perhaps just how far Medaka Box has fallen (if it even occupied a lofty enough height to fall from in the first place).  I don't hate this series by any stretch of the imagination... but imagination is exactly what it's lacking in spades at the moment, and frustratingly so.