Thursday 31 May 2012

Medaka Box - Episode 9

Given everything we've learned about Sandbox Academy to date, it probably shouldn't surprise us that there's a class made up of the school's most "superhuman" students, known as Class 13.  It also shouldn't surprise us that one of the members of that class is Medaka herself.

Of course, Medaka isn't alone in her membership of that class (although she's one of the few to actually bother turning up to school at all), and she shares her nigh-on unique position with the chairman of the school's disciplinary committee, Myouri Unzen.  It seems, however, that the latter has little time for the former, and when both individuals set out to solve a problem with excessive noise coming from the school's music room we soon get to see their unique traits in action.


Of course, we already know all about Medaka's peaceful way of solving things, and it couldn't be more different than Unzen's intensely violent approach - an approach which is soon turned upon Medaka herself.  Although she seems willing to tolerate this, the news that her fellow student council members are in danger sees Medaka pull out all the stops, leaving Shiranui to handle Unzen as she races off in impressive fashion to rescue her comrades from the clutches of their would-be assailants.

Overall, this emergence of a new and powerful enemy of the student council has made for by far the best episode of Medaka Box yet - and by that I mean it was an average episode in comparison to every other series I'm watching this season.  There's certainly some fun to be had from Medaka not holding back and giving it her all, but the result is almost too over the top to the point where suspension of disbelief becomes difficult even within its already stretched confines for this series.  Wipe away some of the "sheen" (and I hesitate to use that word given Medaka Box's production values), and this was pretty much just typically shounen action taken to a ridiculous extreme - not a bad thing in itself, but not the kind of thing to bring me renewed excitement about this series personally.

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