World Conquest Zvezda Plot - Episode 4 (Dropped)

Asuta seems to have made himself at home as the Zvezda Organisation's cook and odd-jobs man, although cooking for a robot still proves to be tricky, as does trying to explain away why Natasha ended up sleeping in his bed.

Still, it's Roboko's situation that is the real problem here - as she refuses to eat cooked udo, it's off to the basement to pick some more... only to find that it all dies suddenly, taking with it the entire secret base's power as the whole thing is powered by the udo farm underneath it.  With this disaster suggesting that the farm's "parent root" is dying, it's off to a secret, ancient Udogawan civilization to find out what's going on.

It's left to Natasha and Asuta to accompany Kate on this mission, which sees Natasha talking about her past and how she came to meet Kate (which makes no sense), the appearance of some kind of terrifying cloud that is the manifestation of human fear (which makes no sense), and a desperate attempt to breed some new udo before it's too late (which... oh, you get the picture).

If the first few episodes of World Conquest Zvezda Plot had just enough to keep me hopeful that this series would show its hand and prove itself at some point, this fourth instalment brought a horrible realisation to bear - that this series is, in fact, pretty darned terrible.  It seems that this series comes from the school of "if we make something really random and nonsensically crazy, it'll automatically be great" - except other shows have pulled that concept off with far more aplomb, and this series' incredibly clumsy and disjointed presentation every week destroys anything remotely resembling comedy, drama or entertainment.  It still feels like there's a decent series screaming to get out, but as of right now it appears to be buried under the rubble of its shoddy execution and I can't bring myself to wait around to see if it can dig itself out of the debris.