Saya rejoins the kendo club; Miya Miya tries to hide her identity; hilarity ensues.
More blushing Tama-chan is fine too. Not only is she good at kendo, she’s also a good instructor. That and Miya Miya being a quick learner.
Flashbacks of Saya complaining about how she couldn’t beat Kirino at kendou; she quits and rejoins the club (repeatedly?). In addition to her height and strength, Kirino and the teacher guy thinks she has got considerable potential to develop her skills. But she quits for real after the guys and the teacher tease her about her bad hair day.
I had a pretty bad impression of her for being rather Tomo-like (easily my least favourite Azumanga character) but this eye catch was definitely eye catching! Kirino wears the sleeveless sweater but Saya doesn’t, which shows off how her shirt is close to having a few buttons pop out imminently.
Miya Miya is in dark mode, complaining to herself about why she has to have morning practice when she meets the teacher guy who tells her that there’s no need to strain herself with her sparkly act (猫被り). She has a moment of introspection about her true self (本当ã®è‡ªåˆ†) in the changing room but is interrupted by Kirino.
Teacher’s pet!
Everyone loves Tama-chan. KAWAIIIII~~~
Hilarous when Miya Miya realized that Saya has seen her dark side and tries to hide behind the kendou mask until the end of the practice session. I kept thinking of Shamal whined about how she and the other Belka knights should have used transformation magic to hide their faces before attacking Nanoha and co. LOL
Also hilarous how Miya Miya does enjoy the violent outlet of sparring plus how Dan-kun thinks she looks like she’s enjoying herself so much when everyone else is like -_-;; VIVA VIOLENCE!!!
Quite surprised that our Irresponsible Teacher Toraji was actually quite Teacher-like in counselling Miya Miya to come clean with and apologize to Saya. I also rather like Miya Miya’s non-sparkly but not-completely-dark voice. There’s been some discussion (as well as manga comparisons - see the comments) about Miya Miya’s ‘true’ nature but I agree with Mentar’s balanced view which avoids the pitfall of essentializing one facet over another. Probably one thing that’s definite about Miya Miya is that she truly does love Dan-kun and that his presence brings out all that she has in her.
LOL. Really nice setup with the discordant BGM, the wobbly first person POV, the students darting out of Miya Miya’s way. Saya’s terror being the icing on the cake. Reminded me of [Claymore *manga* spoiler]:
Was going to grumble about how easily Miya Miya and Saya made up but Saya’s 0_0;; at Miya Miya’s erm enthusiasm at violent sparring restored the balance in the Force somewhat. Hope they’ll continue to bounce off each other in the future.
Also LOL when Dan said how beautiful Miya Miya looked as she sparred with Saya and everyone else (except Tama-chan) had a WTF expression. Dan x Miya Miya are definitely good for each other.
So that’s another character introduced and dynamics between Saya and Kirino as well as Saya and Miya Miya established. Toraji Ishida-sensei became so much less annoying that I actually can remember his name. Was lured in by Tama-chan but the female cast so far all seem fun and have their own individual brands of charisma that may well be able to carry the whole series for a fun ride.
I suspect you will like the 5th girl when she in introduced.
I don’t quite know how the mangaka has done it (and the anime catches the essence perfectly), but he managed to make alot of character templates I usually detest FULLY LIKEABLE to me.
For example, I tend to hate the hyper-genki girls, but how can you not love Kirino? She’s so overwhelmingly positive without being a simpleton. She knows exactly how much space to give someone like Saya, and how she lured Tama into the club was also great. She’s the glue keeping it all together. Major props for her VA.
Saya’s template is hit-or-miss with me, but here she’s definitely a hit. A more violent and moody form of the hyper-genki template, but she’s also got a good heart and a friendly disposition. In the future, the Kirino-Saya tag team will be responsible for alot of “awww” scenes ;)
MiyaMiya is probably the single most interesting character (with the possible exception of the fifth girl - Satori - who will take a bit before she’s going to be introduced however). It’s going to be very enlightening to understand how her multilayered personality ticks - and compared to the goodie-two-shoes all around, that’s a welcome change.
In a way, Tama is the simpleton and most childish of all characters. Which for some reason makes me feel strangely ambivalent to her, at least for quite a while. Things got better however in the last tankubon 6 ^_^ … harr harr. Dark Tama is fun.
So - yes, it’s the characters carrying the show. And I’ll definitely follow it to the very end.
Miyako’s extreme bowing towards Sayako was hilarious. I love how she gets so nervous about Danjuro finding out about her when the guy is thick as a rock.
>”Dan x Miya Miya are definitely good for each other.”
Heck yea! LOVE POWER!
Mentar, at this time, it looks like a good balance between using templates that are familiar (and thus reassuring) but adding bits of other templates to them to make them just a bit more nuanced. I suppose it also helped that I didn’t have great expectations of Bamboo Blade. Can’t say that the samples of manga art at the end of each episode have enthused me with a great enthusiasm to look at the source material though.
Totali, I’m sure Miya Miya wants to show Dan her good side but at the same time I wonder if it’s more of Dan bringing out that good side rather than her having to actively suppress her not so good side.