Asobi ni Iku Yo! Episode 10 – I Don’t Care Anymore

If there’s one downside to writing (however loosely) about each individual episode in a series, it’s weeks like this one. This is very clearly part 1 of what promises to be at least a two part story arc, and as such doesn’t stand very well on its own. It also sticks straight to the plot, with few digressions for advancing the side plots or expository conversation to ham-fistedly grow its world. In that respect, it’s quite a divergence from the norm.

I forgot how much this episode devoted to explaining Christmas. It's still tightly plotted by Asobi standards, though

This week’s episode concerns itself with a two-pronged assault from the doggirls on the catgirls around Earth. The spaceship is attacked by robots hidden in space debris that the doggirls shot at the ship, expecting it to get close enough for an assault before the cats shoot it down. It works, catching the catgirls entirely by surprise, and forcing them to retreat the ship’s bridge in hyperspace somehow.

The Cathians don’t even put up much of a fight. For as technologically advanced a race as they are, you’d think they’d have some way of repelling boarders. They normally seem to use Assistaroids for combat, but I didn’t see any on the ship at all. Which is kind of weird in itself, since they seem to follow Eris and the humans around everywhere.

I think the catgirls are watching 'It's a Wonderful Life' here

There’s no resistance at all, no fight. I understand that it was a surprise attack, but it’s ridiculous to think that a warship would be utterly defenseless in such a situation. Even if you can believe that they would be caught in such a trap to begin with.

Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. This episode is pretty clearly a way to set up a situation that will force some dramatic action, no matter how implausible it may be. This is particularly illustrative given how much time spend the show spends informing us of every stupid little detail about the Cathians and their technology (usually by paying homage some other, better, science fiction show).

The funniest moment of the show is when Kio comes running up to Aoi saying something like 'I want you--' and she faints dead away. Of course, all he was really saying was 'I want you to come with me right now! There's a DVD of this show you like over here!'

But all the setting in the world is meaningless if you aren’t consistent with it. This show has shown before how little it cares about the consistency of its characters, and in this episode shows similar disdain for its setting.

Back on Earth, the captain of the ship gives Kio a power suit to protect himself. When they, too, get attacked by dogrobots, he asks Eris if he could use it to, you know, protect himself, but she tells him it hasn’t been initialized yet. Or, in lazy writer speak, the main character had to get this plot device before the character giving him it was disabled, but since him having it would prevent her from being disabled, the writer had to make something up to prevent him from using it.

This gas knocks out all the Assistroids immediately, for some reason. I thought the new generation were entirely mechanical, grown out of nanite seeds?

And that’s basically this episode in a nutshell: it’s time to set up some ridiculous action scene to (finally) end this thing, and the writers are going to do it, no matter the cost. I’ve written before that most anime writers are incompetent hacks, and this is one of the better examples I can think of.

The thing is, this terrible story consumes pretty much the entire episode. Sure, we get some more of Aoi’s shy hand-wringing about her feelings for Kio, and Manami cheering her on because she thinks she’s blown her chance, but that’s been drawn out for long enough that even I am getting tired of shy person romantic drama. There’s only so much pathos you can wring out of a situation before you have to move along.

You'd think that, even in a debris cloud (which isn't drawn at all in the establishing shots), Cathian ship would have some means of detecting hundreds of moving robots swarming their ship

Anyway, I’m sure next episode will deliver the usual explosive finale these short story arcs typically have. Maybe if we’re lucky, we’ll see something approaching character development, too, as this series winds down. I wouldn’t bet on it, though.

You can watch this episode here.