BlazBlue: Alter Memory - 05

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It’s really frustrating when you’re waiting for plot development in an anime, and yet it brings you an episode full of pointless silliness and fanservice.  This episode of BlazBlue: Alter Memory is just one of those episodes.

That isn’t to say there’s absolutely no plot development in this episode.  Iron Tager and Platinum the Trinity are both introduced, demonstrating that there’s a real desire to include all the characters from the game in the anime.  And there’s an effort to explain a few things in this episode, as well.

However, I feel like anytime they try to explain anything in this anime, they go through it far too quickly for it to actually make sense.  In the conversation between Kokonoe and Tager, they tried to explain the NOL, Sector Seven, and a little bit about the Azure Grimoire.  The problem is, that conversation only lasted a minute or two.  That’s not really a lot of time to try to explain three rather complicated subjects.

These poor attempts at explaining things are just exacerbated by the fact that they keep introducing new concepts (what the heck is a Prime Field?) without any sort of clarification at all.  What is Terumi/Hazama’s motivation?  What is Hakumen’s motivation?  What’s Kokonoe’s motivation?  What’s the motivation of any of the characters in this anime?  Sure, we know a few of them: Jin wants to kill Ragna (although we don’t know why), Ragna wants to destroy all the Cauldrons (although we don’t really know why), Noel wants to stick around Ragna and get answers, Rachel wants to “help mortals move forward”.  But there are plenty of unanswered questions, and only seven episodes left in which to answer them.

My biggest gripe about this episode is that it’s a hot springs episode.  The vast majority of the episode is devoted to showing Ragna, Noel, Taokaka, Litchi, and Rachel hanging out at the hot springs, which is utterly pointless.  There’s absolutely no reason for it other than fanservice; and don’t half the characters’ normal outfits allow for plenty of fanservice, anyway?  At the same time, this episode gives me a harem vibe, which is very confusing.

It looks like the next episode is finally going to have some fighting again.  Really, for an anime based on a fighting game, it seems to me like they’ve been avoiding showing any fighting unless it’s absolutely essential to the story.  This seems a little bit backward to me, especially when they’ve been setting up potential fight scenes only to pass them by with talking instead (like the almost-fight between Litchi and Noel last episode).

BlazBlue: Alter Memory Episode 6 Preview

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