Occult Academy episode 2

Anime blog­ging? That phrase didn’t exist in 1999!

(Shame on any­one who doesn’t watch the next epis­ode previews)

It was pretty much as you were for Occult Academy, which is a good thing. The humour is still extremely clever, focus­ing on sight gags without hav­ing the usual ‘straight man’ to point them out for you. I can’t stress enough how great this is. When the punch­ing mech­anic Smile came onto the scene, there was nobody around to exclaim loudly that he had just punched someone. The very idea of hav­ing someone point that out sounds stu­pid, but that’s exactly what so many anime have. It’s a thought ingrained in Japan­ese cul­ture so thank you Occult Academy for buck­ing that trend.

Speak­ing of clever humour, I love this touch they gave to Uchida (had to look up on MAL for his name. I’m ter­rible with anime char­ac­ter names unless they show them all in the open­ing song). In every instance of the char­ac­ter when he’s away from the wrath of Maya, he’s a pretty cool dude. Appear­ing on TV as a kid with girls kyaaa~~ing over him. Sit­ting on some Hawaiin beach with a cigar. His laid-back intro­duc­tion to the class before he saw Maya down the back of the classroom. But toss Maya into his world and he instantly looks like a bum­bling idiot. Prob­ably best of all was his attempt at see­ing through the tsun­dere atti­tude of Maya. ‘Yeah, you really love the occult, I can see through your bar­rier’, as if he was the coolest dude on earth and could fig­ure out any women instantly. Sorry mate. You may appear in all the promo foot­age with Maya but that doesn’t mean the flags of romance will start being hois­ted any­time soon. This show is too smart for that.

Speak­ing of ‘as you were’, Maya con­tin­ues to be the real star of the show (at least, whenever Smile isn’t on screen, which is far too little). She is one of those char­ac­ters that provide fanser­vice by default, what with that one-piece, fig­ure hug­ging, zettai ryouki out­fit of hers. A-1 is even kind enough to throw in a wet, see-through ver­sion of that dress, a shower scene and a towel-clad ver­sion of Maya all in the one epis­ode. Maybe it’s because I’m watch­ing the ever-boinging breasts of High­school of the Dead this sea­son, but none of this ever felt unnat­ural or forced.

The plot is a bit ho-hum though. It’s just a mash up of vari­ous dif­fer­ent block­buster movies. War of the Worlds meets Ter­min­ator with some Mat­rix logic with a dash of Ghost­busters. Yup, the plot isn’t the strongest point of Occult Academy. I don’t think it was ever meant to be though. This is def­in­itely a show that lives off the humour, which is far from what people were expect­ing of it before it hit the screens mon­it­ors. That doesn’t mean a poor plot can be for­given so read­ily though. Bring­ing it back to High­school of the Dead, you might say that the aim of that show is viol­ence and boobs so doesn’t need enga­ging char­ac­ters, but the show would still be far bet­ter off with them. Same for Occult Academy. I hope it has some nice plot twists up its’ sleeves some­where along the line. We’re still set­ting up the plot so far. From here on in I guess we’re look­ing for that Nos­trada­mus Key.

High­light of the epis­ode? Well, Smile’s punch was pretty epic. So was Uchida’s cool-dude pose on the beach because of how it con­tras­ted to the Uchida in the above pic­ture. Oddly, I don’t think any of Maya’s scenes were quite as good as last week, mainly because the girl punch­ing guy gag gets kinda old very quickly. Maybe the high­light was Uchida’s frantic waddle after Maya, before decid­ing to throw decency away and stop cup­ping his privates. It’s cer­tainly not a com­fort­able feel­ing to run through the woods naked. Your thing flies all over the place in a quite pain­ful manner.

…not that I would know or anything…