Karneval ep7: faffing about! I label this show, a faffer.

There’s a time for mourning in all things.  My buddy who loves the Office just had to cope with the fact that the show will only live on in syndication now (though I personally thought it should’ve ended years ago).  No longer will he be able to do his little guitar strumming bunny-hop to the break room for his lunches to see his favorite show.  There will be a mourning period, an unavoidable time of reflection, sadness and coping.  Of course he’s a person though, not a TV show.  And Karneval has done a great job of not doing much at all, so I’d appreciate it if this show would stop faffing about and get on to the main points of the plot as some point!

After the horrible destruction of what was left of Gareki’s surrogate family last episode, he’s understandably in a dour mood.  Well, he’s apparently always in a dour mood, but he’s really in a funk now.  To help cheer him up, Yogi decides to force Gareki to participate in one of the parade’s that Circus like to pull off when they visit a town.  The only thing Gareki actually does to dress up though is put on a suit and some horns.  But I’m not complaining because at least he’s not wearing that stupid shirt.

During the parade, Kiichi comes up to Yogi during the parade and tells him that he has to come with her to find one of those creepy robo-rabbits that run the ships.  Apparently, it’s gone haywire and missing and is a danger to the public.  Yogi then forces Gareki to put on his giant cat outfit while he scours the city with Kiichi.

In another part of town, Tsukomo is helping Jiki as he puts on a performance about a corrupt general and a mermaid.  Thank goodness Tsukomo is playing the mermaid.  She’s gorgeous, and no one cares about male mermaids – mermen?  Whatever.

This seems like a classic case of everyone being brought together by circumstance at the end of an episode.

Things take a turn for the worst during a key scene in the play, when Tsukomo is supposed to escape from a trap.  Jiki is supposed to turn her into a human during the scene in an effort to force her to be with him.  And the large glass container is rigged so she can escape through the bottom.  Unfortunately, that rascally rabbit (heh heh heh heh heh hehe) turns up and seals the escape hatch shut, thinking that it’s fulfilling its protocol and fixing something.

Stupid wabbit.

I applaud Tsukomo’s calm demeanor, stamina and breath control because when she finds out that she can’t escape, there’s quite a bit of time going by before help can actually fix the problem.  She is able to let Jiki know that something is wrong, but when he goes to break the glass, that stupid bunny shows up and blocks him.  It’s actually Nai’s super-hearing that is her saviour.  Somehow he’s able to hear her distress (from underwater?) and gets Gareki and Iva to accompany him to their location.  Once there, Iva forms a plan to distract the bunny and save Tsukomo while not ruining the play.  It works, somehow, and the bunny is captured by Kiichi and Yogi, who are the last ones to arrive because the concert hall is the last place they decided to look.  One thing I did find funny was how I could not tell if Iva was really into her performance, or if she really was punishing Jiki for putting Tsukomo in danger.

The episode concludes with a scene featuring three of the big shot bishounen,  Tsukitachi, his crush Hirato, and the ever-heartless Akari, who seems more like a real doctor every episode with all the nurses he pisses off.  One can only imagine what their discussion will entail, though I’m guessing it has something to do with Nai and his species.

I didn’t care much for this episode.  As usual, the two supposedly main characters were firmly in the background.  Nothing much exciting or insightful happened happened this episode either.  The main highlights were Tsukomo in a mermaid outfit (mesmerizing) and some decent dialogue between Kiichi and Yogi.  It seems that Kiichi may be playing the tsundere card harder than I thought, and she may be more keen towards Yogi than I previously thought.  I’m sure other readers may have already seen or known this, but I’m noticing it harder now.  It wouldn’t surprise me if it was just as likely that she had a crush on him, as it was likely that she wanted him to shape up professionally.

My problem with this show isn’t quality, it’s that this show hasn’t done anything truly exciting during its entire run.  Karneval is content to look pretty and show us pretty images featuring bishounen of various types, all the while spicing things up with sub par fight scenes and action.  Of the shows I’m watching this season, this one by far seems to have lost my interest.  And to be fair, there are quite a few very interesting, unique anime out there.  But this doesn’t cut the mustard for me, at all.  I may be forced to call this series my first clunker for the season.

Further Reading:

• Episode 6