Asobi ni Ikuyo: Bombshells from the Sky (TV)
It seems Crunchyroll is simulcasting a later showing (Thursday), I caught an earlier one.
This is what the encyclopedia has to say (although I expect someone will at least improve the grammar if not the description later):
The story centers around Kio Kakazu , a high school freshman living in Okinawa. During a memorial service for one of his family ancestors. A mysterious girl with cat ears appears before him indroducing herself as Eris and claiming that she is an alien. However She be more troubling than he first realizes.
If you're like me, that didn't sound too promising. Just another weak harem concept, Omamori Himari and Sora no Otoshimono come to mind as recent examples, but I was very surprised to see it is apparently a lot more. Really quality animation, very good character design, and what's more impressive, it actually seems to have a plot that's more than purely perfunctory.
Granted, this is still a show about an incredibly buxom, apparently simple-minded, mysterious catgirl from outer space that immediately and for no great reason attaches herself to a young, unassuming, easily flustered, bland schoolboy, and she does sneak, nearly naked, into his bed while he's sleeping, setting off the expected accidental fondling incident. But then there's the rest of the story and cast.
The opening sequence had me thinking I had downloaded the wrong show. [spoiler]In this first example of high quality animation, a navy ship is attacked by what it assumed was a commercial vessel. A seemingly super-powered female agent from the Navy ship, who could give Major Kusanagi a fight, jumps into the fray, materializing weapons out of thin air she impales and machine guns the crew on her way to the bridge, where the captain holds a detonator, ready to blow himself up. She disarms him, but when an alien craft zooms by and knocks them both over he regains the detonator and blows the ship into a fireball while she yells "Don't do it!"[/spoiler]
Then there's the introduction of the catgirl, Eris. And let's face it, her story is exactly the kind of silly fluff I DID expect. In body proportions, accessories and attitude she reminds me of Lala from To Love-Ru or Mizuho Kazami from Please Teacher (maturity somewhere in between). [spoiler]Her first transmission to the earth was that she was "coming to play. "She can talk to cats. She comes from a cat/humanoid planet that they too call Earth but decide to refer to as "Caita" instead to make it easier to differentiate, she has a friendly and sentient shipboard computer mascot with a cartoony cat appearance that can contact her holographically through the cat bell around her neck.[/spoiler] It's all really silly stuff... but I think there's actually a strange logic to this. I do however really like how the two discuss [spoiler]how completely unlikely it is for two alien races to resemble each other in humanoid appearance.[/spoiler]
After this introduction we meet what I expected to be a very typical harem cast. In fact, when I saw the preview a couple days ago, I went through the transparent character types as they went by the screen.
The Tsundere tomboy girl next door that barges into the house to fetch Kio. Everything you see reminds you painfully of the exact same character type in Omamori Himari and Sora no Otoshimono. And when she appears she does go through the motions, she teases Kio, calls him a pervert, interrogates and teases him about the girl she saw come into the house the night before and acts sufficiently shocked and humbled by the half naked catgirl who walks down the stairs wearing Kio's shirt, which cannot contain her giant boobs. But when she leaves after introductions and is given proof Eris is actually an alien, apparently to process the strange things going on [spoiler] we see her in her room, surrounded by guns and watching secret surveillance cameras of the two and she's contacting her superiors, confirming what she just saw and wanting to be involved in their further plans.[/spoiler]
We also meet a female teacher and club advisor of the two students. Apparently the requisite hopelessly single beautiful female teacher, a little scatter-brained and can't believe what she is seeing. But when she leaves [spoiler] We witness her reporting to some secret group in a computer chatroom. Together they discuss, how to keep the catgirl alien a secret from the world but NOT because they want to keep alien life secret, but because the alien in question is such an embarrassing example of an alien. A perky big-breasted catgirl alien? no, the want to hold out for a "beautiful first contact".[/spoiler] And there's the logic of Eris being such a ludicrous construct- if she wasn't, there wouldn't be a problem. And it also really tickles my funny bone, a nice little twist on why a group would want to "defeat the alien"
And finally we are introduced to the very typical meganekko. Big eyes behind glasses, dark hair, shy, and though she acts like a friend to Kio as they talk about movies, she obviously has a crush on him. Of course, by this time I knew she can't be what she seems. And sure enough, when their conversation is interrupted by a guy in car picking her up to drive her home we find out [spoiler]she's actually a highly trained and short-tempered professional assassin (to chastise the guy who picked her up for teasing her about maybe having feelings for Kio she informs him he's a dispersible messenger and shoots a bullet by his temple and into his windshield), in fact she is apparently the invincible woman agent from the first scene that we thought had been killed in the explosion. And she's been given the the assignment to kill Eris and Kio.[/spoiler]
So, all in all, a completely unexpected quality show. A show that is apparently shameless in its use of standard character types and story tropes, but wants to turn them around a bit and mix them up with what might be a quality, if still comedic, sci-fi story with impressive action sequences.
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