Gin_no_Dangan

The students of Classes S and F of Kawakami Highschool engage in large-scale mock battle as a result of the rising tensions between their classes. However while the commander for Class S, Hideo Kuki ordered an all out assault on Class F’s forces he wasn’t expecting for them to use their trump cards so early.

Momoyo route confirmed? Also it’s great to see Yamato’s awesomeness still intact.

Deploying Kazuko Kawakami/Wanko, Christiane Friedrich/Chris, Miyako Shiina, and Yukie Mayuzumi/Mayucchi to the frontlines to meet them. Something Class S’ Tactician Yamato Naoe had anticipated as views things from the sidelines with his bros, Shoichi Kazama/Cap, Gakuto Shimazu, and Takuya Morooka/Moro while enjoying a cold can of cola, wanting to make this a fun birthday for a certain someone.

After which however he is shown confessing his love to the girl who’s like an older sister to him, Momoko Kawakami only to be rejected. So in order to counter them Hideo sends in the noblewoman Kokoro Fushikawa and her forces. And from above the principal and Momoyo’s grandfather explains that this supposed battle is his school’s way of settling disputes and to win, they need to capture the other team’s commander. However while Class F finds themselves outnumbered near two to one, they make up for this with numerous ambushes that Hideo just sends his forces into, just as Yamato had expected as he reminisces about how he told Momoyo he wanted to fight by her side with his brain as opposed to his fists.

But just as things seem to be in their favour, one of their divisions is wiped out by two mysterious girls with Margit’s division taking advantage of this break, and Hideo’s maid Azumi heads in to capture their commander, Mayo. And having forseen this, Yamato sends in Mayucchi to counter her while his own division wipes out Kokoro’s, personally extracting a surrender. Aside from that, Miyako counters Margit’s archers before they all move in for the final battle, however Momoyo unexpectedly appears on Class S’ side.

So in order to counter her they call in Hideo’s sister and Momoyo’s friend and rival, Ageha Kuki however even as she goes up against her with Mayucchi the two still appear to be overwhelmed by Momoyo’s monstrous power, until at least the arrival of the last of the Big Four Matsunaga Tsubame. At which point the three of them are at least able to keep up with her. However as the decisive battle begins and their reinforcements mysteriously wiped out, things don’t look good for Class F however Yamato attempts to turn the situation around by leading the charge with Cookie at his back, using the things he picked up from being around Momoyo so long while Cookie sacrifices himself.

However as Momoyo was concentrated on taking down her three opponents, Cap had confronted Hideo in a battle between heroes and defeated him, winning the war. And as the episode ends, Yamato meets Momoyo by the river and tells her that giving her this fight was a birthday present for her, once again he also confesses and this time she at least considers it.

Thoughts:

Another good start to a series, one of my fears before watching this was that it would be reduced to one of those shows with copious and censored fanservice, and better yet, Yamato would be turned into your usual limp-dicked harem protagonist. However it looks like all those fears were for nothing, if anything it even seemed to emphasise quite the opposite.

Instead of that Yamato was his usual classy self, and better yet how his position as the Tactician, who comes up with somewhat awesome plans and is always a step ahead of everything was one of those things that was emphasised. And even putting that aside he even had his share of bold and badass moves in this episode, whether it was spanking Kokoro into submission for everyone to see or even taking to the frontlines himself, something which given his nature was kind of unexpected. Either way it’s just good to see that his character is intact, and now even has a suitable voice actor in an already awesome voice cast, Hiroshi Kamiya.

Not to mention that the voice cast alone makes this show worth watching, which in order to avoid spamming far too many links I’ll show with the chart instead. Near every character that at least had a character sprite in the VN and even a few that didn’t, all have fairly notable voice actors, with the likes of Yuu Asakawa and Shizuka Itou leading by voicing two of the heroines, Momoyo and Chris along with the likes of Katsuyuki Konishi voicing the character’s best bro, Cap. On a somewhat related note to all of this I’m also looking forward to seeing more of Mayucchi/Yukie go back and forward between herself and Matsukaze. Finally amongst all of this it was also surprising to see Tsubame, a heroine from the yet to be released fandisk show up.

However if there was one thing that I was unsure of after watching this episode, it’s where the story is going, sure you could say that there isn’t that much to it already but the direction is still important. Instead of starting like the VN did it opted for a much more action packed, albeit somewhat confusing to new viewers, start, which while I haven’t read her route yet myself was supposedly Momoyo’s ending. And if anything it’s this aspect alone that’s confusing me, will the show be adapting Momoyo’s route and it just chose to start with the ending? With even strong hints for her route being thrown in. Or will it opt for an original route to show off all the heroines instead/omnibus format? Either way I’m interested to see which direction it will take, all the heroines are great but the ones in the older sister archtype always tend to be my favourites. Finally though the number of episodes could be a problem, if it’s only going to be one cour the prologue could almost be enough to cover that on it’s own. So if anything it’ll need at least two.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 4th, 2011 at 9:40 pm and is filed under Anime, Majikoi, Summaries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.