“Funya~ … and welcome to Japan’s Funniest Home Videos!”

Summary: When she returns home from school, Sasami discovers a mysterious DVD made by Kamiomi and the Yagami sisters. The disc contains some footage of her shopping as filmed by the sisters following her around with cameras, though Sasami fails to remember ever going to the mall.

I was just about ready to stop watching Sasami@Unmotivated altogether. After last week’s exposition disaster I had no reason to keep watching it, nor anyone whose heart to stir by covering it, yet it looks like the sarcastic post announcing this show being dropped like a brick will have to wait just a bit longer. This fourth episode was by no means good, but at least it felt like a breath of fresh air and a wacky return to the cheerful zaniness that defined the first episode. I am quite the goner for handheld camera and this episode made some really great use of it. Tama’s ending up abducted by aliens only to return and ruin the final battle with a scene straight out of a cheesy 80’s sci-fi family flick managed to get a smile out of me, and the twist at the end was actually pretty clever. For trying to keep a show with no plot left artificially alive, they could have done much worse.

I liked her better back when she was a wolf.

Of course, having no explanations left to fill up the episode with, this show needed to come up with something else to shine its spotlight on; and what could possibly be a more original and classy way of making a name for yourself than perverted jokes and nerd pandering? From the inevitable, omnipresent incest remarks to Tsurugi lusting after Sasami’s nipples, the supposedly dry, casual delivery of some incredibly vulgar lines that honestly do not thread even remotely close to funny sent chills down my spine more often than not. I really fail to see the point in many anime portraying the world as a place where everyone acts and thinks in the same way as they assume the intended target demographic does. It is oddly reminiscent of those children’s shows where even the adults act like children. I don’t know about you, but that analogy makes me feel patronized.

Even with its surprising adeptness at palliative care, Sasami@Unmotivated remains thoroughly directionless. This episode still managed to collect some supposedly loose threads from last week’s hasty wrap-up and resolve them, but I wonder what they will have to pull off to not turn the show into a Power Rangers-esque romp with Sasami’s dad as the recurring villain conceiving one ridiculous plot after another to get his daughter back. In a universe were Sasami@Unmotivated has likeable characters and a classy sense of humour, this could be a really fun road to go down, but here and now, it’s hard to think of it as anything less than a recipe for disaster.

Random observations

• My favourite character in this episode was the perfectly awkward and upstanding bloke who ended up working at a store that sells creepy porn manga. Can he get his own show?
• I am surprisingly okay with Kagami’s entire purpose in this show being to kick butt with her cool cyborg powers and say “Funya~” in the voice of the impeccable Kana Hanazawa.
• You might notice how a lot of the screenshots I take of this show are still close-ups. There is a very simple reason for this, as they are those are the only parts of the show that do not look horrendous when not in motion.