Mitsudomoe Zōryōchū!: Episodes 1-8 (Complete)
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Well. Brave move to have the main characters barely appear in the first episode and instead making it an episode of the in-universe sentai show
Gachi Rangers, not a gamble I'm sure paid off. I wouldn't be surprised if what killed off the show was people waiting for a second season of anarchic fun with the Marui triplets, only to find themselves watching a very run-of-the-mill sentai parody for 20 minutes and not bothering to tune in again. Thankfully Zōryōchū does improve from there, but it feels more hit-and-miss than the first season. Also weirdly disjointed. Between episodes two and seven we get Christmas, summer, Valentine's Day, New Years, Valentine's Day again, then winter, April Fools' Day and Christmas again, then summer again
in that order. I struggle to believe those thematic segments weren't originally intended to air together and I can't imagine why they didn't, it breaks up the flow of the individual episodes quite badly.
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One of Zōryōchū's good points is that it makes much greater use of the extended cast with the triplets now more often being joined by some of their classmates, which I think is a good thing for opening up the potential for comedy situations. Sugisaki as a foil for Mitsuba in particular (in their new, more frienemies like relationship than the outright mutal scorn of the first season) provides some of the funniest moments this time around. At the same time it feels like Hitoha has been left behind a bit as though they've run out of things to do with her, she does get a couple of good segments but largely the jokes surrounding her are just re-treads of things we've already seen and start to lose their lustre quite quickly. You could probably level accusations of repetitiveness at Mitsudomoe in general, but I think for the most part the situations were varied and funny enough that it didn't matter, it's not too different from a sketch show in that regard.
It's also kind of a pleasant surprise to see characters grow a bit (and I'm not talking about Mitsuba's belly) with Yabecchi now almost completely unfazed by the madness of his class and callbacks to previous events in a way I wasn't really expecting from a show like this. It's no Azumanga Daioh or anything in that regard, but I still felt like I had gotten to know the characters quite well by the end and despite Mitsudomoe's flaws, that end came much too quickly. I am going to miss these little terrors, just watching them march along to the beat of their very different drums in the
riotous OP was enough to put a smile on my face.
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