At the end of the last episode of Denpa Onna, they had made a bunch of handicraft model rockets, and were planning to shoot them off at the beach with some creepy man. He was paying well above the market rate for handicraft model rockets, he must have some sinister motive IMO. And what happened to Ryuushi’s objection to mixed-gender visits to the beach, anyway? Is it all okay now because the creepy man counts as adult supervision? Maybe I’m missing some sort of important context here, or I missed something earlier in the show. Maybe they’re going with or without her, and so she can’t be left out, in a “race to the bottom” scenario. (Race to the bikini bottom.) Maybe we’ll find out by watching episode 8 of Denpa Onna!
…thirty minutes pass…
I wish I had a toy rocket. Look how much fun she's having!
Ok, that did in fact clear up my questions nicely. The creepy dude is kind of creepy, but not as creepy as I’d first assumed. He’s only stalking a girl half his age because he thinks she’s the daughter of the woman he loves! I think we’ve all been there. And the beach thing wasn’t a standard “go to the beach to have fun and check out one another’s half-naked bodies glistening wet with seawater” type deal, it was an attempt to cheer up an old lady. For a moment I was going to complain that shooting rockets at invisible aliens wasn’t going to save her grandmother’s life and she should do something useful, like medical research, but you know, the placebo effect is a funny thing. Depression kills. Knowing that someone cares about you enough to spend twenty-eight years building rockets to fight an imaginary foe to save your life might actually help keep you healthy.
This sort of episode is fine once in a while, as payoff for all the nonsense in the previous episodes that they didn’t bother explaining to us. I’d really rather focus on the younger generation, though. Meme is a great character, but she’s great for her interactions with Ryuushi, Erio, the protagonist, etc. If she’s just a single mom trying to get by and deal with turning forty, she loses a lot of her charm.
suntzuanime 