By TheBigN
This year definitely has more than 12 random moments I can pick that best signified what made this year awesome for me anime-wise. Problem is, I wasn’t sure if I could actually make posts about them (the effort, oh my god!). I mean, I missed the first day already (but will make up for it in the future, I think), and depending on how busy the next couple of days are, more could be around the corner. Let’s see what happens next though.
Striker Sigma V. The best pencil ever.
Day 11: Baka to Test to Shoukanjuu was my favorite comedy of the year, and one of my favorite shows of the year, full stop. And it isn’t like they really did anything special (except for Hideyoshi) to make the show work. The gags, slapstick, homages and deadly food just consistently tickled me in ways that others comedies haven’t done in a long time. And of course, there are random moments that just happen to stick with me as the series is over.
One of the latter examples comes from episode 5, where the entire high school breaks into 3 man teams for an epic scavenger hunt for awesome prizes. Our main character/idiot Akihisa groups up with Hideyoshi and Yuuji to answer a series of questions based on school subjects to find out where locations of prizes are. As this is one of the least intellectually malleable teams in the school, the trio has no idea where to start. But Akihisa has a plan, as demonstrated from here at 7 minutes 17 seconds in to about 8 minutes 20 seconds in the linked video (hopefully it’s available in your region), with your regular generic answer-choice marked pencil and good old luck finding the way, as demonstrated here with the powerful Striker Sigma V.
What makes the scene great to me is the discord between Akihisa’s belief in his pencils, hilariously contrasted with how epic these pencils are in his mind when he uses them compared to the viewpoint of Yuuji and Hideyoshi just watching him rolling pencils to get a random answer. Equally epic contrasting scenes follow with Problem Breaker and Shining Answer in the rest of the episode. What also makes the scene work for me is the fact that when he does get the final answer, barring the z coordinate, his faith is almost pretty much justified. It doesn’t really beg the question of whether or not his idiocy makes him luckier than others, but it’s not a bad one to think about.
And that’s not the last you see of Striker Sigma V either. Put trust in it, and it you will be rewarded, obviously.
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TheBigN
I was surprised, but Baka was a really good comedy. Great characters, good gags, smart writing, good use of fanservice. I don’t know if it did any one of those things exceptionally well, but the total package was hilarious.
You’re not a day late, you’re almost two weeks early! I’ve been consoling my own procrastination with the knowledge that the 12 days of Christmas run from Dec 25 to Jan 6.
But it’s good to bring up Bakatest. That series was a surprising delight.
The main thing that bothered me about Baka was that it wasn’t as dynamic in terms of character development; I felt that most of the characters remained static most of the time though.
But your post made me smile, I loved that scene with the ULTIMATE PENCIL. I almost forgot about it, but epic epic! 😀