Ben-To 09: …
The episode began well. The idea of a bento that destroys one’s conceptions of taste is pretty awesome. And Oshiroi loved his sweat. Good. She is consistently sadistic if nothing else . (I’m a bit mortified her site gets many more hits than mine.)
Sadly, the episode quickly degenerated into another week of “What the hell did they do to my Ben-To?!” I find it hard to believe someone actually wrote this dialogue in light-novel format. How murderously dull. The fan-service wasn’t even slightly titillating. Even the next episode’s preview sucked. Who on Earth thought it was a good idea to get away from the centrality of fighting in this show??? I’m disgusted.
Kritik der Animationskraft 
>I find it hard to believe someone actually wrote this dialogue in light-novel format.
Whether any light novel has bad dialogue this bad aside (I think some LNs do!), the recent 3 episodes of Ben-To are anime original stories.
I refrain from calling them “filler”, since I feel today the word has been over-extended to refer to “anything I don’t like that isn’t part of the main plot”.
Apparently the anime has cut a lot of funny materials, such as how Sato was sent to train with Self-Defense Force by his father since young. Judging from these original episodes, I wonder if these are cut because they don’t involve attractive girls.
AHA! Now this makes sense. But it doesn’t make sense that a studio would pick up a light novel because they think it’s good and it will sell well, only to turn around and start coming up with new material halfway through a cour. What? Did the marketing research suggest viewers wanted a whole episode on Ume seducing Oshiroi?? I think it unlikely.
Sato in the SDF, that’s awesome!
As an episode of Ben-to, this sucked, but I enjoyed it as an episode of anime. Albeit in a very laid-back way.
I didn’t like at as an episode of Ben-To, as an episode of anime, as a ironic parody on fanservice in anime, etc etc.
Perhaps the last couple of episodes were made the way they were to save on budget. All those fights scenes must have cost a decent amount to animate. Although if they were that short on budget perhaps they should have passed on doing a special OP for Shaga in her introductory episode.
At any rate, I could have done without spending a good chunk of the episode watching Ume do creepy things to Oshiroi. Actually if there’s anything this episode really accomplished it was to drive home just how unhealthy the relationship between those two is. Although I kind of doubt that was the intention.
Yeah, it might be a budget crunch. They gotta come up with original material because the novel is full of fighting (that’s me speculating but yeah). This might mean that they’ll go all out on the last couple of episodes. Let’s hope.
I like Oshiroi. I’m still not fed up with characters like her in anime. But I don’t like Ume. I am more than fed up with characters like her.
[…] enjoyed this episode, but not as an episode of Ben-to. ak’s review of the episode is more representative of its quality and disappointing nature (though unlike him I thought […]