Wednesday, March 16, 2016

AOKANA: Four Rhythm Across The Blue Episode #10 Review


All of you, come at me together. I'll teach you my ace in the hole.

What They Say:
The Kunahama Institute is one of the first in the world to give out new anti-gravity footwear to its students. Not only does this invention change the way the basic world functions, with students now being able to shoot across the sky, but it also gives birth to a new sport -- The Flying Circus. Asuka Kurashina is a new transfer student at Kunahama who has never wanted anything more than the ability to fly. Suddenly mixed in with students who have already mastered the art of flight, Asuka must overcome physical and mental barriers as she adapts to a new environment filled with new people, all while trying to master a new way of life.

The Review:
Content: (Please note that the content portion of the review may contain spoilers)
Remember that part of Rocky III when "Eye Of The Tiger" comes on and everything is super intense and stuff? Well if there was any episode of AOKANA to throw a testosterone-induced training theme into the mixture, it would be this episode. In preparation for the coming tournament, the Kunahama FC team must work harder than ever before if they are going to have any chance of beating Inui Saki. At the same time, Saki and Irina are modifying their training regime as well, taking the balancers completely off of Saki's grav-shoes and allowing her to fly even faster (As if she needs to do that).

In the midst of all this training, Asuka decides that it's a good idea for Kunahama to temporarily team up with Reiko and Rika and calls them over to run some drills. After all, everyone is going to have to take on Inui at some point...but will the power of sheer hard work be enough to overtake her? That's the question on everyone's mind -- particularly Masaya's. But we'll get to that in a second.

With Reiko and Rika added to the mixture, Misaki decides to summon yet another person to the sweaty, training montage. This time around, that person is Shindou (Who had previously decided that sitting at a shrine and praying is a superior form of training). Either way, Shindou leaves the Shrine and meets up with Kunahama. Apparently the whole praying thing worked out for him because now he is able to mimic several of Saki's moves that she ultimately used to dominate him in the finals of the last tournament. Good for you, Shindou. Anyway, setting himself up as sort of a target dummy, he coerces Misaki into attempting to take him down. Obviously, it doesn't work because he's now an overpowered divine FC dude or something and the training montage continues for a little while longer.

Okay, back to Masaya. With not much...actual content in this episode, it's a good time for Masaya to finally get back into the mixture. Noticing the gravity (Ha) of the situation at hand, Masaya has a talk with Kagami-sensei about getting back into FC to better help the girls. Then, in the middle of their training, he bursts through the skies in grav-shoes of his own, bewildering the entire crowd. Then out of nowhere, Kagami-sensei shows up and says, "Yeah, he's always been good at this," before taking off into the sky as well and challenging every single person on the field/sky to come at her. But before I go down a few more lines to the "In summary" part, I just want to say...my God, Kagami is HOT. Jeez. Okay, that's enough.

In Summary:
This episode is basically a giant setup for Masaya to get over himself and get back into the game of flying circus. A good 3/4 of the episode, though, is honestly just the girls training (Which they are doing all the time anyway). This time around, though, the training is harder (I guess) and there are more people there. That's really the only difference. Honestly, if it weren't for the last five minutes or so, I'd go ahead and say that you could skip this entire episode and still be able to grasp what's going on. This, combined with a few more artistic inconsistencies than normal, go on to create a rather blasé tenth episode that serves very little purpose when put side-to-side with the rest. Average on all fronts.

Grade: C

Streamed By: Crunchyroll

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