Meganebu Episode 12
What They Say:
Souma Akira is a glasses-wearing high school student at the rural Himalaya Third Technical School. He loves glasses more than anyone and is proud to wear his own. Along with Hachimine Takuma, Minabe Yukiya, Kamatani Mitsuki, and Kimata Hayato – four other boys with glasses who have joined (or, perhaps, were forced to join) the club born of Akira’s greatest ambition – the members of “The Glasses Club” share sweat, laughter, tears, and the occasional explosion(!) as they pour their undying passion into their eye-wear.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Culture festivals being what they are, we got some teases in the previous episode about the plans that the Glasses Club had. But now the festival is here and we get a good look at the rest of the place first, especially with all the push towards food and other delights as the various stalls are definitely the way to go if you have the skill and mindset to do it. With great weather and a strong student council that had worked hard combined with the efforts of the Glasses Club in the previous episode to save everything amid the storm that had arrived beforehand, there’s a good sense of progress having been made. Naturally, the Glasses Club is working on its own research on the side now and as necessary as it is for the festival, they’re a bit behind on getting it all in order.
Their general idea is a fun one though as their display is part of a treasure hunt for glasses wearers and they come up with glasses for people to wear, clues about the school and plenty of enthusiasm for it all. Of course, nobody is actually taking anything for awhile until they learn of the prize itself, which definitely hits students right at their heart by going through their stomach with meal tickets. Comically, as we’ve seen the non-glasses characters as little more than thin wisps so far, once they put on glasses they become actual full bodied characters. The problem is that in their rush to get the donated glasses for the event, they storm Yukiya to grab them and take his experimental x-ray glasses that they’ve been working on all season long. So it’s one pair amid a sea of students who are all now wearing glasses, which practically sends Akira into orgasm.
While there’s some good fun to it all as it goes along and the silliness of the lost glasses is cute to watch, it naturally goes into the predictable territory where the boys have to band together, face their small struggles as a group and then find themselves being supported by everyone and the glasses they have in creating the proper festival event that shines bright than anything else. It’s cute and it plays out in a nice way, but at the same time you have to take it with a big grain of salt since the Glasses Club members, through the representations we’ve seen in the episodes past, haven’t thought of anyone who wore glasses until now. And even then it’s hard to say they really pay them much mind beyond what they give them in order to make their festival plans a success. It’s amusing to see how they viewed everyone before and after the glasses, but it just adds an odd feeling to everything once it’s been laid out in such a clear fashion.
In Summary:
I certainly had my hopes tempered coming into this show for a number of reasons. I certainly wasn’t expecting another Free! series and I don’t think I was even expecting a strong character series like some of the shows can be when it focuses on a group of friends of a particular type or gender. What I wanted out of it, and what I got, was a beautifully animated show with some great quirk and style that was highly appealing. Unfortunately, after the initial introduction of it all for a couple of episodes, it became clearer that it was largely style over substance and the little substance we had wasn’t enough to really sustain it for the run it had to go through. I’m a big fan of the director here and her style of bringing shows to life, but the shift from single episode ‘art house’ OVAs to a full TV series didn’t go well overall. There really needs to be a lot better content and character choices in order for her to really hit the ground running in an engaging way.
Grade: C-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.