Chained Soldier

Episode 5

Now hold the phone, Chained Soldier. How the hell are you just going to take one of the sexiest Rewards for Yuuki so far — sloppy makeouts with some lip-biting thrown in for good measure — and just cover the whole damn thing in washed-out lights and those weird floating bubbles? You're telling me that it's fine to watch this guy get his junk ground into powder by Kyouka's bare feet, but we can't spare any halfway decent cinematography for an intimate smooch scene!?

I might be getting ahead of myself. Truth be told, “Sisters, Yachiho, Ridicule” is a pretty good conclusion to all of the buildup we spent so much time on last episode (aside from the story's catastrophic failure to titillate, of course). I could complain about all of the rookie mistakes that this show sometimes makes when it comes to capitalizing on its more licentious material, but I will try not to gripe too much< seeing as the action half of the equation managed to work out quite well, in the end.

While the CGI used for Yuuki's transformation was done surprisingly well, I won't pretend that the big fight between Himari and her big sister is the best-looking thing I've ever seen. The intense red shading of every aspect of the background in Mato starts to wear on the eyes after a while, and I was not a fan of the cheap-looking color-negative filters used to indicate when Yachiho was freezing time. Thankfully, the big exhibition battle makes up for the lack of overt visual flair with some great mechanical drama.

When it comes to anime fights that involve a lot of inner monologuing and power-rule explaining, I have one rule: It's all cool with me until I start to get bored. Where Chained Soldier manages to execute things surprisingly well is in the way that it blends the nitpicky rules of Yachiho's Golden Hour powers with the minute-to-minute pacing of the battle, which kept me interested in the proceedings the entire time. The way that Yachiho and Yuuki have to strategically push in and pull out (heh) in time with Yachiho's rewinding is the sort of weird anime bullshit that manages to be just comprehendible enough that you don't have to think about it too hard and can therefore focus on enjoying the action unfold in (mostly) uninterrupted real-time. Also, how can you not feel at least a little triumphant when Himari uses Yuuki's transformation smoke to fake out her sister and shoot her in the neck like a boss? That shit is just cool as hell.

And, yeah, the following Reward scene was pretty lame by comparison. I can't say I loved the neat and schmaltzy way that the episode tried to wrap up Yachiho's “Evil but secretly loving” relationship with Himari, but I had a good enough time with the main event of the week to let those issues go. I'm a simple man, in a lot of ways. Give me a good, weird, and enjoyably stupid cartoon monster fight, and I'll be a happy camper.

Just pay some goddamn respect to the sloppy makeouts next time, Chained Soldier. You can do better at being horny and weird, and we deserve better.

Rating:

Chained Soldier is currently streaming on HIDIVE.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.