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Chained Soldier
Episode 10

by James Beckett,

How would you rate episode 10 of
Chained Soldier ?
Community score: 4.5

chained-soldier-ep-10-review.png

As this season of Chained Soldier winding down to its close, it's becoming more apparent than ever that the series is unlikely to rise above its status as a mostly pretty decent action-sex-comedy that could have amounted to a whole lot more if it was given more freedom to be loosed from its proverbial chains. For a cartoon about a literal sex slave who gets transformed into giant battle monsters based on whichever monster-killing master mommy is riding him at the time, it's been difficult to overlook how tame this product has been, especially in its back half. It's far from terrible but “War, Naon, Recite” is another episode that left me wanting a lot more by the time the credits rolled.

I'm not just talking about the fan service, either (although the sleaze has been in shockingly weak supply, as of late). Rather, the biggest disappointment of the week for me is how little I could care about the big showdown between Yuuki's new Humanoid Shuuki friends and the 7th Squadron girls. The reveal of the torturous experiments that the Humanoid girls went through makes their plight a lot more sympathetic, and the show has tried hard to get us to like Coco, Naon, and Aoba as much as we like the 7th Squadron. I couldn't muster up emotional investment once Kyouka and the crew arrived to throw down with Yuuki's captors.

A part of this might have to do with the fact that Chained Soldier is finally starting to pay for its vague and rather generic world-building. I've never been given much reason to think too hard about the fundamental rules of Peaches, Mato, the Shuuki, and all of the other pillars of Chained Soldier's storytelling because the show has never seemed to care much. The entire premise of the series has mostly functioned as an excuse to put Yuuki into a bunch of situations where he helps the girls fight a bunch of monsters and is then subsequently suffocated by their breasts and/or genitals. It's a lot harder to overlook how lacking in substance the setting and themes of the show are now that we're suddenly supposed to be empathizing with the Humanoid Shuuki enough to question Yuuki's loyalty and find tension in the conflict between his lady loves (and yes, I am including his sister in that description).

I feel obligated to note that this week's “reward” was maybe the least sexy bit of fan service that Chained Soldier has ever delivered. While I will concede that the joke of Tenka joining in on the action just because she's mad horny for Yuuki was funny, it wasn't enough to distract me from how awkward and half-hearted the finger-sucking reward was shot and animated. I'm sorry, but we are living in a post-Chainsaw-Man-Episode-5 World. That show presented a scene of finger-sucking that might very well be one of the sexiest moments in the history of anime. Y'all are going to have to step up your game.

Still, despite my complaints, I want to stress that my impression of this episode was not that it was bad; I know Chained Soldier can be so much more than the merely watchable time-killer it currently is. At the very least, the episode makes sure to leave a better impression in the end, as the action picks up quite a bit once the Humanoid Shuuki brings out their pets to wreck the 7th Squad's shit. Hopefully, the show can supplement all of the fighting by cranking the Horny Nonsense Dial up to 11 at least once or twice more before the season is over.

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.


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