Sakugan | Episode Three: Overconfidence can only get you so far.

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Memenpu is a fascinating character. She’s a very outgoing, overly confident but also highly intelligent nine year old. However, she’s overly confident to a fault (as shown by episode three). Memenpu and her father, Gagumber are polar opposites yes, but they balance each other out and that’s what I love most about this father-daughter duo, for some reason it just works. Even though Gagumber is against the brash, “go in heads first and deal with the consequences later” nature of Memenpu, him allowing Memenpu to continue to express herself freely and to live out her owns decisions and associated consequences as a result makes Gagumber a very underrated parent.

Also can I just quickly say, what I found interesting over the past three episodes was that this monster that originally attacked the colony seems to be specifically targeting the main characters and I’m not sure why this is the case. Maybe it has something to do with Memenpu’s gem-like thing that she turned into a necklace because the attacks only started happening after she obtained the gem thing. It’s almost as if these monsters are doing everything in their power to prevent Memenpu and Gagumber from reaching their destination. Okay now with that out of the way, I’d like to talk about the characters in relation to this episode.

Gagumber allows Memenpu to be who she is and to follow her own intuition. Although, I do think that Gagumber has to do a better job at being the voice of reason and at being more assertive on Memenpu but despite that I think he’s pretty cool. He allowed Memenpu to follow through with her “go in heads first and deal with the consequences later” plan, Gagumber allowed Memenpu’s over confidence to take hold. Making her live with the consequences, which in this case was being mobbed in an ice-cold iron shed, away from her mech and father because Memenpu thought her father slowed her down and didn’t want to wait for him. That scene showed that Memenpu still has a lot of maturing to do, I mean, she’s only nine years old after all.

Memenpu’s over confidence only got her so far. If it weren’t for her father coming to find her, Memenpu probably wouldn’t have made it past the third episode. But we do not kill off one of the two main characters that quickly. It tells me that while I think Gagumber is an underrated father, he could also be seen as an enabler because he’s letting it all happening. Maybe it’s because Memenpu knows just how far she can get away from things because she knows that her father (her safety blanket) will always be there in some capacity. But what happens when he isn’t there and it’s just her? We got a glimpse of that this episode and it makes me wonder if we’ll ever get to a time where that will ultimately have to be the case for one reason or another.

Now moving away from that. Something I enjoyed a lot about episode three was that as we watched the father-daughter duo explore the caverns it was accompanied by a song playing in the background. Although it was something minor, I thought it added a lot of depth to the exploration. It was nice because it gave something else for us to listen to as we watched. There have been plenty adventure anime in the past where during exploration, all that can be heard is the ambient sound of their surroundings. While episode three of Sakugan is no different in that respect, the fact that there’s something more than just the character’s dialogue and the ambient sounds is nice.

Also, who was that dude at the end of the episode and why did he say “Which makes this terribly regrettable”. He seems to be someone who knows a lot about the two because once they spotted the guy on the bridge. The dude already knew who they were and it seemed as though he was waiting for them to show up. All I’m saying is that he seems very fishy and is making me really look forward to the next episode.