Sakugan | Episode Five: It could have been better.

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This Bureau guy doesn’t seem so bad after all. In the words of Gagumber, they (Merooro and Memenpu) are both “nerds”. Which for once worked against Gagumber because Memenpu had someone of equal intelligence to talk and relate to. So in that regard, Gagumber had less thinking to do as he tried desperately to keep up with his daughter intellectually. However, you can also argue that it worked against Gagumber because, for one entire episode, Memenpu had someone who was able to keep up with her in Merooro. It is because of this new playmate that Memenpu found that kind of forced Gagumber off to the side and you can tell he was slightly annoyed in that respect.

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Could episode five be better? I certainly think it can be. After what I saw in the previous episodes, episode fiver felt slow and empty. Truth be told, not much if anything at all happened during the episode and I think that is the biggest contributing factor to this episode. Episode five was the episode where Sakugan took a break from their thrill-seeking exploration and decided in favour of doing something that I thought was pointless. However, for the sake of the episode, I thought the mission that the trio went on was justified.

When you live underground, things we take for granted like a cool breeze are at a premium or are non-existent. So in order to preserve the world’s history (with regards to plant and tree life), you need to artificially create and maintain these devices used for these things. That is what we find Memenpu, Gagumber and Merooro doing. While I understand the whole preserving the history of the world aspect, I didn’t find it all too interesting to watch. Episode five is like a filler episode, it’s just there to bridge a gap between two episodes relating to the main story.

Hopefully, in the next couple of episodes, Sakugan will start to pick up otherwise it’s going to be a disappointing end to what I thought was going to be a good anime.

Anyway, enough of that. I don’t know what I didn’t include this in my ‘impressions’ blog but is there any reason why Gagumber and Memenpu call each other by their real names? If those are their real names, which I assume it is but you never know. It was just something that jumped into my head as I watched the episode “Why is Gagumber called Gagumber? Why is Memenpu called Memenpu?”. If it’s solely because they wanted to create something different then, I like it. It’s not every day where you see a daughter call their father by their first name, I think the last character I saw do that was Hori from Horimiya.

Anyway, to summarize. Episode five wasn’t an episode that I found particularly interesting, but I am hopeful that it’ll change course in the next episode.