Another character introduction episode. Yes, 50 episodes in and we are still meeting new characters. And there’s still a fairly main character to come along even later!
Here we meet Ryouko, Mendou’s theatrical sister. She amuses herself by tormenting her brother and performing elaborate pranks aided by her Kuroko henchmen.
After scaring Ataru by dressing as a skeleton, she shows up at school pretending to be Mendou’s fiancée. She then tries to make him eat a nine day old lunch. When Mendou refuses, Ataru offers to eat it. She actually responds to Ataru’s advances, asking him to play “Romeo and Juliet” with her. But it’s not out of love, merely to amuse herself and annoy her brother.
Expecting Ataru to sneak in Mendou lays traps and mobilises their private army. Only to have the butler show Ataru right in on Ryouko’s orders. However the Kuroko then dump him in the middle of the warzone, and we get some excellent Masahito Yamashita animation.
Eventually he battles his way to the tower where Ryouko is waiting, dressed as Juliet… only for Lum to fly in and electrocute him. And unlike the play, Ryouko’s Juliet doesn’t suffer the same fate as her Romeo (as the Kuroko point out).
For all the great animation on the second half and the fact that Ryouko is a great addition, it suffers again from having a few too many beats in it. It’s all a little too busy storywise – Ten gets introduced to the plot out of nowhere, purely to allow Ataru to get from A to B. There’s better Ryouko stories than this in the series.
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Mami Koyama provides the voice of Ryouko. Other notable roles include the eponymous Fairy Princess Minky Momo, Nils in The Wonderful Adventures of Nils, Arale-chan in Dr Slump and more recently, Balalaika in Black Lagoon. From magical princess to hard boiled Russian mafioso!
Crikey another hard to find name today, é³¥å— ä¹ƒ. Beyond similar credit on Nanami SOS and Ochamegami Monogatari Korokoro Poron, I’m totally stumped. Anyone with any clue about the English translation, and who they are?
Screenplay: Kazunori Ito
Storyboard: é³¥å— ä¹ƒ
Director: Keiji Hayakawa
Animation Director: Asami Endo
