Uknighted Manganime Life is too short to watch bad anime

Setting aside the fact that the ending to Magikano was an absolutely travesty, it was a pretty good series. But I’m not here to talk about it, am I? No, today we’re talking about Touka Gettan, a series that seems to me to be very similar to Fate/Stay Night, except that it confuses me more and has more sex involved. Hm.

Touka Gettan stars the eponymous Touka, a character so androgynous that I thought he was a girl until I was nearly done with the second episode. Speaking of which, I should probably summarize the first two episodes real quick, so that this post makes some sense. This is complicated somewhat by the fact that I really don’t know what happened in the first two episodes. Here’s what I remember of them, organized nicely into bullet points:

• Touka talks with his mom on the phone, possibly for the first time.
• Touka has some flower-sword-thing inside his torso. I think it was called the Crystal Sword.
• Some bizarre ceremony thing happens…
• But not before a massive food fight.
• Touka runs into some girl named Momoka and they kiss.
• Pretty much everyone seems to be someone else, only reincarnated.
• A bunch of people disappeared during the ceremony thing.

So um, yeah. On to the now. The third episode starts with Touka wading through a bunch of angst about something, complete with strange an indecipherable flashbacks in which he wields a sword and a really creepy facial expression. Then three shinyflies, which are like butterflies except all glowy, appear and annoy emoTouka. He waves them away, at which point they turn into a set of three identical girls with green hair and fans. The three of them laugh at Touka in a way reminiscent of Maria-sama ga Miteru (OH HO HO HO HO) and claim he touched them in bad places.

We now abruptly cut to a dream Touka’s mom is having, though we don’t know that yet. We are shown a young girl standing in a field, complete with the requisite film grain. No wheat here! Then, fire. Lots and lots of fire. And that strange flower-sword-thing. And now the girl is promising somebody that she’ll kill him first once she gets the sword. And now she’s saying she wants the sword and asking where it is. And then all sorts of other things happen that don’t really make any sense to me, but they seem to involve ceremonies and then people being killed. Fun times.

Something, I’m not quite sure what, seems to affect Touka in a very serious way, so he sneaks into somebody’s futon and falls asleep. This somebody turns out to be a girl named Makoto, and she just so happens to have the highest-pitched voice I’ve ever heard. Noticing that there is suddenly a man in her futon, she screams, prompting Momoka to show up and beat said man to a pulp.

At this point, Touka reveals how much of a wimp he is by running to his mom. He then asks if he can sleep in her bed for the night. And then I’m pretty sure that they have sex.
You read that right. Touka (probably) has sex with his mother. Not only that, but uppity salsa music plays during the scene.

Then we’re treated to the eyecatch, which, incidentally, is the series logo and the word “eyecatch” written in Japanese.

It is a new day, and Touka is staring into the sky. Random Guy A shows up and asks Touka what’s going on, at which point he waxes philosophical about… something or other. They’re interrupted by Makoto running off to somewhere else and, upon her departure, Touka reveals that he was actually scanning the sky for UFOs; his philosophical wax was simply his lame way of mocking Random Guy A. We are then treated to lunch, courtesy o f Makoto and Momoka. During lunch, Momoka asks how Makoto would feel if she (Momoka, that is) were to disappear or otherwise go away. Makoto responds somehow in her extremely high-pitched voice, but I really didn’t quite understand what she meant.

Then the Catgirl Warrior Thing Arc sets in. We are introduced to a girl wielding a scythe who seems to think she’s a cat. Incidentally, she’s trapped in some invisible field. But that’s okay, because we’re going to forget about her and move back to the green-haired triplets! They tell each other to be quiet and then talk about how this cup of tea is this cup of tea is life. I don’t get it either. In any event, some girl materializes behind Touka and says something cryptic to him before vanishing. She then materializes near Matoko and says that this is to be the last ceremony. Materializing girl then tells Matoko to UNLEASH THE DRAGON, which I guess is code for “telepathically do strange things to Momoka”. This is followed with footage of Momoka’s intense migraine and very brief transformation into a screaming… something. Her clothes become all fancy and she shines a lot. Call it what you wish.

It turns out that this was all caused by Makoto’s singing. Interesting. In any event, she UNLEASHES THE DRAGON, causing a huge shiny bubble to appear around the entire village. The previously-glimpsed catgirl person suddenly notices that the barriers around her are gone, meaning she is FREE!!! It is on this note that we cut to the three green-haired butterfly girls, who are standing in a sea of cherry blossoms. They don’t get to enjoy this for very long before they are intruded upon by a badass girl driving a totally pimp car who wants to talk about budget cuts or something. Their conversation doesn’t last very long before it too is interrupted, this time by the aforementioned catgirl leaping rudely through their talking grounds.

Assorted people glow in assorted ways, Makoto stares up at the moon without clothes, and Momoka runs into Touka. Touka and Momoka seem to have had some sort of falling out, so Momoka declares that she’ll kiss Touka should they meet again and then promptly runs off to cry. The catgirl appears, taunts Momoka, and engages her in a very short fight before running away. Then the episode ends, leaving me even more confused than before.

I’m three episodes in and I still don’t know the names of most of the characters. According to Wikipedia, the show was aired in reverse-chronological order, which explains some things but still leaves me largely in the dark. I don’t think that this show handles the whole funky timeline thing as well as Memento did, though admittedly that’s an unfair comparison as Memento handled it pretty much perfectly. However, it also isn’t handled as well as, say, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya; in Haruhi, they made sure that the funky timeline gave extra meaning to the show, whereas here it seems like they made the whole series and then just decided on a whim to air it in reverse order. I’ll keep watching the show, but I have the feeling that I won’t know what exactly is going on until I finish the show and, still confused, look the damn thing up the internet.