Episode three of Kanokon seemed to take a strange new direction for the series. Where were the panty shots? Where was the comedy? Where were the kiss scenes, even? There were just some uninspired scenarios and some out-of-place attempts at plot and character development, and I was left wondering what had happened to the Kanokon I knew and was beginning to love. And then, suddenly…
…all my dreams came true. FUCK YES KANOKON, YOU ARE THE BEST ECCHI SERIES EVAR!
Now that that’s out of the way (and you know that Chizuru and I still got a thing goin’ on), I’ll get to my episode review. This one kicks off with Nozomu paying an unexpected visit to Chizuru’s house. Since Chizuru is in the bath, her brother Tayura (I finally remembered his name!) answers the door. He’s upset that he has to do all the housework these days since Chizuru is too busy thinking of ways to rape Kouta, so he welcomes Nozomu into the house and lets her read some of Chizuru’s romantic advice magazines for the lulz.
It’s not surprising when Chizuru and Nozomu, taking cues from the magazines, both start acting like girls from a visual novel anytime they’re around Kouta. Chizuru makes breakfast for him, but clumsily mistakes sugar for salt and cuts all her fingers in the process; Nozomu, running late to school with toast in her mouth, trips and falls on top of Kouta along the way; et cetera, et cetera. It’s all really standard fare, although Nozomu saves the scene with her hilarious acting skills.
Anyway, Chizuru catches on to this game pretty quickly, and after beating the hell out of Tayura for letting Nozomu read her magazines, she challenges Nozomu to a true contest of womanly honor – seeing who can make Kouta the best lunchtime bento! Not much to say about this here – Kouta gets around the problem of choosing one over the other by eating them both at the same time, and predictably, they both taste horrible, which lands Kouta in the nurse’s office and Chizuru and Nozomu in detention. This affair goes on for most of the rest of the episode, with each girl’s cooking becoming worse and worse as they grow more desperate.
There’s a couple of hints at some kind of conspiracy in this episode – a huge tough-looking guy talks to one of the teachers at Kouta’s school about spirits, and a pointy-eared kid uses a tornado attack on Kouta as he’s walking Chizuru home from school. What these scenes have to do with anything has yet to be explained, but they’ll probably set up some action later in the series.
But I’m not worried about what’s going to happen later. What’s important is that Kouta is injured as a result of the attack, and this sets up the good part of the episode – and by that, I mean fanservice!
To heal Kouta, Chizuru kidnaps some girl who’s actually a frog spirit, and bullies her into releasing “toad oil” which can cure any ailment. (Where she releases it from, I don’t know.) Chizuru proceeds to strip off her clothes, slather herself in toad oil, and rub her body against Kouta’s! Now that’s treatment! Nozomu joins in for fun after a while, too. It was hard to believe what I was seeing (or hearing, for that matter) at this point.
But that’s not even the best scene. The class rep, who’s finally tired of all the chaos this cooking contest is causing, gives Kouta some priceless tsundere advice – he needs to scold those girls if he truly cares for them! Of course! So, the next day, when Chizuru and Nozomu are both trying to shove their food down Kouta’s face and Chizuru decides to get a little pushy, he yells at her. She’s shocked for a moment, and runs out of the room crying. Kouta, urged by the class rep, chases after her. When he finds her in an empty classroom, he learns that she’s not really upset at him at all – in fact, she’s glad he scolded her! Awesome! But she still wants her “punishment,” sooo… Kouta says that he’ll spank her.
At this point (approximately 20:30 into the episode) a combination of blood and coffee splattered onto my computer’s screen, and I had to pause a moment to clean it off.
I knew that there would be ecchi just as soon as I pushed “play” again, but honestly, I’m not even going to attempt to describe the scene that followed, as I probably could not do it justice. Suffice to say that it eclipsed even the legendary scene in the first episode that convinced me to start watching this series. This was absolutely incredible ecchi, the kind I never thought I’d see, and it totally made this third episode worth watching all by itself.
I actually have some thoughts to share about this episode. See, Zanaikin said the other day that this series was as close as you could get to hentai without actually having hentai, and I didn’t really believe him before, but at this point I will agree with him completely. The fact that this show airs in a Saturday morning timeslot and is probably being watched by millions of impressionable young Japanese is even more insane! Another friend of mine swears this show will be cancelled for that fact alone, but I seriously hope he’s wrong. I’m immensely enjoying my weekly fix of Kanokon, maybe even more than Code Geass R2 (and yes, I realize that if this is true it does mean that I am a shameless pervert, but I never made a secret of the fact I loved ecchi). And damned if Chizuru isn’t the hottest girl I’ve seen in an anime in a long time. I’d still love to see more of her fox form, but that’s not much of a complaint, and by now I’m willing to forgive a lot when it comes to Kanokon.
This is the part where I’d post ecchi screenshots, but I’m still waiting for Ayako to deliver my high-definition fansubs. I promise I’ll post screens as soon as I have them in the high resolution that we all deserve. I promise! Now hurry up, Ayako! Please!
