Satomi challenges The Roommates to each create a script for the Theatre Club, with 5 points awarded for a finished script and 20 points of territory rewarded if the club chooses a Roommate’s script. The amount of turf is too hard for The Roommates to pass up and soon they are all happily competing.
Tulip wins by *cough* plagiarizing *cough* a common fable of her people entitled The Gray Princess and the Blue Knight. Her happiness is quickly dashed as actual casting her fellow high school students in the lead roles only plops Satomi and Sakuraba together, furthering their chemistry and chances of hook up.
Little do the Roommates know, another alien has landed via space time quake and is watching them prepare for the play. Clearly, she is up to no good!
RnS loads the bases this week with an unexpected drive into left field. I wasn’t expecting a two part ‘school play’ episode immediately after a two part beech episode and I was expecting it to present an entirely new, mythical side story even less.
Could Satomi actually be the fabled Blue Knight of legend somehow? Could Sakuraba be his Gray Princess? Everyone appears to be seeing visions along those lines…
Meanwhile, a giant Rhinoceros Beetle is living in their closet. Long story short: it’s Cosplay Girl’s fault and “Hercules-Chan” is there mostly as a throw away gag to tie into Ruth’s previous unrequited love plot from the beach arc.
That said, something’s going on with that beetle and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it again as a more prominent plot device.
From Tulip’s hologram/bound book to Ghost Girl possessing Satomi to ‘Ghost Write’ her contribution for the script challenge, to the cheap box of curry behind Cosplay Girl, episode six is packed with nice details. In fact, this episode is the best looking the show has produced so far.
So much so that I had to pause and make sure I hadn’t downloaded an OAV by mistake!
Oddness about a middle shelf show’s mid season looking better than it’s early season aside, what really confuses me about RnS is that it is no longer a comedy.
Sure, Cosplay Girl playing the horse’s ass in the play is funny, and sure, RnS goes through the motions with zany situations like having a Roommate bring home a gigantic beetle but it’s trying fewer than 10 jokes an episode — and that’s counting “we’re embarrassed” style humor.
I don’t get it? These characters are totally over the top and they’ve been played over the top for 4 episodes. How am I supposed to suddenly shift gears and care about light-touch romantic drama when magic powers and space mecha are still floating around??
As for the Mysterious New Alien Girl with glasses and cat teeth, who knows? I’m sure she’ll be defeated right away and get stuck in the room with everyone else.
Maybe she’ll be a two-off like the evil Ghost Girl from the beach resort episodes? She’s obviously going to give us exposition and develop Tulip’s back story, which I don’t care about in any way.
Honestly, if RnS hadn’t upped the render quality (it now has a lighting and color treatment more like Angel Beats!) I may have dropped it this week. Even so, this is not an interestingly rendered show.
Oh RnS…what to make of you?
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