Halfway through. Dear god.
It’s been hard, at times. Not just in the story – obviously I have endless leagues of sympathy for the trials of our Hero and his Hair Queen on their magical journey into the land of sexy, kinky shonen fighting.
No, it’s been hard being cruel to something so adorable. Something so honest and distinctive and endearing. This show tries pretty hard. It really does.
So today, I’m going to be nice to you, Crime Edge. Let’s be friends for a while. Hell, I’ll even show you a little bit of that thoughtful analysis I try to bring to my other write-ups – maybe I’ll even take F1’s (honestly quite defensible and even likely) perspective, and analyze your flailing not as the drunken missteps of a genre experiment gone wrong, but the crafty jabs of a fond, knowing satirist at the height of his power. Let’s call a truce for today, Crime Edge. You know I’ve always loved you.
Episode 7
0:20 – “It… it’s not like I actually want to stop killing you or anything…” Here we see Crime Edge exposing the inherent lunacy of the tsundere archetype by transposing it against non-trivialized violence, thus crafting a sharp critique of the normalized violence indicative of a classic tsundere. It begs the question, “what really does separate a mind-controlling riding crop-wielding psychopath from your textbook tsundere?” Let us think on this
…alright, there’s probably nothing more self-indulgent than a parody of my own style, and I don’t know if I could keep it up for 23 minutes without strangling myself (hot) to death (less hot) anyway. I’ll stop that
1:02 – There’s something really great about Iwai excitedly sharing the latest gossip with the emotionless fishwoman
3:49 – Welp, according to the OP’s harrowing foreshadowing, dat loli is the only Author-of-the-week remaining. Well, I personally could not have more faith in this show’s ability to maintain interest without throwing constant arbitrary bad guys at our protagonists
…actually, I’m not even kidding. I agree with xRichard’s comment from last week – the most legitimately interesting thing in this show is the Kiri/Iwai relationship, and the adorable young love parallels their hairscapades result in. If this show thinks it can scare me by doubling down on the adolescent drama, it’s gonna be sorely disappointed
4:33 – “Hm, what should the story do next? I know I’m supposed to gather all the characters in one place, but… wait… how about the bad guys throw a party, and everyone’s invited! Dear god, sometimes my brilliance scares even me…”
5:42 – “You two can flirt without a care in the world…” Oh man, this show is slamming that theme. That’s right, big sis – embrace your kink! MORE KINKS FOR EVERYONE
I’m very down with this sexual tolerance stuff. Somewhat less down with conflating rough sex with addiction, though. Win some, lose some.
5:55 – Why must the show do these stupid Powerpoint transitions. Yes, I know I’m repeating material, but the show did it first!
6:13 – Fishwoman walks in on big sis and I’m all oh man this is gonna get steamy and then fishwoman stares at the camera with those cold, dead eyes and hauaglhahhaba STOP THAT
8:15 – “You had a terrifying face… but I sure do like bread.” My god you guys, I care so little about this character’s development. I think I actually negative care, in that the more they develop her, the less I’ll care. Tsundere big sis can’t-get-attached Instead-san is like a red-headed black hole of dull and uninteresting cliches. Please, please bring back the fishwoman. I’m sorry, I was wrong, I won’t vomit at her scary eyes anymore
8:46 – AH EYES FUCK. Actually she looks kinda adorable with her hair down – like a sad meth-head puppy
9:09 – Lady, she forgave someone who literally brainwashed her own boyfriend into attempting to kill her, I think she’ll forgive you for tugging on her hair
10:00 – STOP WITH THE EYES
10:26 – You know, I never really envisioned myself reaching a point where I’d think “FINALLY we get to the fucking needle-play,” but I guess life is just full of little surprises like that
12:27 – “Onee-chan, your face looks so gentle today.” And yet I don’t think this scene even cracks the top ten of weirdest scenes so far
12:50 – Kiri, what the FUCK are you doing hair-cheating on Iwai with that rage-maiden
13:11 – “I’m doing you a favor by cutting your hair. Can’t you show some appreciation?” That’s right, rage-maiden. IT MEANT NOTHING TO HIM
13:48 – “I’m just remembering the first time you came here…” wibbly wobblyNO. FUCK YOU, Crime Edge. I HAVE NO INTEREST IN THIS FLASHBACK. You can develop your shitty tertiary characters ELSEWHERE, thank you very much
15:13 – Oh god. Has this younger, primal Kiri-kun learned to keep his raging hair-beast inside him? This could get hai… no, I won’t.
15:56 – “I haven’t touched such beautiful hair in a long time” HE SAYS, FORCING HER BODILY AGAINST THE WALL. Okay, now THIS scene is top five, easy. Also, this is one of her FOND KIRI MEMORIES? Japan, we have a problem
16:47 – Ooooh, it was the Goods making him all rapey back then. Silly me!
16:56 – …nice work, translators. “Friscalating,” huh? I actually called bullshit on that, and looked it up – Wes Anderson invented that word for The Royal Tenenbaums, to describe the exact quality of wavering dusky sunset that last scene took place in. I don’t know whether to applaud or sigh a translation choice that will make 98% of the audience say “that’s not a word” and the other 2% spend a minute on Google determining that’s… still not really a word
17:23 – “Even still, sometimes it feels like we’re growing apart.” Yeah, we were never closer than that one time you almost assaulted me. That’s… there’s no other way to interpret this, right? They’re saying she found that super-hot, right?
20:26 – “Are people are going to stare at me like I’m some kind of freak?” It’s hard to applaud a show for having such earnest views about sexual freedom when that show also has such freewheeling views about… you know…consent
And Done
FUCK YOU, Crime Edge. I start off this episode pondering what the show will do with half its runtime remaining and all but one Author introduced… and then it turns out the answer is absolutely nothing. “Today on Crime Edge, Kiri and Iwai receive an invitation to a party, and decide to go to it. TUNE IN NEXT TIME.”
If you’re going to be bad, at least be bad in ways that are amusing to me – don’t spend three quarters of your runtime developing characters that are never going to become more than cliched scenery anyway. You disappoint me, Crime Edge.
Fortunately, next week promises to be ridiculous in all the ways I like, so I can’t be too mad at you. And with any luck we’ve run out of entirely vanilla characters for the show to pretend to care about for a few minutes