10 Second Anime - Kiznaiver - Episode 2

The new Kiznaivers get their first mission: introduce themselves. This is harder than it sounds.

Episode 2 - "If you can swallow a bizarre situation like this so easily, two buckets of barium shouldn't be a problem."

Heh.

It looks like long episode titles is going to be a feature of the series.

Also, I'm not so sure the connection between barium enemas and revealing the hardest thing to admit about oneself was made clear enough. Oh, wait. I just made that connection.

In the premiere, we saw flashes of farcical humor, but I wasn't so sure that would apply to the rest of the circumstances because the show might have gone toward a serious sci-fi angle. But then they showed the Mayor hanging out with those weird robots, slicing drives terribly while his sycophantic assistant applauded his efforts.

This show is going to limit the serious stuff to the themes of connections, bonds, vulnerability, intimacy, scars, healing and pain. Everything else is going to be over the top ridiculous! I can handle that.

The small scene between the homeroom teacher and the school counselor confirmed how everyone in the research city of Sugomori besides the students are part of the "Smiley Happy Town for Everyone" plan.

School Counselor Urushibara is Noriko's number one fan. Check out her cell phone strap! 

Confirmed. Robots have life fiber! I'd been waiting to see Trigger's reference to Kill la Kill like they did with Inou Battle, and there it was.

I can't wait to see all the creative ways the Kiznaivers do their pain dance. Considering that their personalities were hand-picked not to get along with other people, we're going to see the pain dance a lot.

I'm assuming those weird looking mascots are robots of some kind. I'm basing this on Noriko's push button remote control device. Whenever she pushed it, the robots stuck Katsuhira with their stun batons. However, at the end of the episode, she used that device to make the Kiznaiver scars throw digital confetti, so I'm just going to point myself at the above paragraph where I accepted that this show is going to be ridiculous.

Nico is going to be a treat to watch.

She's definitely taken over the Mako role from Kill la Kill, but her eccentricity is not genuine. The Kiznaiver's first mission was Self-Introductions, but in the real intimate sense. They had to reveal to each other the one thing about themselves that was hardest to admit out loud.

For Nico, her darkest secret is that she's been compensating for being a rich girl by putting on eccentric airs. Her Eccentric Head Case  personality is a deliberate act. She doesn't believe in fairies!

Tenga's vulnerability is that he is deathly afraid of dogs, so much so that he keeps track of when dogs around him go on their walks so he can avoid them. The Muscle-headed Thug is a whimpering weakling around puppies.

Yuta, the ladies man, doesn't want his targets to know that he used to be a fat kid. The Cunning Normal's whole purpose is presenting a certain image so that people never meet the real person behind his mask.

Katsuhira was given a pass, even though he did a lot of yacking, because he appears to have a memory problem. This is tied to Chidori's dark secret. She used to like Katsuhira before his personality change from whatever incident caused his pain insensitivity. This means her personal regard for him is out of habit, some hope that he'll return to normal and some kind of feeling of responsibility for him. Pretty much how a Goody Two-Shoes is supposed to act toward a childhood friend who suffered a life changing disability but doesn't want to admit, out of some put-upon morality, that she actually hates that person now.

Katsuhira as the Imbecile doesn't know himself or others, but it's due to some kind of amnesia.

Most of these secrets aren't really that serious, which is why I thought it was a cool thing to change gears with Maki's vulnerability. The cliffhanger for the episode was that she's killed a person! Oooh. We'll have to wait to find out those details.

I wonder if there was some significance to the name Maki found in the morgue. I really hate Japanese katakana spelling sometimes, because I can't make out what they're trying to translate. The phonetic ShaRuRu Do MakKiNGu could be Charles du McKing or MacKing or something like that. Does it mean anything?

The whole setting for the Kiznaiver awakening was in a hospital about to be demolished. Does that mean something too? Or is it just a convenient place for the story to get ridiculous? Noriko said the dogs were in there for some other purpose. Bomb sniffing? Searching for people to evacuate before demolition? I guess I'll have to wait to find out whether I should be worrying about these details. I wouldn't be surprised if it was some wholly contrived scenario designed to force embarrassing confessions out of the kids. For some anime, you just have to roll with it.