Tenchou's review- Infinite Stratos IS 4

SHININNNNNNNG FINGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Alright, back to the epically awesome semi-mecha harem IS! Episode 4 was rather entertaining with the short fight between Lin (Rin?) and Ichika. Although I still hate 3D rendering, the majority of the battle was pretty well-directed with plenty of good angles and quick-paced combat; I would say I thoroughly enjoyed watching Ichika (public enemy) getting plummeted by one of his 'girls'. What I do want to say though is the terrible direction with the 'turning point', so far every battle/conflicts turning point happens so suddenly and illustrated so poorly it seemed terribly forced. For example, first half of this episode's turning point was Ichika remembering his nee-san's lesson on Ignition Boost, which gives him enough of an edge in battle to fight against a rep. However, there was no prior indications in regards to this twist, it just...happens. Although in real life, from the audience' perspective, these kind of things happens, but from an anime perspective where we can actually see the main character's thoughts, this twist creates a sort of gap between the viewers and Ichika. It happens much too often in merely four episodes, taking away a lot of the viewers' attachment to the character Ichika. If the source material is written as such, then there's nothing to be done, but if the source material did have some foreshadowing, please follow the source as it will provide a lot of continuity for the viewers to see.

Now onto second half of the anime, I believe I called it last week about the unknown enemy crap (well...on second thought, it's kind of obvious so I won't give myself a point there). Anyways, the whole battle was cute from RinXIchika standpoint where we got to see Rin in deredere mode all over Ichika, however, the battle itself was pretty lackluster, clustered with too much talking and not a lot of fighting and the 3D rendering did not help one bit. Now the question of how Cecilia and Houki even got into the arena before the rescue team is beyond me, and the fact that Ichika was well aware of her before anyone else was also pretty baffling. Oh well, can't expect anymore than this from this anime. The ending was quite nice with the current Ichika harem bickering among themselves, the cliche stuff that gets me everytime.

Next week is going to be pretty sweet, the Italian French appears! Oh Em Gee She's a reversed trap!

Again, thanks to Random Curiosity for screencaps.