CCXX: "Squid Girl"

A title similar to my last post in terms of plot, Squid Girl, aka Shinryaku! Ika Musume is one that's more down to earth, and thankfully shorter. I never thought I'd see this title so soon, but the internet just keeps throwing the title in my face (in various ways, at that.) I might as well get started on this.

The title character is, of course, Squid Girl, a sea emissary who plotted to invade Earth as the denizen's consequence for the pollution of the sea. And yet, after busting a hole in the wall of the Lemon Beach House (a restaurant owned by the Aizawa sisters Eko and Chizuru), she ends up serving the very humans she wanted to conquer. However, it's not as depressing as it initially sounds, as she meets curious characters, learns things on the surface, and eat loads of shrimp! Will she ever invade the planet?

Unlike Sgt. Frog, Squid Girl isn't perceived as an alien, and while she looks close to human, she actually features and uses traits you would find in squids, well... various squids. The title in question is a slice of life comedy, and having seen stuff of this genre, it's a breath of fresh air to see a type that's actually humorous a little. Squid Girl has 2 seasons that are 13 episodes a piece, with an OVA released August of last year, and another debuting overseas in 2 weeks. Media Blasters licensed this title for the US release, so it has been dubbed, at least Season 1 has, which I found via Netflix. The cast this times feature mostly names I never heard of before, though Christina Vee has a role in here. Christine Marie Cabanos voices the lead character, and I remember hearing her before in Rozen Maiden Overture.

Initially, I couldn't make heads or tails of this, but as it progressed (yes, I still hung in there), I started to come to terms with it a bit more. And it's definitely a bit more upbeat, compared to normal slice of life titles, and a huge plus over the dramatic ones. An interesting thing to note here: in the raw/subbed versions, she stresses the ika term and usually ends her sentences with de geso. In the dub, these are dropped, being replaced by dialogue with squid-based puns. What charms me about the latter is that some of the puns are positioned in a way that it can be considered unintentionally censored.

Squid Girl was as... redundant, but a bit more bearable, so I'll file it as a 7 of 10. I never thought I'd get around to completing this, but I tried, and did. On to the next, as they say...