Acro Trip

Episode 5

It was bound to happen inevitably, I suppose. I am sorry to report that this fifth episode of Acro Trip was the first of the series not to make me laugh out loud. Don't worry, the show is still cute as heck and pretty darned entertaining. There were a lot of funny bits and silly sight gags that got a smile out of me in “Ominous Unknowns.” I just couldn't quite muster up an audible chuckle. Ah, well. C'est la vie.

It might have been the pacing that dulled the humor. The three sketches we get here are just as goofy as anything that the show has delivered up until this point, but they go on a little long, and there's more emphasis on Chrome just being very loud and obnoxious over the specific jokes that have cracked me up so much in the past. In the first half of the episode, Chrome is obsessed with taking advantage of the poor weather to emerge ominously from the rain clouds and do battle with Berry Blossom—but he's all out of magic for the month again. The resulting pointless excursion gives us a couple of solid bits—I liked when Chizuko's grandpa was unquestioningly game to get into a high-speed chase with the cops—but the punchline of the segment is just that Chrome has to give up and leave B.B. hanging. A lame conclusion, to be sure, but I guess I can call it an even wash on account of how amusing it was to hear the Kuma Kaijin's whimper their pathetic “Beeeeyaaaah's” as they drifted off into the wind.

The middle sketch is similarly uneven, as the comedic potential of Chrome and Chizuko's wand heist doesn't end up going anywhere. It is funny that Chrome is apparently so stupid that he never once thought to just steal Berry Blossom's sole source of magical power and it's equally charming when B.B. really does end up finding a bunch of perfectly good replacements on Not-Amazon.com. I just didn't love the anticlimax of Fossa Magna just…giving the wand back. The show can only fall back on Chrome being excessively injured by Berry's attacks so many times.

The final sketch was maybe the least funny of the three, but it was also the cutest of them—so again, we kind of ended up breaking even. Everyone around here knows how I feel about having to look at giant, disgusting fish, so that whole part of the subplot wasn't very enjoyable, but I can find the joy in B.B. being so dumb that she can't recognize Chrome outside of his costume—and even ends up thinking that he is the big Berry Blossom fan in Fossa Magna. Given that the series has done a surprisingly good job of maintaining its loose sense of continuity, I am curious to see if and how that develops. At this point, though, I think the show needs a shakeup to keep things fresh. Hopefully, we'll get some fun new cast members to throw into the mix, soon. Even better, maybe Chizuko will unseal one of those vacuum-packed knockoff wands and finally earn a magical girl transformation of her very own?

Rating:

Acro Trip is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.