Acro Trip

Episode 6

You know, this whole episode of Acro Trip, I kept expecting that Hugh guy to turn out to be Chrome's redheaded pal from the flashback, but that never happened. He just got “sanctioned” by the evil organization and turned into a…cute…little…mascot guy… That's when I noticed that our good pal Mashirou has the same exact eyes and hair color as that kid who inspired Chrome to become an evil villain so long ago. What was his name, by the way? Ma-kun? Hm…

Welp, I'm sure that isn't a detail that will have any implications on this show's lore going forward!

As for the rest of “Hocus de Lawless,” I'm happy to report it's a pretty good time! The novelty of the story comes with the genuine stakes it introduces to this hitherto lackadaisical program, and those stakes come in the form of Hugh, a new representative from the company that plans to take Fossa Magna in a bold new direction with his incredibly unique skill: he is perhaps the only person in this show other than Chizuko who isn't a completely incompetent buffoon. Not only does he hijack a news station and outshine our antiheroes without so much as lifting a finger, but he also manages to instantly imprison Berry Blossom within ten seconds of the magical girl's arrival on the scene. This isn't impressive, necessarily, since Berry Blossom is just about as terminally oblivious as Chrome is, but it's still more of a threat than our protagonists have ever managed to represent.

This leads to a reasonably funny and entertaining caper where Mashirou, Chizuko, and Chrome have to team up to take the new baddie down. Now, while I appreciated some of its gags, such as when Chrome is the one who ends up dressing like a Magical Girl to sneak Mashirou and the magic wand into the news station, I also can't help but feel like the show is intentionally screwing with us when it comes to Chizuko's magical potential. I was certain that we were finally going to get a full-on Dark Magical Girl transformation for our deserving protagonist, but all Chizuko managed to do with her spooky powerup was melt Hugh's gauntlet with the power of her evil (and almost certainly gay) love for Berry Blossom.

Granted, this led to the funniest bit of the episode, where Chrome wins out with the mastermind strategy of snitching to the boss, which is just the sort of stupidly petty victory I'd expect from everyone's favorite lovable loser. So, I'll go ahead and score this one out in Acro Trip's favor. We may not have gotten the full evolution of General Dante's power that we so richly deserve, but we got some neat little worldbuilding nuggets to chew on, and we got to laugh at all of the deranged noises that Chrome's voice actor got to make in the recording booth. I consider that a win-win scenario.

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.