Mayonaka Punch

Episode 5

This week, the ladies of MayoPan discover something that reality TV figured out 20 years ago: people love watching other people put themselves in dangerous situations for no reason. Whether it's Bear Grylls becoming a meme over drinking his own urine or all those weirdos on Naked and Afraid, people like seeing others struggle and scavenge for the hell of it. Unfortunately, our YouTube-ing heroines missed the part where those shows have hordes of people just off-camera working to make sure those on-camera survivalists don't die.

What follows is a pretty solid outing in terms of comedy. There's a solid source of comedic friction between Live trying to get the right footage for their video while everyone else wants to Vampire their way out of hardships. There are also some nice bits of YouTube-centric comedy, like Live setting up the camera to get a shot of her "struggling" to carry some driftwood. It's a good reminder that even the most authentic-looking videos on the internet are at least a little bit staged, even if they don't star vampires. The show's face game is on-point as ever, and congrats to Masaki for giving us another quality entry into the Posting Through It genre of reaction images.

That's all fine and good, but unfortunately, the more dramatic side of this episode just doesn't work for me. I like the conceit – Live tries her hardest to make a proper video to impress Masaki, fails, but learns that her efforts weren't in vain and her reward remains in-vein. It's just that the execution feels a little off. It would be different if Live had the idea to make a video herself to make Masaki happy, but here it's something she's straight-up ordered to do on pain of missing out on Masaki's human juice. Masaki's always been willing to pull that card to get Live's assistance, but here it feels just a little too meanspirited, especially when the scheduling issue wasn't even Live's fault to begin with. That could still work if the show were going for a purely acerbic resolution or if Live expressed some anger on her own behalf, but there's obviously a sentimental angle here that just doesn't land even when Masaki is being nice at the end.

Maybe this will work better later in the season when we've had more time to develop these characters and their relationships. We're not even halfway through, so there's plenty of room for Live to grow more assertive or Masaki to be more considerate of her bloodthirsty YouTube thrall. Right now, it's just not as satisfying as I think the show meant it to be, and it takes the wind out of an otherwise solid episode.

Rating:

Mayonaka Punch is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.