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The Squid Girl: Season One Collection – Review

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The Squid Girl: Season One Collection - Review 1Title: The Squid Girl: Season One Collection
Alternate Title: Shinryaku! Ika Musume
Encompasses: The Complete First Season
Published by: Madman Entertainment
Based on: Shinryaku! Ika Musume Manga Series by Masahiro Anbe
Genre: Comedy
Audio: English and Japanese Dubs
Subtitles: English
Aspect Ratio: 16:9 Anamorphic Widescreen
Runtime: 300 Minutes
Cost: $59.95
Special Thanks: Madman Entertainment for kindly providing me with a copy of this title for review

I have stated previously that I like my storylines to have a good plot with enough content to warrant watching the series the whole way through without the strong desire to skip over episodes…. but I also do have a soft spot for a well planned comedy anime which have always been varied in quality if not coupled with some sort of plot. On the reviewing slate today is Squid Girl, originally released by Media Blasters to the North American market and more recently brought over to the ANZ region by the team at Madman Entertainment. This series is one of those that focus on raw comedy with a plot that is only used to deliver more comedy – so falls into a warning zone where if the comedy is bland… it would have nothing much going for it (Other than the most adorable and eccentric squid you are bound to find). How did this series shape up? Read on to find out!

The Squid Girl: Season One Collection - Review 2

Foolish land-born air breathers! Behold the terror from the depths, the tentacled conqueror of humanity: Squid Girl! With your pollution and stuff you really deserve it, so prepare for menacing, inky doom! Squid Girl has come from the depths of the sea to conquer humanity for its pollution of the ocean. Within moments of arriving on the surface world, our easily distracted little invertebrate is promptly bullied into working for the Aizawa sisters as a waitress, supplying their restaurant with squid ink. If poor Squid Girl can’t handle two pushy Japanese girls, how will she ever subjugate the human race?

To Squid Girl we are evil beings who deserve to suffer at the hands of her tyrannical whim or else become servants to the all-mighty squid…. or at least that is what was intended. Squid Girl is a series that is all about delivering a heavy degree of comedy to the mix with different plots every episode and nothing all too much in the way of an overarching plot. Poor… poor Squiddy found that from the moment she chose to make a beach restaurant as her base that the owners would not be taken down so lightly. Run by Eiko Aizawa and Chizuru Aizawa, both of their unique personalities manage to take advantage of Squid Girls naivety of the world thus turning her into a waitress and instilling a sense of fear amongst their kindness and hospitality that keeps her under their control and becomes the main building point for this seasons comedy. That is of course after you take into account the sizable secondary character cast, each of who provide additional hilarity and ways of teaching Squid Girl about the world… when not causing hesitation.

The Squid Girl: Season One Collection - Review 3

In terms of episode composition, each of the twelve episodes are separated into three different plots which depending on the episode will follow on from each other or deliver completely different stories. As a comedy I feel that doing this was much better than dedicating a whole episode to one issue and risking overdoing a joke or mini-plot. As to what the episodes are like individually, they mostly center around Squid Girl as she attempts to learn more about the humans, takes part in their many festivities such as birthdays and interact with the many eccentric characters from Sanae Nagatsuki – an airhead who has a crush on the girl and attempts to win her admiration regardless of the cost to Nagisa Saito who unlike everyone else at the beach restaurant… actually fears her. With such a sizable cast, many of the characters feel to only be “Character of the Week” style which is fortunate as while they provided well to the series itself, I feel would have been bland if they were the center of attention for too long – instead well suited as occasional secondary characters. Along with Squid Girl who never really loses that voice in her head telling her to dominate the world and a number of flawed schemes to do so, the character cast was overall an amusing and likable bunch that provided well to the overall intention of being funny.

Looking at the plots themselves, I did feel that the earlier episodes were a bit more… comical and enjoyable than the later episodes – however gave at the very least a consistent stream of moments you could chuckle at. But given what could be considered a more limited scope with what they could do surrounding a beach restaurant, they did a decent job at coming up with content for each of the episodes…. Lifeguard vs Squid, Giant Frozen Shrimp and Mini Squid Girl were three mini-plots/gags that come to mind when I think of memorable moments. In terms of the Japanese –> English translation, evidently Media Blasters had a field day when it came to Squid Girl’s lines. Those who have played Persona 4 and found Teddy annoying due to his habit of including teddy and bear in his speech (Eg. Thank you Beary Much) might scream as they have frequently used words like Squid and Ink to form puns in a similar way throughout the episodes (Let’s Play, Inkvasion!). Personally I found it to be one of the more enjoyable elements of the English dub and showed they actually thought more carefully about the dialogue than just translating it.

Overall, while the first half of Squid Girl proved much more enjoyable than the second half, I thought it was a comical series you could sit down and watch after a tiring day without thinking too much and getting a good chuckle out of it without too much of a heavy plot (or any) to go with it. A comical character cast, many laughable moments and puns that made me chuckle all contributed to an enjoyable watching experience – however a bit more development into characters other than squid I feel would have added a bit more to the series as a whole.

The Squid Girl: Season One Collection - Review 4

There was nothing remarkable or all that special about the design, and with the exception of a few scenes with Squid Girl or another character did not contribute much to the overall plot – something I feel most comedies include in their repotoire of comedy inducing factors. However that being said, the designs were bright and colourful and cleanly designed with appropriate attention to detail and smooth animation that unfortunately didn’t get its chance to shine all too often. Perhaps the most redeeming factor of the design was the simplistic creativity put into the Mini Squid Girl, which did contribute to perhaps the only emotionally moving episodes of the series.

In terms of the music quality, it was sufficient for the scenes they were included in, and had a mixture of emotional and comical tracks – but the problem was that none of them really stood out. The English dub would be based on personal preference as it is something you will either enjoy or prefer to listen to the Japanese dub over… but I thought Christine Cabanos (K-ON! – Azusa Nakano) did a good job of portraying the “Many Moods of Squid Girl” while Shelby Lindley also portrayed Chizuru pretty well. The rest of the cast was hit or miss but it is one that should grow on you over time.

The Squid Girl: Season One Collection - Review 5 The Squid Girl: Season One Collection - Review 6

The Squid Girl came with a single opening and a single ending theme, with the ending sequence occasionally changing slightly to portray a reference from that particular episode. The opening theme is titled Shinryaku no Susume☆ with vocals by ULTRA-PRISM and proved to be a fun, upbeat theme that did not reuse any animation and really set the tone for what you could expect each episode. The ending theme was titled Metamerism with vocals from Kanae Ito and was not to my tastes, but ignoring that fact I thought it was a decent theme with the slight changes to the animation a welcome addition.

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For the record, while Media Blasters opted to include landscape cover art for their individual Squid Girl releases, Madman Entertainment have opted for the portrait style for a number of reasons – but at the same time the cover art is by no means bad or unsightly – actually quite good in my opinion. But moving on to the extra content included on disc, the second disc has a sizable collection of goodies including:

  • Textless Opening Sequence
  • Textless Closing Sequences
  • Interview with Hisako Kanemoto – Japanese VA for Squid Girl
  • Hat Folding Video
  • Mini Squid Girl OVA Episodes
  • Trailers for a number of Madman Entertainment releases including Haruhi-Chan Suzumiya, Bamboo Blade, Lucky Star, Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva and Summer Wars, for which I have reviews for all of them on this site!

Overall, I was happy with the first season of Squid Girl. It sets out to be a fun and comical series and provides just that and should be well up your alley if you have enjoyed previously released comedy series such as Lucky Star, Pani Poni Dash or Azumanga Daioh. As I mentioned above it is one of those series you can just sit down, relax and chuckle at without having to  try and understand a complex plot. As for the second season…. with any luck that should not be too far off, however there is little to no news on it as of yet.

Final Score
Storyline / Character Development: B
Design: B-
Music/Voice Acting: C+
Personal Preference: B
Extra Content: A
Overall Score: B

Sam
Sam
Founder of The Otaku's Study. I have been exploring this labyrinth of fandom these last fifteen years, and still nowhere close to the exit yet. Probably searching for a long time to come.

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