[AKB0048] - 5
This episode confused me at first because on the surface it actually appears to be a standard 'filler' episode - the premise is 'the girls of AKB0048 have a day off to do whatever they want'. This notion of a 'filler' episode is further reinforced by the poor quality art, animation and direction which give the impression that this whole episode was formed out to some other company.
This is just one of many 'off-model' shots that you can find in the episode. I know what you're thinking, these character designs are pretty bad when they're
on model but that's not the point. The animation is pretty janky at times too, and they use a number of long shots to avoid having to do stuff like mouth flaps. The background art and is actually the worst offender here, but I am saving that for last.
Anyhow, even though I assumed that all the girls in this episode would engage in fairly mindless activities on their day off, but actually all the characters paired off and went on their own adventures which revealed important aspects about their characters and the AKB0048 universe at large. Okay.
This is a good idea but unfortunately the whole thing is done rather poorly and rather than feeling like a unified ensemble cast it feels more like they only have enough time in the episode to give each character a minutes worth of screentime, leaving every single 'mini-story' underdeveloped. There's not enough time to flesh anything out or get interested in what's going on. There isn't any kind of main plot point linking all these scenarios together either which makes the whole thing feel poorly thought out and the episode has zero sense of pacing or tempo because none of the mini-stories have their own arc.
Still, it's worth talking about a few of these 'adventures' because they're all pretty stupid. One of the girls, who name I can't remember 'and will never know' gets chastised for being too sexy, so she has to undergo training to become less sexy.
Conversely, two other girls need to work on being sexy, so they undertake 'operation pherenome':
It's a great success. Somehow. All I saw them do was balance books on their head, but I guess somehow that makes them sexier.
In another story, we lean that another one of the idols comes from a family that specialises in always being part of AKB0048. As in, every generation of their family. It's incredibly creepy, but I think the director considers it 'cute':
There's also some creepy fanservice shit. The otaku will be pleased.
Finally, here's some of that terrible background art I mentioned earlier:
What the hell is wrong with the perspective? Are they trying to ape German Expressionism?
WTF.
