ROCKET PUNCH! – Anime Gataris Season Review

So I had cast some doubt upon this show when I last discussed it. As of this writing, I assure you that doubt was horridly wrong. If you want a great story with twists, I recommend you watch this show because it pays out and damn well. I shall wait here in the form of an article and image below. If you don’t mind spoilers then lets carry on carrying on.

With that out of the way lets go and review this show and the clever trick it pulled on us as viewers (or just me if you are reading the article). This show teased and taunted us with the premise of something more. Not just an interesting twist or two but a fair amount of meta teasing such as the show acknowledging that three episodes in is typically the set point for a show and that beyond that we won’t see much more plot deviation. We then almost completely follow that rote to the point of mediocrity, and that’s when the show gets you. If you stuck with it, not only was it not shit anime, but actually turned in to an interesting story direction.

The show takes us to an anime writing mini-process with the club creating a show in order to not be shut down, a premise/threat the characters themselves are becoming bored with. Some minor reveals/twists during these three episodes included are the dad going full Otaku and essentially acknowledging Minoa is his favorite daughter due to her anime fandom and the goals and dreams of the members are slowly fleshed out to give them more depth than a puddle. A few bits of misunderstood Yaoi fangirling, a hot springs trip, and some terrible projects being done and we have the anime club design and complete their project which came out to be a mediocre but still entertaining short, with the ending being the CG ending scene from the ED which I want to call as cheating but it worked so oh well.

So the show got kinda real with the different clubs acknowledging the anime club and attempting to do anime things like adding rocket boots to track sprinters or using anime technique style pitches. In addition to acknowledging the talking cat and building giant Gundam robots, these anime things started working. We find that the handsome AF Aurora-senpai is really a traitor and that the principal is not only an Otaku but also the creator of the anime that Minoa has been hung up on for years.

We then hit the ending arc and in the home stretch I’m left thinking “is this a show about Minoa becoming insane?” With the recent increase in anime ideas working, we have people begin changing. I don’t mean like they’re different people but that they are anime as in identified in world as being anime with shifts in style of animation as well as Sebastian becoming a busty maid, and other completely non-nonsensical meta becoming “real” and accepted as commonplace. One minor issue I had was that the Sebas-chan joke belongs to Black Butler and shouldn’t be used by others. But the last two episodes of this anime become the meta joke about how they are anime and there is another “anime” universe that exists and is where Aurora and Neko-Senpai come from. I was genuinely unsure if she was going insane or if I was. In a very Future Diary/Mirai Nikki OVA seeming ending, the show ends with an almost anti-climatic ending with Aurora and Neko being sealed on the other side of the door from the beginning of the series and life becomes normal, or at least as normal as “IRL” anime gets.

So with this capping off, I’m left realizing this was something I should have by most means dropped at mid season but actually managed to vindicate itself and win me over in the end. The art for the show was really well done and had plenty of throwbacks that even I didn’t fully understand. The music was super catchy and energetic and the VA’s were amazing, especially YuiYun the explosion arch-wizard. This was meta to an exceptionally entertaining degree for me and for anyone who likes things like Haruhi Suzumiya or Stein’s;Gate I recommend this show because of the wild and fun ride you’ll be in for, albeit maybe not as well done as those two. Give the show a shot and let me know what you thought, and remember, THE ROCKET PUNCH IS THE HIGHLIGHT OF ANIME!