The One With The Sharper Fangs Wins! – Killing Bites Mid-Season Review (NSFW)

Alrighty then, not going to lie to you this show got even weirder and less Safe For Work. Like I guessed, surprise surprise, our Main Characters are alive and well after curb stomping the porcupine flasher from the end of episode 1. Mind you in the subsequent 5 episodes, the show hasn’t displayed them as being spectacular nor amazing characters and if anything, they’re just terrible individuals. While I do still find the show to be entertaining, action packed, and funny at times, there’s other times when I just have to groan and/or roll my eyes at how campy or fan-service laden the scenes can be every now and again. This doesn’t happen very often mind you, but often enough to detract from the show. So let’s recap what’s happened in the first half of the season.

 

We have the porcupine about to be curb stomped by our lovely Ratel but is stopped by the Brute of the Ishida Zaibatsu who then drops to his knees and begs Hitomi to fight for the Ishida. A bit of convincing from her guardian that she’s absolutely gaga for, and Hitomi agrees. Back at college, it turns out, Yuya actually has friends that aren’t rapists. However, they are a bunch of neckbeard otaku who swoon and fawn over Yuya’s new high school companion, Hitomi. This subsequently devolves into Hitomi encountering another Therianthrope named Eruza Nakanishi poking up into Hitomi’s bathroom stall and stealing her panties. For reasons. No I swear, there’s a point to this, as Eruza is able to storm out and surprisingly outpace the transformed Hitomi. We then learn a bit more backstory as another couple Therianthropes appear, to stop Hitomi and Eruza from murdering one another and announce there is to be a cease fire until a “Destroyal” occurs. Returning to Yuya, his otaku friends begin to swarm him due to the not one but two real high school girls on his arms. Not being able to wake up from a fantasy, they assume the two girls are in fact Cosplayers, and referring to that point I said the prior fan service had, Eruza teases Hitomi in exchange for teaching her to focus and control her transformation, enabling better energy economy.

This is fun as no one explained to Yuya what was going on so when he encountered a leader of another one of the Zaibatsus the show likes to say control Japan, he was a tad surprised. Here, Yuya is “politely advised” to not take part in the Destroyal to which he essentially announces he’s a pushover and will do whatever Hitomi says to do. After sticking with the Ishida, they find a need to hire on a third Therianthrope for their Destroyal team. Filtering through, they found one who was neither dead nor working for another Zaibatsu. This Therianthrope is Ui Inaba and sacred God-Emperor of Mankind, she is fething garbage. Being a Rabbit Therianthrope, her only skill is to run and dig a hole. Upon encountering a pair of ocular blood shooting Horned Lizard lesbian lover twin sister Therianthropes, (yea this show likes to get weirder and weirder) she runs away, to be saved by Hitomi and then allowed to take the credit. Being the garbage individual that she is, Ui takes said credit and allows herself to be built up, agreeing to accompany the Ishida team on their deathmatch battle royal.

Traveling down to the Destroyal location in the Philippines Islands, we find our crew enjoying a lavish party before the combat begins and we are introduced to some strange individuals ranging from previously introduced powerful Therianthropes like Leo, strange masked ones, and creepy asshole rapist Therianthropes. We find out over the course of this that while Yuya tends to be a bitch, he’s also a decent human being which is infinitely more than the rest of these rich assholes as they maneuver their teams of Therianthropes not as living beings but pieces on a chessboard. Anyway, Eruza (who is on another team) gets separated off by a gecko lady and the aforementioned creepy asshole rapist (honestly, there’s only been a bit less rape in this show than Berserk) and it seems her brother she’s so very enamored with is about to get ganked by a gorilla and crocodile, that latter of which also being on Team AssholeLizards. Team Ishida come to the rescue, with the Hippo Ichinosuke and Hitomi kicking in and beating the hell out of the asshole reptiles after some bad CG (of the baddies thankfully). Turns out the Ishida Zaibatsu leader isn’t complete shit and probably the only person in this show that isn’t pants-on-head retarded.

All other things aside, the combat has been kicking in and is very reminiscent of Terraformars with a lot more fan service and a lot less death. This brings us to one point that bothers me and that is the lethality. We started the show off with Hitomi absolutely slaughtering Yuya’s friends and nearly ending his pathetic life as well and only barely stopping from doing him in episode one. After that, no one except maybe the creepy rapist cobra died, but he had not one but two dicks ripped off so it seems all good. Onto a high point, the combat is great and has that same borderline educational feel of Terraformars, which I absolutely loved due to how cool nature is at times. The surprise most didn’t know was that things like cobra neurotoxin are naturally processed and removed. Because honey badger still doesn’t give a shit. The battle sounds and VA work have been the same as the first episode with the animation and art being pretty good barring the shit CG moments. I’m psyched to see how this goes and still have some hope that this won’t be complete and utter garbage. Let me know if you think the same or if you are just disgusted with this show.