Mecha-Ude Ep 2 Review: Let’s Fight, Shounen!

Episode 2 of Mecha-Ude reminds me of Kill la Kill, with very random and hilarious character interactions and the silly, over-the-top animation style. And I really appreciate the fact that they didn’t make Hikaru into a cookie-cutter shonen MC. Despite being forced into a corner, he didn’t follow the usual trope and stick to his personality, while making gradual development as the story progress.

First, we get the school life romcom – mostly the com. Since Aki and Hikaru are now classmates and her aim is basically to stick to him like glue and bring him back to ARMS headquarters, it creates a lot of misunderstanding and hilarious situation. Hikaru – as expected – is a shy and introverted boy, despite him being able to take the first step that led to all this, but he’s not the Komi type where he freezes up and couldn’t utter a word, he just prefer not to deal with troublesome things – kinda like Shikamaru in Naruto in a way.

The supporting character Shirayama is pretty good. She’s funny and probably won’t be Hikaru’s love interest considering her reaction in this episode. Just a hijink supporter and create situations that we can only see in romcoms. I think she can be a good friend with Aki later.

Speaking of Aki, I did expect her to be a tough girl, I didn’t expect her to be a cookie-loving tough girl. I guess it’s the good ol’ rough character with a surprisingly soft side.

This episode we’re introduced to two new Kagami Group henchmen. I kinda like the sniper Mecha-Ude design, and the Wanner dude’s pretty funny. The entire fight in the old school building is basically just a way to make sure Hikaru will commit to the cause. Cause the entire thing is hilarious as hell, especially after Aki got caught. It has a huge Trigger vibe like Kill la Kill, Panty & Stocking and a bit of FLCL too.

Another thing is that even though Hikaru didn’t want to resort to violence, he has a knack for strategies. He came up with a pretty funky way to fight against the sound attack by Wanner. Although it’s kinda silly that the ANC actually worked, but I can see him going for some creative strategies in the future, and Alma will be like: “Oh yeah, I can do this too” and then turn into a McGuffin for him to use. And once again, Alma hasn’t really showed us what he can do, except being Bravern but with Superbia’s voice. Gotta say, he’s pretty funny for a “special” Mecha-Ude.

At the end, the duo Tous and Wanner from Kagami Group got yeeted by Aki in very comedic fashion. And the leader of ARMS finally met Alma and Hikaru. His Mecha-Ude is Fist which is basically Alma but slightly different. And they also setup the next ep opponent which is Jun and Ouroboros – which is also a pretty special Ude. Not sure how many episodes this will have, but with the pacing, I think a 24-25 episode count would be great, since it’s already 2 episodes and we just only get to the part where Hikaru started to be involved. But the storyboarding and script is not boring at all, on the contrary it has a lot of…character, thanks to the interaction between everyone involved – including the bad guys.

=Aaron=
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