Friday 8 March 2013

Vividred Operation - Episode 9

Understandably given that the relationship between Aoi and Akane is now well established, this week's Vividred Operation instead switches its focus towards the friendship between Himawari and Wakaba instead.

More pointedly, much of the episode's focus stems from a shopping trip undertaken by this duo, with Himawari dressed up to the nines at her friend's request.  This choice of clothing certainly means that our normally quiet heroine receives no shortage of attention, but while the usual surfeit of male attention is quickly brushed off it's rather a different story when a representative of a high profile fashion magazine approaches Himawari with a view to a photo shoot.


Once this one-off shoot turns into something more professional, Himawari is left torn between her normal (well, normal for her) interests and this potential new career path - despite Wakaba's enthusiasm, Himawari is rather less impressed with the whole thing; a lack of interest which leads to her bending her friend to her will.  When Himawari loses the hairpins given to her by Wakaba however, we see just how close the relationship between the two of them can be, and not a moment too soon with a new Alone quite literally falling from the sky.

After putting some meat onto its bones over the past couple of weeks, it's a bit disappointing to see Vividred Operation offering up another throwaway episode - there was nothing within this episode regarding its character interactions that we couldn't have extrapolated for ourselves, and even the obligatory Alone attack did little to impress this time around compared to the stand-out moments of previous instalments.  Although it feels like this should be the point where the series is driving home everything that makes it impressive, instead we were treated to the most unimaginative episode yet - a state of affairs that the series will hopefully resolve as we enter what should be its end-game.

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