Merry Christmas, everyone! I got a pretty awesome haul this year - not very many things, but the things I got were awesome, which is what matters. It included a D Si! FLIPNOTE STUDIO = BEST. THING. EVERRRR, plus I can actually browse TV Tropes on it!
I digress. Let's move on to Kämpfer, episode the fifth!
The episode begins with probably the funniest thing in the series so far - a group of boys dressed up as girls attempt to sneak over to the girls' side in the chaos of festival preperations, but it turns out the Absurdedly Powerful Student Council has girls with guns protecting the border! Man, they really make you pay for being a straight pervert in this show! Anyway, it turns out there's a group of girls who are cheering for Female!Natsuru and Akane in the beauty contest (as opposed to Sakura and Not-Sakaki, who I've FINALLY realized is really named Shizuku). The girls decide to show their support by stripping Akane and Natsuru down and trying different fetish outfits on them, including swimsuits, Playboy bunny outfits, nurse outfits, cowboy outfits and what appears to be a Di Gi Charat cosplay(!?). FAAAANSEEEERVVVVIIIIICE. That's when Kaede bursts in and - more strange musical choices - what sounds like porno music plays despite the fact that there's nothing erotic going on at this particular moment. More fighting beetween Sakura and Akane, blah blah.
Cut to Male!Natsuru walking home that night. He bumps into Sakura-san and they talk about the possibility of Akane liking Female!Natsuru. All in all, it's awkward. Sakura turns away from Male!Natsuru and, to hammer the awkwardness home, it turns out Not-Sakaki was sitting on a fence above them. Er...wha?
MASCOT TIME! We do yet another cut, this time to Male!Natsuru talking to Hara Kiri Tiger while behind what appears to be a medical screen. A caption reads 'To protect the consulter's privacy, their voice has been altered'. It turns out Natsuru is going to H.K. Tiger for advice! What follows is epicness in the form of Natsuru-with-helium-sounding-altered-voice talking to a stuffed animal — but this only lasts two seconds. I would have been disappointed if it didn't do an awesome transition to the eyecatch involving Seppuku Black Bunny Crashing Her Head Into The Screen For No Sane Reason (tm).
Eyecatch is Female!Natsuru and the class rep who likes to smell people (yeah, they went there).
And we're back! The day of the Culture Fest has finally arrived and everyone's looking forward to the beauty contest. All except Natsuru (female right now) who still isn't feeling too good about the whole thing. She opens the door to the dressing room and, to her surprise, the costume Kaede has chosen appears to be a wedding dress. Natsuru fantasizes his male self getting married to Kaede but snaps out of it quickly as Akane walks in dressed in a cowboy outfit (which I must admit makes her look downright badass). Not-Sakaki shows up, asks Natsuru to watch her change - groan - blah dee blah.
OK, BEAUTY CONTEST TIME! Finally, eh? Female!Natsuru chose male clothes as her costume, but that doesn't do anything for me. What DOES is the awesome barrage of references to other anime that occurs during the speech introducing her! It mentions Sailor Moon and Haruhi Suzumiya in the same sentence! Then, if only to extend my nerdgasm even further, Sakura shows up and throws Entrail Animals to random people in the audience!! FFFFFFFFFF. Did I mention I want one of those?
Okay, the next part has got to be the best thing in the entire show so far, and I'd be darned if it can be beaten - it turns out that Kaede's act for the talent portion of the competition is to tell an "Entrail Animals Side Story" about the Entrail Animals' Princess and the Prince of Hormone (!?) Kingdom (played by her and Natsuru, of course) falling in love. It's a modern Romeo And Juliet, except it has more organs involved in the plot. It turns out that this is how Kaede was planning to confess in front of the whole school, which was actually pretty clever on her part. The love story takes another turn when Akane shows up...in her Kämpfer form, wielding a gun! Natsuru tries to talk Akane out of shooting, but ends up having to protect Kaede instead. The audience are idiots, so they think it's all part of the story. It is at that point that Natsuru's shirt rips off (along a perfectly clean seam, lol) and it is revealed that THE PRINCE OF HORMONE KINGDOM IS ACTUALLY A GIRL! The irony of this is pretty hilarious, given that it's a gender reveal that's the opposite of Natsuru's real life situation. Anyway, it is at that moment that Not-Sakaki shows up as another character, the Entrails Hero, who has also come to make this skit's plot even more convoluted cut Akane's bullets in half with a knife. Wow. She then somehow knocks the others unconscious using the same knife. No, she doesn't cuff them, it looks like she's slicing their heads off. The three Entrail Animals - Tiger, Bunny and Wildcat (and a cameo by Some Random Dodgeball) - are lodged in the stadium rafters and applaud the show.
Natsuru wakes up later in male form next to Not-Sakaki, who apparently dressed him...yeh. They talk about stuff that has no real relevance to anything, and oh THEN SHE KISSES HIM ON THE LIPS AND WE SEE A STRING OF THEIR GLISTENING DROOL. Fetish Retardant, much!?
Meanwhile, outside, Natsuru's childhood friend (I forget her name, but I'm sure they'll mention it again) has returned to Japan. She caught a bouquet during the beauty contest and, when she shakes it, an Entrail Animal of a dog with a noose around its neck comes out. Kaede, are you giving these out left and right just to crush my spirits? HUH? HUUUUHHHH!?
...Oh, and that's the end of episode five. This review is much shorter than I thought it would be, but I didn't do that on purpose: the events of this episode just seemed pretty straightforward, without many subplots. It was, for the most part, just 1) Prepare for beauty contest, 2) perform beauty contest. That didn't stop it from being, in my opinion, the most enjoyable episode of the series so far.
This is Pirka, who didn't get an Entrails Animal for Xmas...*sob*
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