YMMV / Squid Girl

• Adorkable:
  • Ika is genuinely naive and childish in general, but because she's a Fish out of Water, she has a childlike curiosity and naiveté regarding many different aspects and items of life on the surface. She also tends to take a lot of other things at face value and is often Comically Missing the Point.
  • Keiko Furukawa is a kind young policewoman, but her clumsiness, relative incompetence, and eagerness to do right despite her setbacks make her endearingly adorkable. For a specific example, her repeating map directions in her head was distracted by two kids reciting part of the Konami Code.
• Awesome Music: The Season 2 opening, High Powered.
• Awesomeness Withdrawal: With only 13 episodes, some fans can't find the same kind of amusement when watching the anime shows in the Winter 2011 and beyond that they found in Ika Musume. Luckily the manga ran until February 2016 for about 300 chapters.
• Bizarro Episode: Chapter 390 features the Lemon staff playing baseball against Mr. Tokita and the lifeguards. It's never explained what led up to this or what the stakes are, and what pushes it into bizarro territory is that they're all wearing customized regulation uniforms and equipment with no explanation why or how they got them.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Mini-Ika went over so well with viewers that she stars in a few mini episodes on the DVD release!
• Fridge Brilliance: When Squid Girl goes on a hypnosis rampage with an MIT-built hypnosis coin, Chizuru is the only one who isn't affected. Aside from her natural badassedry, there's also the fact that she's the only one whose eyes are usually closed.
• Friendly Fandoms: With Splatoon, due to them both having squids. The creator of the manga has even drawn Splatoon fanart, and Ika's outfit became available as free in-game content in the first installment.
• Genius Bonus: The American scientists yells "I shall return!", which will only make sense to those familiar with World War II.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Chapter 39 of the manga, which was not adapted for the TV series. Jokes about earthquakes and tsunamis didn't seem quite so funny in the aftermath of the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake. The real knife-twist is that said chapter even mentions Tsunami.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In chapter 164, Cindy speculates that Ika Musume is a robot body being controlled by a much tinier alien inside her head, foreshadowing Squid Girl's future Weekly Shonen Champion sister series My Monster Secret.
  • Cindy Campbell argues that Ika could still be an alien even though she came from the ocean. Cut to several years later a scientific paper actually tries claim that Octopi are actually aliens.
• Ho Yay: Goro and Tatsuo seem to be very close with each other. Maybe a little bit too close.
  • Les Yay:
    • Sanae really likes Ika... and likes, uh, dressing her up suggestively.
    • Cindy really likes Ika too, thanks to her "alien heritage." At least for Ika though, she's not as creepy as Sanae.
  • Also, Eiko and Ayumi, the latter being bashful around the former.
  • Season 2, Episode 9.1 (Chapter 69 in the manga). See it for yourself.
  Eiko: You were 90 percent serious.
  Sanae: That's a lie! I was 100 percent serious!
  • Ika and Eiko can be (hardly) counted as one, especially with the finales of Season 1 and 2.
  • Ika wanted to test her 3D glasses by... grabbing Kiyomi's developing boobs!
• LGBT Fanbase: Goro and Tatsuo are really popular with gay men. Heaven knows why?
• Memetic Badass: Chizuru, and rightly so.
• Moe: Most female characters count in one way or another, but stand-outs include:
  • Ika and Mini-Ika, who are so insanely huggable that one can easily see why Sanae fell for her.
  • Sanae herself, despite her unhealthy obsession, is also really cute.
  • Chizuru, despite her scary angry side, is really adorable when she's her usual kind and cheerful self.
  • Kiyomi is an absolute sweetheart, both in personality and looks.
  • Ayumi is likewise very kind and shy, yet so freaking cute.
  • Keiko is a really kind and Adorkable policewoman.
• Narm Charm: The intentionally terrible sea puns give a lot of charm to the dub. It says something that despite the usual Subbing Versus Dubbing debates, very few fans consider the cheesy script a detractor in any way.
• Paranoia Fuel: Ika. Not for the viewers, but for Nagisa.
• Squick: Southern Winds Owner's Ika-themed toilet.
  Ika: I feel violated. *eyes tiny with shock/horror*
• Unintentional Period Piece: The anime changed the prize of the beach volleyball tournament in episode 12 from just a big television to a 3D television, a format that completely died on its ass shortly after the episode aired.
• The Woobie: Chizuru of all people. Even her own siblings are afraid of the sight of her with her eyes open, which leads her to stop wearing contact lenses. In Season 2 Episode 11.3 and OVA 1.2 she seems hurt by the fact that Ika and Ayumi don't think she's human.
• Woolseyism: Ika's Verbal Tic wouldn't work well in English, so the dub replaced it with Smurfing. It works.

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