WARNING: The following article contains SPOILERS for Denki-Gai Episode 8. If you don’t want to be spoiled, please stop reading. You have been warned.
I may need to find a different way to approach these commentaries. I’ve started to sound like a broken record just by saying that I sound like a broken record. Seriously, I think I may be running out of ideas.
So for episode 8, we once again have a plot starring Sensei. I guess if I needed to make one small complaint, I would say that we have had a little too much focus on Sensei lately. Granted, I really cannot tell who the main character is supposed to be in Denki-Gai. Part of me originally thought it may have been Umio or Hiotan, but there was never really anything to back it up other than a slight bit of focus the plot had on them.
Anyway, the first half of the episode is about Sensei getting a job as an assistant for a well-known manga author. As great as that is for her, it ends up conflicting with the hours she has at the store and the time she has working on her doujins. So what follows is a semi-emotional scene about everyone saying goodbye before she leaves her job in order to work full-time, only for her to reveal that she still has the job and just has shorter shifts.
The second part of the episode is about Sensei preparing for a date with Umio and trying to figure out what to wear. It ends with them deciding to figure it out…by bringing over Umio himself and asking him. He ends up saying that Sensei’s glasses are the cutest part about her and that she didn’t need to change anything. While a bit of a clichéd plot, it was still executed very well and was outright hilarious. Particularly memorable were the various outfits they had and Sensei’s reaction while wearing them.
Now, seeing as how I pretty much summed up the episode but only have enough material for four paragraphs, I figure I should go over some of the things that I have really liked about this series. First of all, I love the subtlety of it. A lot of the funniest moments tend to come from background images or the delivery. They are often handled in ways that cannot be replicated in text. I do generally try to give a taste of what these are like by screencapping certain scenes, but there are way too many to properly do it justice. This has basically made it so that it is a lot easier to find certain scenes that work as screencaps for these commentaries. With something like Wolf Girl and Black Prince, it is a lot harder to find as many visual frames that express themselves as well as in Denki-Gai.
Another aspect I liked is that it just seems to understand humor a lot better than a lot of other anime I have seen. It seems to realize that humor is largely based on subversion and unexpectedness. It ends up getting rather annoying when an anime still thinks an idiot main character being mistaken for a pervert after being caught in a compromising situation and having all the female characters getting angry and beating him up is comedy gold. It was annoying back when Love Hina decided to stretch it out as the only plot for 25 episodes, and it has not gotten any funnier since then. Seriously, it is rather annoying that people have still not realized this gag may be getting a bit old. As much as not using clichéd jokes seems like something that should be expected of a comedy series, it is still good not to have to see it here.
Okay I think I have enough filler for now. I could go further into some of the greater aspects of the series, but I still need some material for later commentaries. After all, I have no idea if anything is going to change. It could also be entirely possible that a later episode may exemplify a certain trait more so than anything else previously has. Or maybe I’m just running out of ideas. Either way, Denki-Gai has been great so far, and episode 8 is no exception to that pattern.
Denki-Gai is available to watch on Crunchyroll, with new episodes coming out Thursdays at 10:30 AM ET/7:30 AM PT. Non-premium users will be able to watch episodes free one week after they first air.
