Karen's Anime Blog

It’s time for episode two of everyone’s favorite troll anime, Turkey! When we last left our heroines, they were transported back in time to the Sengoku era because an ancient bowling ball was excavated on a construction site; I’d like to say “it makes sense in context,” but it really doesn’t.

We get the OP, which features young Mai sitting in a burning room and all the girls playing instruments like they’re part of the Light Music Club instead of the Bowling Club; they also play in the rain for some reason. Are we going to get a tragic backstory for Mai where her parents died in a fire or something? I hope not. Back to the show, a severed head from the battle raging below has just come flying at the girls. They realize it’s real and not a special effect, and start to freak out. The girls turn to Mai for leadership, like being the captain of the bowling team is really adequate qualification to be in charge during a time-traveling crisis. Fortunately Mai is at least with it enough that she realizes that they’re missing Rina.

“I liked today better when it was just Rina yelling at us like an asshole.”

They try to call Rina, only to realize that their phones have no service. Honestly, at this point they may as well just lay down and die. Modern teenagers without phones? How will they even live? Mai has a little break down about Rina, because she feels responsible for getting Rina involved: Rina was on the other side of the alley when Mai called out to her, after all.

They manage to find Rina, using the patented “let’s pretend we’re bushes” strategy. Rina isn’t terribly happy about meeting up with the group, so at least she’s consistent. Then the group gets found by some soldiers, and unfortunately we’re going to have to see the “Every man in the past was a horny scumbag” trope. Did they really have to do this? Couldn’t they have just been found first by some normal soldiers who were like, “Who are you, you strangely dressed women? You shouldn’t be out here, it’s dangerous!” But no, we get some shifty looking dudes who talk about how “ripe” the girls look. Sigh.

“Let’s have an orgy right in the middle of this huge battle that’s going on, seems like a practical choice.”

Rina slaps one of the soldiers ogling her, so he backhands her hard enough to make her bleed. The soldier goes to cut her with his blade, but Mai stands in front of Rina to protect her. Well, I gotta hand it to her: she may not be a great bowling club president, but she’s brave. Fortunately Evil Sword Guy gets an arrow through his hand, and a handsome young samurai comes to rescue the girls.

“You can tell that I’m a good guy, because unlike these punks, I’m ATTRACTIVE! Attractive people are always good!“

Handsome Samurai begins fighting the evil louts and yells at the girls to run, which they do. When they stop in the forest to take a breath, Nanase (purple hair) gives us some interesting information: while they’ve traveled in time, they haven’t traveled in space. Using her phone (which can still be used as a camera even without service), a picture of the battleground superimposed over a picture of the bowling alley shows that the two take place in the same location. That’s the most interesting thing that’s happened in the entire episode so far.

The girls see Handsome Samurai being led away by two of the louts; I’m guessing the third one was killed. Mai wants to rescue him, which the other girls veto. Rina gives Mai one of her patented “This is why I hate you to death” speeches. There is some talk about the danger of changing the past, to which Mai points out (surprisingly reasonably) that they’ve already changed the past by altering Handsome Samurai’s fate. She also says that if the samurai hadn’t rescued them, they’d all be “dead and buried.” Uh…no. Maybe Mai would have been dead, because the lout looked prepared to slice her up, but the others would have suffered a different fate. I’m not sure Mai is worldly enough to know what was happening there.

She goes back to the bowling metaphor from last episode: they’ve thrown their first ball, but it’s the second ball that matters in bowling! Oy vey. The attempt to try to graft the bowling theme onto this time travel show is already wearing thin, and it’s episode two. Nozomi points out that the louts have weapons, to which Rina points out that the girls also have weapons. Oh…oh no. They’re not going to do it, are they? They’re not going to do the thing I’m thinking of, are they?

Yes. Yes, they are fighting Sengoku-era swordsman with bowling balls. At first it’s not that ridiculous: they’re rolling the balls to create noise and motion, which I thought might be a way of tricking the louts into thinking that they’re surrounded. Nanase does something with a card to make smoke, and it may be a cultural thing but I have no idea what she’s doing. But then, we get what I was afraid of: Mai takes out the louts with a bowling ball. She rolls the ball, and it somehow manages to pop up and knock the two guys unconscious. What kind of spin did Mai use to make her ball fly? Does she have magic powers now? To be honest, I’d prefer the explanation “Oh, did we mention that Mai has telekinesis like Momo in Dandadan?” over being expected to take what just happened seriously.

It’s time to bowl, bowl those pesky rapists away!

And that’s the whole problem here, isn’t it? The show can’t decide if it wants to be taken seriously or not. If this was going to be the kind of show where a normally rolled bowling ball can fly to take out multiple bad guys, then the whole dark tone of the first two thirds of the show is a totally bizarre choice.

The girls then get the hell out of there, with Sayuri full-body lifting Handsome Samurai onto her back. Uh, I know she’s bigger than the other girls, but is she really that strong? Maybe they should have established that she was on the weight-lifting club before joining the bowling team, although after what just happened, complaining about the realism doesn’t really make sense; they’ve given up on that.

Handsome Samurai– oh alright, his name is Sugiri– confirms that the girls saved him first, since their looking for Rina distracted an enemy who had just found him. He also found Rina’s good luck charm from episode one, which I guess is meant to be kind of touching but I’m not feeling it. Mai almost lets it slip that the girls are from the future, but Nanase nixes that and Rina comes up with the excuse that they’re traveling performers. Sugiri invites them to his home, and I might be mistaken, but weren’t they in the middle of a massive battle half an hour ago? Can he really take his ball (in this case multiple balls) and just go home? Mai is about to turn him down, but Nozomi has already accepted and started flirting, so too late.

He takes them to his home, and someone in a fox mask stares at Rina; Rina stares back. They find a pink-haired girl playing a proto-version of bowling, and that’s…that’s it. That’s where it ends. I feel like I should recap this show because I feel like it’s culturally relevant– I mean, people are going to be talking for a long time about the bowling show that trolled the audience and became a different show. I wish I was enjoying it more though. Does this count as hate-watching? I don’t hate it, I just literally have no idea what it’s trying to do and what routes it’s taking to get there.