2014-02-05

Squid Girl

Squid Girl is a slice of life fantasy comedy series.  The original 12 episode series aired in the fall of 2010 with the follow up second series of 12 episodes airing in the fall of 2011.  The series is based on the manga Shinryaku! Ika Musume (Invader! Squid Girl).

    The title character is a human shapped squid who has decided to invade the surface to stop mankind from destroying the world oceans.  She begins her attack by attempting to turn a beach restaurant into her base of opperations.  Unfortunatly for here the kids who run it aren't going to roll over for her.  Instead they use Squid Girls stupidity against her and make her work for them to repair damage done during her attack.  Instead of being man kinds throne she finds herself an adopted oddity of the Aizawa family.  Can she regain her pride and enact her plans for domination?

    This is essentially a rip off of Keroro Gunso.  Instead of being an army of alien invaders its a lone sea borne oddity.  Squid Girl doesn't have any nifty inventions to help her cause havoc, just her misplaced ideals and super powered tentacles.  She even employes quirky placed 'ika' (squid) in her speech to make her endearing.  Instead of being obsessed with Gundam models her weakness is shrimp.  Unlike Keroro, Squid Girls existence is not hidden from the general populace.  Unless she goes wild with her tentacles the average person assumes she's a quirky girl.  Like Keroro though there is no over arching plot line to the story.  The episodes are split between 2 vignettes of which characters come and go.  Between the MIT UFO researchers, a lolita obsessed school girl, buff life guards, a rival restaurant owner and the Aizawa family who adopted her, Squid Girl has little time to focus on her invasion plans.

    Its OK.  Nothing new, but it can be pretty funny at times.  Especially the older sister, Chizuru Aizawa, who holds mysterious hidden powers, of which everyone treads lightly.  To their benefit, unlike Keroro, it knew when not to push the limits of exhaustion and ended after 24 episodes.  So, you can find entertainment in this run of the mill innocuous comedy but don't expect anything great or new.

    The series is available in North America via streaming and on DVD.


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