I think Dantalian no Shoka just jumped the shark. Yup, there’s no two ways about it — when you use books as ammo to launch a devastating projectile, there’s no going back. How can I possibly take this show seriously after this? I can’t and I won’t.

Charisma -50
It’s probably for the best that I think of Dantalian no Shoka as complete camp, especially after the addition of Hal and Flamberge to the story. Oh, how can I describe the two new characters… take Hugh Disward and Dalian and suck all the fun out of them.

“But you don’t even like the main characters in the first place!”

Yes! So imagine the anime with even worse characters! Hal is deadpan, but he’s not a “deadpan snarker.” By that, I mean his insults aren’t even entertaining. He’s as wooden as the dolls he is fighting. While Hal’s dry personality might very well be purposeful, the anime doesn’t really do anything interesting with it. His exchanges with Flamberge essentially boils down to:

Flamberge: “Heh, you lecherous pervert fuckface!”
Hal: “Shut up you rubbish woman….”

Repeat this over and over for the next 23 minutes and you have the worst Dantalian no Shoka episode yet. Dalian’s annoying, but at least Hugh is somewhat charismatic. Even if he didn’t stand up to Dalian’s verbal abuse like he should, he has an air of coolness to him. Hal just puts me to sleep.

As for Flamberge, there’s not much to go on but her voice, which is conveniently grating to listen to. Although her key sequence offers (slightly more disturbing) variety to the Hugh-Dalian exchange we’ve gotten all too used to, that’s not really enough at this point to pique my interest in an anime that has been on a downward trend since the first episode.

The disjointed narrative
The problem with one-off stories is that you can rarely tell a satisfying story in just a single episode. This ain’t Kino no Tabi or anything. As a result, Dantalian no Shoka’s tales aren’t remotely compelling. So a war torn town relies upon dolls to replace its inhabitants… uh, okay. What are the deeper implications? What’s the overarching point? That screwing dolls is wrong?

Not every anime needs to have a larger point; a story can just be thrilling or enthralling. But like I’ve said, each tale in the anime is limited to a single episode so we really have no time to craft an interesting narrative. Mabel and Patricia are paper-thin characters. There’s no reason for me to care about either of them them or their silly, little town. So if the story’s gonna suck, it should at least make a point, but it doesn’t. Dolls are bad, mm’kay? Oh yeah, we destroyed your Phantom Book so buh bye.

You could say that the episode’s only purpose is to introduce us to the two new characters and hint at a potential conflict between them and the Hugh-Dalian dynamic. Even so, that’s not good enough. Other anime have no problems incorporating additions to the plot without boring the audience about meaningless town. Can anyone honestly claim that they’ll remember the people and events of this episode in a week’s time? And if the answer’s no, shouldn’t the anime aspire for more than this?

Everything else…?
I would usually muse over a few tiny details here, but the sooner I get away from this sleep-inducing episode, the better.