{"id":483,"date":"2016-11-04T01:00:10","date_gmt":"2016-11-04T01:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/?p=483"},"modified":"2016-11-04T01:25:37","modified_gmt":"2016-11-04T01:25:37","slug":"nanbaka-episodes-4-and-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/2016\/11\/04\/nanbaka-episodes-4-and-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Nanbaka – Episodes 4 and 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know, between the daily grind of my new job, riding through the last few months of college, doing constant pre-planning work for the site, and having to deal with the incessant \u201cdankness\u201d of Joey and Tyler on a daily basis, I\u2019m glad that an anime about pretty boys in a comedically crazy prison is here to make my day a little bit better. And this week, to get back up to pace, we\u2019re doing a double-time double-shot of Nanbaka<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Episode 4 – \u201cHappy New Year! The New Year\u2019s Tournament Is Where We Get Serious!!\u201d<\/p>\n

\"No
No witty comment. This is just a really nice “serious” in-between shot.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lucky inmates, they\u2019re ringing in 2017 before all of us. Grumble grumble\u2026 anyway, as is tradition at Nanba Prison, there\u2019s going to be a prison-wide tournament to see who\u2019s the best of the best, among both the inmates and officers. The prize up for grabs? The building and guard who wins gets some sweet perks, and the inmates in the winning cell block get one of whatever object they want. Of course, our boys from Cell 13 are picked to\u00a0represent Building 13, much to Hajime\u2019s disdain. All the guards have their handpicked inmates representing them, running through five events; the first event is about penmanship, so our boys elect Jyugo to draw a large kanji<\/i> banner, because they\u2019re all baka gaijins<\/i> who can\u2019t draw Japanese characters. And Jyugo can\u2019t, either. Thankfully, their guards come in for the save, and win the first event for their building, with the Warden looking on at Hajime with those goo-goo-googly eyes of hers. Second event, it\u2019s all about pounding some mochi<\/i> in a giant bowl, atop three platforms. It falls, you lose, so be wary of opponents looking to knock those platforms over. This is Rock\u2019s event, since it requires super-heavy mallets. But things take a turn for the personal between Rock and Liang, an old \u201cfriend\u201d of his looking to fulfill a grudge. How does it turn out? It doesn\u2019t matter what Liang thinks, because Rock lays the smackdown on his candy\u2026 wait, this isn\u2019t Tiger Mask W<\/i>, disregard the wrestling references. Both Rock and their designated guard win the event, using brute force and destruction to their advantage, and Building\/Cell 13 is still in first place. Third event, it\u2019s time for \u201cHyakunin Isshu,\u201d so Seitarou is up to bat, with Uno coming in as the partner. I\u2019ll admit, I don\u2019t really know what this is, only that it\u2019s a memory card game of some kind, so you\u2019ll have to pardon my ignorance. Anyway, Seitarou wins his bout with scary ease, but Uno? He\u2019s having a bit more trouble, but he seems to be coming up with a pretty devious idea in that head of his. What could it be? Let\u2019s get to the next episode and find out.<\/p>\n

Episode 5 – \u201cA Fraud and a Hero\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Cena
Cena and Orton… Naruto and Sasuke… Hajime and Monkey. Legendary rivalries.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We\u2019re still at the \u201cHyakunin Isshu\u201d game, and Uno seems to have found the upper hand, finding his opponent\u2019s tells. All that time gambling seemed to have paid off, I\u2019d say. Again, I don\u2019t know exactly how this game works, so you\u2019ll have to pardon my ignorance with this. Now, in the last episode, it’s stated that the prize that the winning inmates get is one of whatever they want; for Rock, it\u2019s a stone oven to cook some real food, and for Uno, he wants a gambling room in the prison. As you can tell, they have pretty small aspirations – like me. Oh, and Uno won the game for his building. Onto event number 4, we go – top spinning. As in, giant tops. And much like with Beyblade, it\u2019s a no-holds-barred brawl that will leave only one spinning top left standing. But there\u2019s a wild card in play – Nico. See, he forgot to take his meds today, so he\u2019s not only super strong, but completely off his rocker, playing pretend Great Saiyaman against the \u201cevildoers.\u201d And that ball and chain makes for quite the handy weapon, I\u2019d say. For Hajime and Monkey, though, they\u2019re back to their feuding ways, while Nico narrowly avoids a copyright-free Kameh(bleep)ha attack. Nico\u2019s able to pick up moves in an instant, which means he must be a JoJo<\/i> fan, laying out some \u201cORAORAORAORAORA\u201ds of his own. But enough about that, what does Nico want as his prize? Why, the latest game system, of course, but that only raises another question – PS4 Pro, or Nintendo Switch? And all the while, the Warden is fantasizing about Hajime, as per usual. And as we come to the end of the match, Nico drops the best one-liner in anime: \u201cThis hand of mine is burning red!\u201d YES! Domon Kasshu would be proud, Nico. And with a few more bleeped out anime attacks, complete with a launching spinning top from Hajime, Building 13 wins the fourth round of the tournament. Now, with the final round looming, it\u2019s going to be war between Building 13 and Building 4. Tune in next time for the gripping climax.<\/p>\n

\"Nico
Nico has excellent taste in Gundam fighters – Domon Kasshu is tops.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Holy anime references, Batman. There were some pretty funny shonen parody moments in these episodes, with a lot copyright-free attacks being used, which is always a plus in my book. \u201cIsn\u2019t this a gag anime?\u201d quips Jyugo. Some of these enemies feel like more colorful versions of the bad guys in the first arc of Hunter x Hunter<\/i>, with plenty of MIND GAMES being used, so point in that favor, I guess. Interestingly enough, towards the end of episode 5, the trio of Jyugo, Uno, and Rock had taken up the duty of copyright censors for Nico, because Japan doesn\u2019t know what parody is. This is a pretty good batch of episodes, and it shows that it knows how to have a fun time by making fun of the usual anime suspects – tournaments, shonen fighters, crazy attacks, and so on. The climax is coming next week, and don\u2019t worry, the recap for episode six WILL be on time.<\/p>\n

Nanbaka is available on Crunchyroll as a weekly simulcast, Tuesdays at 3:30pm EDT. An English simulcast dub will be available from Funimation, starting this coming Saturday, at 10:30pm EDT..<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You know, between the daily grind of my new job, riding through the last few months of college, doing constant pre-planning work for \n [...]<\/a>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":486,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[5,29,60,92,62],"class_list":["post-483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animation","tag-animation","tag-anime","tag-crunchyroll","tag-fall-2016","tag-nanbaka"],"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":false,"span_bottom":false},"number_of_votes":0,"sum_votes":0},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.surrealresolution.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Screen-Shot-2016-11-03-at-8.46.23-PM.jpg?fit=1912%2C1076&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8GYHU-7N","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":492,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483\/revisions\/492"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surrealresolution.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}