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Episode 8 of Brave Bang Braven! asks the bravest question of all: what if you had to have sex with a giant sentient robot villainess to save your friends?
For some, this may be a difficult question. As for myself…
Obviously Braven was great this week. It does what it’s done before, which is do some solid character work, throw in some fun jokes, entertain with a good mix of live action and super robots , and of course, feeling incredibly thirsty. I think the formula still works well, although viewers who are here specifically to watch the guys pour their hot pilot passions on each other may be disappointed. However, for a certain demographic—namely “Okay, but what if a giant robot was an evil masochistic woman who mated before killing people?” fans out there—it’s a home run.
All I want to say is, if I write a story where the hero is a nice hebo guy who is super into tokusatsu and can only save his friends by suddenly sacrificing himself first the morbidity of a mechanical girl in the throes of death by zaksnu-zaksnu, they will say i’m mesmerized by my self inserted fanfic. Luckily someone else wrote this for sick people like me to enjoy.
This week’s action was also very good. The versatility is sometimes not quite there, which is disappointing, especially with super robots. The villains and Braven all look a bit stiff, which is a shame. It hasn’t gone away much, but it’s been more noticeable this week. It works in favor of the robot’s grunt mechanism being more realistic as you can imagine them being more rigid in their movements. Knuth teleporting Hiro around to replay his final moments over and over again is the particular type of villain we love to watch, and Smith’s delivery of Knuth’s pathos was surprisingly effective. also great. I just wish the sacrifice had a little more impact–after all the hot and heavy double entenders that preceded his dramatic death (?), it’s hard to be sad right now.
Rating:
Grant is a co-host on the Blade Licking Thieves podcast and the Super Senpai Podcast.
Brave Bang Braven! currently streaming on Crunchyroll.