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Squid Girl Complete Series 1

Review Date:

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Released by: Manga Entertainment UK

Age Rating: 12

Region: 2 - UK

Length: 300 minutes

Subtitles: English

Audio: Japanese 2.0 Stereo

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Squid Girl Complete Series 1

Summary

Foolish land-born air breathers: behold the terror from the depths, the tentacled conqueror of humanity Squid Girl! With your pollution and stuff you really deserve it, so prepare for menacing, inky doom! Squid Girl has come from the depths of the sea to conquer humanity for its pollution of the ocean. Within moments of arriving on the surface world, our easily distracted little invertebrate is promptly bullied into working for the Aizawa sisters as a waitress, supplying their restaurant with squid ink. If poor Squid Girl can t handle two pushy Japanese girls, how will she ever subjugate the human race?

Review

Squid Girl (or Shinryaku! Ika Musume) is one of those gaudy, gimmicky anime series that reels in viewers with an adorable anthropomorphic character. The premise is simple and is essentially a wink to Japanese monster cinema as a freakish invader rises to from the ocean to wreak revenge on the human race. Little Squid girl is a minature moe menace and her aspirations of world domination and human subjugation are more crackers than kraken.

The animation is pretty close in style to the art of the original manga and is consistent, if unremarkable. Over all the show delivers where it is most important – in comic timing.

Aside from the bizarre bait, which is Squid Girl herself, there is nothing unique about the series whatsoever. It's rife with anime archetypes and there is only so much mileage in the same recycled cast structures and scenarios.

While the majority of the episodes are mediocre, there are some gems hidden amongst them that give a much needed lift to the overly homogenised humour.

Squid Girl is a playful series that plays out in perpetual summertime. It serves up a surreal little slice of life by the sea. If you are charmed by Ika Musume herself, you are likely to lap up every inky instalment like so many plates of black spaghetti.

For fans who need a little more than incessant gags and a plethora of puns (made ever more tiresome by contributions from both the dub and subtitle tracks) Squid Girl has limited value.

Rating: 6/10

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