SSBS – Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch | Episode 3: Flickering Emotion Review

Plot: A new girl arrives at Luchia and Hanon’s school named Rina Toin. She immediately strikes everyone as a cool person, and Luchia and Hanon try to befriend her, but Hanon is too put off by her rude and cold attitude to continue pursuing her friendship. Luchia, however, is more accommodating and makes a trio of friendship rings for her, Hanon and Rina. When she’s about to give the ring to Rina, she spots what looks like Rina and Kaito kissing on the roof. Luchia is devastated, but not everything is as it seems.

Breakdown: In this episode, we’re introduced to Rina, who is the third mermaid in the magical girl trio, but we’re supposed to not know that, I guess, despite the fact that she’s in the opening theme song as a mermaid. Rina is very rude and cold, and she extremely suspicious of Kaito, believing him to be the evil Gaito. Well, she never directly says “Gaito” but we can assume considering the insanely similar names (to the point where the fansubber even mistakenly wrote “Kaito” in Gaito’s scene today)

Hanon also moves in with Luchia in this episode in order to help keep her mermaid secret from Kaito. She’s also getting closer to Taro Mitsuki, who is the music teacher, because she has a crush on him, and from what I’ve read on the Fandom page, this may have been kinda mutual so, ick.

Luchia believes she sees Kaito and Rina on the roof kissing, and she’s super bummed about it, but we see that she was just getting super close to his face because she believes he’s Gaito in disguise just pretending to be an average student.

While Luchia deals with that, she meets Jennifer Houston, a famous singer, who is in a similar predicament. She is in love with a man named Richard, who looks like a porn director from the 80s. However, she saw him out and about in town with some girl who looks a lot like Jennifer, so she believed they were dating. Luchia asserts that she must find out the truth because she only saw them from a distance (like she only saw Rina and Kaito from a distance) She could be mistaken, and she’ll never know for sure unless she asks him directly, which is what Hanon told Luchia several hours ago, but she couldn’t ask Kaito.

Just as Luchia manages to convince Jennifer to approach Richard, she and Richard are attacked by Gaito’s two goons, Eriru and Izuru, because Jennifer has a green pearl necklace that they believe is proof that she’s one of the mermaid princesses, but it turns out to be fake. They get knocked unconscious, and Luchia and Hanon transform, sing and take out Eriru and Izuru.

When they awake, Richard tries to explain himself to Jennifer, claiming the girl she saw him with was a fan of hers and “as (Jennifer’s) producer, she was enthusiastic….” and then Jennifer stopped him talking so she could confess, but, uh, Jennifer, that sounds really suspicious. This girl is a fan of yours, so your producer just, what, took her out on the town? And she was really enthusiastic? About what? This doesn’t sound like a legit explanation, but whatever. They confess their feelings, kiss, and that’s it.

Surprisingly, they’re actually continuing the story about Luchia being jealous about Kaito and Rina into the next episode, so we don’t get any resolution to that here, but that’s perfectly fine. I mean, we know this wasn’t what Luchia thought it was, so there’s not much in regards in regards to a cliffhanger, but sorting it all out and hopefully getting Kaito and Luchia closer is something to look forward to anyway.

Overall, this was a pretty okay episode. If these episodes have any message, not jumping to conclusions, especially when what you’re witnessing is far away, is a fairly good one. You may be afraid of what you think you’re seemingly witnessing, but you’ll needlessly stress yourself out or depress yourself if you don’t make the effort to directly find out for yourself. I think that’s a good message to give to kids, especially when they’re pre-teen and will start to be concerned about gossip and whatnot soon.

Next Episode….

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SSBS – Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch Episode 2: Feelings I Can’t Say

Plot: Lucia is asked out on a date to the spring festival by Kaito, but Hanon protests, claiming Lucia can’t be trusted to keep her mermaid nature a secret should she confess her feelings to Kaito. If she reveals her secret to a human, she’ll turn into bubbles. She goes on the date anyway, but when he starts talking about the mermaid who saved his life, she panics and runs away from him.

Meanwhile, Hanon is captured by a new enemy named Eriru, who is working for a mysterious shadowy man named Gaito, who also employs Izul. Eriru seems to have a plan to combat Pink Pearl Voice’s song, but Hanon thwarts her, and transforms into Aqua Pearl Voice. Performing a duet together, she and Pink Pearl Voice take down Eriru.

Later that night, Lucia, in mermaid form, sings for Kaito on a rock near the shore. Meeting in the water, Lucia decides to admit to her feelings while in mermaid form, her secret life as the human Lucia safe. She kisses him on the cheek and leaves.

Breakdown: This one puts a bit more substance to the story, but only a bit more and only slightly with the relationship with Kaito and Lucia.

We get slightly more development on the enemy side, learning of a mastermind named Gaito and introducing what seemed like a more interesting enemy in Eriru, but not really. At least she’s more interesting than Queen Beryl Lite/Izul, but she’s just a bumbling as she is.

Eriru seems like she’s making a plan where the mermaids will be lured to a spot in the festival where she’s selling fish that dance to music, since mermaids love music, but neither of them are ever lured there. The only reason the fish become any part of the plot is because Hanon’s new love interest gives her one since he was handed one he didn’t want. Hanon releases it into the ocean and goes for a swim, and that somehow leads Eriru to her location, even though that’s not what she said they do.

Eriru also exposes an incredibly stupid weakness of the mermaids. Eriru has a….I want you imagine the most sarcastic overly exaggerated air quotes when I say this – “battle form.” which is really just her turning around and back again really fast, her eyes glowing red, and her teeth getting sharpened.

When Pink Pearl Voice sings, Eriru is unaffected. Not because her “battle form” has this immunity, but because, when she turns around and back again, she also pulls down the bandanna she wears on her head over her ears, making it so she can’t hear the song.

When I first watched this, I had to restrain myself from yelling out in laughter ‘You have GOT to be friggin’ kidding me!’

Our hero.

Can be thwarted.

By a BANDANNA.

It’s not even like she’s using ear plugs or anything. She’s using a flimsy piece of fabric just pulled over her ears. Has anyone who wears like hats or hoodies ever had their hearing be noticeably affected? Even if, it’s just barely affected. It certainly doesn’t deafen you.

And she’s defeated just as pathetically easily because Hanon instantly realizes what she’s doing and, gasp of all gasps, she pulls the damn thing off with no issue. Hanon was even restrained by magic seaweed stuff courtesy of Eriru and it wasn’t restrictive enough to stop her from doing that. She only grabbed onto her tail with it.

This enemy is the biggest joke I’ve ever seen.

Oh well, at least we got to see Aqua Pearl Voice….whose outfit is damn near identical to Pink’s just….ya know….blue.

Her little microphone is also basically identical to Pink’s.

The plot with Kaito is a little better, and I thought the scene at the end was really sweet, but I really don’t get the conflict here. She can’t date him because she might confess her feelings for him, which will somehow inevitably lead to her admitting she’s a mermaid to him? Those are two completely unrelated things.

It would be different if the plot was that Kaito has suspicions that she was the mermaid who saved him, which made her panic. Then she’d maybe want to avoid being with him out of fear of her secret being unveiled. Or maybe she thought him knowing the truth would somehow hurt him or something. This just makes no sense.

I also thought her getting upset at Kaito being with those two bitchy girls was unreasonable. Kaito very obviously physically and vocally expressed that he both didn’t like these girls and that he desperately wanted to get away from them to be with Lucia, but she just instantly believed he was a jerk who’d break her heart.

We also learn just a tiny bit more of the mermaids. The sea world has been wrought with calamities lately, and it’s suspected that these issues are also causing problems on the shore. Lucia, Hanon and any other Mermaid Princess they find will be tasked with finding the Sea Goddess, Aqua Regina, to help save the world from more destruction.

Overall, this was an okay episode, but the enemy conflict today is so dumb I think I might have to check into a hospital to see if I still have brain activity, and the plot with Kaito was nice, but sloppy. The song the mermaids sing is starting to grow on me, but that might be the power of repetition because I heard it at least four times in this episode.

Next episode….

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SSBS – Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch Episode 1: The Pearl Tear

Plot: Lucia is the Mermaid Princess of the North Pacific Ocean. Seven years ago, she saved a boy from drowning by placing her magical pearl on his chest, imbuing him with her life force. The two fell in love, but they were quickly forced to part ways.

Seven years later, Lucia goes up to the surface world to find her pearl since she needs it in order to be a true adult. In addition, mermaids only have a sense of music when they have their pearl. Lucia goes up to the surface world to live life as a normal teenager when she meets a rather boastful and seemingly sleazy guy named Kaito who invites her to watch him partake in a local surfing contest.

After meeting her new friend, Hanon, she goes to the competition and is amazed by Kaito’s surfing abilities. However, when an evil mermaid notices the light of the pearl Kaito wears around his neck, she sends a storm to knock him into the water and take the pearl for herself.

Lucia quickly dives into the water to save him, reverting back into her mermaid form. Recognizing her as the mermaid who saved him seven years ago, Kaito throws the pearl back to Lucia and she transforms into her Idol Form; Pink Pearl Voice.

She sings her magical song and quickly dispatches the sea witch.

Back on shore, Kaito and Lucia recognize each other (though, Kaito doesn’t really realize she’s the girl he’s been talking to) and embrace each other on the beach.

Hanon reveals that she had a suspicion about Lucia being a Mermaid Princess and admits that she’s the Mermaid Princess of the South Atlantic Ocean. While they have found Lucia’s pearl and kept the sea witch at bay, her penguin friend, Hippo, is incredibly worried at the implications of her falling in love with a human.

Breakdown: It’s Sailor Moon and The Little Mermaid squished together.

What? That’s the way several people described it to me and…..yeah, that’s pretty much what it is. I know the whole ‘every magical girl show is a Sailor Moon rip-off’ thing is overused and unjustly thrown around quite a bit, but I’m going to stand pretty firm here. I mean, they don’t even try hiding it in some respects like Lucia’s mermaid and idol hair styles with the incredibly long blond pig tails or ‘totally not Queen Beryl as a mermaid.’ At least I’m pretty sure Kaito isn’t a Tuxedo Mask clone.

What does this show have going for it outside of the regular magical girl spiel? Not much so far. Lucia’s nice enough, but she’s very much the typical teenage main magical girl character. A bit airheaded, clumsy, though maybe more understandable than normal considering she’s a mermaid, and brave when the situation calls for it.

Hippo is….not funny. Also, he seems like he’s supposed to be keeping Lucia in line in the surface world to not bring attention to the mer-world under the water, but he doesn’t do anything to mask his presence. He walks right out in broad daylight talking and interacting with people like it’s no big deal…even though he’s a talking blue penguin in a sailor suit.

It seems more like Lucia does more to mask his presence than he does. He’s also slightly annoying because his one role is to nag and yell at Lucia to find her pearl and keep her identity a secret. Luna he is not.

Hanon is fine, but a bit overbearing. Sea witch woman was generic as all hell.

I probably liked Kaito most of all. He’s a bit overbearing too, but he’s genuinely sweet. While he does come on a bit strong to Lucia upon first meeting, he’s not being an ass about it. And I appreciate that they just had playful flirting with them to start with instead of having them hate each other and slowly realize they love each other.

As for the story of this episode, it’s pretty predictable from start to finish. She tries to fit in, she tries to find her pearl (I’m just now realizing the high levels of innuendo with this) she meets Kaito, faces a bad guy and transforms to save the day.

Before I got into this series, I didn’t know really anything about it outside of it being a magical girl show with mermaids as the subject matter this time. From reading a little more before watching, both on Wiki and on THEM Anime Reviews, I realized they used music as their weapon and that the magical girl cast actually rivaled the size of Sailor Moon’s with seven soon-to-be-discovered Mermaid Princesses.

I was fine with this. It’s actually kinda nice to have more of these shows with larger casts, though how useful the other mermaids are is yet to be seen.

I was also fine with the singing aspect. Singing is a part of mermaid lore, and there are plenty of audio/singing based attacks in superhero shows. At least the music aspect makes much more sense used here instead of Tokyo Mew Mew who basically tacked on musical instruments as their weapons for no reason.

THEM noted that one of the main flaws of this show was how doinky it was, and I didn’t quite get what they meant as I watched a bulk of the episode. However, when we got to the end, I quickly understood.

Let’s go over all of the steps here. Lucia is a mermaid who can turn into a human at will on land, but the instant she hits water she reverts back to mermaid form – even when it comes to taking a bath.

She is a mermaid. This show is called Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch. Mermaids should be the central theme here. Agreed? Okay.

Kaito throws her the pearl which inexplicably turns into a “microphone” also known as an e-pitch. I say “microphone” like that because I know that’s what it’s intended to be, but that thing seriously looks like a detachable shower head.

She does her magical girl transformation sequence, and I swear hardly any of these magical girl shows actually put effort into their transformation scenes anymore.

So, she’s a mermaid fighting underwater against a mermaid using powers heralded from her mermaid kingdom. What is her final transformation?

A human.

A pop idol, to be precise.

……Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch…..has magical girls….who aren’t mermaids.

Okay. When did this train get off the insanely simple track?

I know it’s asinine to nitpick logistics with magical girl shows, but what the hell is this even? I’m guessing these powers are ancient and passed down from generation to generation yet here she is with a modern day microphone and transforming into a pop idol.

You might say this is fine as long as the music is beautiful and powerful, but it’s not. It’s the same pop drivel you’d expect from any shoujo show. And how is that some ancient powerful song she’s summoning from her magical non-mermaid mermaid powers?

The enemy isn’t even being attacked by it. She listens to it, gets slowly annoyed, then it seems like she’s in pain and then she leaves. Truly a battle of the ages.

What are these pearls? Who was that lady? Why did she want the pearl? None of this is ever explained.

That ending was just horrible execution on top of horrible execution topped with, yes, doinkiness.

Really think about this whole ending, guys, because you’ll come to a striking revelation. The main plot of this whole show is basically moot because of the direction they chose to take the magical girl aspect.

Why does any of this mermaid stuff even need to be there if most of the series takes place on land and their transformations are all human pop idols? I thought the whole reason their music is beautiful and powerful was kinda because they’re friggin’ mermaids.

Why wouldn’t it make more sense to have them turn into some really cool mermaid with various types of attacks based on music and sound? You could still have them have a human form that they can turn into when needed. Why have the human form be default?

I hope I’m wrong about this series because I do have a soft spot for magical girl shows. For now, though, this episode started out mediocre and ended terribly.

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