English Dub Review: Million Arthur “Star Fishing Arthur”

Million Arthur Xtreme Beach Volleyball 2: Fishing Simulator

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Dancho decides to take the girls (leaving the guys at home for…reasons) out for a day off at a new beach resort built by a wealthy Arthur named Fugo, who Kakka looks up to. But their good time is spoiled by a series of random swimsuit disappearances happening around the resort, with another Arthur likely the culprit. They soon find said culprit, Sander, whose Excalibur is a fishing rod that he uses to solely steal the tops off girls. But he has a good reason! See, he had a really sick brother named Guyler who really wanted his own star, but even after finding an Excalibur, Sander could only accidently grab women’s swimsuits from a clothesline. Luckily, Guyler got better, but his exposure to swimsuits that day turned him into an even bigger pervert than Sander! And using HIS OWN fishing rod Excalibur, he steals both tops AND bottoms!

But both guys are defeated thanks to the girls realizing that the rods’ powers don’t work on one pieces! Little do they know that they are being observed by Fugo himself.

OUR TAKE

When I got tasked with covering this show, I knew full well I was not in for some Shakespearean tapestry of intricate plotting and complex characters. No, the reality of what this show was at its core was quite apparent as simply a commercial for a mobile game that relied heavily on fanservice. Nothing more, nothing less, and that was something I could make peace with as long as it could do one thing: Be fun. This is not something that requires a multi-layered story or in-depth theming, but simply a will to play around with what you are given. And much to my surprise, Million Arthur has managed to do that with a few of its episodes so far.

This was not one of them. It basically falls back entirely on the fanservice with almost none of the personality or character development that helped the first half of this season. Where the last handful of episodes had its cast limited to groups of two to four, this one has to balance nine characters that all turn into flavorless fanservice generators aside from Dancho, whose personality is basically just instigating fanservice anyway. Not that I have a problem with fanservice in and of itself, just that there’s a time and place and it should be used to HEIGHTEN flavor, not substitute for it.

We’ve essentially hit a filler episode in a very short season when there should be no time for filler, when we could be getting a BREATHER episode. Not that there’s been much going on to warrant a breather, but this could have been used as a time to better flesh out the world of the show a bit. Oh, this resort was made by an Arthur? Why don’t we explore that and how some Arthurs are good and some are bad, seeing how we’ve got two bad ones creeping around? Maybe have a bit of glimpse at what the public thinks of Arthurs as a whole if they’ve even heard of them? Do some character building with pairs that have formed unique bonds in the past few episodes? No? Just stripping? Yeah, I guess that could work if you magically lost access to ALL PORN ALL OVER THE INTERNET.

At the end of the day, this was definitely a low point for a show with already low expectations. I honestly wish Sander HAD hooked a star and it enveloped the planet, killing everyone and allowing me to stop watching early. Maybe next week will be better?