1166: The Invader Comes from the Bottom of the Sea!

It’s been a while since I talked anime here, so I’m going to talk anime. Oh yes indeedy. Specifically, I’d like to talk about a bizarre little show I’ve just started watching called Squid Girl, also known as Ika Musume.

Squid Girl is a rather peculiar show in a number of ways. Firstly, it’s not quite “episodic” in the same manner as other anime series, though there is a sense of progression throughout. Instead of being a sequence of 20-minute episodes, each “episode” of Squid Girl is instead made up of three short self-contained mini-stories that tend not to have a great deal to do with each other besides having the same core cast. However, the whole thing does have a clear chronology, since characters, concepts and settings introduced in earlier episodes tend to show up again later rather than being “one-shots”. I haven’t watched far enough to know exactly how it all ties together — if at all — yet, but already in the four full episodes I have watched we’ve seen the introduction of certain characters and their subsequent return — and I’m sure there’ll be more to come.

Secondly is the concept, which anime pros probably won’t bat an eyelid at, but which those used to more… “conventional” Western entertainment might find a little bizarre. As you might expect from a show called Squid Girl, the main character is a girl who shares a number of characteristics with squid. Specifically, her blue hair is actually a set of ten tentacles which she can manipulate independently at will, her hat causes the shape of her head to resemble that of a squid (and removing it will apparently kill her) and she is able to spew squid ink from her mouth. She also has the abilities of various different types of squid, including luminescence, the ability to change her weight at will and flapping the… flappy bits on her hat. The English subtitles and dub also see her making frequent squid- and tentacle-themed puns in her dialogue, while in Japanese she tends to end her sentences with “de geso” (translated literally, something to do with squid legs) similar to how super-cute moe characters often deliberately overuse or exaggerate the “desu” or “desu no” final particle (see Compa and Gust from Hyperdimension Neptunia for good examples), and she also tends to emphasise the syllables “ika” (“squid”) in her speech whenever they come up, regardless of whether or not doing so would really make sense. (Aside: I love finding out about the equivalent of puns and the like in other languages, as I do often find myself wondering how non-English languages deal with jokes, slang, dialect and puns like this. It’s fascinating to learn this stuff through things I enjoy.)

The basic premise of the show sees Squid Girl coming ashore ostensibly to subjugate all of humanity in revenge for the shitty way they’ve treated the ocean, but she instead finds herself forced into working as a waitress at a beachfront restaurant when an outburst and demonstration of her “power” ends up smashing through the wall. The various mini-stories that make up the episodes depict Squid Girl learning more about human society and what a “normal” life is, and much of the humour comes from her complete unawareness of how to behave like a human despite resembling one for the most part. There’s also a huge amount of comedy value inherent in her interactions with the owners of the beachfront restaurant she damaged, who seem completely unperturbed by the fact that she is obviously not human and each have their own distinct characters and means of dealing with the girl-shaped hurricane that is Squid Girl. Eiko is slightly weary and a little tsundere but tolerates Squid Girl for the most part. Her sister Chizuru, meanwhile, initially appears to be the stereotypical quiet, demure and kind “older sister” type, but reveals herself very early on to have a distinctly dark side that utterly terrifies poor old Squid Girl. In actual fact, this “dark side” is not truly threatening or unpleasant — it’s simply the ability to perform a “withering look” that is the Holy Grail for parents and teachers alike, but which is often depicted as a horrifying dark aura from Squid Girl’s perspective. Even as Squid Girl tries to convince herself that she’s still going to subjugate humanity, she quickly learns not to step out of line when Chizuru is around.

For the most part, Squid Girl is thoroughly silly fun, and I frankly wasn’t expecting much more than something fairly throwaway to watch while I had breakfast and then forget about shortly afterwards. However, one of the mini-stories I watched earlier well and truly changed my mind and convinced me that this is actually a show doing some surprisingly clever things. I shan’t spoil it completely for those who are planning on watching the show, but I’ll just say that the “mini-Squid Girl” vignette — which was depicted almost completely wordlessly — was surprisingly heartfelt and touching, and I was very surprised to realise that even after just a few episodes, I already cared very much about these characters.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, really; one of the things that continually strikes me about Japanese media the more of it I consume — be it video game, anime or manga — is the deft skill with which creators are often able to weave their magic to create compelling characters and make you care about them remarkably quickly. Squid Girl, as ridiculous as it sounds on paper, is certainly no exception to that, and I look forward to seeing the rest of this surprisingly captivating nonsense.