Perhaps the more random of the "Alien entity trying to assimilate Earth" titles, Invader! Squid Girl, aka Shinryaku! Ika Musume is what happens when you take a marine animal and make it revolt against humanity... and comically mess it up. It's not the first to do that, and it's e rude to scale which would be the funniest of this type of anime, but I guess the humorous charm is to take what everyone would normally fear, and make it fail what it was set out to do. This... is not so different. The plot for this is more close to home... and I mean CLOSE to home.
The sea is quite fed up. The continuous pollution of the waters on Earth made the inhabitants quite irate at humanity. Seeking to make the humans atone for their sins by enslavement, an emissary was sent to the surface in the form of Squid Girl, with the intent of invasion. That all comes to a halt when in a pathetic display, the Lemon Beach Shack, the place she wanted to be foe base of her assault, gets a hole in the wall due to her actions. Forced to do so by the owners of the place, Chizuru and Eko Aizawa, Squid Girl is now stuck working there to pay off the damage she caused, forcing her invasion on indefinite pause. However, it also serves as an opportunity to study Earth and its people... at least as far as the surrounding area of the Beach House.
Lasting 2 seasons, this title has a total of 24 episodes, with 3 original video animations to its name. While the character herself isn't from outer space, it's similar to other tiles I see like it in theme, like Sgt. Frog. The title in question is a slice of life comedy, with nothing really off the rails beyond her existence, for the most part. Being an old anime, like 8 years old, it did have a change in US licensing. Media Blasters initially had the reigns for the series, however, only the first anime was dubbed for the states until the year of its supposed dissolution. Three years ago, its floating status was later changed, as Sentai Filmworks, successor to A.D. Vision, picked it up. With a new dubbing cast, the last 12 episodes and the 3 OVAs were dubbed and released stateside. Having been on streaming platforms like Netflix and Crunchyroll, this title made its rounds. The cast this times feature mostly names I'm nnot quite familiar with, save for Christina Vee, who I often hear from other anime titles, and certain video games like the Shantae series, which she plays the protagonist of. The lead character is done by Christine Marie Cabanos who can be heard in titles such as Sailor Moon Crystal as well as some of the Fire Emblem games among many others, and she would retain her role in both dubbings. The rest did a bit of a shakeup between the 2 dubbings, though, like (or example) Takeru Aizawa, little brother of the sisters. Season 1 saw him voiced by Amanda C. Miller, who also voices Boruto Uzumaki in his anime Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, while Season 2 replaced her with Greg Ayres, brother of Christopher Ayres, and known for roles like Negi Springfield of the Negima! anime, and Frost (universal parallel of Frieza, which his brother voices) in Dragon Ball Super.
Initially, I couldn't make heads or tails of this, but as it progressed, I started to come to terms with it a bit more. And it's definitely a bit more upbeat, compared to normal slice of life titles, and a huge plus over the dramatic ones. An interesting thing to note here: in the raw/subbed versions, she stresses the "ika" term and usually ends her sentences with "de geso". In the dub, these are dropped, being replaced by dialogue with squid-based puns. What charms me about the latter is that some of the puns are positioned in a way that it can be considered unintentionally censored, as in, for example, "Are you squidding me!?" can be seen as a humorous, roundabout way of the more profane "Are you sh***ing me!?" My only criticism is that the change in voices were difficult to deal with at first, but it's not the only title to do so. Two of my favorite series, Slayers and Ranma 1/2, are guilty of this as well, but at least with the latter, I could understand, since the character sounded slightly older between seasons 3 and 4. With Slayers, it saw a similar gap Invader! Squid Girl did, but much older in comparison.
Invader! Squid Girl was entertaining, but not to the point where I'd stop everything to watch it again out of boredom. Make no mistake, save that one criticism, there was hardly anything to turn me away from it, but it didn't offer much to keep me as a fan either. I reviewed it before in the older blog, but giving it a second look, I downgrade my score to a 6 of 10, which isn't much of a drop from the first time. Still worth a look if you are into slice of life, but want your dose of comedy with it. I can say at the very least, this anime achieves that.
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