Arakawa under the Bridge 03 - Brilliance unfolding beautifully for us viewers

I think we can all agree that this is one girl we'd like to wake up with, even if she does claim to be from Venus.

Thoughts -

Oh man, episode 2 made me have a much more positive view of this series, but this episode has truly captivated me. I do love SHAFT but they have an annoying habit of giving us a plateful of brilliance and then to our horror the dessert is a plateful of steaming crap.

Dance in the Vampire Bund showed how to take a story and adapt it horribly and take everything that was good and exciting about the manga and suck it dry.

Luckily SHAFT have managed to renew my love for them, this episode continued with the great laughs and also provided us with somewhat touching scenes.

Cuteness becomes effortless for Nino.

The first half of the episode mainly focused on Hoshi (Starhead-Dude) trying to find out why Nino has been sleeping at Riku's lately. Of course anyone would assume they've been having sex the past few days, the truth simply is that Nino sleep walks to places that are more comfortable.

It's hilarious to see the many question's Hoshi asks Riku, and also to see that Sister is basically a lie detector. Something this show does well that Bakemonogatari did well was funny and interesting dialogue, something that can at times be better than any action scene.

I'm hoping and betting that Riku and Hoshi clash once more since it produces some really funny results and there wasn't a minute where I wasn't chuckling or smiling.

For some reason this scene gave me flashbacks to the terrible Matrix revolutions film.

The rest of the episode was spent on Riku trying to go out on a date with Nino, this being his first. Although he was popular with the ladies Valentine's day proved to be torture for him as he sent them all back so he wouldn't be in debt to them, amazing how far that OCD goes huh?

He had a pretty funny plan for a date though, but through it all no matter how romantic it seemed we all knew it wasn't something that Nino would go far. (And personally dining with Japan's Prime Minister doesn't sound all that romantic either.)

It appears that she doesn't want to leave the Riverbank, something that isn't fully explained but in the end she decides she wants to go the River Mouth with him.

To see the grass ships she had sailed down earlier. We didn't actually get to see them do this together unfortunately, which was a shame since it could of been a really touching scene, but we did get something..... which you may argue to be better..

Unfortunately there no words to describe how beautiful she looks in this shot, so I'll just end the sentence now.

Heck Riku should give Nino more dresses since she looks stunning in this one, as he said she was already 'perfect'. It made him wonder whether she wore anything like it in her past, perhaps her past will be something touched upon in future episode's? Who knows.

This was a very funny episode thankfully and I hope SHAFT are able to keep the laughs up, but I'm also hoping we get some development between Riku and Nino, I'm not expecting anything too dramatic, but it'd be interesting to see them walking down the Riverbank holding hands now and then.

But hey if this show doesn't deliver romance related developments I won't hate it for it.

I can only hope that SHAFT manage to turn this into something truly spectacular, because so far I'm loving it and I'm hoping you are as well!