[Review] Back to Formula – Monster Girls ep. 8

Well last week was hopefully the last introduction that Monster Girls will have to show us for a long time. And considering that over half the show is character intro’s I’m already seeing how it could be hard to watch this more than once. But for the time being, everything is new, so I might as well enjoy Monster Girls, for better or for worse.

Episode Synopsis

The first half covers Rachnera moving in and everyone’s reaction to her. Basically everyone acts exactly as you would expect them too. Miia’s confrontational, Papi and Suu are happy-go-lucky and Mero is as kind as ever. But whats really being focused on is how Cerea is interpreting Rachenra moving in. For most of the episode she is constantly clinging to Kimihito out of a sense of protection. But of course she doesn’t admit till the very end of the episode that it’s because of her prejudice against Rachnera. Which is a little more than justified. And Cerea actually catches Rachnera in the act of seducing Kimihito and steal him away from her into the city. The “anti-monster girl dicks” show up again and are about to sexually assault Cerea when Rachnera ties and scares the shit out of them. Cereal confesses her prejudice but Rachnera doesn’t really care. But Cerea insists to make it up to her so Rachenra gets to practice tying up Cerea in all sorts of ways.

The second half covers Kimihito getting sick. Right when the girls try to help him though, Smith blows through the window and quarantines him, not wanting any of the girls to get sick and risk a pandemic. But Smith deems herself useless as usual and falls asleep leaving the girls to figure out a plan to help him. They decide to use Suu as a proxy to administer their varied treatments to him. But of course everything turns into something sexual. And we do discover three of Suu’s powers. She can heal injuries with her breast water, she can look into people’s memories and she can finally talk on her own.


MFR ON YOUTUBE (latest video)
Help us reach 5K Subs!

Episode Thoughts

Something that I took notice this week as I have in previous episodes of Monster Girls is that most of the episodes are split into two parts. And typically the parts don’t really have anything to do with each other. I’m assuming that the show will continue this trend at it will turn into a sort of Nickelodeon cartoon format, like “Spongebob” or “Fairly Odd Parents”. I think this is perfect for what the show is ultimately trying to accomplish and I actually like the two-part episodes better in this case. Mainly because the big thing Monster Girls has going for it is the jokes. And more often than not Anime has a bad trend of dragging out a certain joke until it’s not really funny anymore. But with Monster Girls, the jokes keep changing because of the episode formatting and the jokes last long enough for the laugh and then the concept changes. Now occasionally there will be an episode like the “shedding/egg-laying” episode where enough is happening to warrant a whole episode dedicated to it. But most of the time if you try to do that in a show like this you’ll get a lot of bull shitting around where, either nothing funny is happening or nothing sexy is happening. And that’s the last thing you want to happen with a show like this.

For the most part the episode was pretty standard in the route of comedy. I think at least once every character pulled out their signature gag, and they still feel fresh and funny. The funniest part for me was when Smith came crashing through the window out of nowhere. And the part where Mero eats Miia’s cooking and flashes into the Little Mermaid story. They are still keeping the jokes intertwined with the sexy scenes to keep a lighthearted balance that the show trades in. Rachnera fits in perfectly as someone who can bring tension to the group while at the same time hold the group together. She’s basically a big sister to the girls but also just a pure dominatrix of everyone when she wants to be. Honestly I loved everything involving Suu in this episode but there really isn’t much to say than it was super cute. There’s just something about super hot and super stupid Slime girls that makes me happy.

But the most interesting part this week is the character driven stuff in the first half, where Cerea is being prejudice over Rachnera but pretending not to be. For one it reinforces Cerea’s shyness to come out and say how she’s feeling. It also relates to her centaur code to not judge people and hold herself to a higher standard. These scenes are really cute and make Cerea seem more like a character instead of a trope.

Rachnera on the other hand doesn’t really come off as a trope to begin with anyway, just a cool character. We do get a little clearer depiction of Rachnera’s personality, and boy is she a freak. She’s almost like Miia in a way but much more sadistic and mature. She’s not really afraid of consequences and lives life the way she wants too, which coincidentally coincides with stringing people up with her webs, almost always in a sexual manner.

A nice gem of world building pops up again when Smith is talking about how something like the common cold could cause an epidemic if one of the girls were to catch it and it would mutate. It makes perfect sense that they would be concerned with that happening. It also helps string together the actions to take place and make them not seem as random. I’ve said it a million times but its nice when stuff happens for a reason. Sure the sexy Suu stuff is ridiculous but it all happens for more or less a reason.

Next week we’ll see if the show continues to follow this two part episode groove or go back to its single episode plot-lines. I think it should stick with this style to prevent jokes from getting old but if they can make it work I really don’t care which they do. But it’s sure nice to finally have all the girls in the house and I can’t wait to see what kind of hijinks they can get into. And with only five or so many episodes left I will be sure to soak in the continuing phenomenon that is Monster Girls.

Logan Peterson
Logan Peterson
My names Logan and I love writing about Anime. Other art is guchi too. When I'm not writing gonzo reviews I'm writing books. *If interested look up The Dream Sequence on Amazon.* I usually write more editorial stuff than just plain reviews. I like my writing to be more big picture. I feel consumer reviews are a thing of the past and more personal reviews are the most valuable nowadays.