Common Name: Shinryaku! Ika Musume
Alternate Names: Invade! Squid Girl, Squid Girl, The Invader Comes From the Bottom of the Sea!
Score: 7/10, 4/5
Length: 2 seasons, 24 episodes total
Genre: Comedy, Moe, Super-powered
Summary: The sea has suffered from humanity poisoning the waters of the Earth for far too long. To wreak its vengeance, the sea's harbinger has risen from the deep to bring the human race to heel. At least, that would be the case if this harbinger actually had enough power to threaten mankind and if she wasn't an idiotic squid child.
Review: An absurd and absurdly cute gag comedy featuring a young squid...girl...thing whose desire to overthrow humanity and save the ocean is slowly corrupted by the friendships she makes on shore. While there is a plot of speak of, it follows the same weak formula of most moe comedies in that the resolution only comes about during the last few episodes. Outside of this, the characters show little change over the course of the show and what change does happen either never sticks for the sake of the comedy or just doesn't amount to much.
The gags that make up the majority of the show, however, are actually fairly humorous and involve either the characters' interaction or some new facet of Ika's squid-like nature and how she follows or breaks from expectation. It becomes blatantly clear by the second season however, that there are only so many squid jokes a person can make before the reservoir of A+ humor runs dry. To remedy this, the show keeps a fairly steady flow of new characters to add to the formula until there's nothing else to explore.
While certainly not a masterpiece, Ika Musume is worth a good number of laughs and is easy to watch. Though far from compelling, it is aware of what it is and rarely ever steps outside of its comfort zone except for a few more personable interactions between the characters, adding both variety and relatability to a cast that would grow old fast otherwise.