咲-Saki-全国編 / Saki - Zenkoku-hen/ Saki – Episode of the Nationals / Saki: The Nationals

It seems that every successive series of the Saki anime is going to be not what I expect. I thought this series would cover the Nationals tournament – as indicated by the title – incorporating Saki finally facing off against her scary sister and what happens to the cute alternate team from Nara we got to know in Episode of Side-A. Perhaps they’d be sacrificial lambs.

Well, all of that remains for some as-yet unmade series – there’s an OVA on the way next year, for starters. What this series did was some of the preliminary rounds of the Nationals competition. True, there were some fun new character introduced – I loved the extremely tall girl and the ridiculous shrine maidens who could summon the powers of gods – but ultimately there was little here that was particularly consequential. The fact is that the fun of super-powered Mahjong games eat up episodes, though, and this half-season flew by. What Saki really needs is to be very long and ongoing – too little happens for this sort of length of series to satisfy.

So while our heroic team manage to prevail thanks to each member’s skill and Saki’s ridiculous luck with her rinshan kaihou hands, all that has really happened is that the central conflicts of the larger series have been delayed for another future adaptation – if we even get there. It may be that to see the actually important parts of this story following its exposition, I may have to go to a manga.

But for all that annoys me, I can’t deny how enjoyable the ride is. The ridiculous characters and exaggerated drama of the hands played, the way formidable players can sense one another’s auras, the fanservice – it’s all very funny and entertaining, and makes for compulsive, brainless viewing. And I need a few series like that here and there.

So yes, I will go on watching whatever Saki I can get. But until I have to, I won’t feel any real need to read the manga.  

咲 Saki 阿知賀編 episode of Side-A / Saki Achiga-hen episode of Side-A

Saki was the latest very silly, brainless anime I enjoyed. I always like to have at least one of these on the go (the other one I currently have being Inazuma 11), which I can put on in any mood, no matter how tired, and enjoy myself. And Saki episodes are compulsive fluff – they’re stupid, the way the game at the centre of the story is played is largely irrelevant, and the fanservice is often tedious, but the fact is that it’s extremely enjoyable nonetheless.

There are some odd choices with this second season. Firstly, it’s a complete side-story. The first season’s main characters are seen only in glimpses and flashbacks. Instead, we follow some of Nodoka’s childhood friends as they see her on TV, revive their Mahjong club and make their way to the national competition to be reunited with their old friend. Of course, this involves placing highly their regional tournament, which as ever means confronting girls with mahjong super-powers.

The powers here are even more extreme than the last season’s ability to disappear from view or mess people up with ultra-beginner’s-luck. Here, we have girls whose bonds are so deep that if one wins a hand in a round having placed imaginary bondage restraints on herself, her partner is guaranteed to win that hand on the next round – after having a rather erotic reaction. We have a girl who can see into the future after a near-death experience, who can grant that ability to her best friend by rubbing her head on her thighs. Yes. And one of our main characters spent a long time deep in the mountains, which has bestowed her with the gift of claiming any territory she can perceive as a deep mountain as her own – including going up against formidable opponents, who are like mountains, and being deep into the tiles lined up in front of her. What even more absurd abilities await in the next season I am eager to know, and the way the absurdity is racked up and up reminds me in a good way of Yakitate!! Japan.

However, one of the problems here is that there are so many interesting, colourful characters. There’s Saki’s strangely indifferent sister, who is an indomitable monster held off only by another player’s bizarre ability to never lose all of her points, even if she is not very strong. There’s the adorable tomboy who gets embarrassed when she has to wear a skirt – always my preferred character type. There’s the sharpshooter who makes people feel she’s an archer as she shoots them down with targeted mahjong hands, and the angler who can always pick out what she needs. Beside all these, the core group of five, who have character quirks like feeling cold all the time and having been keen on bowling, just don’t stand out very much. I ended up much more invested in the teams trying to get in their way than the main characters themselves, and that’s a bit of a problem. They were just relatively uninteresting.

And of course, the whole endeavour seems a little pointless. Presumably, these are going to be sacrificial lambs in the end, losing to Saki’s sister so that they can have a big showdown at the end. I may be wrong, and the final may be between two teams we’re supposed to root for, but that just doesn’t seem likely. That probability in the back of my mind just makes it harder to feel very engaged with these side-story characters.

Still, for all it seemed like a strange diversion, the actual journey was extremely enjoyable and I shall certainly progress to the next season. And as for the change of studio, as Gonzo staffers split to form Studio Gokumi? Well, honestly it made no difference at all. 

咲- / Saki- (season 1)

I haven’t the faintest idea how to play Mahjong. You sit around a table, taking it in turns to draw tiles and trying to make hands that you have to memorize. You set these up by putting tiles on one side of the table, and there are advantages and disadvantages to being the dealer. Throwing in sticks ups the stakes. And there are also some dice in the middle, but I have no idea what for. Even after watching Saki, I would still call myself almost entirely unaware of how Mahjong works.

But I am aware of how sports anime work – encompassing competitive board games – and after all I knew nothing about go when I started Hikaru no Go, and that became my favourite manga of all time. Knowing that I would probably enjoy the way the anime worked, I got hold of Saki, though soon forgot that I had it, so that when I started to watch I had entirely forgotten that it was a mahjong anime – for all I remembered, it was going to be about H.H. Munro.

But no. Based on a Young Gangan manga, it is a typical but nonetheless highly enjoyable sports anime. It follows a tried-and-tested formula: a rather ordinary young person reveals an uncanny talent for a competitive game in front of an established top youth player. The youth player becomes a bit obsessive – with a hint of romantic attraction – and manages to coax the peculiarly talented one into playing competitively. Though there is a hint of rivalry, the series settles into a series of matches in a competition format, with the sympathetic team encountering opponents with unusual approaches to the game, and after reaching some inner revelation, overcoming the challenge. Meanwhile, the simple actions of the game become highly dramatised, so that the power of moves may be represented by strikes of lightning, visions of mighty creatures or sudden changes in air pressure. This is almost exactly the formula Hikaru no Go had.

But for all the similarity in outline, Saki is very different in feel from HikaGo. With its predominantly female cast, cutesy art style and readiness to have really bizarre character types – including a girl so hard to notice that even her tiles begin to disappear, and a tiny loli who is effectively kept chained up for her immense mahjong prowess – it is rather more like Bamboo Blade. There’s also a propensity to put all the characters into romantic pairs – all but the goofy main guy and the childish teammate being lesbian pairings – that owes something to Maria-sama Ga Miteru, though with about a fiftieth of the subtlety and gentleness. This is a series happy to send its almost all-female cast off to bathhouses and hot springs so that they all get naked together, and does not hesitate to use the old trip-over-and-fall-on-top-of-the-one-you-like conceit.

But that Saki doesn’t mind being a bit lowbrow about its presentation is part of why it’s so much fun. It’s bold and obvious and very obviously geared towards otaku tastes – but that’s why it has an infectious exuberance. It’s just enjoyable to watch, enjoyable to rush through and enjoyable to laugh along with. It’s not trying to change the world or to offer something new and daring, but wants its audience to enjoy – and I certainly did.

It’s no Hikaru no Go – it doesn’t have the sincerity that allows for much more heightened emotion, but then again anyone who might find HikaGo tedious would be better-served here. I think mahjong is fundamentally less-suited to this sort of presentation anyway, being much more luck-based, whereas go has no random factor. Mahjong is evidently about trending towards winning rather than winning every time, but that’s not what this anime shows, and even with my lack of knowledge I know that a lot of the amazing winning hands shown are amazing because they involve ridiculous luck, not just in arranging your hand but in picking a random tile to complete it.

Since I know nothing about mahjong, though, it doesn’t really matter to me how realistic the presentation is. What I enjoy is the absurdity, and the sense of triumph when a character wins. The anime is also very, very good at making the audience root for every character it gives a background to, when of course only one player can win.

This was only the first of three seasons. There is very little sense of closure here – it’s made clear the national tournament is the real goal of these characters, and this entire 25-episode series, after the exposition, is about the qualifying tournament to get to the nationals rather than the tournament itself. It also seems that when Studio Gokumi split off from Gonzo, they took Saki with them, so after this there comes a change in studio – if not staff. I may not swallow it up quite so ravenously, but I will certainly be watching the rest of Saki 

まりあ†ほりっくあらいぶ/ Maria†Holic: Alive (season 2)

The second season of Maria†Holic was largely more of the same, but it was worthwhile watching and thoroughly enjoyable. A lot of the characters who had a limited role in the first season have an expanded part to play – Mariya’s sister Shizu is seen in her own school, with her own butler as a counterpart to Matsurika, creepy teacher Kanae becomes a comic staple and Kanako’s little sister appears towards the end to provide an adorable sincerity that serves as a great counterpoint to Kanako’s constant hysterics and histrionics.

Ultimately, the show once again boils down largely to Kanako suffering, usually through her own fault, and things are if anything a little more surreal than before. Kanako and the others brave the silly traps and games of a ‘forbidden’ old dorm, Kanako is put on trial, a 10-year-old boy arrives announcing he’s engaged to marry one of the girls (though let us not forget arranged marriages still exist), and in the last episode, Mariya and Matsurika show a softer side – after they are flushed into a strange underground passage from the school baths with Kanako and chased by expanding seaweed. Yup.

For all that it’s stranger than before, though, stylistically it’s a bit less playful – we get the same shoujo pastiche style far too many times – and I’m not a fan of all the fourth-wall breaking references. I never like jokes where characters show knowledge of being fictional, or that they’re in episodes, unless it’s a really obvious childish comedy like Rock Lee’s Springtime ofYouth. At the same time, though, the characters are in general treated a little more sympathetically and…well, fleshed out, which is welcome. Mariya shows a softer side, Kanako reflects on her selfishness, and…well, it’s amazing how much of a different person Matsurika seems without her maid headband. I also quite liked seeing Shizu as a boy, especially as her hidden side is much more pleasant than her brother’s.

At only 12 episodes, once again not a whole lot is going to happen, but I’m glad there was more Maria†Holic to enjoy and if a third season comes along, I shall be keen to watch that too. Also, I should make mention of the brilliant in-character intro song, which is the first OP in several years that I’ve actually enjoyed watching each and every time – not counting the little variations!

まりあ†ほりっく/ Maria†Holic (season 1)

For whatever reason, Catholic girls’ schools in Japan have a reputation for lesbianism. A certain very male-centric form of lesbianism. Nothing to do with Doc Martins, Dykes on Bikes or cute androgynous girls in saggy basketball tops with half their hair shaved off – nor, I suspect, any other stereotype that might come with the word ‘lesbianism’ in a Western mindset. In fact, the style has much more in common with books about English public schools where two boys become very close – a little too close to be good friends, and perhaps fittingly a lot of those books are in fact aimed at middle-aged women. The relationship between the girls at these Catholic schools is presented as utterly devotional, idealised, innocent and elevated. Typical associated clichés involve exchanging rosaries, referring to the older partner highly respectfully as ‘onee-sama’ and the adorably-old-fashioned greeting ‘gokigenyou’. Perhaps the most obvious example of this style is Maria-sama ga Miteru, which if it didn’t establish these tropes (probably found in novels and such before it) certainly brought them to a new audience, started a fashion and spawned unfortunate imitators like the execrable Strawberry Panic.

Maria†Holic, perhaps obviously given that it’s a Shaft anime, sets out to send up all these conventions and make a joke out of them. The creative aspect of this can’t be credited to them, given that this was a manga first and Shaft simply adapted it, but their signature fast-paced reference-filled style is immediately apparent and the artists clearly have a lot of fun taking every chance to mix up the art style, parodying absurd Yuri and Shoujo sparkly-eyed and spindly-limbed art, as well as stained glass windows and other Christian iconography.

Miyamae Kanako is an open lesbian whose aversion to men even has a physical manifestation – she breaks out in hives if a man so much as touches her. She is delighted to be transferring to the Catholic school Ame no Kisaki, where she hopes she will find her true love. Indeed, every girl in the school seems to be beautiful, and being a comic buffoon of a character, she will never be able to act on any of her crushes because when she gets excited, she gets a powerful nosebleed that usually leaves her unconscious – that typical anime sign of arousal that here becomes increasingly exaggerated, until Kanako is turning entire swimming pools red with blood and in the final episode, the planet, then the galaxy, then the universe gets the sanguine touch from her excitement.

Her life gets much more complicated as a result of Shidou Mariya, the grandchild of the school’s chairman, a beautiful angelic blond who also happens to be a boy in disguise. Kanako of course stumbles upon his secret, but this only leads to his true sadistic personality being discovered, and he and his laconic maid Matsurika set out to subjugate Kanako – which is not a particularly difficult feat. 

Add to this a cast of typical anime girls – the childish loli type, the strange and seemingly cold girl who seems to solve most of Kanako’s problems by declaring a love between them, the tall and glamorous archery star who has self-esteem issues…as well as, of course, an identical twin sister for Mariya who usually dresses up as a boy in the neighbouring school, and a truly bizarre ageless woman who looks like a small girl and serves as the terrifying dorm mistress. Oh, and in the last couple of episodes, a very silly male teacher/priest who tries to comfort Kanako in his own very strange but well-intentioned style, led astray by Mariya who makes up a story about a dead older brother he resembles.

Largely, it’s typical Shaft stuff, with typical Shaft shortcomings – the set-up is great, the humour is great, the acting is great (who would have thought Kanako had Dejiko’s seiyuu?), the references are brilliant and the pastiches are spot-on, but ultimately the problem is that…well, nothing really happens. I know it’s an episodic comedy, but after twelve episodes, when the season closes with the story of Kanako getting excited about the school’s swimming pool opening only to not get to partake in any of the lessons there, it feels anticlimactic. Yes, there’s a second season, and yes, this is really how most Shaft anime, from Pani Poni Dash! to Sayonara Zetsubou-sensei have worked, but the fact is that I would like some development to happen, some character arcs and some emotional involvement.  

Well, there’s a second season to come. I liked the scenario enough to be eager to watch. But I hope there’s a bit more to sink my teeth into, and not just the same repetition of lesbian-gets-nosebleed-over-cute-girls jokes.

けいおん! / Keion! / K-On! (season 1)

When I first entered the anime fandom, it was very popular to detest Dragonball Z. All those prolonged fight scenes and stupid cuts of characters just yelling at each other and powering up. Much better to watch this quirky little shounen about ninja called Naruto. Of course, the time for hatred for Naruto came along, and Dragonball was ever more associated with the halcyon days of childhood and is now well-loved and its deficiencies ironically celebrated. I expect the same to eventually happen with Naruto. The next trend was to ignore big shounen titles and to only watch late-night anime, which were often shows about young girls that were usually based on pervy visual novels – things like Da Capo and Kimi ga Nozomu Eien. This trend melded with the successes of cute, funny slice-of-life shows like Azumanga Daioh and Ichigo Mashimaro and suddenly, the moéblob trend was everywhere. It perhaps reached its pinnacle in the season when Lucky Star, Manabi Straight and Hidamari Sketch all came out at the same time, but the show that has become emblematic of the subgenre is K-On!

The life-cycle of a notable moé anime seems to follow this pattern: great immediate success where the pretty art and likeable characters endear themselves to almost everyone watching the newest anime; a swelling fanbase of more casual fans; a lot of the original audience realising that (a) the show is going to meander along and nothing interesting is going to happen and that (b) people they feel oh-so-superior to are now latching on to the same show; a backlash in which people get on their soapboxes – often the same ones who were so keen at the beginning – and decry the series as dull, inconsequential, annoying. Then after that comes a sudden and final drop in popularity, where the more fickle fans move on and the more vociferous ones pretend to never have liked the show in the first place, leaving only a hardcore who have fallen somewhat in love with one of the characters and the casual fans who occasionally get reminded of that show they watched a few months ago. This happened with Lucky Star. It happened with Kanon and Air, and to an extent with Haruhi. But emblematic of the concept of ‘moéblob’ – syrupy cuteness with a loose art style – is K-On!

You may notice that all of those shows are from Kyoto Animation. This is certainly true, and their shows have suffered severe backlash, but that’s more a result of their success than anything else – moé shows like Kyou no Go no Ni and C3 would get at least as much vitriol if they were as wildly popular to begin with, but because they’re more obscure, people care less and thus complain less. The iDOLM@STER got off lightly because by the time it came out people who disliked shows like K-On! knew to avoid it. Other shows like Ika Musume noticed that what allowed Azumanga Daioh to be cute, have very little happen and still be well-loved was a lot of quirkiness and a lot of laughs – something Kyoto have taken notice of with Nichijou. The moéblob fad is passing because frankly, its appeal was always limited and there are better alternatives already being mined that don’t mean the cute girls who look good on body pillows disappear.

To K-On!, then – explosively popular at first, now much-derided. I watched episode 1 when it aired in 2009, and then didn’t continue until about a month ago, three years later. The fact was that it didn’t hook me in. I knew what to expect, I more or less knew how it would be treated by its fanbase, and I didn’t particularly like the art style, which was far looser than Kyoto’s best. When I came to watch it, I knew very well that it was a show about cute girls doing cute things – and not a whole lot else. I had no complaints about that – after all, so are Azumanga Daioh and Ichigo Mashimaro. But K-On! makes two big mistakes – firstly, it ignores its gimmick, which is music. Music is the reason the five central girls get together and become friends, and one of Kyoto’s strong points – the concert scenes and dances in Lucky Star and Haruhi were highlights, and K-On! has great opening and ending themes. But other than short diversions to have band practices and a school concert, the music club does very little music-related and more time is spent on things like shopping, agonising over love letters and going to the beach. It’s not until the OVA that the focus turns to music performance, and it’s a real shame that this strong episode wasn’t in the series. But that’s rather the point – the music club is just an excuse to get the funny little girls together in one place and have them interact. But therein lies the second flaw – so little happens that it just doesn’t matter. Apart from possibly Ritsu when she wonders about her love letter, the girls never get any depth, keeping them always on the surface – Yui is the ditzy one with the adorably responsible little sister, Mio is the slightly stuffy one who is cute when she gets scared, Ritsu is tomboyish and irresponsible and Mugi is classy and elegant but with a cheeky side. Later, Azu-nyan is…just sort of there.

In Azumanga Daioh you get the heart-wrenching graduation and the hook of surrealism. In Ichigo Mashimaro Miu’s antics are extreme enough to be hilarious, but her vulnerability and loneliness make for a key scene. In Minami-Ke all the cuteness is broken up by potential romances. Even The iDOLM@STER knows to inject some healthy angst to give the series structure. K-On! stays true to the course set – cute girls do cute things – and ultimately feels utterly inconsequential, even boring.

I quite enjoyed the lightness of K-On!, the easy simplicity and the fact the brain does not need to be engaged whatsoever. But that was over 13 episodes and an OVA. Harsh as the backlash is, K-On! was still a major hit, spawning a 26-episode second season, another OVA and a feature film. I’m not too sure how much I’m looking forward to watching those, especially since the conceit of introducing a new character (usually a way to prolong interest into a second season) was used up before the 10 episode mark – but I will watch. Because, really, it’s simple and easy to do so, and it’s cute. 

侵略！？イカ娘 / Shinryaku!? Ika Musume / Invade!? Squid Girl (season 2)

When Negima! got a question mark after its exclamation point for a new anime season (well, and strictly speaking also had its ‘Mahou Sensei’ cut away), it signified big changes: a new production studio, a reboot, new characters and a very different style. The added question mark here has no such effect: Ika Musume season 2 is very much more of the same. It continues right where the first season left off and in very much the same way. The title sequences change, but that often happens mid-season with 26-episode series anyway. But I must say, I haven’t been as grateful for a continuation since Chii’s New Address picked up from after Chii’s Sweet Home, again with almost nothing changing (but still more than changes here!).

A big part of the charm of Ika Musume is that nothing changes, though – Summer doesn’t end, the characters are never going to come to any real harm, and even if there seems to be real tension between characters, as we get at the very end for the big finale, on some level we all know it’s going to be alright in the end and things will go back to normal.

Because Squid Girl is light, silly, cute and fun, and that’s what it’s meant to be.

I predicted a few changes might happen at the end of my season 1 impressions, only a few days ago. Everything I predicted came true to an extent: the jellyfish girl returned, though in a similar role at the very end of the season. The action did not move away from the summer days on the beach – although a bit of cute variety was added by a snow machine letting the girls dress up in winter clothes. Thankfully, the fanservice remained at the ‘almost none, and even then almost coming across as innocent’, except that there’s one rather gratuitous shot in the opening animation that made me feel vindicated.

Like many other cute comedy shows about girls before it, like Azumanga Daioh and Ichigo Mashimaro, the attempts to take the characters new places start to feel like making them dress-up dolls – here, we get not only the winter clothes but the yukata of a matsuri, the characters deciding they want to ‘cosplay’ after Nagisa is made to look like a boy, and in one fantasy sequence Chizuru is dressed as an evil nun, which made me think very keenly of Clarice from Arcana Heart.

While it was business as usual and took no risks, that’s part of being based on an ongoing manga and frankly I’m still a long way from tiring of the concept, characters or jokes. I really enjoyed every episodes of Shinryaku!? Ika Musume and – carefully avoiding making a Simpsons reference about welcoming overlords – I would like to send the message to the creators that I would love to see more, so bring on whatever extra punctuation you like!

侵略!イカ娘 / Shinryaku! Ika Musume / Invade! Squid Girl (season 1)

Ahhh, Ika Musume. Another sign, along with the likes of Nichijou, that moé anime is once again swinging towards the surreal, silly and more original after K-On burst the bubble. Not that this sort of cuteness ever went away, but now it’s back in pole position, and I’m perfectly happy with that situation – I like ordinary slice-of-life, but the spice of surrealism makes things tastier.

The premise of a strange but very cute young girl invading the normal life of someone quite ordinary underpins a lot of anime, sometimes in drama (like Kurenai), but more often in a sitcom. Often the strange girl will want to initiate a romance with a dull but identifiable boy (like in Sumomomo-mo Momo-mo), but sometimes the comedy just comes from a very weird girl interacting with someone more down-to-earth in what is essentially a manzai comedy routine - for example, in 2x2 ga Shinobuden. But for all we're on familiar ground here, and for all the characters are very familiar archetypes, Ika Musume - 'Squid Girl' - is something very distinct and is probably the very best example of its kind. It perfectly blends comedy, cuteness, character development and variety, and though it's in parts predictable, it's also quite smart and always, always highly enjoyable. Though part of me wishes I started watching this when it aired in 2010, I’m also happy I didn’t because now I don’t have to wait for new episodes to be released and can zip through it.

It’s a great, silly little premise: a cute anthropomorphised squid girl in the tradition of the various personified –tans comes out of the sea with the intention of conquering mankind to put a stop to their polluting ways, but gets no further than a beach hut café: a demonstration of the power of her tentacle-hair means she is forced into working to repay debts for damages. Around her gathers a colourful cast – there are the siblings who run the café, middle child and identifiable comedic foil Eiko, polite and feminine elder sister Chizuru and sweet-natured younger brother Takeru. Then come Eiko’s friend Sanae, who gets a rather masochistic lesbian crush on Ika Musume, and tomboyish coworker Nagisa, who is the only one who finds Ika Musume fearsome. A team of silly American scientists come to study Ika Musume, believing her to be an alien, led by the buxom blonde Cindy – she speaks fluent Japanese but her three daft co-workers have that exAAgeraTED wAY of emPHAsisSIING random syllables that the Japanese identify as an American accent. Then there are others to colour life on the beach – a genuine friend for Ika Musume met when she failed at pani-poni dash, a fairly sensible lifeguard with a crush on Chizuru and a shy girl coerced by her father into wearing ridiculous false heads of Ika Musume.

It’s character-based comedy and it works brilliantly. Yes, very similar things have done before: overall, it strongly resembles Rizelmine, which is now an astonishing ten years old - I also observed that of C³, but this show has much more of Rizelmine’s genuine cuteness. Chizuru’s hilarious dark, arguably Yandere side recalls Miya-Miya from Bamboo Blade and Tanaka Rie’s performance has elements of her Suigintou. The antics of the American scientists resemble the Black Gema Gang from Di Gi Charat, mixed with that show’s American. Takeru’s ‘no defining characteristics’ echos Chi-chan from Ichigo Mashimaro, and his looks recall main character of the TV version of Kyou no Go no Ni, especially with his classmates. Nagisa reminds me of Makoto from The iDOLM@STER (and in season 2 gets dressed up as a boy to similar effect), while Sanae’s crush is like that of Kaorin in Azumanga Daioh on steroids – and it was already pretty extreme. Azumanga Daioh’s huge shadow is everywhere here – it’s hard not to think of Chiyo when Ika Musume thinks of flying with her little squiddy hat-flaps, and Tanaka Rie’s performance as Yomi is recalled in the episode of season 2 where she’s concerned with her weight.

But I don’t think it at all negative that Ika Musume has a lot in it that has been done before. It brings all that together, it works so well and it makes it all so damn cute. Ika Musume herself is incredibly adorable, and while there are moments of lolicon fanservice, perhaps inevitably for a show where so many characters spend so much time on the beach and where humour is derived from one character having erotic fantasies about another young girl, it’s all very light and certainly ought not to get on anyone’s nerves or detract from the humour – which was a relief, as this is from Kodomo no Jikan’s studio Diomedea (previous known as Barcelona) . I also loved the little shorts with a mini Ika Musume (also in one episode) – while the idea is similar to Shakugan no Shana’s Shana-Tan episodes, the feel was pleasantly like Binchou-tan.

Where next, then? I expect more of the same from season 2, and beyond if more is made. Will the (presumably) jellyfish girl return? Perhaps more fanservice? (I'd be willing to bet it'll fall into that trap.) Perhaps summer will end and the plot will move away from the beach – but somehow I doubt it. Either way, I anticipate loving every episode, as I loved every one here.

Oh, and one last note – the anime is full of simple puns: Ika Musume replaces ‘desu’ with ‘de geso’, a reference to edible tentacles that really wouldn’t sound cute directly translated, and most episode titles have some variation of ‘-ja nai ka?’ (loosely, ‘why don’t we…?’ or ‘Isn’t that…?’), which is a pun because the final ‘ika’ means ‘squid’. The official subs attempted to come up with different puns for each of these, with differing levels of success, but unlike some who hated it, I rather liked all the ‘squiddly’s and ‘squidding’s – and it was all worth it for one stroke of genius, being ‘Squid pro quo’. Brilliant!

マリア様がみてる/ Maria-Sama ga Miteru (seasons 3&4)

MariMite, that most unlikely of cult hits about the meaningful relationships between earnest young girls in a Japanese Catholic unisex school, not only followed up its second season with no less than five OVA episodes, each the best part of an hour long, but then bucked the trend for series that end up with OVAs by returning to televisions for a fourth season. The story, as might be expected, continued to follow the light novels that are the series’ origins, following Yumi and her circle as the oldest ‘roses’ leave and they have to make the transition from sweet ‘petite souers’ to responsible, respected figures within the school’s structure – and look for younger girls to take under their wings themselves.

On the other hand, the maturity of the presentation took something of a dip as the story went on. What in the first seasons was elegant, melancholy and very sweet has become…somewhat obvious, even exploited, to the extent that it lost a great degree of its sweetness. What made Maria-sama work was its self-belief, its straightforwardness, the cluelessness of Yumi and the fact that it really took some digging under the surface to find out that this was not at all an ordinary shoujo series (as numerous English reviewers labelled it) but aimed at the seinen audience who follow magazines like Dengeki Daioh and collect figurines and body pillows. When that was all tacit, obscured and vaguely inappropriate, everything was presented perfectly. When we started to have nude Yumi and Touko with their lips inches apart and hands clasped as part of credits sequences…it’s all a bit obvious and vulgar, and that knocks the charm back a lot. Marimite doesn’t suit fanservice in its canon. Well, at least, not fanservice of that sort.

Speaking of credits sequences, the fourth has probably the most bizarre and misleading the show could have chosen short of all-out surrealism or some sort of epic battle sequence. It involves Yumi and co teleporting through magic portals all over the school. Certainly confusing for anyone who might randomly check out an episode as it aired – although I suppose that given you had to get hold of DVDs to be up-to-date with the story thus far, they expected that by this stage it was really a series for the fanbase.

With Eriko, Sei and Youko having graduated, the Yamayurikai are reduced to five: Yumi and Sachiko, Rei and Yoshino and Shimako alone as Rosa Gigantea. In her typical style, but not without some lovely drama about religious beliefs, Shimako finds her petite soeur Noriko without too much fuss. After all she struggled for independence at first, Yoshino is too close to Rei to consider a younger sister just yet. Meanwhile, Yumi is conflicted: she has gotten closer to the prickly but vulnerable Touko, but never knows quite where she stands with her, while the hilariously tall Kanako is a fan of Yumi and may share a similar personality to her beloved onee-sama.

The loss of subtlety is not purely in the opening and ending sequences. It creeps into the dialogue and character interactions too. The girls end up daydreaming about one another and getting giddy over ‘dates’ in a way that could have worked played just right, but get presented in a way not many steps above the poor imitation that is Strawberry Panic.

On the other hand, while these elements prevent the series living up to its first seasons, that is not to say the episodes are not highly enjoyable, or that I would not eagerly watch each of them. I may not have liked Touko much, even after her reasons were revealed (not sufficient excuses), and I thought the way Noriko was manipulated was horrible and not at all like the dignified Yamiyurikai of old, I accepted both storylines and the decisions made by the characters. And enjoyed all of it – I care what happens to Yumi and Yoshino, and where the relationships go. The gentleness of the relationships and the soft character-based humour (as well as the zany omake DVD extras) always made me smile, and the pacing, acting and art remained distinctive and enjoyable.

Not, perhaps, everything it could have been, but still part of a favourite series, and highly enjoyable to watch.

かしまし ～ガール・ミーツ・ガール～/Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl

For all the adult nature of much of the anime business, and the easy availability of manga and anime with homosexual themes, if a show is going to have anything but clique success, same-sex love has to be hidden behind at least a veneer of orthodox heterosexuality. Thus, most anime with boys who act in a gay manner are comedies, as in Princess Princess, where the prettiest boys in a boarding school dress up as girls because the totally non-gay student population want to imagine them as females, or Ouran, where acting gay is a way to excite girls. Otherwise they’re pushed into a corner with Gravitation and Loveless and watched only by a very small subset of anime fans – more dominant in the West because of the high proportion of teenaged girls who love anime here, but certainly minor in Japan.

It’s fine, however, for mainstream shounen like Naruto and Hikaru no Go to have lots of hints at homosexuality, as long as it isn’t explicit. Strange roundabout way of thinking.

From this mindset comes the utterly stupid premise of Kashimashi: a shy, girlish boy is rejected by the girl he loves. He goes up a mountain to reflect, only to be taken by aliens and turned into a girl. Since he’s a boy REALLY, it’s fine to have him explore lesbian relationships. It’s a very bad premise.

But despite this, and despite some of the worst comedic characters I’ve ever seen (including a father who only wants to take dirty pictures of his son now that he’s become his daughter, an over-exaggeratedly dippy teacher and an alien duo consisting of one serious man in a silly yellow suit and a hyper girl who affixes ‘-puu!’ to every sentence), Kashimashi turned out to be a good anime – and a popular one, too.

You see, the story didn’t really concern itself much with the gender-switching, other than for some light humour. What the anime was really about was a love triangle. Hazumu, our newly-double-Xed protagonist, had his advances rejected by Yasuna, but also has feelings for Tonari, his tomboyish childhood friend and next-door neighbour. When it becomes clear that Yasuna rejected him not because she doesn’t like him but for reasons that will only slowly be unveiled, and Tonari begins to be more assertive in showing Hazumu she cares, tensions run high. It’s nothing that hasn’t been done before, but it’s done very well, and I really began to care which of the girls Hazumu would finally choose. And while the final decision wasn’t the one I would have liked to have seen, and there was a suggestion that a large part of what informed his choice was pity, there WAS more to it than that - and from the beginning he seemed to have a stronger inclination to sway in that direction, even if less rational reason. And whoever said love had to be rational? With that in mind, I was satisfied with the ending, and enjoyed the sadness of the rejection that was then inevitable for the bittersweet tragedy and display of braveness it was. Soap-opera melodrama, which probably would have been insufferably cheesy performed by live-action actresses, but very sweet.

Plus at 12 episodes, hardly a huge distraction.

Seems there’ll be an extra episode with the DVD releases. I’ll look forward to it.

(originally written 18.8.06)

マリア様がみてる / Maria-sama ga Miteru (seasons 1+2)

Occasionally, an anime comes along that is very different from everything else around it. It may not be the most prominent or the most successful show airing, but its influence can be discerned in its wake like ripples on a still pond. One such a show is Maria-sama ga Miteru.

No explosions, monsters or giant robots here. No zany comedy and every few stylised facial expressions. Maria-sama ga Miteru is a show about life at a very distinctive girls’ school, and the pace is slow, stately and elegant, the result best described as exquisite.

Lillian High School is a French convent-influenced Catholic school for girls in Japan. In order to help girls assimilate into the environment, there is in place what is called the ‘Soeur System’, in which an older girl takes a new student under her wing, presenting her with a rosary as a symbolic gesture. All the girls look up to the student council called the Yamayurikai, headed by the three roses – Rosa Foetida, Rosa Chinensis and Rosa Gigantea, along with their soeurs. The story begins when a quiet, insecure girl named Yumi is selected as a petite souer by Sachiko, a rather stern and distant girl who is Rosa Chinensis en bouton – the petite souer of Rosa Chinensis.

The underlying system is rather complicated, but the stories are generally simple – how little dramas in the relationships of the various soeurs are dealt with, told through Yumi’s eyes. Based on a series of novels that were unexpected hits with older teenaged boys who lapped up the homoerotic undertones of the girls’ absolute devotion to one another, and there is a romance and sophistication to the series, as well as a seemingly limitless charm, that makes it irresistible.

The art is somewhat inconsistent, and still frames often look very ugly – girls with strange pointy noses or painfully skinny bodies – and there is little to animate, but the simple, muted style suits the tone perfectly, and the real stars are the writers and the voice actors. Marimite (as it is known to fans) has one success that stands above the rest – the characters. They are quite simply the most believable characters I’ve seen in an anime, with varying levels of complexity. One of my favourite moments came when I rewatched the first episode of this anime after the end of the first series. When I first saw it, I was thrown in at the deep end, seeing all these unfamiliar characters who all seemed to be part of this one organised group, and I was barely able to distinguish between them, but the disorientation perfectly matched Yumi’s confusion. But then later, I had got to know all the characters and rewatching the scenes, I saw how each of their personalities were always there, but I just didn’t know them well enough to see them on the first viewing.

Everything is very gentle, stately and somewhat idealised – the girls are all very different, but all totally lovely, and life’s problems usually come unravelled in the end. Still, there’s a yearning quality to the beauty that I respond to, understanding why this ideal is so attractive. It’s the flaws that make it believable, the adult edge to all the innocence that make it seem so much more real.

And the fan community (as well as the official creators, with outtake-style DVD extras that are utterly hilarious) has responded to Marimite with great fervour, understanding transplanting the characters into bizarre scenarios works so much better because they’re presented so seriously to begin with. I for one can’t get enough of Nuclear Soeur The Fighter or Maribato, the totally inappropriate shooting and fighting doujin (fan-made) games.

But what really matters is that (while Yoshino is my favourite), Yumi is just the cutest person ever to grace a screen. Ever.

(originally written 31.3.06. Seasons 3-4 here)