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Minami-ke Tadaima anime review

This story is a simple depiction of the ordinary lives of the three Minami sisters. Please do not expect too much.

That’s the disclaimer in every episode of Minami-ke Tadaima, and the show is exactly what it says on the tin. Haruka, Kana and Chiaki wake up, eat, go to school, come home, eat, sleep and on and on through the episodes. It’s a great series for anyone who likes slice-of-life with relatively normal characters, but after four seasons maybe enough is enough?

Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed the show thoroughly, but the nature of most slice-of-life shows is that things will (almost) always reset to the status quo, so there’s rarely any development of note. Normally this isn’t a problem because such shows usually last only 13 to 26 episodes and end before you can get fed up, but Minami-ke is at double that number and counting. That means after 4 seasons things that were funny or interesting in the beginning now prompt a “That’s enough already!” reaction out of me. In particular:

– Hosaka is still fantasizing about Haruka yet still hasn’t managed to even talk to her properly yet.

– Fujioka is still failing to confess his love to Kana.

– Riko is still failing to confess her love to Fujioka.

– That annoying girl who is in love with Natsuki is still in love with him but can’t confess. Though we have learned that Natsuki has a bit of a crush on Haruka.

– Fujioka still doesn’t know that Touma is a girl.

– Makoto is still cross-dressing as Mako-chan… though I suppose Chiaki is slightly more friendly to boy Makoto now.

– Uncle Takeru is still coming over to mope… though he’s less of a mooch now.

So there have been slight developments, but for the most part everything is still the same as ever. That means fans of the series will get exactly what they were hoping for when they picked it up but it also means people like me who were getting just a bit tired of the formula last time will be a little disappointed. And even more so when they tease developments then take them away, like when they made it seem Haruka was into Natsuki, or that Fujioka and annoying-girl-who-likes-Natsuki would get together.

At least the show only added one new member to the cast (Miyuki. Or was she there all along?) but the cast is already plenty large, so I had to slog through a lot of skits that dealt with people I either don’t care for (the annoying girl that likes Natsuki, Atsuko and Maki), used to like but am now tired of (Hosaka, Makoto) or people I actively dislike (Natsuki, Hayami-sempai). I felt a little sad when the past three seasons ended but with Minami-ke Tadaima it’s just like, huh. Okay.

Of course I will still watch season 5 if and when it comes out, but the series is really stagnating now. If nothing changes after this then the next season will be my last.

Gyakkyou Nine volumes 1 & 2 manga review

Yuup, you guessed it! Another baseball manga! I haven’t dropped Ikkyuu-san entirely, but volume 4 was rather boring, so I started something else on my list. I meant to just read a chapter or two for a change of pace, but before I knew it I’d finished the first two volumes of Gyakkyou Nine.

Gyakkyou = adversity. Nine = the nine members of the baseball team. This super hotblooded shounen manga is all about a baseball captain named Fukutsu Toshi (i.e. Indomitable Fighting Spirit) overcoming all kinds of far-fetched trials to keep his team intact and get them to Koshien. First he has to keep his team from disaster long enough so they can face the best team in the prefecture, then later on he has to study hard enough to avoid remedial classes… only to find out that most of his team didn’t pass the exams either… so now he needs to recruit a new team… and then he injures his arm… It just never ends.

Is it good? So far, it’s definitely amusing. In a trainwreck kind of “Just how bad can it get?!” situation. Everyone reacts in a completely over the top way to the least little problem, and it’s pretty funny somehow. That’s how exaggeration has to be – waaaay beyond the realm of reason, otherwise the reader starts trying to insert some logic into the situation, and then the whole thing falls apart. Kazuhiko Shimamoto avoids that by keeping the manga constantly moving along and making the problems flow thick and fast. At the end of volume 2 Toshi is in yet another pinch: his dream girl asked him out on a date… on the day of his match… and he accepted and ditched the game! How is he going to face his team now? Heh heh, this should be interesting to see.

Despite being a manga about a baseball team captain, Gyakkyou Nine isn’t really a baseball manga, so there isn’t much focus on the game itself. The team does some cursory practice once in a while, and we’ve been shown fragments of a game once or twice, but it’s a manga about a guy who just happens to play baseball, so the sport is just a way to introduce more drama into his life, nothing more. It could be a baseball or a boxing manga without losing much. Which is not to say I hold that against it. It’s a pretty fun and silly manga, and I’ll be taking a break from Ikkyuu-san to finish this off first since it’s only 6 volumes.

Namiuchigawa no Muromi-san anime review

Also known as ‘Muromi on the Shore’, Namiuchigawa no Muromi-san is a 13-minute 13-episode comedy series about a boy named Taku who fishes up a mermaid named Muromi one day only to find that mermaids once caught aren’t so easily gotten rid of.

There isn’t much story to speak of. Most episodes consist of Tak bravely trying to fish at the same spot while Muromi and an increasingly crazy cast of friends show up and get in his way. It turns out Muromi has been alive for millions of years and knows all kinds of mythical creatures like the (stupidly adorable) Yeti and (spacey fanservicey) Levia-san. So every episode has the gang saying and doing crazy things like they were the most natural thing in the world, like Muromi going out drinking with the Kraken or Levia-san casually blowing a hole in an ice floe to threaten a bunch of penguins.

Is it funny? Sometimes. Especially in the beginning when you don’t know what Muromi is going to pull next. “Oh yeah, the mythical sea palace? It went out of business a couple of years ago.” “Atlantis? Went up in flames. Best fireworks show ever.” Unlike most other such shows, Muromi and co. don’t particularly try to hide their existence from human beings. In fact they’re so used to being among people that they ride around on skateboards saying hi to everyone and the only one to bat an eyelash is Takkun, though he gives up pretty quickly.

Is it a good show? Umm, well… Almost. The best thing about it is that each episode is short, so it’s over before you know it and you’re left wanting more. And in the early episodes it’s full of surprises and you’re always looking forward to the next revelation about mermaid society. Also some of the characters like Yeti and Harpy are completely adorable both in terms of design and behavior. Yeti especially is really, really cute. Is this what they call… moe?!

Buuut… some of the jokes fell a bit flat sometimes. Like Muromi and her buddies washing up on a shore drunk is just …huhhh… And all the episodes revolving around the kappa were just depressing and offputting. Don’t put such ugly characters in my cute series! The worst part of the show was the fanservice, the sheer tastelessness of some of it, especially the scenes where the characters pretend to fellate cucumbers just because… what? I have no idea. I had to skip a couple of episodes and end the OAV early because of that.

So I started out very enthusiastic about Muromi on the Shore, but the longer the show went on the older the jokes got and the more disgusting the show itself grew. I’d give a 7/10 to the first half and a 3/10 to the second half. Overall though, since it’s only about half the length of most anime shows, it’s a good show to check out if you’re looking for a slapstick comedy and don’t mind crude fanservice as much as I do.

Level E manga review

Did you know that once upon a time Yoshihiro Togashi could actually draw? Or maybe I should say “Yoshihiro Togashi would actually draw.” The potential is still there, but you wouldn’t know it to look at current chapters of Hunter x Hunter (a.k.a. Hiatus x Hiatus). You would know it if you read Level E, though, a short but enjoyable 3-volume manga Togashi started in 1995 after finishing Yu Yu Hakusho. The summary goes like:

Tsutsui Yukitaka is a freshman entering high school who hopes to become a good baseball player. However, when he walks into his new apartment, there is a man in the room who claims that he is an alien who lost his memory. He is in fact the first prince of Planet Dogra, known to have the best brain but the worst nature.

But the whole story is really about Ouji the prince of Dogra and the high school freshman is reduced to a rarely-appearing side character pretty quickly. And it’s not just him but the most of the rest of the cast only appear sparingly to be used and discarded and then reappear again when you least expect them. That has the disadvantage of leaving all the characters paper-thin, but on the plus side it keeps every chapter fresh because you just never know who’s going to show up.

There’s no real overarching story besides “Ouji toys with everyone for his amusement” but most chapters deal with some alien or another coming to/being on Earth and some drama occurring. Some stories are outright hilarious, but they also just as likely to be serious and even tragic. The best chapters are the ones that don’t feature Ouji at all or have very little of him, but while he can be an irritating jerk sometimes (all the time), other characters agree with the reader on his hateability and frequently band together to try and defeat him, making it fun to root for their usually futile attempts to get rid of him.

As with most Togashi series the art isn’t 100% consistent and gets worse as the series draws to a close, but like in the nursery rhyme “When it was good, it was very very good, but when it was bad it was horrid!” Thus I wouldn’t recommend trying Level E for the art alone but rather for the art + the characters + the great stories within.

There’s only one story that was boring and difficult to follow – some rubbish about a baseball team that got lost in a dream. It’s ironic because I picked Level E in the first place because it had baseball in the description, but the baseball parts turned to be the worst things about it. In fact nobody ever even plays baseball, they just talk about it. So you can basically ignore that bit… wait, you didn’t care in the first place, did you? Don’t mind me and my baseball manga fetish ^.^;;

Get Level E if: you like sci-fi, especially aliens. You like comedy. You like short-story/anthology formats. You like drama/tragedy that doesn’t get too depressing. Don’t get Level E if: You hate sadistic characters that get away with their bad behavior. You prefer a consistent, well-developed cast. Btw, I hear an anime came out recently, so if you’d rather watch than read, you can give the Level E anime a try instead.

Maria the Convenience Store Girl volume 1 manga review

Maria the Convenience Store Girl is a 4-volume seinen slice of life manga written and illustrated by Mitsuru Miura. It was licensed in English by Netcomics and can still be read on their site for a small fee ($0.25 per chapter. I shudder to think how little the translator was paid). The Netcomics summary looks like this:

Maria is a sweet country girl who ventures to Tokyo to honor a favor for her late grandmother. Waiting for her at her destination – the Rosy Convenience Store in Misakigaoka – are the Tomekichi brothers, struggling with an increasingly senile grandfather, a clueless father, and a family business on the verge of bankruptcy. All seems hopeless, until one day Maria turns up on their doorstep – to the dismay of one brother in particular. To complicate matters, there are moody customers, ever-present food issues, and a shady inspector ready to strike at any moment.

Will Maria be able to save this little convenience store? Or is it doomed to fold?

A fun story that deals with life, love, and lunch, “Maria, The Convenience Store Girl” will make you feel warm inside–and maybe even a bit hungry!

Of course she’s going to be save it, otherwise this manga wouldn’t even exist. Maria is basically a perfect angel from on high who charms anyone and everyone she deals with in two pages flat. She’s earnest, naive, friendly, innocent (even when she’s randomly stripping to provide fanservice) and basically everything you would expect of a generic Mary Sue. They could easily have titled the series “Mary Sue Saves The Day,” since that is what every chapter boils down to.

No matter how serious the issue, whether it’s something minor like customers with dirty feet or something major like a woman trying to pass another man’s baby off as her boyfriend’s, all Maria has to do is smile and/or plead earnestly and everyone falls down at her feet and worships her knowledge and wisdom. “Maria showed me the error of my ways” is their everlasting refrain. It is ridiculously cheesy how she always ends up being the perfect solution to everyone’s problems. How Tokyo ever got along before she came along is beyond me.

Since that’s the case, there’s no need for me to read more than one volume of Maria the Convenience Store Girl. Heck, there’s no need to even read more than two or three chapters. Problem arise -> Maria solves it easily -> Everyone sings her praises -> Repeat from start. Even if more complex matters do arise in later volumes, it’s obvious she’s just going to solve them in her ‘innocent, country girl’ way, so there’s no reason to read it. The supporting cast only exists to make her look good, the art isn’t anything special, the little ‘comedy’ present is laughable, but not in a good way and long story short there’s no real reason to get this manga, not even for $0.25 a chapter.