Tenshi na Konamaiki 7

Created/Updated 2003-04-27



Animephile Rating: C (7.5)


Comments:

Doh! I hate when there's such a big misunderstanding. At AmoTokyo site, it says, "Original story is Popular Manga in Weekly Sunday magazine by Hiroyuki Nishimori. Weekly Sunday Manga Magazine is a popular Manga magazine, and it produced Mitsuru Adachi and Rumiko Takahashi." For some odd reason, I misunderstood that as saying that Rumiko Takahashi was involved in creating this show. She is not! I feel so stupid, but also much better at the same time!

Here's the thing. There's NO WAY Takahashi-san could come up with something so clever and entertaining as this. Do you know what her problem is? It's so freakin' obvious that her character pairs are in love with each other; yet, for the life of them, they can't act like normal couples! Inuyasha and Kagome, Ranma and Akane, and to a slightly lesser degree, Ataru and Lum, are all the same and annoying as hell. There are many so-called "romantic comedy" in which the characters have trouble getting together due to various reasons. As long as those reasons are reasonable and the story doesn't just drag on for no reason whatsoever, it won't be boring. Heck, even if it is boring, at least it won't be annoying. I'm simply amazed that Takahashi-san's been as popular as she is. Her characters stop developing and just keep arguing with each other. Her only solution is to introduce more good-for-nothing character pairs with worthless reasons for not being together.

In Tenshi na Konamaiki, Nishimori-sensei doesn't depend on such cheap tricks. First of all, the relationships aren't so obvious. The ones that won't work are fairly obvious, but those aren't all that important anyway. The ones that _might_ work aren't obvious at all because the situation prevents anyone from making an easy decision.

Not only are the relationships more unpredictable, the reasons for all the events are extremely complicated. To make things even more interesting, that complexity is revealed slowly as the show goes on. I bet many people will reach some kind of conclusion while watching this show, only to retract later as they learn more from the later episodes. All that strange mystery doesn't annoy you at all because you don't even get much time to ponder about it. "Why," you ask? Because you're laughing so hard, you have a hard to keeping track of what's going on!

Let's talk about the characters. Yup, they're a bunch of stereotypical anime characters... or are they. That's absolutely untrue. Typical stereotypical anime characters are just that. Typical. Once they're assigned their stereotypes, that's all they'll ever be. What those characters do, stops being amusing the second time they do it, yet they keep doing the same thing over and over. What impressed me about this series is that the characters, despite being marked as stereotypes, continue to amaze me as they keep breaking the limit of their assigned stereotypes. Not only that, they're aware of themselves when they shouldn't be and unaware of themselves when they should be. How can you not enjoy this stuff!?

In my review for DVD 1, I said that there's not much detail in the animation. I take it back. It's wonderfully rich. It's certainly not a high budget animation, but they get by damn well using neat animation tricks to cut down on complex frame needs. And unlike "Shiawase-sou no Okojo-san," animation quality doesn't drop off. Heck, it gets better in some later episodes.

As Hayashibara-san said in her 18-minute interview (extra for DVD Vol.3), this role is made for Hayashibara-san. Who am I to argue with the goddess of seiyuu?

I think there're going to be total of 13 volumes. You bet I'll be getting them all.


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