It doesn't seem that long ago that I had the November issue, but the
December issue
has arrived, and after their anniversary issue December's disk is back to
three
episodes.
First up was: The Wallflower.
So, we have this girl who's been told she's ugly, and believes it to be
true. As
result she becomes a bit of a recluse. She dresses in scruffy clothes,
grows her
hair so it hides her face and decorates her room like a chamber of
horrors. So her
aunt gets these four guys in to try to change her into a respectable young
lady.
This is quite a change from the usual harem anime and sounds like it might
even be
interesting.But don't be fooled, this is a pile of rubbish without a
single
redeeming feature.
Next!
And next we have Magikano.
Ok, we're back in sort of harem anime territory. Haruo lives with his
three
sisters, but one evening he comes home to find the girl who transferred
into his
class that day is now the family's live-in maid. There's more to it than
that of
course, Haruo's sisters are magic users, but his powers haven't appeared
yet and if
his sisters have anything to do with it, they never will. However, the new
girl is
also a magic user, but she's under a curse and the only way to remove the
curse is
for her to awaken Haruo's magic powers. So the battle-lines are drawn.
This is a
very silly series. OK, some of the jokes were slightly funny, even if you
could see
them coming a mile off. It's a mildly amusing way to spend a bit of time,
but how
many episodes of this silliness you could sit through is another question.
The third series was Yawara.
Now here's a real blast from the past, Yawara: The Fa****onable Judo Girl.
I
remember watching some of this series several years ago. This is the
story of a
high school girl who lives with her grandfather and dreams of being just
an
ordinary girl. Her grandfather has other ideas and wants her to take part
in the
Olympics and win the Gold Medal for judo, so totally ignoring Yawara's
wishes, he
dominates her life and forces her into training. With the conflict
between Yawara
and her desire to be just an ordinary girl and her manipulative
grandfather's
devious, and often underhanded, schemes to force her into the world of
competitive
judo there is an interesting storyline. But there's just not enough here
to hold
the attention, after a few episodes it just goes into 'mark-time' mode
with endless
filler episodes. Eventually, I lost interest in the series after around
19 or 20
of the series total of 125.
== Peter ==
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"Was it all a dream? No it really happened."
(Hitomi Kanzaki: Escaflowne)
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