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[series:2135#628] | ||||||
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(Eight episodes watched): I had thought that this might be a children's show but gave it a look just in case. That was fortunate, because it turned out to be fairly amusing and entertaining. Gainax, the studio which virtually invented fanservice with some daringly questionable works twenty-something years ago played a part in the making of Hanamaru Youchien. The thought occured to me that nowadays it would probably be more daring to produce an anime without fanservice than one with it. Although there are hints of sexuality there is nothing perverted about this show. HY is about Tsuchida, a young man who makes the unusual career choice of becoming a kindergarten teacher. He finds himself attracted to fellow teacher Yamamoto (the female kind) while one of his five-year-old students, Anzu, becomes attracted to him. It's a cute, harmless situation quite unlike the nasty Kodomo no Jikan. Some unlikely things happen and some jokes made me groan while others made me smirk. But at the end I felt that the foundation of an entertaining, fun story, with more sophistication than I'd expected, had been laid. Episode two, however was slightly disappointing. The show didn't seem to be going with the fairly intriguing romantic triangle angle, instead it went off on a new tangent with another of the three principal girls and her feud with a male classmate. It's hard not to like such a cute, innocent show, but kind of hard to find things to like, as well. The jokes aren't killer, and it's seeming pretty episodic at this point. The thought occured to me that maybe I could put the time required to watch Hanamaru to better use. The Evangelion jokes in episode five were a nice touch, but otherwise kindergarten slice-of-life isn't all that entertaining. It consists of stuff like solving a kid's frustration at not being allowed to help her father work as a fishmonger; the solution is about as exciting as the problem itself. Since the comedy isn't LOL funny, an ongoing story would be nice; but Tsuchi and Yamamoto's supposed romance doesn't seem to be going anywhere, nor is anything else. The fact that each episode consists of two largely seperate sub-stories makes it easier to watch Hanamaru, since I can watch one today and the other tommorrow without much trouble. I don't look forward to sitting through a full 23 minutes of HK all at once. As it turned out, I shelved HK when I found myself several weeks behind my anime viewing schedule. There were numerous shows more entertaining than this one which I needed to catch up on. Last updated Thursday, May 13 2010. Created Wednesday, January 13 2010. | ||||||||
Other Sites
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| Official Japanese Series Site | http://www.starchild.co.jp/special/hanamaru/ |
