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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Watch | 8 | 6 | 7 | 9 | 5 | 7 |
 Devil Doll
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[series:659#752] |
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[Score: 70%]
For about half an episode this anime looked like the charming Story of a shy young man (with glasses) and a shy young woman (way too cute for not having a boyfriend), both completely inexperienced about relations but linked together by the course of events - at first by chance, then by the help of her best friend Namiko (who happens to be his co-worker at office). Both leads are nice, and their scenes are what makes this anime interesting to me. They alone plus Namiko and one rival might have been enough for an interesting romance story. If this were what the 3 episodes OVA are about then I would probably like this anime a lot, regardless of the clichés. But instead of writing a reasonable story about these two leads the producers made the old "we want to be in every category" mistake, adding lots of additional Characters, all of these made of cardboard and some of them really annoying (such as the chibi junior boss or the university teacher rival). Kudos to Nagisa's friend Isobe Namiko who's the most interesting character of the staff (and apparently enjoys setting up these two). But everything else is just so cliché that it hurts, and many of the jokes are lame. What's more, they built up two love triangles (plus one more candidate) in no time (instead of focusing on one relation) but make the other participants look so completely ridiculous that they could only serve for comical relief and not add anything to the story, other than wasting time and cause unnecessary problems. And why exactly would a young man who's convinced to never get a girlfriend just completely overlook a cute co-worker who's permanently telling him he's "her type" and tries to be near him on every occasion? Matsuo's many blunders may be necessary for the story - yet how they are occurring is all too predictable and unrealistic (such as him catching a woman falling down a tree and ending up twiddling her breasts... yawn). The best scenes are where Nagisa is in charge and cautiously tries to push the relation forward... it's just that these scenes are buried under the avalanche of silliness. At least they used the Fan-service elements sparingly (the cover image is completely misleading) which is important for a romance story. And it was quite interesting how Hanaoka-kun reacted to the ecchi magazine... Art and Animation was okay but scenes looked oddly blurred at times. The lively OP and the calm ED songs are average stuff; those few scenes with the leads alone or one thinking of the other - often using stills - are supported by minimalistic yet beautiful instrumental Music which was actually the highlight of the show for me. But none of this can fully make up for the significant deficits in the other departments. So for two episodes we get a mixture of a shy romance with obstacles and a truckload of slapstick humor. But to my surprise the final episode is very different: All of a sudden the silliness is gone, the drama takes over, the two side characters who form the triangles grow significantly and become influential, and the story is finally getting to the point. It's bad luck for me that I happened to know two crucial scenes of the closing sequence already as they're the climax elements of Ajimu Kaigan Monogatari resp. Love Hina Christmas Special... then again Yume de Aetara was released several years earlier and used these ideas first. In the end we get what we expected, and wondering where Matsuo intended to go in the final scene is only a minor problem. All in all, a decent 78 minutes watch for fans of romantic stories. It is just that you have to endure the silly parts first - and don't try to perform any plausibility checks for the story. This show almost earned a "Rent" for episode 3 alone... but given its many flaws in the other episodes this would be too forgiving. Last updated Tuesday, June 03 2008. Created Wednesday, January 18 2006. | ||||||||
| Rent |
 Forbin
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[series:659#1573] | ||||||
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Drama : Low/Med Comedy : Med Action : None SciFi : None Ecchi : Med This was pretty good. Little romance with a slight double love triangle in there. Too bad it was so short. That last episode was very good but the 3 episodes together are just not enough. Note : I took off ecchi. There is barely one scene and that's not enough for ecchi. Last updated Saturday, January 14 2006. Created Saturday, January 14 2006. | ||||||||
| Rent | 9 | 8 | 7 | 6 | 7 | 7 |
 Jer Alford
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[series:659#614] |
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This was a 3-episode OVA series that later spunoff into a 16-episode mini-TV series with short episodes similar to Mini-Goddesses and Di Gi Charat. In this romantic comedy, Misou is a young man in his mid-20s who has never had a girlfriend. However, one day in the rain, he is given some help by a kind girl. After checking with a fortune teller to see if he'll ever have a lover, he's informed by her that he'll never find a girlfriend. Right afterwards, he runs into the girl again. Her name is Nagisa, and her best friend happens to work at Misou's office building. After hooking up again, Misou works it into asking her out for real. They seem to be hitting it off, but suddenly Misou seems to be having getting some attention from his fellow female co-workers, while Nagisa is being equally wooed by some other potential suitors. This is pretty good shoujo story, but seems to borrow a little too much from other anime plotlines like the obligatory beach episode, and the finale which happens to take place at Christmas. Fans of Maison Ikkoku should like it though.
Last updated Tuesday, October 28 2003. Created Sunday, September 28 2003. | ||||||||
