Photon

For me, all of the nudity and other ecchi content is uncalled for. But since this is a Masaki Kajishima title, it is to be expected. The series is mostly very comedic in nature. The comedy comes from a mix of heavy slapstick and "potty" jokes. I admit that there are some really good laughs in this series and that is reason enough to watch. Most of the laughs come at the expence of the series villian, but that's OK. They are still laugh out loud funny.

The overall story is nothing to write home about. In fact, when the series gets somewhat more serious, it suffers. It was difficult to accept the serious stuff after the outrageous humor that we'd been seeing prior to this. Characters who are bafoons don't suddenly come off well as serious.

Don't let the title fool you into thinking that Photon is the only idiot in the series. All of the characters are "baka" to a degree or other. Young Photon is an idiot for so easily being fooled by baloon dolls that look like his companions. Keyne is an idiot in that she is constantly letting her guard down which allows the Count to put tracers on her. Aun is an idiot for how she treats her adopted brother Photon. Rashara is an idiot for being so trusting. Papacha-sama is just an idiot period.

Bottom line: very funny at times, extremely ecchi at times, and "baka" at times. Worth a watch though.

Last updated Sunday, August 01 2004. Created Tuesday, January 27 2004.

If nothing else, this anime is kinetic. It would be interesting to show Yokohama Shopping Trip and then this at an anime club meeting and observe the results. It is hard to rate the show as your opinion of it will stem from your tolerance for over the top physical comedy, as there is a lot of it here. For me, in the 4 episodes I saw, it tended to get a little redundant. However, there were certainly a number of gags that worked well, and enough interesting ideas to make this show somewhat notable.

First, the characters. There is the namesake of the series, Photon Earth, a runty little kid who happens to be the strongest human in the universe. The reasons are hinted at, but really not revealed in the first 4 episodes. Then there is his charge, Princes Aun Freya, the girl his sister told him to protect before she (his sister) left for parts unknown. Aun is an under-developed, hyper-active loud mouth, who might stand a chance at making the Anime" href="http://members.tripod.com/therossman/top10babes/skanks.html">Anime">http://members.tripod.com/therossman/top10babes/skanks.html">Anime top 10 skank list (I never thought I would use that word in an actual sentence). I'm not quite sure what kind of princess she is (perhaps the translators messed up) but there must not have been a lot of applicants for the job. Oh yeah, she has this rather interesting ability to stop time.

Anyway, they both live on a little out of the way planet which is 70 percent ocean. The rest is mostly desert (as a meteorologist I take exception with that). Their already rather interesting lives are disturbed when Photon stumbles upon Kiine's (last name unknown) wrecked ship. He awakens her from stasis (I have never, ever seen some runty little guy awaken an incredible (nekkid) babe from stasis in an anime before -- nope, this has to be the most original thing I have ever seen) at which point she promptly ties to blow him up. In one legitimately original and quite humorous twist he writes "baka" on her forehead which turns out to have BIG cross cultural implications!

Awakened from her slumber, she and Photon set out to look for her ojiisan's "aho" recorder. "Aho" power is very big in the series. Apparently this means something like "moron" in Japanese. All of this was lost on me -- one of cross cultural things that would have been hysterical had I known. Sort of like how I never really got the idea of "May the Schwartz be with" you from Spaceballs.

She is being pursued by the lecherous, dominering and generally rather dim Papachari the 7th. The guy also has an aversion to wearing pants, which is just plain scary. Apparently he has been hired by some powerful galactic noble house to commandeer this aho thingy. It was he who shot Kiine down on the planet to begin with. If the Tenchi similarities are meant to be in-jokes, great; if, as I have heard, this is done by some of the same people who just happen to have a similar style and use the same devices, then borrring. I'll have to investigate as this will color my opinions.

Photon and Kiine meet up with Aun, and the two females immediately start to vie for the affections of Photon. This involves a rather humorous cooking contest, which is frequently interrupted by Papachari's attempts to get the aho recorder -- really he is more after Kiine, who has sort of power that can be unleashed by the aho recorder on this particular planet it so happens. I was a little fuzzy on that point.

Anyway, Photon routinely beats Papachari to a bloody pulp in a rather drawn-out, and not particularly funny, series of events. Toward the end of the volume there is an extended scene where Papacha-sama tries to get into the onna's side of a hot spring where the girls are apparently comparing bust sizes. He tries to enlist Photon's help (characters interact quite freely in show, weird, but I liked it!) with the expected results.

The animation quality was above average, with good frame rates, well done backgrounds and some pretty intricate scenes. Character designs are very definitive, and Kiine is pleasing enough, though I wasn't really taken with most of the designs. She does have these neat bracelet thingys that let her levitate (fairly inventive and well choreographed stuff there). There is a ton of nudity in the series, and I'm not a huge fan of the type of rather low-brow physical comedy often employed, though it was fun to watch Papacha-sama drop-kick his subordinates. The music was not bad, and some of background music was flat out good. On the lower end of the rent spectrum. If this is by the Tenchi people and not poking fun at them, then I might lower it to a watch.

Last updated Thursday, February 24 2000. Created Thursday, February 24 2000.