Anime Meta-Review
Child's Toy
Index's
Home
Alphabetic
Quality
Genre
People
Recent
By Date
Title Info
- alias: Kodomo no Omocha
- seen: 1-34 of 102
- type: TV
- grade: exemplary
- people: Daichi
- genre: shoujo
- Other elements of this title:
- This title is a personal favourite.
- Series state: Can't find any more to watch.
- made: 1996
- Review created: A while ago, i'll revise it eventually.
- mod: none
This is a difficult one, as this is a very difficult anime to rate. The strength (or weakness) of this title comes from the number of components it manages to merge into a single show. This leads to it being brilliant, in that this generally works, average, because it sometimes doesn't or weird because it jumps around a lot to cover the needed ground. At heart this is a manic, humorous shoujo piece following the super-energetic child-actress sana. Sana is perhaps the most hyper character in anime (although it is suggested she's no genius) but is also capable of both moments of deep perception and childishness. Acting as resident cynic/opponent/romantic interest is the chilling Hayama, who has a sort of wisdom gained from his upbringing (explored in the first six episodes) but which has also left him somewhat cold inside. Surrounding these two are a wide variety of other characters, most of whom are interesting and have a definite part to play in the ongoing stories.
It must be said that the humor, both visual and story-based is very strong and energetic, something totally impossible to do justice to in a review. It is manic, clever and over-the-top, but it mostly works and is well integrated into the series. The important thing is that the background stories are fairly serious, the classroom bullying early on, Hayama's family problems and Sana's relationship problems are quite intense and serious. The ability of character's and stories to suddenly change from frenetically humorous to touchingly sincere is a measure of this show's skill. In addition it often manages to go over familiar shoujo ground in a very different way, pleasantly suprising you when a familiar event gets a novel twist (although with the character's involved this is not too suprising). Of course a lot of people are going to find this combination, and the general playfulness of the production, amazingly annoying. In addition the animation is fairly sketchy, which largely works but sometimes is annoying or disappointing. As I continued to watch I found the animation grew on me, and I realised how good some of the body language of the character's is, as well as the character appearance. The sound is good, the opening sequence is delightful, and this is one of the few shows where the lead character singing doesn't cause me to hit the fast-forward. The characters, the vast majority of whom I haven't mentioned, are good value. The dialog is hyper-active and there is a lot of it (I pity the translator) but well done. In essence what this review is trying to say is that this show is definitely worth trying (given any tolerance for shoujo or humor) and that this is the only way you are going to understand the very different experience that this anime offers.
This is a firm favorite on Usenet, with Sana's mom having near cult status herself (no suprise). It has been described as `Marmalade boy on acid' which is an interesting summary. Supposedly it is by the creators of `Fairy Princess Ren', which certainly explains where the hyper-humor was polished. There is a partial review at THEM which gives it top marks, mentions how impossible it is to describe the energy of this show and also suggests they haven't seen that many episodes, but is still the best review available.
Words by Andrew Shelton, Web by Ticti, Last Compile: Wed Aug 5 12:39:16 WST 2009