ÆON Community

Yes, yes I know. More Anime. It’s because games suck and all I play currently is BC2 and TF2 with a wee bit of L4D2 on the side.

Also I apologise for the screenshots I will post below, I only had a low quality 4:3 sub seeing as its a few years old now.

The first thing that struck me about DearS was how similar it was to Chobits…some might disagree there but the first episode just screamed it. So I was rather surprised to find out that DearS actually came out first…but only by a month. Which means two separate anime with similar(ish) stories were in production at the same time….awesome.

DearS is an anime about an alien slave race known as … DearS. Pronounced how you would say: “Dears”. These aliens are given to other people to form a master-slave bond with them which manages to make use of the word “goshujinsama” which makes every single Anime nerd word wide get a woody. A small contingent of these DearS have crash landed in Japan and are now stuck on Earth as they try and pretend they are not a slave race as to not come across as completely useless aliens.

The DearS have an innate ability to understand languages and can learn them in a single day to perfection…however that level of skill doesn’t continue through other academic subjects…but who cares, they can fly and have magic powers and stuff.

We follow the life of Ikuhara Takeya as he comes to grips with living with a DearS which proves to be a great source of entertainment. Ren (Takeya’s DearS) is a defective DearS in that most DearS are assigned masters where she simply chooses one, this of course fulfils some weird prophecy about being the “Gift” or something.

Takeya is chosen by Ren against his will and he struggles to come to terms with the fact right up until the last episode. Along the way he is befriended by another two DearS which causes huge upset among the community and among his friends, eventually he is pitted against the DearS community who are after Ren…all in all its a pretty cliche story but the emphasis is all on the characters. So lets talk about them.

Takeya himself (pictured in the above two screenshots) is a high school student who comes from a torn family and has decided to leave them behind and go study alone. Takeya has a hatred of aliens and constantly thinks they are conspiring against him and thus he struggles to form a bond with Ren.

He also has a loli imouto who made me rage every second she was on the screen…she isn’t related to him by blood but the two have a relationship stronger than most siblings:

All she does is complain and moan about how Takeya isn’t giving her enough time and that Ren should move out away from Takeya…ANNOYING!

Ren herself is an odd sort as you would expect from a defective alien slave. All she wants to do is please Takeya in any way she can, however she does not understand humans correctly and constantly makes elementary oversights while in public which drives Takeya mad. She will often point out things like his porn collection to his friends thinking that it is a perfectly natural thing to talk about…hilarity ensues.

Just to add to Takeya’s mounting frustration surrounding the DearS, Miu comes along. Miu is an educated DearS who is attempting to learn about humanity by enacting a home-stay with a Japanese family while she studies in school. Miu eventually befriends Ren and Takeya and struggles to come to terms with her responsiblities as a DearS versus her love for her new friends and family. She also has ridiculously long pink hair.

The school teacher is worth noting as well…pretty much every time you see her, she is half naked talking about sex, even in the classroom. Although all she does is advance plots and provide comic relief:

The last person I’ll make note of is Neneko who is a childhood friend of Takeya and is madly in love with him but she simply cant admit it to either herself or others. She goes out of her way to help Takeya no matter what but her struggle is with Ren being so close to Takeya…while she dreams of bathing with Takeya, Ren simply hops in the bath with him.

There is little in the way of actual story apart from it being Takeya’s daily life with his friends but there is also the conflict among the DearS community which rears its ugly face towards the end of the series. But of course it isn’t expected to be a highly in depth story as its a light anime which is fun to watch casually and will make you laugh no matter what. Aside from that, it has an awesome ED:

The art isn’t fantastic either seeing as time is against it however the style is awesome with lots of emphasis on stupid looking faces. The animation is smooth enough even if the backgrounds are rather dull and lifeless in just about every scene…but again, we’re watching this for the characters…so balls to the art.

I gotta admit I kinda liked this anime…I didn’t expect too. It seemed too simple and didn’t have the level of comedy that the series I am currently watching but I liked the characters a lot and they all seemed to compliment each other. I especially liked how the characters base personality didn’t change at all through the series, that is to say Takeya stays defiant of the DearS and chooses not to be Ren’s master no matter what happens…this of course drives all the women around him barking mad and confuses the shit out of Ren. But yea…the characters were well casted and likeable (save for Takeya’s little sister).

I know there is a hell of a lot more to say about this anime but I simply can’t be assed…I give it an 7.5/10 because I’m not sure if I simply liked it or really liked it…I’ll figure it out later.

Now I’m off to watch Zero no Tsukaima and think about whether I should bore you lot with an impressions blog of Working!! (which is definitely worth watching btw).

Ciao!