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!

No doubt you will have already looked at the images below and discovered what B Gata H Kei is all about, but I shall warn you that this post isn’t really SFW. I’m sure your boss doesn’t want you to see ecchi whilst being paid.

The Story:

The anime itself is set around a 15 year old girl Yamada who is a virgin but is kinky as hell. Her goal is to reach 100 casual sex partners but alas that would turn this anime straight into a full on hentai anime, instead she gets caught up on some unremarkable boy named Kosuda. Kosuda is a soft spoken virgin (well…we don’t actually know…but we can assume) who is extremely nice but at the same time awkward as hell. So the story continues with a girl that is super model material against a guy who is too awkward to get any where with her – You can kinda guess the plot from there.

While talking to a friend ChatterboxZombie about the anime, we discussed whether or not it is as we expected. I honestly didn’t think I’d like this anime as it guarantees to leave a lot to be desired but was I increasingly surprised as the first episode played along, Chatter exclaimed: “i knew i would [like B Gata], even though its generic and paper-thin its fun and light” and that sentence right there almost sums up the anime completely. You know it isn’t there to be in depth so you expect the story to be pathetic else the overly cliche characters (explained next) simply would not fit into the series well.

15 year old 43 kg girl with that sorta cleavage?…lol.

The Characters:

Our protagonist Yamada is highly outspoken yet horribly confused about how to get men. She really wants to have sex but she only views the end goal instead of the path to get there which leaves her in some seriously awkward situations. She is voiced by Yukari Tamura who I only really know well from Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha (as Nanoha herself) and again to quote Chatter: “The voice for Yamada was for me rather unexpectedly high…kinda annoying at first but I got used to it”. Within the first 5 minutes this same thought hit me, initially it was just annoying to listen to but as time went along it became more natural, unfortunately however she does the singing for the OP and ED, neither of which I like:

Kosuda is how you would expect the typical mid-pubescent teenager to be around Yamada, highly awkward. Yamada is hopelessly inept at conveying the correct meaning in her thoughts and Yamada always misunderstands her meaning so is not sure if she is coming on to him or just being bi-polar. When he thinks there’s a chance to get closer he makes a move but each time is thwarted by Yamada as she realises how weird she is being…so he’s stuck in a rut and its funny.

Yamada has a few friends that are introduced in the first ep, notably her big breasted F-cup friend who is the typical sidekick to the struggling main character. There is also a few other girls (and guys for that matter)  that idolise Yamada but they aren’t worth mentioning.

Both Kosuda and Yamada have sisters, Kosuda’s is older than he and is protective of her spineless brother while Yamada has the moebomb loli imouto who, at one point, is reading her hentai magazines…

The Art:

Its awesome…as I have sadly come to expect these days which makes it infinitely harder to move back to older series. The style is well thought out and looks simple yet elegant, the characters themselves aren’t particularly amazing facially but their uniforms/bags/other shit (pantsu) is drawn well and it works. So nuff said there.

The Attraction:

Essentially the reason I look forward to this anime is its comedy, honestly its so cheesy its funny. Again, its light hearted and blunt and you can’t really predict anything because Yamada is a fucktard so it keeps the comedy flowing rather well.

So far I think I will watch this anime for the rest of the season, if it keeps up with its great style and comedy I could easily see this being a potential favourite comedy anime…but we shall see.

The other reason to watch it of course is the ecchi…which is always followed by comical moments.

OH GNOES! FORGOT THE CONDOMS!

Duarararaarararara comes across as a semi-slice of life anime following this bloke Mikado Ryugamine (what a mouthful) who is sort of…well…weird. He spent most of his life indoors and has never left his local town…so naturally he thinks it will be a wonderful idea to go park up at Tokyo and study there.

Because y’know…that makes a hell of a lot of sense.

He meets up with his childhood friend Masaomi Kida and for the first episode, he follows him around and meets Kida’s friends and learns about the local populace.

In this world, there is a headless Biker with neko-mimi slapped on the helmet…inorite? Headless with a helmet? Yea…I don’t get it either, but that’s the point. People relate this anime very kindly to Baccano! Which was amazingly entertaining however Durarara!! does not quite promise as much as Baccano did, but then again I am basing this on the first episode.

So far our hero has met a guy who throws vending machines at people, a giant black Russian sushi chef, an assortment of Kida’s odd friends and watched an overly moe girl get dragged off to be raped…or tickled…or who knows, only for the girl to be saved by our headless mystery hero…who has a giant scythe that cuts through people…but doesn’t.

Yea, that’s about as much as we are allowed to know after the first episode…however it was entertaining enough an episode for me to at least try out the series and see how it pans out, however it is a 24 episode series which leads me to believe at some point there’s going to be some horrid fillers, however in saying that I realise that they have introduced a LOT of interesting and unique characters that might allow the series to flow well.

So yea, I’m going to give this a go as a comedy/almost slice-of-life anime and as with Sora no Woto…I’ll let you know if I ditch it/love it.