I haven't watched this in a long, long time so I took a look and there was a full BD rip available. torrent torrent torrent and now I'm watching it.

As harem comedies go, this is far from the worst out there. Most shows like this will drag out the introductions, with each haremette getting an intro episode. One nice thing about this show is that they didn't do that. Seven girls, and they introduced all of them in the first episode.

Anyway, Our Hero is Kotarou. It's implied that his mother is dead. His father has moved overseas for work, and Kotarou has been accepted as a student in the high school which inevitably is featured in (nearly) every romcom. He has found an apartment for the astoundingly low rent of just 5000 yen per month (about $45) and considers himself extremely fortunate.

But the reason that apartment is so cheap is that it has a reputation for being haunted. And it is in fact a top drawer weirdness magnet. Ep 4 was a beach episode, so forthwith the cheesecake!

The apartment is haunted. The ghost's name is Sanae:

The next haremette is Theia.

She's princess of some sort of stellar empire, and in order to prove her worthiness to succeed her mother, the currrent Empress, she has to get the occupant(s) of that room to swear fealty to her. She is extremely sensitive about her flat chest.

Ruth is her aide/servant. She also serves as a bit of a governor, to prevent Theia from blowing up the Earth with weapons on her spaceship, and in general to rein her in when Theia gets furious.

Kiriha is from an underground empire. Her people once had a shrine on that spot, and her job is to gain control so she can rebuild the shrine -- which will then provide plentiful mana for reconquest of the surface. Or something like that. And yes, her boobs are by far the largest in the show. And she knows it and is proud of the fact.

Yurika is a mahou shoujo. She wasn't one originally, but a real mahou shoujo saved Yurika's life but was dreadfully injured doing so, and Yurika was drafted to replace her until she could recover. Yurika hates being a magical girl but feels an obligation to carry on. Her reason for being there is that there's a huge concentration of some sort of magical energy there and she has to defend it so that dark magical girls don't gain control of it.

Shizuka is the landlady of the building. Her only interest in all this is to prevent the others from destroying the place. She attends the same high school as Kotarou and is in his class. Initially her only interest in Kotarou is as a customer, but she starts becoming interested as the show continues.

Six haremettes, far more unusual and eccentric than the usual harem. Enough so that it's possible the series is intended as a sendup of the genre. So which one is Kotarou most attracted to?

None of them, actually. From the very start, he has been strongly attracted to Harumi. She's the head of the Knitting club, which he joins, making the second and last member. There's a strong hint in the first episode that she may be a goddess, which would make her rank all the others. (Actually it's something else, but equally supernatural.)

And they're not happy about it.

If I have any real complaint about the series, it's the way the director abuses Yurika. They decided to make her the show's "Butt Monkey" because they think it's funny. I don't think so, and I grimace and cringe every time she gets abused by someone. Plus I don't think it's funny to watch her cry.

Yurika is actually a nice girl -- and a very strong and competent magical girl. Two or three times she does magic that actually saves them all, but no one else notices and she gets no credit. The only real exception is Harumi.

Harumi's health is poor and she has to go to the hospital a lot. In one episode Kotarou convinces her to be his partner in an athletic competition, and she gets about half way and then collapses on the ground. Yurika is with her, and uses very strong magic to heal her. It's not just that Yurika is treating the specific instance; Yurika makes Harumi's medical problems go away. Harumi wakes up and Yurika tells her it was magic -- and it's not clear whether Harumi believes her. I'd like to think she does, but Harumi is such a nice person that even if she didn't she wouldn't say anything like that.

There's nothing earth shattering about the show but it's a good time, and to the extent that is has an ending (like most romcoms this one leaves open the possibility of a sequel), anyway, to the extent that it has an ending it's a rather nice one.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Cheesecake at 04:27 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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