This is the third part (at least) of a longstanding franchise. I've never watched any other part of it before, and I don't have the slightest idea what it's about. So, watching the first episode, what does it seem to be?

Magical horror? Occult mystery? No, it comes off as a rather prosaic harem show with lots of mild gratuitous fan service.

Our harem lead is going to high school. (Check) He's the only guy in a school club, along with five gorgeous girls, none of whom is flat chested and a couple of who are really stacked. (Check) All of them have distinctly different hair colors. (Check) There are hints that all the girls are hung up on him to some greater or lesser extent. (I'm running out of checks.) One of them is his cousin, incest-fetish bait. (More check). She's his roommate, which is an interesting twist, and she's the one with the biggest tits, which gainax like crazy, and she sleeps with him because she likes to cuddle.

Oh, and there's a gay guy who also has the hots for Our Hero. He leads the alt-newspaper.

There's some attempt at establishing an overall story for the series that isn't specifically related to the harem, but it looks to be pretty threadbare.

This island features a giant sakura tree which historically had bloomed year round. Suddenly, about twenty years ago, it stopped doing that. It had a reputation for being magical, and for granting wishes.

Our harem is the staff of the high school newspaper -- one of two such. Theirs is the "official" newspaper; there is also an "unofficial" newspaper which apparently is more popular. Rikka, the head of the club, thinks this is intolerable. She believes in reincarnation, and she thinks that she and Our Hero were involved in their last lives. She believes she was a master magic user.

Anyway, her plan for upstaging the other newspaper is to do their next issue about magic. We get various fan service hijinks (including one of the girls taking her shirt off and displaying a rather pleasing rack) and then the lot of them head out to the ex-magical tree, where they all place their hands on it and make wishes. We only find out what Our Hero's wish is, and it is rather dangerous. "May I continue to enjoy a pleasant life with these club members." Sounds like a prescription for a time loop to me, but if so that will come later in the series.

After they do that, the tree suddenly blooms. It's apparently the first time in 20 years, and in following days it's all over the TV news. Also, everyone in the harem receives an email on their cell phones, dated 1951. Which is rather confusing, to say the least. (State of the art for electronics in 1951 was vacuum tubes, and it was 20 years or so later before anyone heard the word "email".)

The banter amongst the girls just before the wish implies strongly that all of them made romantic wishes about Our Hero.

Here's the incest fetish:

Her name is Charles and she's his cousin. She's from Europe, and has platinum blonde hair. She also jiggles and bounces whenever she moves. She calls him Taka-kun and he calls her Lulu-nee. She's rather forward, ahem.

By the way, there's also voyeur fetish. At the beginning one of the other girls, who seems to be their neighbor, complained because Charles and Kiyotaka were up late the previous night playing video games. Presumably she overhears this event, too, and i'm sure it's going to become a subject of conversation at some future time.

If the harem aspect of the show ends up dominating, it's going to end up being completely pedestrian. But if the occult mystery dominates, it could end up being pretty good. Right now it looks like harem antics are the main thrust of the show, so I don't hold out much hope. But I'll watch another episode or two. Considering how many times we got chest-closeups of the girls, often with jiggle, seems like pandering is the song of the day.

It definitely will end up in the top rotation. The first episode alone had plenty of material for that and it's clear that more is coming. The big question is whether they front-loaded it (ahem) or if it's going to come to dominate the show.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 11:41 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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