Omo (via) laments that people are rejecting Maria-sama ga miteru (aka "Marimite") based on rather surface judgments, and thus are missing the quality beneath.

Well, I'm one of the people who have indicated I'm not interested in the show. And nothing I'm reading in any of the recent defense of it have changed my mind any. Even if everything they say about it is true, it's still not my kind of show.

But in reading his lament, it occurred to me that Divergence Eve is the ultimate series for being-a-book-that-is-completely-misjudged-because-of-its-cover. Only in this case it's a self-inflicted wound. When people see a framegrab like this: what are they supposed to think, after all? The only thing missing is tentacles.

The publicity art for the series is utterly deceptive, things like pictures of the girls lolling around on the beach in unreasonably skimpy swimsuits. (They'd be unreasonably skimpy even if the girls didn't have unreasonably huge boobs.)

So it's easy to come away with the idea that the series is braindead fluff about girls with titanic tits who constantly lose their clothing. And, well, some of that does happen. Quite a lot of it, in fact, at least in the early episodes.

But there's a lot more to the story than that. Everyone I know who finishes the series loves it, and laments that the character designs and the fan service distracted from a really good story about really engaging characters.

These days the entire series, both halves, is out as a thinpack for $45. That's a really good price for a series which is a lot better than the cover art would suggest.

UPDATE: One time Ubu Roi took his three DVDs of Divergence Eve with him to visit his friend Dr. Heinous.

I brought plenty of anime with me, and Dr.Heinous and I stayed up to watch Divergence Eve last night. It was supposed to be “just one disk” before we sacked out, but of course he got hooked by it, and “just one” became “just one more” which became “ok, let’s finish it tonight, I’ve got to know the answers….” (The heinous doctor pronounced it a damn good show, but the breasts were really distracting and unnecessary.)

And the second half is even better than the first.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 11:03 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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