It seems as if every season has a show which vastly exceeds expectations. This season that show is Hanamaru Kindergarten. It's Gainax. It's about three girls who enter kindergarten, whose teacher is a young man in his first job just out of college. One of the girls has yellow and brown hair and her name is Anzu, and she decides she's going to marry him.

Based on that description, what I was expecting was a clone of Kodomo no Jikan, which became notorious in the US under the name "Nymphet". In KnJ, it's about 9 year olds, but one of them actively tries to seduce her teacher. It's a lolicon dream, or maybe a lolicon nightmare.

Hanamaru Kindergarten doesn't turn out to be that way. In fact, they hang a lampshade on that concern in the first episode.

These are four of the six main characters. Left to right, Sakura, Tsuchida, Anzu, Yamamoto. Tsuchida is the audience-viewpoint character. He is newly graduated from college, and being a teacher at this kindergarten is his first job. He seems to be normal, innocent, good natured, and likeable.

Anzu is the kid. She looks like she's from the same mold as Potemayo. All the kids in this show are drawn like that. The kindergarten is a two-year school and she's first year so presumably she's four.

Sakura is Anzu's mom. She went to the same high school as Tsuchida and they were buddies. She's older than him; he calls her sempai. She fell in love with the art teacher in the school and they got married. He got a job in America, and she got pregnant, so she dropped out of school so she could stay with him. Anzu is the result of that pregnancy. Sakura and Tsuchida are both surprised to encounter one another again.

Sakura has an impish sense of humor and likes to tease Tsuchida. Anzu decides that since her mommy married her teacher, it's OK for Anzu to do the same thing, so Anzu decides to marry Sakura's old friend. This seems to tickle Sakura's funny bone, so she encourages it.

Yamamoto is the love interest. She's a fellow teacher. As soon as Tsuchida saw her he was smitten, and rightly so; she's gorgeous. She seems to think this whole business isn't very harmful, and in fact neither do the other two teachers or the school manager.

The way that Tsuchida is instantly taken with Yamamoto, combined with how beautiful she is, instantly defuses most of the squick. Irrespective of the situation as it develops, it's obvious that Tsuchida isn't even slightly a lolicon, and equally it's obvious that the others at the school all know it.

So the one aspect of this show which scared me the most -- that it was a lolicon show like Kodomo no Jikan except with even younger kids -- isn't true, and the folks at Gainax spend most of the first show proving it. To the extent to which anything like that continues to happen in the show, it will be a running gag.

Here's the rest of the main cast:

Along with Anzu, that's Hiiraga aka Hii-chan, and Koume. Koume is quiet, shy, but begins to open up by the end of the first episode. Hii-chan is, by all reports, the real treasure of this show. I'm getting Yue vibes from her, based on the kind of voice she has and the way she speaks. The artistic decision regarding how her eyes are drawn is interesting and I'm not sure what they're trying to imply with it. (My first take was that it implied she was a space case, but she doesn't seem to be.)

In the first episode we see all three of them at home. All of them seem to have happy home lives; no angst coming from there, I think. Hii-chan's home is unusual, though:

That's Hii-chan hanging out in her dad's study. I'll be interested in learning more about him, but he's obviously a science nerd of some kind. That book she's looking at certainly isn't a kid's book. And it makes me wonder if she can read.

I learned to read when I was 4, but reading English is a whole lot less difficult than reading Japanese. If she can read at that age, she's up there in Chiyo-chan territory in terms of intellect. The kind of book she's looking at would be out of reach of a normal 6th grader.

And of course, the cat suit is made of awesome.

After one episode I'm feeling a whole lot less worried and a whole lot more interested.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in General Anime at 07:10 PM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
Post contains 776 words, total size 5 kb.

1 You have no idea how hard it's been not to recommend this to you, Steven. I'm very glad you found it independently.

Here's how I knew this was going to be good: Anzu's reaction when she first sees the school building itself. Then there was The Big Slide....

No show that observes a child's emotions that fondly, that remembers so clearly what being a child that age is like, could possibly turn her into a sex puppet.

And bang on with the Potemayo tie-in. That was my immediate thought as well.

"...Running gag..."
[very mild, indirect spoiler follows]
Anzu's first date...

Posted by: refugee at February 22, 2010 08:42 PM (auErC)

2 Lain had a bear suit.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at February 22, 2010 09:00 PM (/ppBw)

3

Actually, the humor still may not be my kind. I got about a third of the way into the second episode and stopped watching at the point where Anzu announced to the entire class that she and Tsuchida were koibito.

There's a style of comedy that many people love, which I cannot tolerate. Lucille Ball landed right smacko in the middle of that form. I can recognize that it's funny, and understand why other people like it, but all it does for me is make me squirm with physical discomfort and consider running from the room screaming.

The whole business with Anzu claiming to be Tsuchida's fiance, and Anzu's mom encouraging all of this, is an example of it. I understand that it's harmless. It's just not something I enjoy watching.

The whole business of a little girl deciding she wants to marry some guy who's a lot older than her seems to be something of a trope. I have run into it before, but not quite in the same form. It was Neige in Tenchi Muyo GXP, in her first encounter with Seina. Neige is... very old. But she looks like a kid. (All of this is explained in the series.) When Seina and the Kamidake give her a ride to GP HQ, she pretends to be a kid, and spends a bunch of time teasing Seina and the other women. And she gets Seina to promise he'll marry her when she grows up.

Seina goes along with it because he's a nice guy and he doesn't think it's serious. He doesn't know who she really is. (If he did, he wouldn't be calling her "Neige-chan".) Later, once everything is known, she continues to tease Seina (and indirectly the others in the harem) by playing the loli, and keeps bringing up that promise.

I assumed that Nabeshin used it because he was subverting a trope -- in as much as Neige really isn't a loli by any normal reckoning. (And also because of the ending he planned for the series.)

I can't say I've encountered it anywhere else, but it's pretty clear that Nabeshin has.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 22, 2010 09:07 PM (+rSRq)

4 I have to acknowledge that I'm mostly fast-forwarding through the "romance", and for pretty much the same reason. But the observations of how children behave and think -- even really smart ones like Hii-chan --  are priceless.

Posted by: refugee at February 22, 2010 09:10 PM (auErC)

5 I think it's not always the promise, e.g. Tsunami and Tenchi, Futaba (Murata) and Muryuo (Subaru) are cut from the same cloth as this. In Sekirei, however, Kuu really harps on marriage to... "onii-chan". *facepalm*

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at February 22, 2010 10:21 PM (/ppBw)

6

I can recognize that it's funny, and understand why other people like it, but all it does for me is make me squirm with physical discomfort and consider running from the room screaming.

I actually do leave the room ... ostensibly to grab a snack or a drink, but I physically can't sit and watching that kind of uncomfortable humor. I've never met or heard of other people who've had the same reaction.

Posted by: bkw at February 23, 2010 04:10 PM (34O+x)

7

Yamamoto was totally cropped out until I started to add a comment to the thread.  There's a word for that, and of course your blog would be involved.

Posted by: amarigatachi at February 23, 2010 04:23 PM (smT8Q)

8 Say what? (confusion)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 23, 2010 05:02 PM (+rSRq)

9 The content at the main page of a standard mee.nu blog is cropped without an indication that anything was there. The crop line in that picture removes Yamamoto so neatly that there's no hint of her.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at February 23, 2010 05:38 PM (/ppBw)

10

There's a word for that, and of course your blog would be involved.

(even deeper confusion)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 23, 2010 05:46 PM (+rSRq)

11 Sorry for not being clear.

I was browsing your site, and caught a reference to four characters in a screen shot  "Left to right, Sakura, Tsuchida, Anzu, Yamamoto.", and for the life of me I could only see Sakura, Tsuchida and Anzu. (this behavior occured with Firefox and IE)

After reviewing the screen shot, I decided to let you know that there were self-evidently only three characters depicted.  In the process of setting up the comment to inform you, I discovered the rest of the screen shot.

Now that I've discovered that screen shots may be incomplete under certain circumstances, I may have to review Chizumatic in its entirety to discover what I've missed.

(The remark about your blog being involved was solely intended for comic effect, and apparently missed the mark.)

Posted by: amarigatachi at February 23, 2010 06:34 PM (smT8Q)

12 I've seen that happen with new-format mee.nu blogs (and I'm working on a fix) but it shouldn't happen here, because it's related to the dynamic CSS functions which this site doesn't use.  I'll take a look.

Everything was carefully tested against all major browsers...  Then they released new versions, damn them.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at February 23, 2010 06:59 PM (PiXy!)

13 Pixy, it may be my fault. I've made a few changes to the CSS files.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at February 23, 2010 07:34 PM (+rSRq)

14 I wish you explained what makes Futaba ok if Anzu is not. At a guess, the difference in the relationship of power between a random older guy and one's teacher? Also, Futaba is about 3 or 4 years older, which at their age is a big gap percentage-wise. Still... Well, I mean outside of the pride in being inconsistent

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at March 03, 2010 08:52 AM (/ppBw)

15 Are you talking about Futaba in Shingu? Futaba in Macademi Wasshoi? Someone else?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at March 03, 2010 09:24 AM (+rSRq)

16 I'm talking about the deal between Futaba Murata and Muryo Subaru.

Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at March 03, 2010 10:02 AM (/ppBw)

17

There's nothing scandalous about that. Futaba is 12 years old. She's chasing Muryou. We don't really know how old Muryou is, but he's pretending to be the same age as Hajime, 14.

I think most people would agree that there's a difference between a 12 year old girl chasing a 14 year old guy, and a 6 year old girl chasing a 22 year old guy. (Or however old he is after graduating from college.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at March 03, 2010 10:08 AM (+rSRq)

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