neko's thinkbox

Continuing from Part 1 of the review on Minami-ke.

I could as well mention that annoying Hosaka-senpai, who is totally warped. Tell me, how arousing can it be to have a girl wipe off your sweat? His dream of coming back from work and bragging about having sweated three liters… Gosh… that’s REALLY weird. Also, his arrogant gesture despite being such a sweating fag… Yeah, at first I thought he was gay, but he’s just disturbed. Mind you, I have absolutely no problems with gays, but I really don’t like him obsessed over Haruka just to have his sweat wiped off! At least he found a new hobby because of her: cooking. As long as the noodles aren’t cooking in his own sweat, I’m fine with it.

Hmm, Keiko-chan in Kana’s class is pretty much the mandatory meganekko of the anime, and as most of those, she only lands 100’s in all tests. I pitied her a lot throughout the series, because she is always subject to Kana’s unwarranted accusations and selfish orders, but hey it’s fun after all!
Her classmate Riko is your average wallflower, who has a crush on Fujioka and who finds a rival in the shape of Kana. Too bad both of them share the same temper, and for some reason the same vice of grabbing people’s skirts if they need something… xD

Sukaato mekkuri!

Well, for the rest of the staff, they either didn’t make too many appearances or didn’t leave too much of an impression.

As said in the beginning, I found the character development quite solid, and many character’s behaviors and reactions (at least the non-wacky ones) often turn out to be fairly normal and human – especially amongst the Minami family. For example, everyone’s distractive abilities when facing difficult themes (like Haruka when she tries to change the topic) is something that we can find when talking to our own family or friends around us every day. Kana often surprised me by giving in to her little sister’s accusations, and by apologizing once in a while. Usually one would expect her to rear up everytime Chiaki tells her to shut up or to get lost.

I found the soundtrack pretty decent and catchy. No sounds were out of place nor obtrusive – actually, there were plenty of scenes where there wasn’t some kind of background music, which perhaps was meant to give a more solemn feel to the jokes. Some tunes even reminded me sometimes of Azumanga Daioh, I think it’s because the flutes.
The opening song is good! Finally a song that was tailored for an anime instead of taking some random J-Pop music. M-i-n-a-m-i-k-e let’s go! XD The lyrics are decent, I found those little interjections like “kurukuru” pretty cute. The funny and dynamic opening animation, along with the catchy melody of the song make it a good introduction to the series.
The ending was also decent, I didn’t really listen to it but at least I didn’t skip it either.

Design & animation.

°o° woof?

The animation is pretty solid in my opinion. There isn’t any revolution in Minami-ke, but I there’s nothing more to expect of a Slice of Life anime either. Out of the many popular works that Doumu was in charge of the animation, I only watched DearS, HoiHoi-san and the Onegai series, and I recall those being pretty decent.

The overall design of Minami-ke is good too. As for the character design, it is overly cute without being SD (Super Deformed). Too bad I haven’t read the 4koma yet, because I don’t know in how far the original design was respected. I can imagine that the shape of the mouths of all the characters were like that in the 4koma too. They do look weird at the beginning. I most scenes, their mouths are triangle/drop-shaped, and when their mouths are wide open (eg. when smiling), they take a weird shape… The upper lip reminds me of… dunno, a cat, dog or rabbit? Not that it doesn’t look cute, but it does need getting used to. And anyway, it is by far not as bluntly presented as Konata’s mouth in Lucky Star (=ω=).

I also find the characters’ fingers pretty small drawn sometimes. Like Kana doing the peace sign in the opening, her hand does looks pretty small to me… Perhaps it’s just me though, I am being nitpicky too. Better that than hueg paws anyway ^^

On a side note, Chiaki looks really retarded in this picture. D:

Good: no unnatural hair colors (like pink, blue, violet and green for example). This fact also adds to the down-to-earth and realistic feel of the series. It really is an enjoyable break from all the wacky hair colors that appear in at least every second anime. Some might disagree and say that Touma’s hair looks like dark blue, well I say it looks black with some grayish shade. Either way, I don’t think they intended to colorize the hair.

And one factor which is ABSOLUTELY great is the absence of fanservice. Granted, there are quite a few hints there, fanservice is a bit implied indeed. Like Maki’s complaining about the short skirts and looking at Haruka’s pantsu, Chiaki pulling down Kana’s pants, Kana pulling down Chiaki’s pants, Haruka becoming loose and showing her bra, or even Touma’s flat chest seen from the side (I wouldn’t mind seeing her though x3 j/k).

But even so, there have been no explicit depictions of fanservice either, like stolen panty shots, exaggeratedly lewd positions, etc. There is absolutely no emphasis on the bodily features of the female body (eg. breast size, more detail around the breast and between the legs area, etc.) However, it does not let the girls appear too plain and boring either. For once, the girls were all anatomically correct! You can’t imagine how I started despising series where they inflate little girls’ breasts just because they want to attract the random boin hentai freaks… (then again, I’m rather inclined to lolikon than anything else, so… meh x_x)

This is relevant to my interests. :3

Well… With all of the hints that they have given and with the amount of jokes that were based on sexuality, I can imagine that a little bit of fanservice was to be included in Minami-ke. But even so, from what I have seen in Minami-ke, no scene was particularly aimed to arouse the casual hentais/lolicons like KnJ or Moetan would. With the recent censoring trends (see Kodomo no Jikan or School “NICE BOAT” Days) however, I think it would be safe to assume that they wanted to avoid that kind of censorship. And I am perfectly fine with that. I really don’t need more than that to be happy. I might not sound like that, but I really hate excessive fanservice… it steals the attention and really doesn’t contribute to anything except the perverted fantasies of the viewer. If you want pantsu, how about imagining some? :P

Conclusion:

No, the ending wasn’t bad, but… NINOMIYA-KUUUN!!!!

As I had said waaaaaay up in the beginning of this review, I couldn’t have had a better start into anime right now. Minami-ke is a refreshing series that is light to watch, and totally okay to savor at any time of the day. Unlike other series that have been subjected to Rule 7, I didn’t have to marathon this series to maintain an intense feeling of satisfaction. Also, like a 4koma, there were many stories without much information, which makes it all the more easier to watch the series again. I definitely recommend it if you want to spend a few pleasant hours without straining your brain too much.

Of course, if it had been a standalone series, I would have complained that it would have been much too short, and that I would have wished more of this and that. But as everyone knows, Minami-ke Okawari is imminent! Only one week after the first series finished! When I heard that, I thought it would be a bit retarded to split a series in two seasons just to let them air together anyway, but the reason for the split is that there is a different animation studio in charge of it: asread. Well with titles like Ergo Proxy, Kiddy Grade, Shuffle and Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku na Basho, they definitely aren’t newbies, but still, from what I can see in the preview… it does look different though. The cast didn’t change though, but the question is still if will everything will continue in the same fashion, and if there wouldn’t be too much fanservice added to it… Well! We’ll know soon, because the raws are out already!

See you next season!