DVD Review: A Complicated Bundle of Love

If anyone is struggling to find a decent romance anime, there's one show that they absolutely have to watch.

Season one of "Honey and Clover" is a powerful love story that is guaranteed to keep everyone emotionally attached until the very end.

It starts off as a simple slice-of-life about a group of art college friends: three guys and two girls. The guys consist of a first-year student named Takemoto, a sixth-year slacker named Morita and a fourth-year senior named Mayama. The girls consist of a young prodigy named Hagumi and a beautiful third-year pottery student named Ayumi Yamada.

At first, the story becomes a simple snapshot of daily life for these college students. As they grow older, they become more and more romantically attached. Yet, they all have a tough time confessing their feelings for each other, because they don't want their group of friends to break apart.

Although the plot is as simple as a light romance could get, the dialogue is remarkably rich with pent-up emotion. Viewers will immediately get hooked into heartbreaking relationship between Yamada and Mayama. Yamada can't help falling in love with Mayama, even when he starts to live in the apartment of another close friend named Rika.

The dialogue may seem innocent in the first few episodes. By episode 18, though, Yamada's emotions get the best of her when she runs away in tears. The entire series is filled with many difficult situations of unrequited love. These characters must wallow through these flooding emotions, struggling to find a new meaning to their lives.

To tell the truth, I can't believe this group of buddies could ever manage to stay together for two seasons. Thankfully, they never don't really take these pressing relationships too seriously. The director, Kenichi Kasai, has an incredible knack for making every comedy sequence as epic as possible.


For example, episode eight includes an especially agonizing Twister game. It starts out as an easy game. Near the end, though, all the characters are goofily breaking their bones from playing the game. The animators execute everything in this sequence with quick slapstick timing. They manage to make everything as ridiculously painful as possible, without ever crossing the line of extreme violence.

It's a bizarre series of wacky humor with unbearable waves of moving emotion. "Honey and Clover" is probably one of the best and most realistic anime love stories ever made. The protagonists are charming. The warm visuals are soothing. The dialogue hits people where it hurts.

As painful as it is to watch, this show is more about the characters' journeys rather than their relationships. "Honey and Clover" proves that sometimes it takes a little tough love for people to grow into mature adults.

Watch the series at hulu.com.

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DVD Review - Class tensions and gender bending drama

The third season of "Maria Watches Over Us" strengthens the girls' romantic ties with warm dialogue and imagery.

The newest release for the Maria series is set in Lillian Girls Academy during the summer break after season two. As viewers may remember from the previous seasons, the student council is organized under a nobility system, in which each grande seour (big sister) appoints a first-year student as her petite seour, or little sister. It resembles an intern system in some ways, in which the upperclassmen assign certain tasks to their apprentices.

In this year, petite seour Yumi Fukuzawa spends her summer break with her grande seour, Sachiko Ogasawara. Although the vacation starts off as a boring moment of solitude, Sachiko has her own reasons for hiding out in a summer cottage. Rival families are looking forward to laying shame on the Ogasawara family name.

There's plenty of other interesting events, including a joint festival with the all boys high school next-door to the Lillian Girls Academy. The boys high school council features a completely improbable cast of characters, including two twins, a buff guy who works out, a geek, Yumi's little brother and a guy who wanted to grow up as a girl.

Yet, as fantastic as the third season turns out, the story still retains a warm, pleasant tone. Better yet, most of the story is now centered on the two main characters, Yumi and Sachiko. This new narrative focuses our attention on the two women whom anime fans fell in love with first. The ultimate affirmation of their love for each other takes place during an entertaining school festival story, complete with cosplaying guys and panda costumes.

The new OVA format, or original video animation, makes each episode more poignant than those in the previous two seasons. The one-hour episodes also make for richer stories, strung together in a continuous narrative without interruptions. The story tends to ramble during the long sports festival and the school trip. These last two episodes feature more still images than actual animation, but the show still maintains its steady momentum of conversational comedy.

Overall, "Maria Watches Over Us" will immerse you into a warm world of girls' romance, with beautiful character designs and charming stories. The episodes shows these touching relationships without any plot holes or cheaply drawn animation. Although the story tends to drift off in the last episodes of season three, yuri fans will definitely enjoy "Maria Watches Over Us."

Extras: The OVA continues the excellent "Maria Watches Over Us" comedy segments, "Don't Tell Maria," a series of out-takes for every episode. These short blurbs include some epic parodies of the opening narrative, including an epic one involving the all boys school. However, the best jokes involve the exaggerated height of Yumi's newest friend.

Image courtesy of photobucket.com

DVD Review: Ouran romance picks up with Tamaki

It's not typical for a girl to be the center of attention with a bunch of guys in a romantic comedy without sparks flying. Thankfully, "Ouran High School Host Club" manages to make the girl the most likable ordinary girl I've ever seen in an anime.

As the female protagonist in "Ouran," Haruhi is the coolest ordinary girl, who helps all her guys out in unexpected ways in volume two.

The second DVD of "Ouran High School Host Club" picks up where the series left off, in the beach trip which followed their trip to the tropical resort. As usual, the men are entertaining the women. However, something changes the entire tone of the series in episode nine.

Two men try to sexually assault the Host Club's girls. Haruhi tries to stand up to them, but she gets thrown into the ocean. Thankfully, Tamaki saves her from drowning.

Still Tamaki is clearly worried about Haruhi's safety and argues that she shouldn't have stood up. He wants her to act more like a woman, but Haruhi is refuses, leading to an awkward dinner scene. Eventually, Haruhi starts to acknowledge that she really is a shy girl who could use her guy friends. And sure enough, Haruhi admits that she does have feelings for Tamaki.

I don't always like romantic comedies, because they're a little more conservative in tone. The female characters are a little excessively subservient to their boyfriends, to the point where I wish they would look for more fishies in the sea. But "Ouran High School Host Club" succeeds with a different message--that it's okay to be an ordinary girl. And even though the upper-class guys of Ouran Host Club are rich ladykillers, it helps to have an ordinary girl to distract them from their lavish lifestyle.

And there are lots of hilarious jokes about the rich folk. As in episode one, the Ouran Host Club is still extremely fascinated with the taste of powdered coffee. The Loubella Girls Academy also comes in a great episode, in which they try to attract Haruhi into their club with their hilarious dancing sequences and flashing neon signs. They also pull off some hilarious yuri (female homosexual love) sequences, in which one of them sports a fake moustache.

"Ouran High School Host Club" may be a ridiculous romantic comedy, but it surprised me with an ordinary female character supported by her rich boyfriends. Even though I still have a few misgivings about Haruhi's flat chest, she's definitely one of the best anime characters of recent years, making this one of the best anime romantic comedies of all time.

By the way, there's a great extra on this DVD. Funimation managed to squeeze in the English voice actors' outtakes in recording for Ouran High School Host Club. These are hilarious outtakes for every episode on this DVD.

Image courtesy of randomc.animeblogger.net