MY LOVE STORY and IS IT WRONG TO PICK UP GIRLS IN A DUNGEON? TWO HIT ANIMÉ SERIES FROM MANGA UK REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
MY LOVE STORY. MANGA WRITTEN BY KAZUNE KAWAHARA/ILLUSTRATED BY ARUKO. ANIMÉ TELEVISION SERIES DIRECTED BY MORIO ASAKA/WRITTEN BY NATSUKO TAKAHASHI. FIRST AIRED IN 2015.
Aw, if this ain't just the sweetest little show! It's as sweet as a cake made of pie, as Ned 'Diddly' Flanders once remarked in THE SIMPSONS. This popular Japanese romantic comedy animé series tells the story of an unlikely romance between two high school students.
It's unlikely chiefly because of the almost comical mis-matching of the physical appearances of the two main protagonists. In every other way, though, I find them absolutely perfectly suited to each other. Let's start at the beginning...
The lead character is a thirteen-year-old boy-slash-man-mountain called Takeo. He's already as big and tall as a grown man, with the strength, vigour and vitality to match. He's miles bigger than any of his contemporaries, however, which causes some of the other students to either fear him or ridicule him behind his back.
This is sad, because he's the nicest, most chivalrous, most honest and most honourable giant kid you could ever hope to meet. He has nothing but the utmost respect for his fellow man (and woman!) and he has a lot of love to give, so much so that he really deserves to be loved by someone in return. That's what the series is about. Could Takeo be about to find his first love...?
One day, Takeo rescues a beautiful female high school student called Yamato from the unwanted attentions of a subway groper. A problem anywhere that folks are crammed in together somewhere like sardines, I suppose. Anyway, Yamato, a tiny little thing with the squeaky little voice of a timid tiny mouse, is pathetically grateful for Takeo's services.
She bakes him all kinds of mouth-watering cakes as a thank-you for his act of kindness and chivalry. Cheesecake, macaroons, madeleines and something called sachertorte are all heaped before Takeo by the sweet-as-pie-herself Yamato.
'Desserts are my speciality,' she informs Takeo proudly. Ooooh-er! Takeo, a big lad and a still-growing boy (if he grows any more he'll need planning permission for himself from the Air and Space people!), is thrilled skinny, if you'll excuse the pun. A beautiful girl who makes cakes and mixes them lovingly by hand into the bargain is his idea of a dream girl. I'd turn lesbian myself any day of the week for a woman who made nice cakes and fed 'em to me, heh-heh-heh.
To the viewer's objective eye, it's obvious that the sparkly little Yamato is head-over-heels in love with the massive Takeo and vice-versa, but poor Takeo is as thick as every other guy who ever lived when it comes to correctly interpreting the messages that women are sending him.
He thinks that the lovely Yamato is in love with his best friend Suna, a real heart-throb who attracts girls as effortlessly as jam (I'm being refined here, I hope you'll appreciate!) draws flies. He's got floppy blonde hair and a casual attitude towards the fairer sex that only makes girls want to flock around him all the more eagerly.
The decent and honourable Takeo, thinking despite his heartache that Suna and Yamato are in love and want to be a couple, never misses an opportunity to tell Yamato what a great guy Suna is. Yamato could be forgiven for thinking that Takeo is actually gay for Suna, the way he bigs him up so much, haha.
As it is, Yamoto is heartbroken when she thinks that Takeo is trying to push her at Suna. She loves Takeo dearly for his chivalry and his kindness and his many other good qualities and goddammit, Takeo loves her back. Will the penny ever drop for poor Takeo, or will it it take the loyal Suna, who's turned down offers from girls for a very sweet reason that we'll find out, to put his mate straight...?
IS IT WRONG TO PICK UP GIRLS IN A DUNGEON? A JAPANESE LIGHT NOVEL SERIES WRITTEN BY FUJINO OMORI/ILLUSTRATED BY SUZUHITO YASUDA.
ANIMÉ TELEVISION SERIES DIRECTED BY YOSHIKI YAMAKAWA/WRITTEN BY HIDEKI SHIRENE. FIRST AIRED IN 2015.
Have you ever seen that episode of THE SIMPSONS in which Marge acquires a computer in order to be able to say that she has email like everyone else? Disenchanted by the lack of emails being sent her way, she fiddles about on her machine only to stumble onto a virtual reality computer game already being played by most of Springfield, a game called Earthland Realms...
That episode reminds me a lot of IS IT WRONG TO PICK UP GIRLS IN A DUNGEON? It too is set in a sort of alternate reality, a fictional country called Orario. Its main feature is the titular dungeon, peopled by dragons and goblins, just like in Earthland Realms, in which Moe the Bartender is a goblin and Bart DON'T HAVE A COW, MAN! Simpson is the fearsome Shadow Knight whom everyone hates and wants to kill.
Anyway, adventurers by the dozen enter the dungeon and try to defeat the monsters who dwell there. Oh, and they also pinch their crystal shards which can be exchanged for surface-world currency, if they've a mind.
It's like a role-playing game as well in that you're battling your arse off the whole time to get to different levels. It's not my own personal cup of tea at all, all this battling to get to different levels stuff, but I know full well that I'm in the minority there, haha.
When we get our first glimpse of the strange and wonderful world of Orario and its dungeon, a hardy young adventurer called Bell Cranel (he's a dude, despite the girly name!) has just started out battling there. God knows why he'd want to, but it seems to be the only thing to do in Orario...! Seems to me like they really need a drive-in cinema over there, or at the very least a soda parlour, where you can have a milkshake and a bit of an old gossip about who's doing what to whom behind whose back.
Bell's madly in love with Aiz Wallenstein, a stunningly beautiful and mysterious swordswoman who saves his life, but the utterly booby-licious Goddess Hestia (yep, the place is crawling with powerful deities! They've all come down to Earth to live. Why? Well, for something to do, I suppose. Plus, ya gotta live somewhere.), under whose protection Bell has been placed, is crazy-in-love with Bell. Although he doesn't know it. And she isn't the only one who's warm for his form, either...
Guys are the same the world over, aren't they? Too thick to know when a girl is into them, the big thickos. Whether they're an enormous Japanese high school student head-over-heels in what he believes to be unrequited love with a diminutive little cake-making Tinkerbell or Thumbelina-type, or an adventurer in a virtual reality game battling desperately to get to the next level in his little game while all the while struggling to improve himself, they're all the same. Oblivious, every last one of 'em. Gordon Bennett! It's enough to make a statue weep...
http://www.manga.com
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
No comments:
Post a Comment