Sunday 24 April 2005

Pic of the day: Kozue-chan, the cute and innocent female main character(s) from the cute and innocent anime Mahoraba.

Mahoraba

Mahoraba is a surprisingly innocent and cute anime about mostly high school characters. This is an age where most boys' thoughts go to girls and the other way around, as you probably remember. So also here. But while many Japanese comics and cartoons can be painfully explicit in their humor about such things, Mahoraba is refreshingly modest.

The tone is set by the two main characters. The young boy Shiratori comes to Tokyo to study in an art school, as he wants to become an illustrator of children's books. There is no such school near his home, but his mother's cousin owns a small apartment building in Tokyo. The house is currently run by daughter Kozue, a high-schooler. There are only a few residents: Another young girl who is Kozue's childhood friend and classmate; a single mother with her daughter; a middle-aged man who only speaks through his hand puppet dog (he seems to not have a job, probably disabled) and finally a young adult woman who substitutes beer for sleep seemingly with no ill effects. This anime is about the weirdness that must happen when these people get together.

The inclusion of the middle-aged man is the first sign that this is not a "harem" anime, a popular genre in Japan, where a boy is surrounded by interesting and interested girls and often one episode is dedicated to each of them. From the start it is clear that Shiratori and Kozue (whom he refers to as "landlady" despite her young age) are the romance candidates; the others just help or hinder; mostly help, as anything less would leave the two turtledoves helpless. Shiratori is shy, timid and clueless. Kozue is unbelievably innocent. There is a somewhat disturbing reason for this, though.

Kozue actually has (have?) at least 3 alternate personalities. When shocked, she will faint and one of her alternates will take over. One is aggressive, one is childish, one is obsessed with cosplaying (dressing up in a form of role play popular in Japan). There is supposedly at least one more. Not exactly an asset when looking for romance, I'd say.

We don't know what caused this dissociation in the girl. And is it related to whatever caused Shiratori to forget their time together as small children? The anime is not hurrying to solve these mysteries. Instead it shows the daily life and the gradual drawing together of the main characters. Now at episode 12, I would guess we may be about halfway through the story. (Actually a website says 26, which sounds right to me.)

The characters are all drawn very cute and look younger than their stated ages. "Cute" and "innocent" are the words that most easily come to mind when watching this anime. Even the beach episode, often used for fanservice, is quite family friendly. (I would say worksafe, but I doubt most workplaces allow you to watch anime.) There are a few embarassing episodes, but compared to actual high school age boys and girls, these people are saints. And I would not want it otherwise.

If you can't download this anime because of bandwidth, conscience, law, parents or other limiting factors, you should at least visit Satoshi's Mahoraba Archives with synopsis of each episode and small but crisp screenshots. Warmly recommended. He isn't me but you can generally trust him to notice the right things. ^^