Sunday 1 February 2004

Pic of the day: From the first episode. This is where I fell in love with this anime, when the anime character exclaims: "This always happens in manga or anime." That's so my kind of humor. And no, even though she is taking a bath in this picture, we never get to see her without clothes. Not then, and not later.

Daa daa daa revisited

Back when I first learned about anime, 3 years ago these days, I noticed one called Daa daa daa. (In fact, I have a picture from it in this entry.) This was back when I had a dial-up connection and downloaded anime in RealPlayer format from LunaArts. When that site folded a few weeks after I discovered it, I did not find any other source of fansub, not one that was accessible with my slow dial-up connection and across an ocean or two. It would take two years before I found anime again, when I had broadband and BitTorrent file sharing was invented.

Anyway, Daa daa daa. By happenstance I found that the twelve first episodes had been released again as a multi-file BitTorrent. I had only got the first episode back then, and when I returned the earliest episode available was 11. So now I have had an anime feast, catching up on all those funny episodes.

The basics of the series is so simple it is set up in the first episode. A teenage girl, Miyu, moves into a Buddhist shrine / small temple because her parents go to America to work for NASA. The priest is an old friend of her parents; more exactly his wife was a friend of Miyu's mother. The wife passed away years ago, but a son still lives with the priest. He is the same age as Miyu. The day the girl arrives, the priest is going to India for some months, and the two teens are left alone. Awkwardness ensues.

This would all have been worthy of an anime in its own right, but then something even stranger happens. A UFO lands with a baby and a confused babysitter pet from planet Otto. The Ottosans are a more advanced race of humans, and the baby has psychic powers of levitation, telekinesis and limited telepathy. He's still a baby, though. Sitter pets are roughly as intelligent and mature as your average babysitter here on Earth. They are bred with strong protective instincts and the ability to morph into the likeness of other living creatures. Miyu and Kanata realize that the aliens will be in trouble if found by the authorities, and take them in. The baby promptly adopts them as his parents. Chaos ensues. They have to hide not only the fact that they are living alone together, but also the fact that they are NOT actually alone. Through the series they gradually build a circle of friends who accept all or part of their situation. The series is still ongoing, now in its 30es.

Despite the "boy meets girl" theme – in fact, the exit song played after each episode is called "boy meets girl" – the series is quite family-friendly. For a Japanese series, it is almost unusually decent. There is a natural erotic tension running through especially the first episodes as the two teens try to get used to each other's company, but it is not the focus of the story and it doesn't develop any further. Rather the two of them establish a relationship much like adopted sibling, or perhaps cousins (as they pretend to be).

Bright, funny and heartwarming, this anime is still one of my favorites. It is subtitled in English by AnimeOne until an official translation and English release is decided. There is also a project underway by MangaArts to translate the manga (comics), which is also cute but with more accidental underwear episodes and such things. Daa daa daa is created by Kawamura Mika.