There’s something wrong with people not removing hair ornaments when swimming in a pool.
My plan is to watch either the Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai or the Lodoss War series, but then I found out I have to go outstation next week, thus not being able to watch either of them in a single sitting. With only 12 episodes, the heavily censored Kodomo no Jikan (a 2007 anime) will instead feature as my newest blog entry and maybe, just maybe, I will watch either of those two anime after I returned.
Story:-
Aoki Daisuke, a newly minted elementary school teacher-in-training, was assigned to a problematic class with a trio of girls at the center of everything. One of them is hell-bent at sending our protagonist to jail for sexual assault on minors, and the other two has their own issue for our protagonist to deal with.
This anime is not only watered down compared to the manga (which I read before watching the anime) but also infested with one of the most excessive censorship I have ever seen in an anime. I can accept it if they only censor questionable scenes like the way they do it in Chocotto Sister (pretty common anyway in Japanese anime aired on TV), but the overt and very frequent bleeping of dialogues is really something else. Not only had the bleeping muddled the plot, affecting the storyline in a negative way, but also it takes the shine off the performances of some of the main characters. This takes at least 2 points off the final scoring. Watching the uncensored DVD version is a must, and with a few of those DVD episodes I watched, the difference between the censored and the uncensored is almost like night and day.
The story by itself is pretty good, despite being just a watered-down version if the manga is taken into account. In the second half of the series, the director tried merging independent story arcs into one package (usually spanned within an episode) with admittedly mixed results. The story developed very well with excellent pacing (this is actually the main strength of the monthly manga) but the original ending which deviates majorly from the manga storyline, is just average. How the director will reconcile the ending with the expected second season (hoping that they cut down on the bleeping) is open for scrutiny.
Characters development is decent with the main protagonist standing out from the rest, and if not for the consistent bleeping, Kuro Kagami would have joined him too. This is why I hope that the second season, the excessive censorship will be cut down so that the second season will be more palatable to watch.
edit: Just watched the OVA, which does not differ than a typical regular TV season episode. So no alteration to the scoreline.
One of the scenes that does not make it to the TV screen.
Character Design:-
The character design for this anime is excellent, definitely the positive point of this series. The main protagonist and Kuro Kagami both have black hair, which is a good thing. The amount of hairs is unnatural though, but I think I can overlook that.
Voice Acting:-
Unlike the character design, the voice acting in this anime is just average overall. Still, Kuro Kagami stands out from the rest, just like the prince from Mars in Dragonaut – the resonance.
Another one of the ‘censored’ scenes.
Music:-
This anime has good OP/ED themes, but the OST is almost non-existant.
Animation/Direction:-
The animation in this anime is good, and do not suffer in fast-paced scenes, if any exists. There is no comment about the choreography, which did not apply for this series. The directing is decent, with improvisation to the original manga storyline taking the cake.
Conclusion:-
7 out of 10. Would have been easily scored 10 if the censorship can be reduced and not too many deviations from original storyline exist. Nodame Cantabile is still the no.1 anime in 2007. Record of Lodoss War/Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai; one of them will feature in the next review.
Sae Shirai is one of the better characters in the manga. I hope her characters will get more attention in the second season because I feel she can become one of the best characters in this series.
