Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Midori no Hibi or "How To Gain A Girlfriend But Lose A Hand"

(note: this is a rather old review but always kinda liked it, and since i haven't done shit lately, any activity is good activity)

So you wake up one morning to find your crankin' hand has turned into some chick who's always dug you? Straight, lets roll with this XD I wont go further into the basic story because a: there's a dozen reviews already here and b: you can look the hell up in the story synopsis for that if you still need it crowbarred in.

The show has one of the more outlandish premises i've seen in a show that isn't centered around pure chaos(a`la Abenobashi). sure the original set up is straight out of left field but the show itself is well written, has very likable characters and can easily put a smile on the face of the most angsty of the broody-brood set. The show has a fairly long list of good points and only a few, that i could find, of bad points.

for the good, lets start with the most important: IT ENDS!!
I don't know why, but a good percentage of Ro-Co's(romantic comedy) leave you with an ending that's left open so as to not piss off too many fans who wanted a specific ending. this show is at least kind enough to give you an ending. is it completely obvious 10 minutes into episode 1 what that ending will be? yes, but that's not the point. this show thrives on its characters: put them in the sun and watch them shine. Takamizawa being one of the best of the supporting cast. He's obsessed with dolls and puppets and is the only person in this entire universe that can actually see the fact that there is a frikkin person on protag-Seiji's wrist, which really doesn't solidify your hope for mankind. Of course he originally thinks she's a puppet to begin with and tries to get it naked so he can see the serial code so he can try and get one himself.

After Taka, there's Seiji's neighbor's 10(i believe) year old daughter who's got a mad-on for him, as well as a girl from school who keeps trying to set up the perfect opportunities for them to hook up that always are explained in a way that reminded you of when the Coyote finished setting up a trap for the Roadrunner and would non-verbally exposit exactly what he wanted to happen before it's inevitable downfall. I gotta admit, these fantasy sequences are flat-out awesome and even come equipped with title and ending sequences to cement the fact that every one of these people are bat-shit insane.

the biggest problem i had with the show was that, no matter how awesome the characters are, the bulk of them just disappear after a certain moment. loli-fest drops off the earth after her centric episode half-way through the series and Taka Kaiser Soze's after some chick runs after him like a fool in love, but at least that one makes a little sense since it can just be said that they were off making nasty, cosplay-rific, pimply(that's pimple-e, not pimp-ly), oily whoopee. The sister character only shows up to scream 'boogadu-boogie' every now again, steal all of Seiji's money and say something to try and get him and Midori together. What made me furious the most is that the character of Midori's maid seemed like she would be an awesome character to put into the story some, i know it would be hard to do but it looked like they took so much time into giving her a personality to just toss it all in the wastebasket and go about their day.

the only other bad part was some of the music. i heard a trumpet's wah-wah waaaaaaah a few too many times and was glad there was no chase scenes cause you just KNOW that Yakety Sax would cue up. But, as for bad parts, that's about it.some of the sound bytes were archaic and they dropped some characters with no explanation. But the goods far out-way that and its hard to properly convey how well this show is put together. if you're a fan of sight gags, cute and/or odd story telling and rocoms, i suggest you check this show out some time.

The show was released in the U.S under the title. "Midori Days" due to Media Blasters wanting to sell their shows to more than weeaboos. It has one wonderful thing the original does not, Bloopers! An amazing addition to any show, the first time I ever saw that was in Berserk and oh god did i fall in love with that show(might go into it in a later review[i'm going to have to make a drinking game compiled of all the times i say that]). It should not be hard to find the entire series in a collection set on the cheap, so there's very few reasons not to find it