renaissance poisson

aside from the "death watch" as the paramour lovingly calls it, i'm watching more anime than is good for me. but hey, i'm catching up on years and years of not watching anime when all my pals were doing it. but i am woefully behind on reviewing. as usual, it's easier (because, uh, shorter) to write about the mediocre and outright crappy than about the really good shows. and i've not actually watched a lot of crap.

this last week, for example, only one stands out as so bad that i dropped it after 2 episodes. well, actually after mere bits and pieces of two episodes. i usually give a series at least 4, sometimes 8, because some shows are slow to grow on me. but this one i just could not bear watching at all.

amaenaideyo! features ikkou, a young buddhist monk in training, who lives at a temple with several young priestesses in training. they're all hot cuties and their characters cover some basic sterotypes: tsundere (hot-n-cold), semi-autistic genius, kind speaker to animals, libertine, butchy dyke [*]. ikkou is your typical japanese anime loser boy (self-centred, whiny, irresponsible) with a hidden great power to exorcise spirits -- which is activated by him getting turned on by the sight of a naked or even just partially naked girl (*sigh*). other than that he spends most of his time being picked on by the girls who're generally more capable than he is, while they all go on adventures and cleanse spirits. a mere 2 minutes into the first episode butchy dyke strips tsundere in order to get ikkou to power up and save the day. give it 3 more minutes, and he walks in on the girls in the shower. typical harem comedy, which bores me stiff, and where the humour doesn't even make me crack a smirk.

the character design is instantly forgettable. ikkou is clearly not meant to appeal to anyone, he's even more forgettable than the girls who're at least cute (and mostly well-endowed, naturally, except for the small-breasted one who is jealous of all the big boobies). i decided to watch this despite knowing it wasn't gonna be my thing to begin with because ikkou's voice actor is suzuki chihiro whom i adore, and if i love the cast, i can watch even mediocre anime for quite a while. but no, his talents couldn't get me past the hideousness; besides, too much screaming even from a much-adored seiyuu grates.

the show is basically just fan service (and a lot of it, but you don't get any full nudity until the last episode. oops, is that a spoiler? so sorry). the plot is thin -- the paramour actually watched most of them, and apparently the episodes all sort of go like this: some nasty spirit shows up in human guise, only one person sees through the guise right away, a girl "loses" her clothes, ikkou's amazing power exorcises. in between ikkou gets abused. no character development worth mentioning; one of the girls is clearly interested in ikkou (and jealous of anyone else who might look at him), but abuses him along with the others for being a pervert -- except the actual pervert is our butchy dyke, because she's the one groping and stripping others.

the best thing is the ending song. (no, not just because that means an episode is over :).

[*] i should probably not call her a dyke because she's to an actual dyke what the much-desired HBB of personal ads is to an actual hot bi babe.