An episode centering around Mei and Mika this time. Considering how much focus Mei has had, I'd say that she's right up there with Mika and Manabi when it comes to character importance. She does have the most obvious character hooks, what with her very tsundere feel: a very harsh and humourless exterior, with an insecure and shy base personality, and either innately competent in studies, or highly motivated (driven, perhaps) to be competent.

As for Mikan (as Mika's friends call her), she's probably our Viewpoint Character, in much the same way Kyon was in Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, except that the viewpoint is not so strictly limited to only our designated Viewpoint Character and nothing else. And Manabi is, of course, our title character, with all that entails.

Manabi Straight isn't really the sort of show that lends itself well to episode summaries and thoughts. Things happen, and about the best I can come up with in the end are "well, things happened". It might technically be considered slice-of-life: yes, it occurs in a future with hover-skateboards and PDAs for every high school student and declining birth rates turning into a problem for schools, and the characters have rather pronounced personality traits, but it's still just about them going through their high school life with these circumstances as best as they can together. There's usually not a lot one can say about slice-of-life anime except "things happened".

But I need to write an entry for today, and I suppose this is it.

No, this isn't going to be an episode summary as such. (Unless one really stretches the definition of "episode summary".) My loathing of taking and arranging screenshots has not abated, even with IrfanView and its handy batch-conversion/resize feature; what irritates me the most about doing screenshots is the need to decide which scene to screencap, and which to discard. After I tried taking some objectively interesting screencaps of the episode, I slowly grew more and more irritable, until I finally gave up, and decided to just use the screencaps that I personally liked, and had something to ramble on about.

Not an episode summary; not quite episode thoughts and impressions, since it assumes that you're already familiar with what happened in the episode, and I'm not so much talking about the episode as talking in general, and just using the episode as a backdrop. It's like my Livejournal, except with a thin veneer of anime.

Yes, I do like to hear the sound of my own keyboard.

So Manabi has come down with the mumps, and has to stay at the hospital for a week. I don't think I've ever had the mumps, possibly because of the usual vaccinations I (and every other kid in the country) had to go through for all sorts of various diseases; I think the one for mumps was for a trio of mumps, rubella, and measles. Of course, considering I got measles three years later, I'm not sure how effective it all was.

Diseases such as measles and chicken pox (and, I would presume, mumps) tend to spread very quickly through the school during my primary and secondary school days, and then die out for about a year or so, before infecting the next batch of students once again. Generally we've burned it all out of our systems by age sixteen, though (which is about the age the Manabi Straight characters are supposed to be, being in high school and all), and Manabi's mumps infection does make her seem younger than she's supposed to be. Adding to the loli factor, so to speak.

Or maybe I shouldn't talk. Considering I got measles a few years after the vaccination, and I haven't gotten mumps yet, I may be in for a nasty surprise any day now.

I'm not sure if I could describe my own high school (or equivalent) existence as akin to Mei's, pre-Manabi. While it's true that I kept to myself and was mostly undisturbed by the usual classroom politics, I was more like the Random Unnamed Classmate character listed only as "Classmate B" in the ending credits. I wasn't interesting enough to be like Mei; I didn't have any character hooks or anything. I was just, well, there.

Not that I didn't get used to fading into the background. It made for some interesting situations, especially when people are a great deal more free in their conversations when they somehow automatically dismiss as trivial the bystander who is close enough to hear everything. It wasn't until someone else mentioned it that I realized that I did have a Character Hook, and it was an astonishing lack of presence. I was ninja, and it was awesome.

Seeing as Mei is actually coloured in in that scene, I'd say that she does, in fact, have some presence. At least Mikan noticed her, and other classmates were aware of her enough to gossip about her.

CHECK!Point: Momo is oddly fascinating to watch in action, even when she's not actually doing anything. Just that odd twin-ahoge thing is enough to keep me entertained for hours.

As far as I can tell, Momoha (or just Momo to her friends) is not actually part of the Student Council; Manabi, Mikan, and Mei are. Momo is part of the newspaper club (I assume), and presumably the non-Council thing is why she hasn't really gotten as much screentime as the others. She seems to be fairly content with her role as observer, rather than participant. She's willing to help out, of course, but probably only when it would make a better story.

CHECK!Point: I've said it before, and I'll say it once again: Mikan's permanent :3 is very, very cute.

Momo somehow obtained a pair (perhaps more) of hazard suits from the Internet. How exactly she managed this, and why the suit has openings for her hair is left unanswered.

I love watching that girl in action.

Shimojima-sensei takes at least four spoonfuls of sugar with his coffee, and seems to think nothing about smoking indoors in front of his students. This may be his way of making all the trouble said students cause him worth it.

Mikan seems to overreact somewhat when told that the people who needed to approve of the school festival plans were the teachers who most disapproved of Manabi's antics. While I can understand a bit of displeasure, smacking your teacher about the head with a serving tray seems to be a tad much.

Shimojima-sensei appears to be taking the role of the one teacher who Understands The Children and Helps Them With Their Energetic Activities, as opposed to the other teachers who say that they miss the energy of youth, but actively discourage it at every turn. I'm not sure how far the show wants to carry this; on the one hand, it's helpful that the girls have one ally among the Authorities, but on the other hand, it'll be a bit skewed to have only one ally. The Principal may or may not count, since she seems to be more bound to follow the rules strictly if it is brought to her attention, as the other teachers want her to do; Shimojima-sensei seems to be the only one who'd rather bend the rules.

I have to include this screenshot because it made me laugh. Fight on, Student Councillors! Your orz will not go in vain!

Mikan seems to have a problem with carrying far too many books (or papers or files) at once. It makes for some amusing situations, but if she does it again, it's going to get old really quickly. That, or turn into an Endearing Character Trait.

Finally, a scene of Momo relaxing at home. Momo seems to get drawn into the Student Council activities so much she should probably qualify as an honorary member, much like Mutsuki. I'm wondering if we'll ever see any episodes focusing mainly on her; she doesn't have any obvious character hooks (even Mutsuki has some possibilities, what with her incessant genki and ability to make friends easily), but we still have several more episodes to go.

I would probably not eat a popsicle the way Momo does here. It drips.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 6th, 2007 at 5:29 pm and is filed under manabi straight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.