You had to have seen this coming. I mean, you had to. Have I not been completely open and clear about what this blog is about? Have I not made my tastes known to all who ask? And has anything that this show has advertised as being about been in any way contrary to these tastes?

Before I go into the episode proper, I should perhaps mention that contrary to popular belief, the Moetan books are not Engrish-y. In fact, the phrases are (at least for the revised editions and the later books) mostly grammatically correct. What makes them unintentionally hilarious is that despite being grammatically correct, it may still make little sense. Or, in Moetan's case, the meaning is apparent only to the hardcore fan of anime and assorted pop culture (I'm trying not to use the word "otaku" due to the confused definitions for it).

For example, something from the second book which strikes rather close, the sentence for the word "will" goes "The alien, and the woman from the future and the guy with supernatural powers all exist because of the girl's will." (Seriously, it's on page 20.) Apart from the first "and" and the lack of a serial comma (yes, I know that the latter is controversial), this is better than many forum posts by native English speakers that I've seen.

In other words, if you're planning on watching this anime for the Engrish, you're likely to be disappointed. The anime doesn't even have that much English in it, apart from two sentences. In fact, if you're looking for anything other than what looks like a standard non-action magical girl show featuring lots of loli fanservice, this is not for you. (So far.)

As should be obvious, I loved this episode.

Sadly, I've already done the "moe~ moe~ moe~" gag for Lucky Star, so this not-really-summary will be done in a sort of modicum of seriousness, such as it were. Still, looking at the cast list for the show, I really wonder how seriously the producers themselves were taking it. Here we have Yukari Tamura (see also: Nanoha from Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha) voicing Ink Nijihara, a character advised by a duck animal mascot character voiced by Masaya Onosaka (see also: Icchan from Angelic Layer, Large Keroberos from Card Captor Sakura). I have no clue whether that was intentional.

Anyway. Ink Nijihara is, despite all appearances, a high school student who's in her last year before university. She is, apart from looking like an elementary school student, a fairly normal dojikko type anime female moe character. Exactly why her parents saw fit to name her "Ink" is unknown.

Ink has a crush on her classmate, Nao Tezuka. Nao is typically oblivious, and is incidentally bad in English. Ink gets the top marks in her class for English. Yeah, I'm sure you can see where this is going.

While all this is happening, a guy from a magic kingdom who's supposed to be an extremely powerful magician gets punted to Earth after escaping from his trial/sentencing. Ink is, at this moment in time, praying at a shrine of moe (seriously) when a duck lands on her head. FATEFUL MEETING GET.

The duck introduces himself as what sounds like Arks Sheldatu Elbaius, which Ink promptly mis-hears as Ark Sheh Vanilla Ice. After being re-christened Ah-kun, he hands Ink a cellphone thingie with the injunction to turn herself into a magical girl. Ink sees this as an opportunity to tutor Nao in English without him recognizing her, and readily agrees.

If you're wondering, Ink has to come up with the command phrase and such herself. Her first try, which is a rather long recitation that I'm almost convinced is a reference to something, gets vetoed, and Ink just settles for "Magical Change!" which results in Magical Teacher Pastel Ink. I know Konata (in Lucky Star) commented on teachers in anime looking younger and younger, but I don't think this is what she meant.

Cue transformation sequence. If I posted any pictures of it I would get Party Vanned so hard there would be a crater.

Ink heads to Nao's place (via little cherubic wings attached to her arse) and teaches him a few phrases like "Don't you think that magical girls look the same even after they transform?" and "I got episode 12 of that. Do you want to copy it?" for reasons I have yet to fathom. Ah-kun, bored out of his little fowl mind, finds Nao's stash of pr0n, and eventually gets both himself and Ink kicked out.

Ink reflects upon the day while in the bath (after tossing Ah-kun out of the window). A mysterious random girl is shown, and she appears to be somewhat interested in Arks whatever-his-name-is, for a mysterious reason.

At the very end of the episode, we have "Moetan Corner", where Pastel Ink introduces us to the Phrase Of The Day, which teaches viewers how to say "It's great that the animation staff go all out with the quality of an anime's first episode." Exactly how effective this will be as a teaching tool is far beyond my scope of knowledge of education.

I will have to note that Ink's school apparently has one of the odder school uniforms for girls that I've seen.

The brown large button-like things on the sides of the skirt are pouches. The shoulders are exposed and the sleeves are flared large. I'm not sure how comfortable that would be, or what the point of all of that would be other than to look moe on high school students who look like elementary school kids (Y HELO THAR CHIYO).

Another look at the school uniform, this time on a pair of characters who actually look like high school students. Left is Rina, right is Reimi, and they're pretty much Ink's close friends. Frequent watchers of bishoujo anime should probably be able to tell their personalities at a glance.

This is Sumi Kuroi. She's Ink's self-declared rival, she also looks like an elementary school student, and her ahoge brings the anime tradition of sentient hair to new heights (albeit not to the rarefied area of Nabeshin). Also, she has a Cute Little Fang. She narrates the next episode preview, and she's likely to be significant in later episodes.

Overall, I'd place this as a fun outing into an unsurprising magical girl comedy, plus a looks-like-loli main character. The English lesson is almost a minor aspect, used as a mere excuse to have Ink dress up in a magical girl outfit of questionable legality. I'll probably be following this show as best as I can.

As might be expected.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 10th, 2007 at 2:50 pm and is filed under first impressions, moetan. 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.