Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch 1

Opening: "Taiyou no Rakuen ~Promised Land~" - Sung by Kanbe Miyuki. Nothing all that great. Animation's a mix of the stock henshin footage and some other stuff showing off the 3 leading ladies and Kaito.
Ending: "Daiji na Takarabako" - Sung by Nakata Asumi, Luchia's seiyuu. Not the greatest song either. At least there's kinda some stuff going on with the animation.

Special request blog :) ADV announced they had licensed Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch a few weeks ago so I've decided to watch a few episodes and see how it is. 1st episode blog, little bit longer than usual, so on, so forth... fitting that me, a music major, would be watching a show with such a musical name, ne? ;)

Luchia, Mermaid Princess of the North Pacific Ocean, has gone to the human world along with our talking penguin mascot, Hippo (what an odd name for a penguin), and a couple of others to search for a very important pearl that she lost. Well, "lost" isn't exactly the right word for it. A few years ago as she was watching fireworks near a boat on the surface, a huge wave came up and a boy on the boat fell off. She rescued him and brought him to shore, but he still wouldn't wake up. So she used her pearl to revive him. He was her first love. Awwww :)

Back to the present day.. Luchia walks along the beach and sees a very cool guy surfing. You can probably guess who that guy is, ne? Luchia thinks that might be the case, but doesn't say that much about it as the guy -- Kaito -- invites her to see him in a surfing competition.

At school, the gossip is going around about how close she is to Kaito. Another girl in her class, Hanon, offers to help her out a bit so they go shopping for a while, but Luchia has to return to help out at the hotel she's working at.

The day of the surfing competition comes and as Kaito is impressing Luchia and Hanon (and the crowd) with his moves he falls off and doesn't come back up. The weather suddenly changes so Luchia runs into the ocean (changing into mermaid form. She changes back whenever she touches the ocean) to see what's going on. Our bad guy.. bad gal of the week has Kaito and wants the pearl he has.. the pearl that Luchia saved him with. Kaito wakes back up and realizes who Luchia is and gives her the pearl.. henshin time! Though relatively short for a transformation sequence I have to say ;) So what's Luchia's special power? The pearl changed into a microphone so it's the power of song. She sings... not the greatest song... and drives the bad guy away for now and takes Kaito back to shore. So Luchia and Kaito are finally reunited.. however.. apparently, something bad will happen if Luchia confesses to a human. What could that be? And btw... Hanon is a mermaid princess, too, since she has a pearl.

Okay, summary done. Anybody interested now? ;) Seems like it will be your stereotypical mahou shoujo, monster-of-the-week show. Nothing stands out as extraordinary right now, but we'll see... I've watched a few episodes of the 2nd season of the show and it hasn't really been all that different. Some character interaction, then bad guy shows up, transform, sing the same song, bad guy runs away, that's it. But at this point, I can watch it without being too annoyed ;).. It's kind of backwards from the usual "I've got to keep my secret magical identity secret" problem that shows up in mahou shoujo since Kaito already knows Luchia is a mermaid. I guess... If he's made the connection... Maybe... And those two are already hugging and such. We're off to a fast start, aren't we?

Anyways, I'll probably blog a few more episodes, and more if requested :) If anyone else out there has watched any Mermaid Melody please comment, okay?