Kamichu! 4
Opening: 「晴れのちハレ！」 ("Hare nochi hare!") by Maho Tomita - I can finally write something about the song since we've got an actual OP this time! Song's nice and the lyrics really fit the themes of Kamichu! well. Really nice detailed animation with some personality, too. GJ!
Ending: 「アイスキャンディー」 ("Ice Candy") by MAKO - Ehh.. don't care for it much..
One thing before I fall asleep:
ゆりえちゃん可愛いよゆりえちゃん！！
Yurie-chan kawaii yo Yurie-chan!
Sorry, had to say it, went through last week without seeing Yurie, you know. Just watching all she does makes me smile :) The rest to come later.
While Yurie eats breakfast with her family and Tama -- cats don't eat with spoons, you know (^^;;) -- something falls out of the sky and lands near the house. A chibi deer, boar, and butterfly pop out and announce themselves as "Team Happiness", sent from the God's Association to bring Yurie a request, a very special one. Before she opens the scroll, Tama points out what's on TV -- an alien spaceship has landed near the parliament building in Tokyo. Yurie opens the scroll -- seems word about Yurie's gotten out, even to the highest levels of the government in Tokyo since the Prime Minister -- yes, the PM -- wants Yurie's help with this little problem. So off to Tokyo she goes.
Army tanks surround the martian spaceship as Yurie arrives. She's given a nametag that has "God" written on it and the PM takes her to speak to the martian, wanting her to see what it came to Earth to do. Said martian is a rather cute-looking pink thing wearing a ribbon. They lock Yurie in the room where the martian's being held. She tries to talk to it and gets "pikopikoponponpon?" as a reply.... After the butterfly gives her some advice Yurie approaches again. The martian puts out a feeler and touches her hand, then her forehead, and talks. She wants a phone. Wow, talk about long distance calls... Actually, no ;) She puts part of the phone on her (Can you hear me now?) and now can talk to Yurie normally. She can also see the deer, boar, and butterfly for some reason. She's come to Earth to bring back a lost "child" -- she draws a sketch of a NASA lander on the floor... The PM watches what's going on while talking on the phone to some American officials about turning the martian over to them...
So Yurie, thinking everything's taken care of walks around in a gift shop with the deer, boar, and butterfly. She also gives the butterfly a name -- Chou-chan, because she was chou (super) helpful with her advice. Not because she's a chou (butterfly) or anything (^^;;) The deer doesn't quite trust politicians, but Yurie thinks the PM wouldn't lie... as soon as she says so, there's a ruckus outside as helicopters try to take the spaceship away -- Yurie gains clearance to enter the area by showing her "God" nametag and sees the martian girl tied up and about to be handed over to Americans. Yurie gets taken away by a solider, but the martian picks a radio off someone and uses it to make everyone sleep. After putting her ribbon on Yurie, Yurie wakes up and they run into the pariliament building to try and find a place to hide.
While hiding out, Yurie thinks up a name for the boar, Ino-kun -- yup, ino means "boar" (^^;;) The martian shows Yurie a hologram of the person she likes back at her middle school on Mars, a megane-kun guy. Yurie says she doesn't have anybody when the martian asks her ;) Yurie's definitely going to help the martian get back to Mars now. But how are they going to get past all the soldiers? She can use some of her powers, of course. Ino-kun pulls out some paper (only 3 sheets) and something to write with. The deer also gets a name now, Shika-kun for saying nothing but (shika) strange things -- yes, shika means "deer" (^^;;) Suddenly, the lights come on and a solider demands they not move and show themselves. Yurie finishes writing with the help of Chou-chan showing her how to write 術 jutsu -- though Yurie actually wrote the hiragana じゅつ to make 牛歩戦じゅつ gyuuhosenjutsu ("snail's pace tactic") -- and the soliders slow to a crawl, allowing them to escape.
Yurie and the martian run out, being chased by tons of soliders. When they're caught they disappear in a puff of smoke -- those were 類似品 ruijihan "imitation", of course. The real Yurie and martian slowly make their way towards the spaceship, but they get surrounded by soldiers. Yurie goes on about how they can't attack since they're a self-defense force and gets away. The martian calls the soliders "ecchi" for looking ;) But there in front of the spaceship the PM stops them. Luckily for them, a dish from the lander falls off and knocks the PM out.
So now with things finally calmed down it's time for the martian to head on back home to Mars. The martian invites Yurie to come and visit sometime, and Yurie'd love to go and meet her friends and such of course. Yurie remembers she's got the martian's ribbon on -- the martian says she'll give it to her. On the last piece of paper Yurie has she writes a "love umbrella" with Martian-chan and Martian-kun on it (I guess they don't have names...). They bid each other farewell and hug (I cried, too) and the martian flies away on her ship.
The next day things are seemingly back to normal when Team Happiness shows up with yet another request for Yurie. A submarine suddenly surfaces and a report comes on a nearby TV about people from the bottom of the ocean showing up...
So no rest for Yurie-sama, it seems. Team Happiness is a pretty funny group, and pretty cute as well (especially Chou-chan) -- Yurie's got excellent naming sense, doesn't she? (^^;;) The martian@Mochizuki Hisayo was pretty cute as well. Shoot, everything in the show's cute, especially Yurie-chan, of course. All her little habits, like sucking on a finger when she's nervous and such are adorable. 和む (the word Akamatsu-sensei used in his post to describe what moe is) is definitely the word to describe what watching this does to me ;)
Suddenly expanding the scope of the story to national and political (read in what you want from the political side of things) and interstellar happenings from just a little quiet town did feel somewhat odd, but given what's happened before in Kamichu! it shouldn't be that unexpected. We started off with a girl becoming a god overnight and everybody accepting that as fact, anyways, so Yurie talking to a martian is within the realm of possibility. The best way to watch Kamichu! would be to do as was indicated in the OP -- after the scriptwriter's name the paper with "Shut up and come with me" flew in -- suspend disbelief and just go with the flow, even though it might not make sense at times. Though I would prefer episodes more like the previous 3 than this one ;)
And it seems like that'll be the case next time, as it looks like Yurie will come down with a cold among other things. Looking forward to more Yurie cuteness as usual :)
Very cute episode, but I did go wtf a couple of times :-) Not content with having Gods and talking creatures, this show throws in a pink alien too :-)
My hentai side keeps referring to the cute alien as "penis-head". And she has tentacles too ^_^;;;;;;
Is it wrong to not give a damn about Yurie's love life?
It's all Mai Hime again for me. The show itself is awesome. The Martian was a nice twist, at this rate she'll be talking with Jesus and Konfucious next.
uwa~ i really like this show! i've only seen up to episode 3 though ^^; but i must admit, i like how the first 3 episodes were... i really like the local god Yashima-sama too ^o^ lol! but i'm glad to see ya picked up this series too :D i've really gotten hooked on your AnimeBlog! XD but i still hope to see more development between Yurie-chan and Kenji-kun ^^;; not ALOT but some... i guess its that shojo in me ne? lol eitherway i am currently addicted to the anime and even its manga... although i've only been able to find it in raw >>;
This is my favourite series of the summer, for sure (although Pani Puni Dash! is promisingly crazy).
I figured out where Yurie's home town is from the big zoom-out in episode 1 by comparing it with the maps of Japan in Google Earth. It's the town of Onomichi, a real place complete with ferries and a major shrine called Saikokuji Temple (which Matsuri's family owns in the anime) on a steep hilltop. There's even a short piece of film on the Web showing Onomichi schoolgirls in sailor fukus riding their bikes off the ferry.
http://www.city.onomichi.hiroshima.jp/english/map.htm