Zero no Tsukaima 1

  
  

The next day the second year students gather to carry out the summoning ceremony. Kirche appropriate gets a fire-based familiar, while Guiche gets... a mole. It's finally Louise's turn, and... a very normal human boy appears, having absolutely no idea what the heck is going on (^^;;) The other students laugh and say Louise summoned a "commoner". The boy tries to crawl away, but Louise comes closer to finish the contract ritual -- with a kiss (Pactio!). With the addition of some runes on the boy's hand (looks rather painful), he's now Louise's familiar.

When the boy wakes up he's in Louise's room. He says he wants to go back home, but it seems like Louise can't understand what he's saying. Louise then starts undressing right there in front of him, but he doesn't watch (of course). Louise throws her clothes over his way since he's going to be the one washing them (yes, including pantsu). Louise has had enough of the boy's jabbering, so she tries to cast a silence spell, but instead of being silenced she can now understand what he's saying. She asks his name -- Saito Hiraga. First of all, he wants to know why he's there -- to be her familiar, of course. He notices the runes on his hand...

Meanwhile, in the school library, Colbell, the teacher who supervised the summoning ceremony earlier, has found a book with the runes that are on Saito's hand. He's got to tell the principal about this...

Louise has explained the situation to Saito, but he still doesn't quite get it... Why couldn't she have summoned a griffon or something cool like that? After that thought, Saito's already gone, trying to escape. Saito sees Guiche in the hall charming another girl, Katie, and tries to sneak by but is noticed. Guiche and the others went through a lot of trouble since they had to carry Saito back to Louise's room after he passed out. Saito says a quick thanks and runs off as Louise catches up. Saito doesn't get much farther though, caught by Guiche's levitation spell in the courtyard. Saito looks up in the sky and sees two moons (this FF4?) and realizes that he's not in Tokyo or even on Earth anymore...

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And that's just the beginning of the fun for Yuuji... ah, Saito. Can't help but think of Shakugan no Shana with Rie Kugimiya playing a tsundere in Louise with pretty much her Shana voice, and Satoshi Hinao as the loser guy in Saito. Very fitting for their parts ;)

I watched this episode right after reading through the first half of the first volume of the novel, so it was a bit confusing since things were shuffled and changed around quite a bit. The summoning scene happens first, Saito and Shana Louise can understand each other right away (the anime makes a bit more sense with him not being able to understand here, I suppose), Yuuji Saito is with Louise in the classroom scene in the novel, and many others. However, it doesn't bother me all that much since this episode did turn out okay and I enjoyed it. Character design isn't exactly faithful to the novel, but I do like it so no problem there. Louise is pretty cute :) She's quite the tsundere... well, mostly tsun, treating Saito pretty much like a dog a good bit of the time. Next time we should get to see a bit of dere from her, though ;)

Next time, Saito gets in a battle with Guiche. How can he, just a normal human, win against a mage? And what are those runes on his hand? Y'all should find out ;) Of course, I'm going to keep watching this one and intend to blog it on Sunday or Monday, depending on when I can watch it.