Posted on Tuesday, October 17, 2006 9:24 AM
This morning, I watched the first episode of "Otome wa Boku ni Koi Shiteru"; a series revolving around a boy on an all-girls school. Not something that's been pulled for the first time in an anime or manga (I, My, Me, Strawberry Eggs, Pretty Face and Kashimashi come to mind), but on a different premise.
You see; unlike Hibiki (who crossdresses to land a job as a PE-teacher in an all-girls school) and Randou (who needs to dress up because his face was mistakenly rebuilt as his secret highschool sweetheart because his own face was practically gone after an accident), Mizuho apparently had a perverted grandfather. Gramps dies, and the only line in his will states that Mizuho has to go to Seiou All-Girls School.
For that, he needs to be a she. ;)
No operations (he already has long hair and a feminine body), just a heavy amount of padding in the correct place and some make-up here and there.
The only people who know about this are his childhood (girl)friend Mariya, the head of the school and his head teacher. The others are blissfully unaware, and it's important to keep it that way. ;)
The first moments of the anime are quite fanservicy (lots of bouncing and awkward camera angles), and him being the new school beauty, right off the bat is somewhat far-fetched, but it's okay overall.
Characters look an awful lot like some of the characters from Kimi ga Nozomu Eien; Yukari Kamioka is a spitting image of Akane Suzumiya. Yukari is much more genki though...
Acting is good, by the way; the scene where nature calls, and (s)he is unable to go into the girl's bathroom, is short but funny, and the use of superdeformed scenes is always good in my book (takes the tension out, you know).
One thing Mizuho hasn't mastered quite yet, is acting like a female. The Japanese language has quite a lot of gender-specific words, and Mizuho certainly has the male words down. ;)
Note; some tomboyish girls also use male words, but quite different compared to guys.
While some things are clearly over the top (a dressed-up guy becoming the school hottie on her first school day, overly-cute underclass(wo)men), the way Mariya teases Mizuho to no end with her female features makes for great comedy. Fortunately, Mariya also takes great care not to give his secret away by teaching him to act like a girl.
I'm looking forward to the next episode.
Cheers, K.