OP Sequence

OP: 「Shining stars bless☆」 by 詩月カオリ (Utatsuki Kaori)
Watch the OP! Mirror 1, Mirror 2

Summer’s here! And it brings gifts: Nanatsuiro Drops (ななついろ★ドロップス) is the very first show of the season, a colourful magic girl anime with 12 episodes, airing on a whole bunch of channels Monday nights (Chiba TV is first at 25:40 JST).

Director Yamamoto Takashi (Final Approach) and veteran scriptwriter Shimada Michiru (One Piece, Rurouni Kenshin) combine with Studio Barcelona to animate yet another pedoporn game, since there seems to be a lack of those lately. The result is a mess of pastels and squeaky voices in typical summer anime style that simply can’t disappoint. Much.

The main character is an asocial young man named Tsuwabuki Masaharu, who after some hard gardening work drinks super soda dropped by a mysterious dog-eared man and is transformed into a lifeless tiny sheep doll. His bishounen teacher explains that the wacky man was in fact from a different world called Figurare, where transformation is common, as opposed to the “normal” world Retroscena. He continues to smear magical goo on Tsuwabuki, which brings the figure alive and able to move, and speak. Hoping to return to his original form, Tsuwabuki is told that he’ll need assistance in his quest, and ends up thrown through the window of a constantly weeping little girl, who just happens to be his new classmate Akihime Sumomo. An accompanying letter from the teacher informs her that he is a poor little fellow trying to go home to the land of toy animals, and requires her help to collect 7 Star Drops, and, uh, also stay at her house. Since her brain is stuffed with fluff, she’s delighted, and the two obviously make a perfect couple. Hearing that he lacks a name (anonymity is important!), she chooses to call him Yuki-chan because of his visual similarity with snow. Aided by a laser pointer ring, they rush off into the night and collect their first Star Drop using a magical spoon and so on. You get the picture. I should probably mention that there’s a mysterious rival girl waiting to make her move.

ED Sequence

ED: 「mo・o!」 by LOVERIN TAMBURIN
Watch the ED!: Mirror 1, Mirror 2

Voicing the main dude is a very bland Nojima Hirofumi, coming from a number of forgettable roles and not doing much better this time. The sheep form Yuki-chan gets its own voice with Gotou Mai, but the only role I recognize her from is Happiness!, and that’s better left ignored. Sumomo is handled by Yuimoto Michiru (Jun in Happiness! again), who has a terribly squeaky voice that makes my ears bleed, but it sure fits the whole magic loli crybaby thing, if that’s your idea of a hot date. The rest of the cast is decent, with hints of Shimizu Kaori, Itou Miki and Matsuoka Yuki, but they don’t say much in this episode. The production quality seems … average, with the regular happy look of summer shows that gets so overloaded on bright colours that it borders on nausea. At least the musical score doesn’t offend.

Personally I giggled through the entire episode, because this is such an ultimate example of terrible summer anime designed for the broken end of the otaku scale. That is, the creepy corner where fatties cosplay as Card Captor Sakura and sprinkle fairy dust on people passing by on the way to the bathroom in close proximity to cover up the odour. There could be a plot in there, somewhere, but I’d bet you need to venture deep, and in that case you’d best bring a Geiger counter to warn you of lethal levels of cute. Also includes chibi scenes.

Reminds me of: Happiness!, Nanoha

Note: OP and ED added by Omni because I didn’t want to create a new entry just for them

55 Comments

  1. It always makes me kinda sad when “faceless hentai guy” suddenly develops a personality. Then again, sometimes it’s for the better–the guy in Kimi ga Nozomu Eien was actually pretty realistic in how he vascillated and freaked out, but this guy just seems boring.

    Anonymooo
  2. Magical loli? CHECK
    Pink hair? CHECK
    Transformed boy? CHECK
    Potentially lolicon bishonen sensei? CHECK
    Phallic magical instrument? CHECK
    Rival/Potential loliyuri love interest? CHECK

    Yeah, this one’s digging real deep into the originality well…

    quigonkenny
  3. “…because this is such an ultimate example of terrible summer anime designed for the broken end of the otaku scale. ”

    AMAZING – COULDN’T HAVE SAID IT BETTER

    think of this as a more dull version of happiness, minus the epic trap. wait, then what’s left?

    jaalin
  4. Stop picking on the lolis. What have they ever done to you?

    Seriously, as a matter of taste, not everyone who likes lolis is a fat, sakura-cosplaying (actually I don’t think anyone who likes loli would perform such a travesty of an act, weirdo. This show may be bad, but it’s not bad because it has lolis in it.

    So shows like Girls Bravo are so much better right? Pfft, broken end of the otaku scale my arse.

  5. of course theres loads of chibi scence!!!! it’s the same director as final approach!!
    have high hopes for tis series.. hope it does’t end up wif a busted story line!

    padfoot135
  6. This looks more on the cute side than the ecchi side that would appeal to the “fat otaku with a loli daimakura” crowd. This is one of the least informative reviews I’ve seen onj this site though, it looks like Patrik’s following Jaalin’s tactic of “let’s get cheap laughs at fans of another genre’s expense”, which is pretty pathetic. Random Curiosity was better when it was just Omni…

    howaito
  7. “Rival/Potential loliyuri love interest? CHECK”
    Lol, really, some of you guys are too clever 🙂

    At first, I was all “why does Random C even waste time, webspace, and man power blogging this stuff?” but I read on to find a subtle, yet frank tongue-lashing of “yet another pedoporn game.” Most entertaining.

    Bravo Patrik, Bravo.

    kadian1364
  8. howaito: You know what the number one complaint I got back when I worked alone was? “Why didn’t you cover this series?” I don’t have time to do it all with the amount of depth that I personally strive for. In fact, there’s not many people who can do so. That’s why I’ve got friends like jaalin and Patrik to help, and I think they’re doing a damn fine job. I don’t always agree with everything they say, but in this case at least, Patrik is dead on with his review.

  9. This story is pretty stupid mahou shoujo fluff… but it was designed by noizi Ito… Probably why it had so much hype and all… guess art doesn’t mean anything unless the story is interesting/original *cough* Shana *cough* Haruhi *cough *

    Mao
  10. sigh…It’s a matter of tastes. Some may have worse taste than others. Some like to taste stuff like s***. Who knows and who cares. Let others watch it in peace instead of bashing on it. Others may not like pedoporn and some do. Heck…maybe i might decide to watch it. I wouldn’t know. Point is people might like it so dont discourage other from watching.

    klazyguy
  11. Yeah, I don’t think I can even give the first episode a shot and I even tried out Idolmaster (although not El Cazador).

    Maybe it’ll go somewhere, but it looks vaguely like a horrendous Nanoha ripoff. And somehow, I doubt the Fate copy can even attempt to save this.

    Spectrum
  12. Her magic staff is a SPOON man, a SPOON !!

    But no, seriously, there has to be at least one of these mahou shoujo shows every season. Why are we reacting so negatively to this one? Cuz there’s nothing original about it. If there was some play on the spoon motif and she went around hunting pudding monsters, then it’d be a lot more enjoyable. But no… it’s sappy, it’s dull, and the voice of one of the most epic trap characters ever is actually a girl this time. A real annoying, squeaky, hot-sexy-high-socks-but-doesn’t-really-suit-her girl.

    We’re just here to save you a precious 25 minutes of your life. After all, if you have a half hour to waste or have a thing for these shows, you’d download it anyways. So what’s the problem?

    jaalin
  13. Awww… c’mon guys. Can’t we all just get along?

    ————————————————-
    Washi at 7:31 pm on July 2nd, 2007

    Stop picking on the lolis. What have they ever done to you?
    ————————————————-

    Agreed.

    Kyokii
  14. ya know, i would like to see a magical girl series where she slowly destroys a boy’s soul and personality until he goes crazy and shoots himself because he can’t handle her powers and their effect on his wonderful life.

    where is that show xD

  15. @Jaalin: “Her magic staff is a SPOON man, a SPOON !!”

    No doubt, man. I mean, what is she, like, the daughter of the f**kin’ Tick, or something?

    (Please, tell me someone gets thst reference…)

    quigonkenny
  16. quigonkenny at 2:49 am on July 3rd, 2007

    @Jaalin: “Her magic staff is a SPOON man, a SPOON !!”
    No doubt, man. I mean, what is she, like, the daughter of the f**kin’ Tick, or something?
    (Please, tell me someone gets thst reference…)

    SPPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNN!!!

    mehz
  17. All this bashing makes me SICK. Nanatsuiro Drops was one of THE eroges of last year, and it wasn’t because of Itou design’s, that’s for sure.

    And who says that this is full of echii just because it’s from an eroge.. stfu. It only has one sex-scene for each character (an oasis this days with eroges) and they are quite romantic without girls screaming like mad.

    PS: Sumomo isn’t a loli.

    Cless
  18. >>All this bashing makes me SICK. Nanatsuiro Drops was one of THE eroges of last year, and it wasn’t because of Itou design’s, that’s for sure.

    And who says that this is full of echii just because it’s from an eroge.. stfu. It only has one sex-scene for each character (an oasis this days with eroges) and they are quite romantic without girls screaming like mad.

    HOLY SHIT YOU LIE. I’M SURE YOU DO. After all, I as someone who has never played the eroge and therefore has no idea what the show is about, can make justified comments based on the first episode alone! I SPEAK THE TRUTH.

  19. This show portrays very good on what i would call “disgusting cuteness”. And nonetheles, id has zero originality >.>. I mean, how many times, since “cardcaptor sakura” have we seen a loli with a winged staff and stuffed animal? Also, wtf is up with char designs…they look so…generic and ugly…Well this show just has proven one thing: This Summer season will most likely suck >.

    AloneinVoid
  20. what makes me sad is the number of idiots here who think this anime is loli while it’s not even based off a loli game (get a clue and look at Sumomo again, she’s not loli).

    lolwhat
  21. Yeah. Besides, I don’t think of ANY anime character as loli at all. I happen to like the series because it’s cute, nice opening song, cute characters, and other things. I don’t care about what these people think. I will watch it! If only I can find a RAW somewhere…

    FireChick
  22. Isn’t there already Kamichama “Burn It with Fire” Karin? Why do they have to have 2 of the same f**king show running simultaneously? And Sumomo is seriously annoying. Crying at the drop of a hat is so out. It’s not a character.

    Zzz...
  23. I’m glad I’m not the only one annoyed by peoples who tag as loli this anime, I guess there are still peoples with a brain that won’t tag something as ‘omg pedoporn, whatever’ whenever a girl looks like she doesn’t have E-cup boobs.

    lolwhat
  24. You know, to be fair, I can’t defend something that I haven’t watch yet. But what I can point out is the fact that probably only a few of the bashers have actually even watched the episode first before commenting.

    And isn’t it common knowledge that the first episode of most series isn’t always the best, and that you shouldn’t judge a series from it? And to some other haughty people, you actually intend to judge the ENTIRE season base on this one episode?

    Amazing, these trolls have been de-evolving at a much faster rate than predicted!

    Chaos2Frozen
  25. watched it myself… well, i actually can’t help but think that i am watching a very bad version fo cardcaptor sakura. somehow, it’s horrifyingly similar. *shudder*

    biankita
  26. Quite interesting to read reviews. I don’t necessarily disagree with the review, though I will probably give this a shot anyhow. Comparisons with other Noizi Ito drawn works is funny since Nanatsuiro Drops isn’t originally a Light Novel like Shana or Haruhi, but rather an 18+ game. I would be under the impression that a light novel generally would have more story than an 18+ game. And then when seeing the magical shoujo comparisons, neither Sakura nor Nanoha originated from games either, one being from manga, the other being … a spinoff.

    Or maybe I’ll just try Nanoha again. Well, I had no problems with the game itself when I tried it. Perhaps I just find it interesting attempting anime versions of games I’ve played.

    Amoirsp
  27. w00t!! Cardcaptor Sakura remake. Thank the gods.
    *looks at summary and images*
    Que[what]?*head tilts*

    F*ck It. It’s pretty but not much a blockbuster. I’ll still watch just to see a bad example of anime and squeky voices.

  28. Sure there wasn’t really much of a storyline, and alot of the characters were really bland, but the nice artwork and the character designs ( for the girls ) made up for it I found, along with the tearjerker scenes that I think made it worth watching. I actually really enjoyed it, and what can I say, crybaby or not Sumomo is really cute.

    Neko
  29. Too much bashing, I feel it’s gonna start a mahou shoujo internet riot. Seriously, watch the show and get a clue before criticizing it so you guys don’t look like a bunch of mindless idiots.

    TheUtopianCommunists

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