First Impressions / Minami-ke


“Let’s Be Nice”

One day after school, a man lay sitting,
Outside the Minami-ke door, depressed enough to start wrist slitting.
Chiaki gazed upon him, he quietly greets her,
Who is this guy? And why’s he look so much like a loser?
Kana comes home and sees this loser in the living room,
Thinking “ugh, this guy must be a loser I assume.”
What’s wrong with him? Why’s he look so down?
Hah, I bet he got dumped by his girlfriend, or maybe she left town,
But either way, if we make fun of him too much,
So we must treat him with a gentle touch.
Wait till Haruka-oneesama gets home, she’ll know what to do,
With this loser who can’t get over the fact that he’s so blue.
Haruka gets home, and sees this poor sap,
My, what kind of face is that? Did you get into some bad mishap?
“His girlfriend dumped him!” Kana responds,
“But I think he’s partial to girls like Haruka-oneesama, something about them blondes!”
Haruka blushes as she rushes to prepare dinner,
Working on her trademark curry, one bite and it’ll make you feel like a winner.
While eating, the guy gets a call from his pigeon girlfriend,
She wants to talk! She wants to meet up right now, and maybe on the weekend!
The guy runs off and leaves our three sisters,
Kana tells Chiaki, “oi, don’t let into our house any more weird misters.”
But of course, he comes back the next day,
Seems like his talk with that gf didn’t go quite so ok…


“Best Friends”

One day in class, during the lunch hour
A maiden in love sat there gazing, her face lit up like a flower.
It’s Fujioka-kun! The nice guy that gets all the Kana abuse,
Which is a good segue into the Riko and Keiko debuts.
Riko is trying to figure out why Kana and Fujioka are so close,
Upon eavesdropping, sounds like he enjoyed her cooking and was giving her kudos.
Cooking! What! She even cooks for him?!
If I’m trying to win him over my outlook is grim!
Ah screw it, I’ll just get up in her face to face,
Tell her “hey, get off my man, you’re a total disgrace.”
Somehow, some way, the two ended up jawing,
Grabbing each other’s hair, half an inch from clawing.
Keiko! You’re not going anywhere!
As they grabbed her skirt for no apparent reason and out of nowhere.


“Ninomiya-kun! Sensei!”

Ok, I’m all rhymed out. This next sketch has the two younger sisters pitting their hand-eye coordination skills in a matchup of a PlayGame4 video game adaptation of that drama they watch involving the teacher and his student affair. It’s quite a deep game as there seems to be an endless number of game modes, each parodying one game or another. Check the screenshot captions for more info!


“Join the volleyball club”

The last sketch involves a rather greasy guy, who also happens to be the captain of the volleyball club. He scopes out Haruka in a PE class dominating at volleyball, and vows to get her on the team. Which, as it turns out, is his way of fulfilling some weird fantasy of his, and not because she can actually play volleyball. No, he wants her to become manager of the team, and lovingly wipe his sweat during games!

He’s one of those chauvinist characters too caught up in his own glory to see what’s actually going on around him. In this anime, where all the characters seem to take on some kind of sarcastic persona, he becomes the kind of guy that everybody just plays along with, and afterwards talk about how creepy he is (nope, no horde of fangirls here).

How does this one play out? Eventually, he comes to her class and approaches one of the classmates – get Haruka to join the team! Nope, she can’t – she has to take care of the kids at home. KIDS? The captain completely mistakes this and thinks it over, eventually coming to the conclusion that he will become the father figure to those kids, with his princess Haruka at his side.

“Ano, Hosaka-senpai?”
“Don’t call me senpai!”
”Then, what should we call you?”
“Call me… papa.”

Preview:


Thoughts

Minami-ke continues to be hilarious and continues to deliver the snappy punch lines. It was fun to see the other characters, each of them contributing their own unique role to the mix, and it works real well. It’s a slightly different approach from Ichigo Mashimaro as that show just had the five girls, but Minami-ke seems perfectly adept at integrating many other characters in a one-sketch type deal from time to time.

Which could raise an important issue down the line – how many more characters are we gonna see? Does the addition of all these characters add to the “story” at hand? Will we find out more about the Minami girls through these characters? And most importantly, how many episodes is this gonna have? The fact that this is a TV series tells us it’s going to be at least 12-13 eps (and not the 4 eps of Kyou no 5-2), but the introduction of new characters and such could possibly bump that to 26. Not sure if they’re gonna be able to keep up this consistently high level of humor for so long, but after the success of Lucky Star, who knows?

25 Comments

  8. wtf is wrong with the volleyball dude. He has some creepy fascination with Haruka wiping off copious amounts of his sweat. Makes no sense whatsoever. I mean, if he’s having a fantasy of being the father working at a company, why the hell is he freaking sweating so much?

    And I would totally buy that game for its concentrated win (if it cost like 10 bucks)

    kazekage26
    Reply

  23. Sensei and Ninomiya-kun: best recurring non-characters since Punch and Judy on Cowboy Bebop. I LOLed at the “What’s with this game?” But wasn’t the “Round 5” RPG reference more of a Dragon Quest reference than FF?

    This show has the best secondary characters. The volleyball guy this week is hilariously oblivious. He’s a walking parody of bishounen, complete with teeth sparkle, personal background music, Raito-class dramatics, The Hairflip, and to top it off, he’s voiced by Itsuki. Add enough Zapp Brannigan-class ego to spoil the rest, and you’ve got a winner. Can’t fault him for the Haruka fantasies, though. Man does have taste…

    quigonkenny
    Reply

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