Steel Angel Kurumi

In my continuing search for new crap to write about (I'm actually completely caught up right now), I decided to go back and cover the anime series I've been watching over the last several months. It is my eventual plan to just write about significant stuff from the past when I have nothing new, so I'll ease into that by going backwards in time discussing anime until it gets tiring.

The last full thing I saw was Steel Angel Kurumi along with the Encore OVA's and shorter sequel series. It's a pretty quick and forgettable watch. The episodes are all very short, only about 11 minutes as opposed to the normal 22 for animated stuff. It makes it really easy to breeze through without feeling bad you spent so much time on something you don't really care about. There's nothing terrible about the show, it's just not very interesting. It's extremely mildly humorous, there are some somewhat competent action scenes, the characters are fairly tolerable, and the story is a little intriguing and ends in an essentially satisfying way. Damning it with faint praise, eh? It's not a bad show at all, it's just the kind of thing you'd only want to watch if you literally had nothing else to do, or you're really in love with the Magical Girlfriend genre of anime.

Magical Girlfriend shows are similar to Harem shows, which are both pretty basic and usually not indicative of high quality. They appeal to the apparently common Japanese male fantasy of a dorky guy who manages to be in a relationship with a beautiful girl. In Harem shows, the guy is in some crazy situation surrounded by hot girls who all want him, and usually there's one obvious one he ends up with. Magical Girlfriend shows only have one real love interest, often with super powers (in Steel Angel Kurumi, she's a cyborg), and the conflict comes from interference by others characters, often related to the girl, maybe not necessarily because they're into the guy, although it's not uncommon that someone is. Nothing ever really happens, either because the guy is too shy or too perverted, and (not) hilarious hijinks ensue. Steel Angel Kurumi is a little different because the plot is based on a real conflict between forces, and it quite often feels like an action show with a significant romance subplot. It might be a step above the typical genre show, but again, faint praise.

The Encore OVA is a few filler episodes just giving a bit more interaction between the characters, and is even less interesting. The sequel's plot is completely unrelated to the original series, with the main character being a girl, adding a lot of lesbian undertones. It's much more of a romance show than its predecessor, with lots of love triangles and stuff like that, and is less watchable than the original. Again, it's not terrible, it just drags along to the finish. It's definitely not something I'd recommend to someone who's not already a big fan of anime.