I just got back from vacation – I needed some excellent anime to watch. Neregate blogged about an excellent short anime called Denpa Teki na Kanojo yesterday. I decided to give it a try. I enjoyed it immensely.
Note: This covers both episodes because I simply wanted to relax on the first. Also, since I’m not capping the actual plot, the caps work regardless.
A Quick Summary
Juuzawa Juu is a delinquent who has to fight pretty often in order to just be left alone. At some point in high school, he meets Ochibana Ame, a girl who says she knew him as a King in a previous life and that she is his servant and knight to protect him. She wishes to be with him. It is later hinted as to why she thinks this rather odd story is true.
The first episode centers around the mystery of a phantom killer – he believes he is a government secret agent sent to kill the invasive alien race from another dimensions that hides as humans. Juu finds one of his classmates dead and the story begins from there, essentially – the race to figure out who killed her. From there, he meets the killer in a park and fights him. He momentarily wins, however the killer gets back up after being knocked out. Ame is present and saves him with a hard blow with a brick to the lunatic’s head. Later, it is revealed that the insane guy is the brother of a girl in Juu’s school, who is also pretty psychotic. She attempts to kill him but after begging and screaming for help, Ame comes to his rescue.
The second episode deals with Juu again, where he is a victim of a growing trend of nasty demoralizing pranks. He is riding the train and is suddenly accused of molesting a girl. Ame’s sister, Hikaru comes to his rescue and poses as his girlfriend, but makes she he keeps quiet about she did to help him. However, the news gets out and rumors spread out his school. Hikaru’s crush will not accept her because he has seen the rumor himself. This presses Juu to investigate with Ame and things lead to the discovery of a student council president and vice president using a website to collect happiness for themselves by destroying that of others.
Glimpses of a pas life
From what I’ve read, this is a light novel and the anime is short – it’s an OVA of three episodes two of which are out right now. That said, I think this series certainly has plenty of merit if expanded. Also, an aside, Ame’s very much like Tachibana-san from Angel Beats, incredibly calm and slow talking in a very mysterious kind of way.
Ame is an interesting character. She is sweet – she talks calmly and slowly. She’s methodical in her own reason, well, at least she understands what she is going on about. Her belief is that she and Juu are connected by their past lives. She’s slightly crazy too, she’s devoted to him. However, might I add, she’s totally creepy? Until I saw the hidden side of her, well, behind her hair.
Ame is so creepy when she can analyze the scenes of the crime. I can’t describe it any better.
Even though I proclaimed Ame the creepiest character ever, she’s actually fairly cute. When her hair isn’t in her face she’s great. When she’s in a maid outfit, she’s even better. It’s interesting though, as to why they did this. She wasn’t working in the first episode and to get her friends to help her, she needed to work half time? That’s not very nice. Anyway, look at that – completely innocent.
When she’s swinging with Juu, she look like an apparition. You know – you look to the other side of the street with the playground and see the swing moving all by itself and it’s not windy. You look the other way for traffic and you see her when you look back. And then you’re nervous and look away again, and you don’t see her. It’s like that. Creepy.
Finally
For an unscheduled viewing, I’d say Denpa Teki na Kanojo was great because it had a story and fairly interesting characters. It got everything done in two sets of 40 minutes too – that’s amazing because Angel Beats couldn’t do it in 390 minutes. I thought at first it would be a bit like Higurashi – all crazy and bloody but that quickly went away. Then I thought it might be like Chaos;Head which was mind bending crazy and this wasn’t that either. It was more like NHK – kinda. I look forward to the next OVA.
Committed.
