Gao! Gao! Stegosaurus!

Sunday, June 01, 2008

The Japanese have a term called "moe" that I've encountered before but never fully digested. Haruhi defined it as "cute": girls with big boobs, a pretty face and a nice figure. In Welcome to the NHK we get more attributes: glasses, maids, and nurses. But some Wikipedia sleuthing reveals that these are just symptoms of moe. The core is generating a strong sympathetic emotional response in the viewer, and watching Air was like being sucker punched with a moe glove. Misuzu Kamio is heartwrenchingly adorable, naïve, and earnest, tripping over her own feet and gurgling the cutest made-up words.

It's hard to define this show. Partly comedy, slice of life, and fantasy drama, it gives off a nice Tenchi Muyo vibe. The timing is razor sharp and the central mystery to the show feels natural and incorporates all the characters. But I worry that it may have started as a hentai game. By the end of the first disc there's just one guy in a town of six women. He doesn't look or act like the generic hentai male lead, but for a broke vagabond he must pack an awful lot of hair gel. A middle schooler runs him down and he recovers and bops her twice on the head, hard. Pursuant to anime law 34.97B, article 2, he has a cold heart that has to melted, but it mercifully happens in the second episode and leaves us with a lukewarm cast to engage in room temperature antics.

Yukito Kunisaki is the travelin' man. Instead of a sensible profession like chimney sweep or guitar playing beggar, Yukito carries a small doll and puts on puppet shows for children. With no strings. "I have a mild telekinetic ability," he confesses, obviously so committed to his quest to not even imagine claiming James Randi's bounty. A bus drops him off in wherever-the-heck-this-is-ville and he's aggressively befriended by Misuzu Kamio. The absurdly long haired blond gives him food, a place to stay, and introduces him to the lovably defective townspeople. Chief among them, of course, is Misuzu herself.

While you get full character names like a mace to the skull, most everything else has to be inferred. Misuzu appears to be fifteen years old and attends remedial high school courses in the summer. Her attention span rivals a gnat, she's exceedingly immature, and loves dinosaurs, whimpering "gao" when she's upset. Looking after her is a single mom who slams her motorcycle into the shed every night and then drains a liquor bottle for dinner. Mother and daughter don't get along very well, possibly owing to their relative poverty.

Can you see why I'm uncomfortable with the idea of having sex with these people? That's not even mentioning the girl with the ribbon on her wrist, the dog Potato, or the emotionally dead girl and her undeniably underage, aggressive companion. They're all fun to watch, but if Yukito laid a hand on anything but their shoulder I'd run for the hills.