No Nibbling Sweetly

Sunday, August 06, 2006

I thought it would take a lot longer, but I have found what is, by far, the most insidious anime ever made. It's called DearS, published by Geneon in 2005 after what must have been thousands of milliseconds of soul-searching by the Geneon execs. It is the apotheosis of the Inhuman Magical Girlfriend genre, where an unlucky, "normal" Japanese boy becomes the destiny of some robot/maid/witch/whatever. I used to think shows like Mahoromatic or Chobits were bad. No. DearS transcends my previous ideas about what a bad show could be like, illuminating the previous examples as mere ghosts of awful cinema.

My, that was awfully poetic, wasn't it? That should be the introductory paragraph to DearS, but as you might imagine I'm making it seem much worse than it really is. The trick to stopping me from registering www.boycottGeneon.com in protest was the slow realization that the creators of this show seem to embrace the dreck rather than condescend to it.

Let's see if I can manage a plot summary. It's modern day Japan, where one year ago a massive saucer-shaped UFO crashed into a mountain. The occupants turn out to be these hyper attractive alien women (and a few men, who we never see) that the Japanese label "DearS" (short for "Dear FriendS," I'm told). In addition to being adept at languages, the aliens have many interesting talents: minor levitation, cure light wounds, and a scalp thick enough to sustain about eight feet of orange hair. Since no one aboard the ship can repair their auto-pilot, the alien hotties decide to mingle into Japanese society. Our hero (Takeya something) rescues one of the DearS from starvation in an alley and takes her home.

Sounds normal for an anime so far, yes? It breaks down when you hear the theme song ("Love Slave"), notice that lovely burgandy thing the aliens wear around their necks and hear straight from the main love interest's mouth, "I am your slave, Master." Oh my. The flying saucer was apparently carrying a cargo of slave women (and men). Maybe that explains why the green haired hottie, Ren (humorously shortened from four lines of subtitled text) doesn't wear clothes until her "Master" orders her to. We get lots of lovely shots of her bouncing around nude in his apartment, wearing an apron and nothing else, and sleeping in a closet because that was the first place she was told to stay and it's special to her. Oh, and since this is an anime, the main character goes to school, has a childhood friend who wakes him up every morning, a history of suspicion towards the DearS, classmates with their minds in the gutter and a teacher who lustily propositions pupils in class.

All this is enough to make me stop watching before the first commercial break, but I had a sneaking suspicion that something was up and that I should keep going. Although I can't quite point to an eureka moment in the show, I realized that this sort of thing is designed to not be taken the least bit seriously. Now, I know entertainment is entertainment, but the previous series in this genre wanted to try and go outside their... uh, earthly limitations and preach some kind of a message. Chobits begs you to consider when a robot becomes human and thus dateable (hint: never) and Mahoromatic is designed to pull sympathy for the plight of the robot whose guilt over shooting her superior officer leads her to be a maid for that guy's son.

As far as I can tell, DearS doesn't bother with any of that. They have taken every single type of fan service and thrown it into one show, like a cotton candy machine filled with sugar, corn syrup, and every chemical that ends with "ose." This show is fascinated with seeing exactly how far you can go with an alien love slave without making love to her. I suspect there'll be some qualms about the morality of having this slave woman around, but she seems perfectly happy with that collar around her neck. Plus, the token childhood friend is a plain Jane with big glasses and absolutely zero sex appeal. So Takeya has the choice between the ultimate babe with no strings attached or the powerfully uninteresting Neneko. I'll take alien hottie #1 for free, Alex.

My, it's been a while since I've done an anime review. This is still leaving out Tenjho Tenge, which I rented after receiving a lusty wall scroll from Ronny, and UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie, which is objectively worse than DearS because it hides the sexy main character in an obnoxious 8 year old girl and wastes her unspeakably hot outfit (I have a thing for women in white).

And still more this month! The Dead Rising demo was fantasic, psyching me up for the real deal this Tuesday. My birthday's on Thursday, for which I'm requesting to be left alone for a while. Enchanted Arms is still coming, as well as a few posters I got off eBay. Bah - alien women, who needs 'em?