Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge

Anime... anime... anime...

Once upon a time, I used to be a HUGE fan of anime. During my childhood, I spent a huge sum of money on anime CDs, collect anime OSTs, learn to draw from anime, have huge crush on those pretty anime boys and such. My absolute favorite (and still is) has gotta be Rurouni Kenshin or known popularly in my area as Samurai X. Anime inspires me more than anything!

Then of course, all things eventually come to an end. My interest with anime died away as I grew tired of the clichés present in every anime that I had come to watch nowadays. I'll shoot my kittens if I hear another line as close to "I want to be stronger to protect the people that I care!" Seriously, that stuff got old and it still got recycled and recycled in most anime. Cliché is something I cannot stand. That's why I do not prefer dramas, telenovelas, sinetron and such; they have the same things repeated over.And.Over. I grew tired of Naruto because of this reason actually. And Bleach drives me crazy.

So anime comes to be very redundant to me. With a few exception of course (Texhnolyze, Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, just to name a few of anime I like to watch these days). 

I never like to watch lovey-dovey stuffs. For me, all these lovey-dovey stuffs shown on tv, with a very few exception, seems very superficial and dishonest to me. Mostly, I don't like most anime with the high school love theme. For instance, Boys over Flowers is annoying as hell but it got millions of people fawning over the story and it got made into several versions of live actions; Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Damn! I had to go through the Meteor Garden period in bruises and nightmares! My sisters love it and we LIVE IN THE SAME HOUSE. For all I care, it's just about a bunch of rich pretty douchebags ogling over a seemingly poor, but full of positive spirit girl. Have I mention how much I hate harems? And I don't like how the boys were supposed to look in pain but still control their macho-ness altogether. Show some real pain dammit!

That aside, I took some of my miserable moments during these few days to watch something. And since I have nothing else to watch, I decided to give Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge a go. I thought it was going to be another Boys Over Flower but I was proven wrong. This anime is ridiculously and incredibly fun!

Of course there are pretty boys and one out of place girl, but the theme of this anime makes everything so lighthearted and interesting. I love the pretty boys (Kyouhei, Takenaga, Yuki and Ranmaru) here; they don't go all perfect-like and everything, they lose their cool pretty easily whenever they deal with problems and blurts out funny lines all the time. And I love the fact that they made fun of the usual anime cliche of dazzling high school boys with thousand of fan girls at their heels into something more of a satire than seriousness. Like when they appear their skin starts to dazzle and everyone will go "OMG, I'm blind!" rather than "They're so hot..." 

The girl, Sunako, is the opposite of their dazzling-ness. Whereas they are the supposed beautiful creatures, she is the personification of ugliness. I particularly love the scene where Sunako and Kyouhei went to shop together, and then the elderly lady saw Sunako and she's like "Honey, the scary girl is here, go and turn on extra lights" because Sunako's gloominess is pictured literally as very haunting. When the elderly lady saw the handsome Kyouhei (handsome as in dazzling) she went like "Oh honey, there's a dazzling boy with her. No need to turn on the lights". Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha xD

Damn, I haven't watch stuffs like this for ages. This whole anime is like a satire of the popular teen love flick theme. Everything is over-the-top here, and I love it. Another thing is that this anime actually deals with stereotypes. From pretty boys to ugly girl, this anime does not miss a thing. 

Sunako is considered unladylike because she does not wears make ups, does not act girly and does not care about skin caring. She is shown to have pimples problem and whatnots. I love Sunako very much because both her strength and flaws are strong. She does not give the impression of "...a strong, special girl..." but shows that she gives up easily and tends to run away from her problems. She is even a bit selfish. However, she is shown to be really compassionate towards others' feelings and work to overcome her fear over time. 

The others have colourful personalities too. I would have care less if the boys are like "I'm suffering from sumthink" while they're actually not. Kyouhei shows he has problems with his pretty face, has very bad temper, a glutton and childish at times. Ranmaru is the usual playboy with commitment problems but still lovable as his playboyish attitude serves more as a joke than a source of resentment throughout the series. Yuki who desires to be cool like his other friends but ended up being cute and got depressed with it, though his cuteness prove to be very useful in certain conditions. Takenaga who acts very cold but gets all mushy when it comes to his girlfriend and brother like to Sunako. 

There are a lot of interesting scenes in this anime, but I'm not going to spoil it for you. My current terrible mood is enlightened a bit with this comical anime. I would definitely go for season 2 :)