Retsgip’s Anime Blog

Darkshaunz s-s-stutters (its the new cute)

Thoughts on: Episodes 1 to 3 (9.1/10 overall)

I love it when the exam period has ended, you immediately flush yourself off any responsibility and you just vege out like a cucumber on your couch. But not for me, I intend to work hard for you guys during my mid-year semester break. By work hard, I mean of course continue to nag Rets for entries and also surprise (and traumatise) myself with anime which I have no fucking idea how they ended up on my hard drive. This week’s meatloaf surprise is “Hitohira”, I decided to try it out because I saw a megami scan of it on the interwebs with some schoolgirl undressing. I thought to myself, clearly, this would be an anime full of story and flare. It ended up pretty decent, no actual undressing though (Damn Megami).

Mugi’s haplessness just makes her even more adorable.

Hitohira is based around the premise of this schoolgirl by the name of Asai Mugi, she’s not a very sociable person and suffers from stage fright. She is supported by her obligatory best friend who is bursting with papparazi confidence, by the name of Kao. Together they would cross the Shire, through the imperial dark city of Minas Orguth and into Mount Doom itself, to cast away the one ring of evil. The difference between Frodo and Samwise in this case, is that Mugi is so sweet and moe that I am now diabetic just by watching her, and plus the whole pseudo-lesbianism sure beats the shit out of watching two halflings get kind of chummy with each other (shudder). The story starts by Mugi about to die from a heart attack, as she is scared shitless by the Results board. Clearly, the board was tainted by some unspeakable horror and vileness that our heroine just couldn’t take it. However, she finds her inner courage and screams in joy as she realizes she is admitted to some Elite School.

Results board viewing may cause side effects such as Night terrors and nausea.

Overlooking these two freshmen are three suspicious-looking seniors, like vultures circling above the heads of unsuspecting newbies, I was convinced these three were the villains of the show. The telltale signs were all there, an evil looking long-haired temptress, a sheepish looking grey-haired glasses boy and the silent, yet super sexy short-haired leader. Their leader, Nono, sends uber-lesbian vibes whilst being masked by a Yuki-Nagato-esque aura. As usual, the three of them make foreshadowing comments like, “That girl….she’s interesting”. I dont have anything against that, it’s a standard story telling tool, but they could mix it up a little. For example, they can have them say, “That girl, she totally isn’t related to our ulterior motives to recruit her in order to ressurect our dying club”, ……..AND then recruit her, Holy shit what a plot twist (Maybe I should direct an anime). A vital part of episode one is always introducing characters, and the guys get representation from Nishida. Nishida’s like any polite high school guy, with the exception that his hair was probrably stolen from an Elite Beat Agent character.

From left: Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt.

“Hey it’s me, your obligatory love interest”

The audience is then taken to Mugi’s art class, which uses real canvas and those classic wooden frames. This really reminds me that she’s in an elite school, because when I went to school, all we got was some A-3 and our imagination (I liked drawing Lazer Dinosaurs). Naturally, Elite schoolers don’t get to draw cool dogfighting lazer dinosaurs, but they did get to draw some flowers, and Mugi gets to “interact” with Nishida. I think there’s a strong chance for Nishida to steal Mugi’s heart in the series (if she doesn’t go the Gokigenyo route), I don’t know, it’s just a hunch. She is forced to do cleaning duty and finds herself in a store room with ancient artifacts. Here, Mugi becomes really comfortable, almost elated. She really likes the smell of ageing items and works meant to be forgotten. I’ve heard of bondage and foot fetishes, but okay, it seems with this, Japan keeps raising the bar. Mugi becomes fixated at the Goddess of Spring costume, and imagines herself as the beautiful seeder of life (more foreshadowing here).

The Marimite Approach or the Nishida factor? Only Mugi can decide.

Actually, she’s better off with the Marimite approach now that I think about it.

After her little daydreaming episode, she recovers and is found by Kao to resume normal class. As they approach the stairs, they encounter a major thread to womankind, hot-blooded young men. Nishida, like all normal guys in their youthful peak, refuse to use their legs as their primary mode of transport. So instead he rides the Stair handles with his ass at mach 2, right at any unsuspecting moe schoolgirls who may be using the facilities. The collision which occured took out Mugi, even though he didn’t really directly hit her (anime physics lol). So the current situation is, there is a cute and helpless schoolgirl on the ground. Who is there to help her? Four people, the guy who planted his ass on her face (and his sister), her best friend and the sheepish glasses guy. Guess who out of the three helped her? None of them. I mean, what the fuck? Instead, the guy who rammed her asked her to, “Get a hold of herself” (Nice going dumbass), and her best friend decided to shout at Nishida instead. Next time someone gets shot in public, let me try telling him “To get a hold of himself”, the dude’ll probrably punch me in the balls.

Because walking is for losers.

But wait, there’s a reason why Four people refused to help her up, they were waiting for Nono, the sexy and suave drama reasearch president to do the rescue. Nono is so dreamy, which is completely wrong for me to say since I’m a guy. But she’s just that, when you see Nono, you can’t help but put yourself into those stupid dream-cloud sequences. Taking advantage of the situation, Nishida decides that he is going to totally jump down two storeys. I think his hair is the source of his super human strength, even a Kung Fu master would pull something after jumping from such a height, let alone a high school guy (maybe we find out he’s a cyborg or something). Suddenly, its time to choose clubs, which is a big thing in Japanese schools (according to anime anyway). We see two guys trying to recruit a young miss into their “Go” club, I couldn’t help but shout, “ITS A TRAP!”. Admiral Ackbar would be proud. The Drama society club had a pretty good way to promote theirs, by performing a live show. They did so well that they inspired the over-enthusiastic conscription of Chitose, a blondie who seems to have taken too much speed.

Nono, your knight in shining armour.

Fleet! Evasive Manouvers!

We are also introduced to the president of the Drama society, who played the beautiful spring goddess in the play. She’s got some issues and acts all emotional by a window, I really had no idea what she was trying to communicate when she said, “Goddess of Spring….wasn’ me to begin with”, is she trying to say that imitating a fictional character was not the essence of her being to start with? is she reflecting upon a past event in which she betrayed a fellow actress for the part? All this dark questions will undoubtedly be answered in an episode I won’t be downloading. Viewers are then taken back to Mugi’s homeroom, where we see both her and Nishida get coerced like Soviet Conscripts to fight for the motherland back in World War II. Nono totally plays Mugi like a Pimpstress, instead of using her Pimpslap, she uses her Pimpcarress, which makes me weak in my knees and quivering at the lips. Nishida just gets assaulted by his sister, we are talking about the guy who took zero damage from falling two storeys here, so his sister must be like one of the Espada of Hueco Mondo.

“I just volunteered you into service, baby brother”

In the second episode, we learn that there are actually two drama clubs. The Drama Club and the Drama Research Society. Naturally, the Drama club is the more popular club, with the good plastic sign and the practising stage. Its the basic formula of “Take Dying team and make it better than the National Team” approach. It should also not surprise audiences that the Drama Club is made out of purebred bitches, I couldn’t think of a more appropriate word, I thought of douchebags, but it doesnt seem to apply to skanky elite-schooling girls. It’s also one of the rare times which Nono shows any emotion other than “Chilling Pimp”, the emotion comes in the flavour of “SPARTAN RAGE”. This is a result of catching Mugi with Chitose (who was a Drama Club member), and she was wondering if Mugi would desert them for the more popular choice. If you’d ask me personally, between a hall of skanks and a trio of crazy, desperate seniors, I’m better off joining the “Stab your arms with knives” club. Risaki (Nishida’s sister) hurriedly evacs Mugi out of the area before the Estrogen Fuel Bomb explodes in the area.

This is Chitose, one crazy ass bitch.

The Drama Club, 100% skanky.

Just as planned, Mugi would not submit to the temptation of joining the “Popular” Drama club and assures Risaki that she will stay there so that their miserable 5-man club doesn’t vanish into oblivions (awww, its touching). In a previous meeting, Nono has arranged for a public performance sometime in May - Hitohira time. So all of them go the school’s rooftop to make the costume and practice their lines. Chitose, the Drama club recruit, is seen helping Mugi and company prepare for their production. Risaki suggests giving Chitose a nickname, and one of them was “Orinal”, citing it was cute. Being an immature jerk, I naturally associated that nickname with “Urinal”, and imagined in another imaginary world what would happen if someone were to ask her how she got such a crap nickname. It seems that the reason why Urinal (I’m going to call the little cutie that from now on) is hanging around the Drama Research club is not only because she likes hanging out with Mugi, but because she has a major crush on Takashi Katsuragi (sheepish glasses guy). During a rehearsal, Mugi lets her stage fright get the better of her again, and she tries to think about Pancakes in an adorable acid trip sequence, trying to relax herself.

Like we learnt from Bleach filler, standing around powers you up.

I need to try this in real life. Seriously.

Her stage fright really paralyzes her, and so Urinal thinks she has a great idea on how to solve this. She gets Nishida to “restrain” Mugi and she proceeds to Tickle the living daylights out of Mugi, this is probrably the closest thing I would have gotten to any sort of three-way gangbang (implied…mostly in my mind), so I wasn’t about to complain. Turns out that laughing relaxes the arteries and allows you to utilize your vocal chords to their maximum. As such, Mugi let out a roar of the ages which no doubt sent audiospheres across the globe into the Code Red. At this point, Urinal then declares Mugi as her rival and that, “She won’t lose” (lol, seriously, they need to change these cliche’d conventions). Admittedly, in a club full of AIDS, Urinal is probrably the “Cleanest” one out of the lot (pardon the pun), I really wish her the best, and that she doesn’t catch the AIDS. Nono then makes some statement about different things that can touch people, or some sentimental shit I can’t seem to remember. What I do remember is, whenever Nono says something important, Sakura petals seem to appear from nowhere. Even on the school rooftop, you know, where there are no Sakura trees to be found. I mean, is she actually using Byakuya’s goddamn Bankai or what. Scatter, Senbonzakura.

Nishida, you horny bastard you.

“Kurosaki Ichigo, let me show you the attack form which devotes everything to attack” etc.

The third episode, as many of you may have expected is the big performance day. So I am assuming when they say the performance was in May, they said that during Late April, either that or they jumped many months in just one episode. As usual, our cute and over-worried Mugi does what she does best when it comes to facing up to her fears, running and locking herself in the toilet. I often wonder why people like hiding in the toilets, saving the fact it’s the most obvious fact, its also ridiculously unpleasant to be in, she would have been better off in the Janitor’s room. After some SWAT-team door breaching, Risaki gleefully wraps her arms around Mugi’s sweet waist for the touchdown capture. Before the performance can begin, they must hand out pamphlets to people. Nobody is really interested in taking them, I usually take them and glance at the papers until I add them to my fleet of paper aeroplanes (courtesy I guess). Nishida decides to get attention by acting like a complete monkey, in which case I thought the national zoo might come to detain him. Katsuragi decides to do the same, he splurts out tongue twisters to try and attract attention, which might have earnt him the attention of the local mental institution.

Toilets. Providing a false sense of security to millions of people worldwide.

As they try hard to win the attention of passer-bys, they run into the Drama Club and their short-haired bitch-queen of a president. They exchange warm words of kindness and admiration about their respective clubs. When I say warm, I mean warm like the diplomatic relations of America and the Soviet Union during the cold war. I was convinced that if these two ladies had live nuclear warheads, we would all be atomized by now. Nono, who did not have the upper hand in the argument, was forced to announce Mugi as the club’s trump card (citing her talent) out of spite. This is a pretty important development, it tells us the extent of hate that Nono has for the Drama Club president. Something tells me that it’s an old wound. Just with the way the two cut each other that deep, I am guessing that the Drama Club presidentand Nono were once very close, possibly in the Drama Club….until a dispute or betrayal occured to cause such a severe degradation in relationships. We can also safely assume that the series will end with the two reconciling with each other, in tears, and hopefully in wet shirts (mmm).

Clearly the two of them are best of friends, seen in this warm and fuzzy exchange.

Friendz 4 lyfe!

Then comes for the big day of the presentation, and all our heroines and heroes are looking very snappy indeed, save for Nishida who had advertising duty on the school grounds. We learn more about Nono, turns out that the has acute vocal chord paralysis, which is definitely a tragic plot element for the heroine who wants so much to become an actress. This came in at Episode three of the series, usually more dramas save the, “I’m pregnant” or “I have cancer”s for later in the series, but obviously Hitohira doesn’t pull punches with it’s in-house tragedies. I just hope nobody dies by the fourth episode. By some amazing miracle, Nono’s gentle aura of sexiness and warmth manages to coax Mugi into saying her lines in a stuttered, nervous manner, but she still managed to deliver the full version of her lines. The chances of this happening were as much as a ham sandwich landing on my lap right now. Which is next to impossible, because my fridge is all the way in the kitchen. The Drama club president is acting less bitchy and more like a normal human being now, which is scary, because it either means an alien has possessed her body and the human race is going to end, or the writers just gave her multiple personality disorder (maybe she can be a crazy clown next).

You can do it Mugi-chan, just let me smell your sweet, sweet fingers. Mmm~

This scene was so fuzzy, I swear my heart feels like fur at the moment.

Gendo Ikari’s trademark pose. Always classy, always sinister.

After a hard day’s performing and undying applause from an entire two people, it was time for the Drama Research people to celebrate their first performance. It turns out that this run was just the dry test for the real big public performance in October, which could be next episode, if we follow the kooky Hitohira time frame. In just three episodes, I felt washing throughout me, a warm and aromatic presence from Hitohira. The anime was not the cheeky fanservice fare I came to expect from the misleading Megami scan picture. Rather, I got something so enjoyably sublime and relaxing in tone, I could not help but to smile at the still where all the cast members finally came together to give due cheers for their outstanding performance. In my own way, I applauded, “Encore! Encore!” by flexing my butt cheeks on my chair and lifting my coca-cola can in some kind of twisted trance. To Mugi, Kao, Nishida, Katsuragi, Risaki and my sexy, sexy Nono-chan, all the best to their Drama research club in future episodes to air!.

Everybody wants to hug Mugi to death.

I personally want to hug Nono.

In addition to what I’ve written, I would definitely say, give Hitohira a go. It’s not going to be the typical Marimite fare or Kannaduki no Miko archetype. Hitohira’s going to have some real comedic sexual tension between Nono, Kao, Nishida, and ultimately the moe-infected Mugi. Admittedly, Hitohira was not my thing, maybe it just felt a bit too “girlish”, or maybe the tone was so sweet and warm that my guns’n’ violence mind was unable to comprehend the mush. Despite the factors in place that would have gotten me to hit “stop” and shrug at disgust, I was compelled to play along in their story, always curious to find out about the mysterious Nono and smirk devilishly as Mugi made slip up upon slip up. If you’re a fan of the shoujo genre or simply love the mechanics of acting, this anime is well worth the time. Unfortunately, the only time I am interested in acting is when I need an excuse for a missing assignment. If you are a Rei-fan, you’ll see yourself re-watching scenes with Nono, a lot (she makes vocal chord paralysis, oh so hot).

It’s the feel-good anime of the season.

Well, aside from this Emo-president.

Some personal messages I have to relay. Firstly, I am flying to Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) for a month’s vacation after a gruelling exam campaign in university, I am very much looking forward to that and meeting my local blogger.net contact…Kurogane. Also, Lupus-Sol from THAT animeblog and I came up with a kooky idea to represent the current bleach arc using the classical “All your base are belong to us” concept, he was kind enough to upload it in this entry (Where is my Rukia!? No sign at ch.280). If my camera stops demonstrating epic failure, I might be able to sneak in a few pictures of Kuro and I doing what we do best when we meet up, absolutely nothing productive.

Mugi IS the new Moe.

Cheers,

Darkshaunz