NieA Under 7
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand... cue something happening!
Review by: M.H. "Waiting for Godot" Torringjan
Length: 12 episodes
Genre: Comedy
Watched: supposedly 12 (it seemed a lot longer), subbed
I've been known to miss the point of some things (although I'll never admit to them) in literature and anime. Of course, that always assumes that the thing actually had a point to begin with. I waited for about 5 hours for this series to develop something resembling a point, and it has yet to happen.
Plot Summary: Mayuko is a normal high school student (there certainly are a lot of those having anime series made about them) who lives and works in a bath house and works at the local restaurant and delivering papers in order to pay her rent and tuition. She also has an alien living in her closet, NieA, who spends her days making crappy UFO's out of junk she's found lying around and generally being a bum. The aliens in society are trying to integrate themselves into Terran culture, and have developed their own cultural ranking system involving under and over rankings. The lowest ranking is under 7, which is only accorded to the lowest of the low bums, NieA included. There are aliens... and... I really think they were supposed to be going somewhere with this, but it was more of a travelogue than an anime series.
Artwork: The artwork of this series was sub-standard for when it was made, with dull artwork, dull colors, generic character designs, and a whole lot of nothing else. The only thing interesting about the series was one or two of the alien charcter designs, an area where they really could have differentiated themselves and failed yet again. They could have done much better. Hell, I could have done much better, and anyone who's seen my art can say that's pretty bad.
Music: There wasn't much of a soundtrack to speak of, which is a shame, since it could have helped to draw attention away from the lack of anything happening anywhere on the screen. There were occasional banjo tracks, which were an interesting choice, well-placed and fit the mood very well. Otherwise, the soundtrack was not something I'd bother with. The opening track, the usual highlight of an OST, sounds as though it was j-pop's answer to "Betty Davis Eyes," sung by someone with emphysema who'd been suffering from laryngitis for the past week and had preceded recording by screaming at the top of their lungs for an hour straight. It was hoarse. It wasn't fun. The closing track wasn't bad, it just wasn't all that memorable, a little piece of j-pop or something. I usually was just too tired from the episode to bother with the closing theme.
Characters: The characters they developed had potential and probably would have been more interesting if they'd been given something to do that was more than one episode. Start with Mayuko, the mild-mannered high-school student who lives by herself and supports herself with numerous part-time jobs (how she gets her studying done is far beyond me). She is friendly and outgoing and apparently everybody likes her, which would lead me to suspect that she was a Mary Sue, except for the alien living in her closet who pisses her off on a regular basis, and that nothing happens for her to save the day or galaxy or anything. NieA is a bum who mooches off of Mayuko for food, doesn't help out with chores, and spends her time scrounging for junk that she can either sell or use to produce UFO's (which never work). NieA doesn't have a care in the world, as evidenced by her lower-lower class ranking of under 7 and her lack of any sort of concerted effort to change said ranking. Old Lady Enoshima is the elderly woman who owns the bath-house and suffers from jittery hands Yoshida is the fire man of the bath-house whose passion for his job manifests itself at times in a pyromaniacal fashion. Genzo is Mayuko's childhood friend from Tokyo who recently moved into the area and has an obvious crush on her. His soft-spoken manner and awkwardness in social situations is sometimes overcome by his sense of pride. Chiaki is Mayuko's best friend from school who is a major alien freak. Her spare time is spent blogging and surfing the internet for new information about aliens. She also just *loves* NieA's UFO's, no matter how many bruises she might incur.
Plot: Never have I seen an anime series with so many promising set-ups do so little in 13 episodes! As I sat in my chair for a four-hour marathon, I kept expecting something to happen. An explosion, a love scene, a half-hour lecture on thermodynamics, something! Anything! They got my hopes up by introducing a potential love interest. They continued to get my hopes up with "the mother ship's doing something weird." They built me up further with "The bath house isn't doing much business!" And the best they could manage was a vague suggestion of social commentary and a bunch of episodic slice-of-life comedies?! Okay, maybe I missed something when I started falling asleep about halfway through the 10th episode and had to start listening to my "Sounds of Nature" CD to wake me up. Maybe I missed something when I was distracted by the shiny items outside of my windows that turned out to be some very interesting bottlecaps. I'm even willing to admit it's possible that they ran out of funding halfway through (coughStarOceancough), but really, at least try to do *something* with what you do have. (Okay, in all fairness, something did seem to happen towards the end, but they didn't exactly go to any lengths to explain what did happen or why)
CHICKS!! Well, despite the lack of doing ANYTHING in this series, they did provide us with a couple of chicks to keep our attention. And the whole series takes place in a bath house, to boot! Bonus! Shame there weren't all that many bath scenes... Anyway, Mayuko is pretty decent-looking for her age, with a more realistic character design (although you wouldn't be able to pick her out of a line-up of Japanese high-schoolers, I'm afraid, unless the rest were boys). She usually dresses very conservatively and thinks in a down-to-earth (get it, it's an alien anime! It's funny!) fashion. She does enjoy a good time, though it's unclear how often you'd get to experience them, considering her work-load. But rest assured, if she doesn't have to work three jobs and doesn't have an alien living in her closet, she'll be as calm and cuddly as you like her. Chiaki is a little bit more distinct in her appearance, although she's still very realistic. She has a nice figure for her age, and she usually dresses more casually than Mayuko, according to her hobbies (plus, she's a computer dorkette, so she wears glasses! Extra bonus!). She preoccupies herself often with her hobbies, so it might be little bit more difficult to get her attention for more than ten minutes. But she also could surprise you with a couple of "ideas" she found while surfing the Net, ending with a thoroughly exciting Saturday night.
Overall: This series was mediocre without looking at the plot. While looking at the plot (or conspicuous lack thereof), though, this series becomes a waste of time. Even the humor wasn't as good as it really could have been, with the best jokes being a bit recycled from Monty Python's Dirty Hungarian Phrase Book skit (and even they got old after a while). As a project from Yoshitoshi Abe, the guy who did the writing for both Serial Experiments Lain and Haibane Renmei, I would have expected something that didn’t suck. Although it isn't worthy of the Ass, I didn't personally enjoy watching it, and unless they make more and try to tie up these loose plot ends, I wouldn't recommend watching it.
In a nutshell:
+ Humor not too bad
+ Banjo was decent for the soundtrack
+ Semi-interesting characters
- NOTHING HAPPENED
- Poor animation quality
- Bad OP/ED
Final score: 4/10
Return to Index