Gokujou! Mecha
Mote Iincho
Number of episodes: TBA
Production Studio: ShoPro
Fansub Release Viewed: Yu
Likelihood of US Release: Low
Mimi Kitagami, the super popular class president, is on a mission to make everything right and take on any challenge at school. She is faced with having to take on a group of boys who don’t want to follow the rules.
Episode Summary
Mimi Kitagami is the most popular class president in school. She’s a perfectionist that always helps everyone out, including such tasks as returning books to the library or handing out printouts for her teacher. One day she overhears her teacher scolding some boys in the hallway. They are the delinquent group MM3, and all three of them are planning on skipping class and heading home. The teacher is frustrated because all three of them are good at sports, yet none of them is interesting in being in the athletics meet. Mimi makes it her goal to get these guys to participate. She unsuccessfully tries to get Toujou, the leader, ensnared by gazing into his eyes with her “Ururu beam,” before stealing his cell phone and making him chase her to get it back. He seems to have fun running through the hallways, yet he still has no desire to participate.
According to Nagumo, another member of MM3, Toujou quit track because of a tragic injury in middle school. Later, Mimi gets an invitation from the Princess Rose Club, a club dedicated to the art of being beautiful. Mimi goes to check out the club, but her friend Rika, a devotee of tanning and hair bleaching, actually wants to join. The leader of the club rejects her, claiming that only certain girls are fit to be princesses, but Mimi defends her friend. Given one month to polish this rough stone into a beautiful gem, the test will be if Rika’s looks will be able to attract 20 boys to a party to be held at that time.
Thoughts
There are a lot of silly shoujo series out there with contrived situations, and then there are series like this that take contrived, silly and useless to a whole new level. And of all the shallow subjects to focus on, this series seems to revolve around one thing: looking good, and then using that to get people to do what you want them to do. Oh boy, let’s start teaching young girls how to manipulate people rather than, oh, I don’t know, actually work hard and making something of themselves. Add to that the fact that the first episode alone is full of shoujo anime tropes and that the animation is clunky and bizarre, and you have something that I just really don’t want to watch.
Speaking of the animation, it’s probably one of the first things a viewer would notice. It’s an exceedingly bizarre blend of CG and traditional animation which is executed in such a way that it appears to be more a money-saver than a conscious stylistic choice. In most scenes, the characters appear to be CG models, but in most long shots and in scenes where characters interact in complicated ways, they seem to revert to being created in a traditional manner. The final effect is both jarring and unappealing to the eye, which is not helped by the fact that the character designs are completely atrocious. Anime is known for big-eyed characters, but the eyes on the main character Mimi are eating her face alive. I couldn’t find any hits on the character designer from the show, but the character faces remind me a lot of Full Moon wo Sagashite.
The characterization is similarly bad. You can learn all that you need or want to know about the main character through the theme song, which is essentially about how much of a perfectionist she is and how important being beautiful and popular is to her. While I know for a fact that people like this truly do exist, as I mentioned previously, I think this character is a bad example for just about anyone to follow. And of course the entire story line revolving around Rika is even worse, since it seems to boil down to someone giving up their personal style in order to join a snooty group of popular students. There had better be some redeeming moral lesson in the second episode about being yourself and not changing to fit someone else’s ideals. Not that I’m curious to find out, mind you, just that the whole idea of this storyline rubs me completely the wrong way and I like to think that it’s not going where I think it’s going.
It may be hard to believe at times, but there is much, much better shoujo anime out there than this stinker. I just want to throttle all the little twerps in this show.
Pros
- I honestly can’t think of anything to write here
Cons
- The clunky mix of CG and traditional animation just looks wrong
- The message this show projects is really terrible
