Riuva : Research Institute for Unicultural Visual Arts

The season has now progressed to a point where I can perfectly point out what are the best shows for each genre. Top of the Romantic Comedy genre (excluding School Rumble, which operates on a different field. Sort of like Jupiter vs the other planets) would be Kamisama Kazoku, which came from nowhere and instantly got me hooked.

Telepathic conferences involving chibi avatars is just one of the many kami abilities.

First, the OP. Fantastic OP. Not only is it a great song to psyche up viewers before the show, but by itself, Brand New Morning by Mizuhashi Mai is good enough to be a standalone song. It has this really cool opening guitar riff and amazingly catchy chorus that’s converted into a slow BGM for key scenes, much like Sousei no Aquarion’s first OP. Having a good OP is basically half the battle won, since the viewer would have been subconsciously glued to the screen for the actual episode.

KK is about Samatarou, who’s Jesus. Or rather, he’s the son of a Kamisama, aka God. Japanese have a different definition and understanding of God so they can play around with him and depict him as a zany weird old man who loves bloomers. I don’t like bloomers, I like skirts. Anyway, Samatarou is a spoilt and over-protected kid who has everything going his way thanks to the efforts of his old man. Tenko is his guardian angel who’s spunky, helpful and an osananajimi. The show revolves around how Sam tries to win this new transfer student, Kumiko, as his girlfriend without his family interfering while Tenko helps him but actually secretly loves him. Not too original, but several key factors make it a WIN show.

Kumiko - Right now she’s just a regular pretty faced transfer student pawn in the Kami games. But I suspect something deeper.

First, it’s Tenko. I love Tenko. Voiced perfectly by Koshimizu Ami (Tenma, Nina Wong), she switches between her genki supportive mode, jealous mode and dere dere mode quicker than the Flash. I love how she’s so honest with her feelings, which is not too common for osananajimi types. There are countless scenes of her feeling jealous of and inferior to Kumiko and these show how human her character is. I don’t care for those perfect type characters that can just decide "Oh yeah to like a person means to wish that he’s happy. I must let him go after the other girl if that’s what he really wants." In episode 3, Tenko finally snaps and I felt a lot of sympathy for her.

The whole show actually revolves around her, rather than Sam. Or maybe it’s just my Tenko-tinted glasses.

Ok to hell with spoilers, I’ll just reveal everything. Close your eyes and feel for the Alt-tab or alt-f4 buttons if you haven’t watched it.

In episode 3, Tenko begs Sam to buy her a Love keychain and Sam unwillingly does so. After about 20 minutes into the show, Sam saves Kumiko when they were both rolling down a steep hill. Sparks fly and Sam goes to find a present for her. He decides on the exact same keychain that he bought for Tenko and felt it was suitably romantic. Tenko of course is brutally hurt, since Sam doesn’t even remember he bought her that thing, and she treasured it so much. She starts bawling and screaming and making a big scene. Ahh your hurt is my hurt Tenko-chan.

Tenko’s caring worried face.

Her "ganbatte" face.

Desiring face.

Tenma strikes.

The key object in the series, like Lamune’s fish hair clip.

A grudging purchase.

Shocked when Kumiko still is nice to Sam after he rips off her top twice.

When she’s extremely emotional, she smokin’ hot.

Tenko treasures this.

Inferiority complex.

Uneasiness at the thought of losing Sam.

Shocked by Sam’s complete lack of consideration for her.

Sam pours sulphuric acid onto her wounds.

I was expecting her to just tear up and let it be.

But no, she goes Kaede but in a romantically tragic sort of way.

Poor Tenko.

Yup, Sam the bastard must die.

The third reason why the show rocks is because of the character design which totally resembles Eureka seveN’s. The same bright pink, blue colours, the same body and facial proportions and style. And I liked E7’s designs very much. I checked up the character designer for KK and he was Maniwa Hideaki, who worked as an animation director for E7. He was one of the 400 animation directors though. So I’m not too sure of the reason why KK and e7 are so similar.

This scene is straight out of e7.

4th reason is MeMe. Interestingly, Meme sounds the same as Mei Mei, which means younger sister in Chinese. Meme has the funniest silent loli voice ever. The funniest noisy loli voice is Magikano’s youngest sister.

Meme is a funny silent twintail gothic loli.

In spite it being a romance comedy, the comedy isn’t good for the most part. The majority of it is Sam getting beaten up or into sticky and embarrassing situations thanks to his meddling parents and siblings.

I actually think this is very similar to School Rumble. Koshimizu Ami yet again acts a role of a girl with unrequited love (Nina, Tenma) and she’s getting good at it. KK’s a lot more serious than SR but the Kami characters’ ability to have telepathic conferences reminds me of Tenma’s chibi monologues.

Too little of the show has been aired for me to make any judgement on anything else yet, but this is in my top 3 most looked forward show to watch. I’ve always liked these type of romance comedies.