Minto no Ie

Pretty solid animation and a really cool opening theme. Also pretty lovable characters, even with your normal oblivious-to-the-world strange girl who pops out of nowhere… and the lead guy who just can’t help but think dirty, dirty thoughts. Tsk, tsk, tsk. The first episode didn’t introduce most of the cast yet, just the two mains and some voice on a phone. It was a bit slow at the start, but it got better. I’m kinda relieved I didn’t give up on it on the first five minutes.

Summary: As a kid, Mikuriya Jin saw a strange girl at the shrine. She vanished after a while (and the bug he caught vanished as well, what the heck). After a number of years, he’s made a wooden sculpture out of a tree from the shrine. Said sculpture morphs itself into a girl named Nagi.

Nagi is now in a human body because of Jin’s sculpture. She had been a deity of a tree, the same tree that was cut down and the same tree where Jin got the wood for the sculpture where she popped out from. Nagi’s also the same girl Jin had seen when he was a child, but when he asks about it, she simply says she doesn’t remember things like that.

She’s also petrified of bugs, which she calls ‘impurities’. These pests somehow stick to her skin and give it a sort of strange reddish thing, which really does look painful. She tells Jin to just let her be, because if she can’t deal with this impurity, there’s no way a human like him can. Then, Jin… flicks said bug away, and she’s convinced he’s not a normal human being because of this.

She stays in house henceforth, and insists that she’s going to need his help to take care of the impurities. He makes a lot of arrangements - buys clothes for her, hides his stack of dirty laundry, and runs out naked when Nagi answers the phone and almost blows his secret that a girl is going to live with him. He also gives her his room to sleep in, and he muses about the fact about how even Gods have to use the toilet when he hears her in the middle of the night.

Cast:

Mikuriya Jin - Shimono Hiro
Nagi - Tomatsu Haruka

Impressions: So all the first episode did was introduce Jin and Nagi, and nothing else. The best thing I liked about the episode was the animation - it’s so fluid, in the simple but nice kind of way. Nagi’s a cute character, but Jin was just downright cool. He didn’t obsess over her bra and panties and stuff, though it did make him blush a bit. He was actually reasonable. He told her that she was going to have to take the trash out. Now, that’s a sensible man when you see one. Someone who understands that the strange-girl-who-suddenly-pops-out is not only useful for fanservice - she can also do chores!

I also liked how Nagi was being all fussy about the bug on her leg. She really did look like she was in so much pain, and Jin… he was like, uh, whatever, then flicks it away. The bugs did disintegrate when Jin flicked them, though. I just find it strange. Is this show going to be about bug extermination?

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 5th, 2008 at 10:05 am and is filed under First Episodes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.