Special A Episode 1 - Hikari and Kei
Hikari Hanazono has sworn that she will beat Kei Takishima at everything after he defeated her in a wrestling match when they were kids, but whatever she does she always comes in second place. As high achievers, she and Kei are part of the “Special A” group of seven sickeningly clever teenagers who get to lounge around in a beautiful greenhouse rather than attend school because they’re all so hideously brilliant they don’t need to attend lessons (lucky buggers). Hijinks ensue, obviously, especially as Kei has a crush on Hikari to which she’s oblivious - in this episode, after laying the very slightest of foundations of the premise, the plot involves three students desperate to get into the Special A group trying to cheat on an exam on Kei’s birthday.
I feel like a total grinch to say this, but Special A didn’t work for me at all. Obviously someone looked at the success of Ouran High School Host Club (and it WAS successful, only dwarfed by the concurrent Haruhi juggernaut in otaku popularity) and went “shoujo comedy with a budget obviously DOES work!” and so this show got greenlit, and I suppose I should be thankful to see shoujo which looks like money was spent on it - the background art is brilliant, the animation crisp and clean, the character designs boldly drawn… yet I found the show itself nowhere near as enjoyable as Itazurana Kiss.
A big problem for me is that the episode just whizzes through the character introductions and then fails to spend any time on any of them. We start in media res where everyone already knows each other, and before you know it the supporting cast gets shunted to the background while Hikari and Kei immediately dominate. As such I haven’t really got a handle on who the hell anyone else in the Special A group except that they’re all quite spazzy.
The biggest problem, however, is that the direction is so… ordinary. Think of the truly notable shoujo comedies in the past ten or fifteen years - KareKano, Fruits Basket, Ouran, Kodocha et al - and they’ve all got exciting direction, whether it’s Hideaki Anno’s sign-laden shots or Akitaroh Daichi’s signature hyperactivity. Special A just plays things safe and by the book - Yoshikazu Miyao is a long-time assistant/OP director and I don’t think he’s got the flair that a show like this requires, although perhaps this is down to a repetitive script. Take, for example, the “Ni-san” gag - Kei calls Hikari “Number 2″ constantly to tease her, and every time a giant brick “Ni-san” falls on Hikari’s head. It’s not the greatest of gags in the world ever, especially as it always results in a big, echoey “Don’t call me Number 2!” from Hikari, but I can’t help feel that a better director would have done something cleverer with this than just repeating exactly the same visual gag every time. There are some gags that work on repeat because they’re utterly ridiculous - Renge’s motorised oujo-sama entrances in Ouran spring to mind - but they’re spread across several episodes or done in various different ways, whereas most of this episode just felt like the same sort of thing over and over again.
So yes, I’m a bit disappointed in Special A. I will give at least the next episode a try (got to see the OP, after all) but I’m not confident that it’s a keeper, which is a bit of a shame really. Something just hasn’t quite clicked with me and this show.
April 18th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
I definitely wanted to like the show (haven’t had a good high school romance/rivalry in ages), but the numerous tired gags and all-too-familiar plot devices really turned me off.
April 19th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
At one point in the first episode or so when they have these “confessions” that are nothing more than Hikari and Kei looking at each other in a different light (ha ha, pun unintended) I thought they were onto something — like epic psychological love games where despite knowing that they’re both attracted to each other, they still continue competing or something.
Then it all fell apart in episode 2. :( I really wanted to like this show too… too bad shiny wasn’t enough for me.
April 4th, 2009 at 9:13 am
I disagree for the most part… From the animes I’ve seen so far (CCS, blood+,ouran and most of clamps creation) Special A has affected me in a way other animes couldn’t. From episode 1, I was immediately seized with a hilarious, bubbling feeling and I was officially hooked to it. I wanted to know what would happen between them.
The scenes, albeit familiar enough to be cliche, were warming and heart felt. Just when a scene is about to shoot towards familiarity, it would shift to unpredictable and hilarious. I could say its memorable (up till now I still remembered their “moments” hehe)
I have ended the series and by the middle of it, there are actually enough character development to be able to understand the nature of the important characters and they were unique (Yahiro’s lying nature, Megumi’s voice, Jun’s other persona, Akira & Tadashi’s story, Kei and Hikari). Their true nature was something I was taken aback with and have not expected coming at all, since for the entire time I was convinced “they will stick to that” and so forth.
Hikari’s naivety and thickheadedness was so overused that it became a standard trademark for an outside conflict of the story, something I never get sick of witnessing and never fails to give me laughs. XD It really is her personality.
I could actually feel their interaction with each other, their fights and Kei’s dilemma and frustration of not being able to do anything about her thickheadedness.
Overall, I immensely enjoyed watching Special A. I’m mourning to see it end so prematurely. Although it did not fit in several criteria for best anime, it had made an impact in the hearts of many (me for one).
While Special A may fail in someone’s professional standards in anime flexibility and such matters, it certainly succeeded in letting the audience feel what it wanted to portray in clear detail, something which I expected to see in romantic shoujo like Ouran but haven’t.