Hanasakeru Seishounen (Youths in Bloom) Episode 1 - Innocent Girl
Why is this show going to slip through the cracks of Western fandom? Is it because Natsumi Itsuki isn’t very well known over here? I mean, Demon Sacred’s coming out from Tokyopop I think, and Jyu-Oh-Sei was a pretty good anime; I just don’t know why this show isn’t getting any exposure at all. Which makes me sad, because it seems pretty good - despite also appearing to be very, very simple.
To briefly summarise - Kajika Barnsworth is the only daughter of Harry Barnsworth, head of a massive financial corporation. Her mother died about when she was two. She was brought up in isolation from the world with only her pet snow leopard and Li-Ren, her Chinese sort-of bodyguard, for company. She starts attending Japanese junior high school where it is made clear that not only is she filthy rich and has lots of people willing to protect her (including an actual bodyguard), but she’s also a totally no-nonsense girl and utterly awesome, with amazing grey eyes that strikes fear into the hearts of feeble thugs and exquisite taste in strawberries.
However, she is summoned home to visit her father, who issues her with an ultimatum. He has selected three men to be suitors for her to marry; she must choose one, and then he will “reveal her destiny” or something like that. These men do not appear to include Li-Ren, however…
I find Hanasakeru Seishounen interesting because it feels like it’s trying to lull me into a sense of complacency. It seems like an open-and-shut reverse harem show, where Kajika and Li-Ren will end up together and that’s that. But there’s clearly something going on beyond that; I can’t believe that the suitorship is the be-all and end-all of this show, especially coming from the woman who came up with the Ring Caste system in Jyu-Oh-Sei. There has to be something more significant about Li-Ren; about Kajika’s half-Japanese parentage (and dead mother); and why set the show in this high-ranking environment? This isn’t just coming from reading up on the show, although I’m obviously aware there’s something more to it than what we see here, but I’m curious as to why it starts off so innocuously like this.
Anyway, even taken at face value the show’s got a decent amount going for it. It’s not the most beautiful shoujo show ever or anything, but the character designs and background artwork are attractive, the animation competent if uninteresting, and the acting is fine (Aya Endou really does a good job as Kajika).
It’s hard to really comment when this episode doesn’t give us much more than you can already glean from reading promotional material about the show. Even so, it’s executed more than competently and it’s an entertaining and interesting first episode; I doubt I can really do much to sell it on to people who haven’t really paid much attention to the show before, but I do think it’s something that shouldn’t just disappear under the radar, however likely that may be.
April 6th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
Your cursor is in the shot! How adorable!
Anyway, seriously, I’m not about to let this slip off MY radar, though I must admit I’m pretty bummed that they didn’t start off with the WW2-era backstory like the manga did–I think that would have gotten people to sit up and take a little more notice, even though the meat of the series is with Kajika.
The animation quality is pretty excruciatingly bad compared to some of the nicer shows this season, but I’ll manage, I think.
The main reason why I think it’s going to slip past so many people’s radars is because Itsuki has zero presence in Western fandom, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that her manga tend to be wordy–and her artwork isn’t beautiful enough to attract attention despite being on a higher reading level, ala Shimizu Reiko’s works–so they just haven’t been scanlated. Even though they’re well worth the effort, it’s out of range for most shoujo scanlation groups, who wouldn’t be interested anyway. And groups with decent enough translators tend to focus more on seinen or artsy manga.
That’s not to say Hanasakeru Seishounen is THAT difficult to read, only that there’s a LOT more text than your average “omigod i think i like this guy…and now we’re living together and he’s an asshole!” shoujo potboiler romance.
April 6th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
I’m so happy that (1) you’re back, and (2) you’re blogging this and not hating it yet. Are any of the English fansub groups even thinking of working on this? I know everybody’s all hard for FMA and K-ON, but I hope that somebody also recognizes that this show may actually be this season’s hidden gem.
April 6th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
musouka - I genuinely laughed out loud. How did I not notice the cursor! I’m a bit out of practice at this blogging thing, clearly.
Anna - I don’t know if anyone’s working on this show, unfortunately. There’s nothing on the Fansub Wiki to suggest anyone’s going to work on it, unfortunately, but surely one of the “girlier” groups like aarinfantasy might take an interest, or one of the groups that did Skip Beat until the Crunchyroll deal came through?
(with Crunchyroll snapping shows up left right and centre I would be very happy to see some focus drift towards shows like this from sub groups, but I’m not confident that will happen unfortunately)
April 6th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
JP and I are highly amused by this series so I may actually cover it and perhaps actually give it the attention it deserves. (at least this seemed to work for Itazura na Kiss :P)
April 18th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
@anna: http://m33w-fansubs.com/ are doing this series. They have also done Itazura na Kiss.
May 1st, 2009 at 10:40 am
liiiiiiiiii reeeeeeeen is so cool and hot kajika & li ren 4 evaaaa!!!!!!!!!11