2010-04-12, 14:47 | Link #1 |
Yuuki Aoi
Join Date: Jul 2004
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Hime Chen! Otogi Chikku Idol Lilpri
Hime Chen! Otogi Chikku Idol Lilpri
ひめチェン!おとぎちっくアイドル リルぷりっ "Fairyland is suffering. The worlds of Kaguya-hime, Snow White, and Cinderella are slowly disappearing. Natsuki, Ringo, and Layla are three young girls who have been chosen to transform into those princesses and spread happiness amongst humankind in order to restore Fairyland. Once they transform they become a three girl idol pop group 'Lilpri' (Little Princess) which spreads happiness through song." (ANN) Anime for little girls based on an arcade card game from Sega. Like the excellent Yumeiro Patissiere and also Jewelpet, this is a marketing vehicle sponsored by a toy company. Episode one was brilliantly done, if you can stand tooth-rotting sweetness (I can). Episode two, however, was not so entertaining. Like Kirarin Revolution, this show gets its talent from Tsunku, the producer of Morning Musume, etc. The three stars are the members of a new Hello! Project young-teen idol group known as S/mileage. They do a good job of the OP, ED and an insert song, too. The insert song is done to a 3DCG dance by Lilpri which is either brilliant or awful, depending on your taste. I enjoyed it. cast: Fukuda Kanon as Sasahara Natsuki (Kaguya-hime) Maeda Yuuka as Takashiro Layla (Cinderella) Wada Ayaka as Yukimori Ringo (Snow White) Hayamizu Risa as Ryoku Kakihara Tetsuya as Wish Nakatsukasa Yuuka as Dai Takagi Reiko as Sei staff: director: Moriwaki Makoto (Onegai My Melody) series composition (lead writer): Yamada Yuka (Tide-line Blue, Neo-Angelique Abyss, Umi Monogatari) animation/character design: Watanabe Atsuko (Charger Girl Juuden-chan, Ookamikakushi, Valkyria Chronicles) animation company: Telecom (Chiko, Tide-line Blue, Ramen Fighter Miki) This show is already airing, and ep1 has been subbed. ANN reports knowing 13 episode titles, but this is the kind of show that could last a year or more. ANN official site ja.Wikipedia
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Last edited by Kaoru Chujo; 2010-04-12 at 21:56. |
2010-04-18, 20:28 | Link #4 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Neo-Venezia
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I'd forgotten that this one was on my 'to watch' list for Spring. Not a bad start with ep 1. I'll be losing a few teeth by the end of Spring probably.
Ep 2 lol Spoiler:
Those apple-shaped, apple-filled things looked awfully interesting; I'm gonna have to look into that.
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2010-04-24, 16:08 | Link #5 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2007
Age: 35
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lol...at this point, I've seriously gotta wonder about my taste...I give shows like Rainbow and Saraiya Goyou a hard time, and yet am perfectly willing to mindlessly sit through...this?
From a social conditioning standpoint, the ED is a little frightening...and decent though the OP is (love the emoticons the subbers use at the start), using it as the same insert song three episodes in a row is a terrible idea. Speaking of social conditioning, the thinness of the princesses' hands and arms during said 3D-animated insert songs is frightening as well. Beyond that though, the cuteness of the character designs and the voice acting put me in a happy daze similar to Reira's this latest episode over Wish. Haha, stuff like the totally bizarre 'seven dwarves' septuplets from episode 2, and the random insertion of a zoological briefing on doormice in episode 3, also give this show its own charm. In terms of some random connections probably nobody is interested in...:P I thought the 'mapets' sorta resembled a set of the classic starter pokemon, and with the squirrel pulling off a 'fire' type move this episode I was going . A flying water type, and dragon grass type, huh? whoa. More importantly, I noticed the connection 'Reira' = 'Rella', as in 'Cinderella'. That was pretty interesting. 'Ringo', of course, was obvious from the start with the apple connection to Snow White. Now I'm curious as to how 'Natsuki' connects with Kaguya-hime--would the 'tsuki' there, by any chance, be 'moon'? Dunno how far I will follow this really. If the insert song weren't so repetitive, I'd probably be totally up for the whole run...er, probably. I certainly enjoyed these three episodes though. I guess we'll see. |
2010-04-26, 16:08 | Link #6 |
Vanitas owns you >:3
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I can't get into it. I never ever EVER thought I'd find a magical girl show (it's my favorite freaking genre!!) that is too childish for me but this has to be it.
Or maybe it's just that I see very very little effort put into it. Between the emotionless voice-acting of the little girls, painfully flat animation, or the HORRIBLE HORRIBLE BAD BAD CGI sequences....and the songs are nothing to write home about either. Everything in this series is so........mediocre. *sighs*
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2010-04-26, 17:04 | Link #7 | |
Junior Member
Join Date: Jul 2009
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As for Hime-chan, it's a cute mahou shoujo anime and that's all it needs to be. |
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2010-04-26, 17:29 | Link #8 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Neo-Venezia
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I noticed this, too, particularly for Ringo. It's not that they sound emotionless, but there is a "flatness" to their voices. I chalk it up to a lack of experience, as this seems to be all three voice actress' first gig.
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2010-04-26, 19:53 | Link #9 |
Vanitas owns you >:3
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Ringo sounds especially flat, yes. Reira's character design is very very cute...but that's just not enough to keep me watching lol.
I'm going to drop this unless I hear about it getting a lot better. The CGI thing is mainly why I want to drop it. It's like.........."WHY!? WHY CAN'T YOU DRAW THEM NORMAL!?" T_T I'm not that big a fan of the main character herself either. Don't know why....but it could be because I've always always hated Snow White. The Disney one. And she kinda looks like her with red hair. XD
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2010-04-26, 19:57 | Link #10 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2007
Age: 35
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Heh, re: the voice acting. Yeah, I noticed the certain flatness too, and actually the first thing it reminded me of was the voice acting for Maka Albarn from Soul Eater, whose seiyuu I heard was also inexperienced at the time. However, there's just something about it here...particularly in Ringo, though that might just because we've seen more of her, that is making their flat voices really attractive to me. It's actually part of what I like about the show. I dunno--it might be the simplicity, the otherwise lacking depth of character (again, particularly in Ringo's case; the connections of Reira's personality to her Cinderella story were quite charming, really), but the flat (and nevertheless cute!) voice acting seemed to provide an immediate quirk to latch onto that allowed me to really enjoy the first and following episodes.
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2010-04-27, 00:20 | Link #11 |
Yuuki Aoi
Join Date: Jul 2004
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I used to love flat, untrained voices. Lemon Angel was one of the first shows I blogged about, just because of that. Flat voices can seem more honest than professional ones.
So I can take these voices, but I don't really love them. I do like the three main characters, however, so the seiyuu can't be that bad. And I like their singing of the OP, as the Tsunku-trained Hello!Project idols they are. Not the equal of Buono, but acceptably good. I actually enjoy the 3D dance (with costume changes to add minimal variety). But I just caught a couple of episodes of Heartcatch Precure, and I can see that this 3D dance is an inferior version. This show is more aimed at a quite young audience than that one, which consciously has two audiences: young girls and male otaku. There is tons more conflict there, too. I really did like ep1 of this show, but the stories and writing of recent epsiodes have just been so limp. I guess magical girl really isn't a genre I love, though, since even with its higher quality -- and quite excellent animation -- Heartcatch doesn't appeal to me any more than this show does, at this point. But I will probably keep sneaking a peek at new episodes of Lilpri as they come out.
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2010-04-27, 06:17 | Link #12 | ||
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Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Neo-Venezia
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2010-05-18, 01:44 | Link #14 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2007
Age: 35
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Aww, episode 6 was cute. Wish's song was pretty good, I wonder if his voice actor is attached to this show as part of an idol/singer promotion also. I've enjoyed every episode so far, but I'll still admit that Lilpri's interactions with Wish as 'actual' idols are one of the principle story elements/developments I'm looking forward to. The pretty major hint with his disappearance at the end was very interesting. In the context of this 'idol' anime, I think the name and image etc. of Wish are really very well produced. Whenever the girls go all fangirl over him, that's a 'kyaa' moment for me too (yeah, strangely enough; I somehow like seeing happy fangirls).
Anyway, this show's sometimes bizarre humour still continues to deliver. lol at 'Micheal' from the beginning of the episode. Seriously, wow. Anyway, from last episode forward, they've been using live action/cosplay dances for their bonus ending segment. I'm not a huge fan of it, so I didn't post anything on it last time (coloured cosplay hair always seems to look terrible for me, and the costumes themselves aren't great either. I think it might be the too bright lighting of the white background...anyway, it's a bit of a shame, 'cause I can tell that the girls' faces are actually fairly pretty), but yeah, I just thought I should mention it. I guess they're really trying to sell this song/dance as something big, though. Hmm... lol. So when Wish said Lilpri had improved from their first time, do you think that was just plot, or did they actually change anything for the singing/3D performance this time? I didn't notice anything... |
2010-06-11, 20:16 | Link #18 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2007
Age: 35
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Episodes 8 and 9 were really quite touching...surprisingly enough despite Tsugumi-chan and Saotome-kun's unattractive character designs. lol, I actually even thought Saotome-kun looked pretty cool in that pro-violinist fantasy sequence the girls did.
I thought the soundtrack/background music also really stepped up in these two latest episodes. Was quite nice. I am totally shocked about Wish really being Chris, but I don't think it's a trick or anything. It's kinda mindblowing really, but if it's true it really just makes Wish even more awesome. The guy is super mysterious. |
2010-06-22, 03:10 | Link #20 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Oct 2007
Age: 35
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Just caught episode 11 on Crunchyroll and episode 12 somewhere else. Er, seems like the next episode is called "Final Hime-Chen"...seriously? It's the last episode? Whoa, way too soon. I thought this show would go on for a while longer. If this is really the case, then that's quite unfortunate.
As for these two episodes themselves, though (11 and 12), I gotta admit that the Lilpri sequences seemed seriously shafted in, and took away a bit from the effectiveness of the story. Particularly in episode 12, the way that Lilpri and Wish just seem to show up everywhere for totally trivial events and reasons started feeling lame. And in episode 11, I felt like Lilpri's hijacking of their teacher's wedding to 'make people happy' by giving a show when everybody already seemed perfectly enthralled in the first place might have been rude and disingenuous. Despite that though, both episodes still had some pretty touching/meaningful moments such as the feelings which lay behind the apple pies that Ringo's father makes, or Reira's determination/desire to deliver the Cinderella shoe to Moeko no matter what. That latter scene particularly, with Wish showing up in a pumpkin carriage and whisking Reira away to the wedding, was especially awesome. In the end, I really think this show's most persistent problem is how it's trying to be a marketing vehicle for a song/dance whose digitalized voices and tones, by now, are sounding cheap and tinny to me. If it weren't for how the song itself, and not only that it's apparent popularity amongst the show's characters, seem to have to be shoved into every episode, I think I really wouldn't have any complaints with this show's incredibly cute simplistic character design, often bizarre and outrageous humour, and unexpectedly solid emotional/narrative content. As it is, I could keep watching this for quite a while yet, so I'll be totally bummed if episode 13 really does turn out to be the wrap up for fthis show's run/season. |
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