Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge: Nabeshin’s latest work. Four bishounen get to live in a huge mansion, on the condition that they can make the owner’s niece (who is the worst gothic horror-freak possible) into a lady. It’s sense of humour is based on energy. Lots and lots of energy, and over-the-top dialogues. Obviously, the entire concept of bishounen is made ridiculous. Few series can claim to have as much energy as this one, and the result turned out hilarious, though it’s got a few problems.

One thing this anime did right was its characters. There’s basically one bad character, but apart from him all characters are fleshed out and made more than just 2-dimensional ones. Polar opposites have always worked well together, and the four most good-looking guys, combined with a gothic-horror freak can hardly move further apart. This combination makes sure that the laughs keep coming, especially with this series’ sense of humour. Just when the humour starts to become stale, the characters start to develop and get fleshed out, making this hilarious till the end, with perhaps only the middle section a little weak. Heck, even the final episode delivers; something only few comedies can claim.

The graphics and music are both something incredibly subjective, though. They’ll make you either love or hate this series. The fact remains that almost the entire soundtrack, especially around the climax, consists of fast-paced rock, to help this anime create its energy. If you’re more of a j-pop fan, or like silent music, this will be hard to swallow. The art is also something you’d easily find ugly, and even though the main characters are supposed to be extremely attractive, they don’t look that way and I suspect that Nabeshin went for the concept of ’suspense of belief” with them. Personally, I didn’t mind the art, and I loved the soundtrack, but people can easily dislike them, so don’t expect any Lucky-Star-like art here. The only really bad thing about the art is that the main female lead, Sunako, is way too often portrayed as a chibi-figure, while her normal character-art looks (ironically) beautiful.

For me, Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge was a huge success as a comedy, despite five or six weak episodes around the middle part. Some of these episodes liked to use a reset-button as well when characters made huge amounts of money, which I didn’t like either. I definitely recommend this series, though, because I loved the over-the-top-ness of this series, along with all the methods to make the bishounen-stereotype ridiculous.

I’m not too happy to see that the fansubbers released this episode on a Saturday. While it’s nice to see that Higurashi is still getting out fast, Saturday remains my busiest day of the week, with five series that have to be blogged, and I have no intention to increase that number to six. Especially considering the time it takes to create an average Higurashi-entry. So if future releases of Higurashi will be coming out on Saturday, expect my entry of it to appear on Sunday.

Anyway, about the episode: I think it’s clear now that this is the slowest arc so far. This episode focused yet again on random games, while some scenes featured Rika’s despair of getting killed again. I’m afraid to say it, but I fear that this is going to be one of the lesser arcs of the series, because it hasn’t been written by the original writers and it can’t give too much away, or else it’ll ruin the next arc as well.

While the previous episode looked a lot like the first episode of the fifth arc, this episode looked a lot like the first episode of the third arc. I do hope that the next episode will focus on the Watanagashi, instead of going to the toy-store we saw in the second arc.

There was only one piece of new information, so I won’t bother with a summary. But at least we now know that Rika’s partner is some kind of spirit. I’m not sure whether this girl was the same one that we see in the OP, but she seems to inhabit the same body as Rika.

I do hope that the rest of the arc will be more exciting than this episode. It would, for example, be the perfect chance to show Keiichi’s past, which was left out in the sixth arc according to the people from Animesuki. I’d love to see such a tragedy in animated form.

Ah so she didn’t visit her grandmother, but two of her father’s elder sisters. Emily basically went back to her father’s birthplace. In this episode, she met her father’s childhood friend, with whom he went to college. Obvkously, the two of them would make friends fast.

This was one of the lesser episodes of Kaze no Shoujo Emily, though. It may be because the awesome music from the previous episode was gone, but I suspect it was because nothing much happened. I’m glad that Emily went back to Elizabeth at the end of the episode, as I’m eager to see Perry, Ilse and Teddy again.