I’ve turned into quite a fan of the modern horeca-series, brought back and popularized by Bartender. It’s a genre with an atmosphere unlike any other genre, and one of those very few types of series targeted solely at adults. The latest installment is Ristorante Paradiso: yet again a short but charming and relaxing series about a restaurant somewhere in Rome.

From the outside, the premise of this series indeed looks quite shaky. It’s easy to think that this is just a harem, but this time the lead character being a female in her twenties and the male characters all being stereotypical bishounen in their forties or above. Thankfully, the series proves that it’s fully able to avoid this cliché. There is one lead couple, and the rest of the characters all have their own romances.

One of the things that makes this series so enjoyable is how well it manages to handle its limited airtime of only eleven episodes, and yet it manages to develop a relatively large cast of characters. Every episode is basically dedicated to one or two characters, but they’re all inspired and miles away from stereotypes. The characters here have realistic problems and issues, rather than those overdramatic ones you tend to often see in anime. Every episode keeps you guessing on what’s going to happen next; despite the next-episode previews, you’ll hardly ever find yourself able to predict what’s going to happen next, or what the next character’s back-story is going to be about.

And still the series forms a coherent whole in the end. A major theme is the past, and how it affects characters today. Surprisingly, most people in this series have relatively dark pasts, but unlike most other anime they hardly ever bear grudges or feel depressed. A major theme of this series is not getting worked up about what happened in the past, but instead using these experiences to enjoy today. It’s a theme that’s explored wonderfully throughout the series, and makes it feel complete.

Of course, you need to know that this isn’t the series for those who want action or lots of drama. Instead, it’s meant to be relaxing, while most of the drama is done very subtly without ever dragging on. Apart from that though, I couldn’t find any major flaws in this series, or reasons why one would not want to watch this. It’s not anything epic, but what it does it does really well: the creators really put thoughts into how they could make this show work best, and not let a minute go to waste. It’s a recommendation for those who are looking for a short relaxing series.

Haha! This series pulled it off! Mitsuko Kase really proves that she knows how to make a good series. She’s probably one of the very few female anime directors out there, most of her series are very under-appreciated, but you can really call me a fan of her. Especially when it comes to the endings, nine out of ten anime series simply fail to put an actually good and satisfying conclusion to their story, but she time and time again uses that ending to wrap up all of the hanging plot-lines, develop the main characters, AND pull in a few surprises here and there to boot while still staying true to the atmosphere of the rest of the series. There really aren’t many directors who also have consistently proven to do this.

So yeah, I don’t think I could have hoped for a better ending than this episode. I had to laugh at when they played the scene that showed up in last episode’s next episode preview: when watched in context with the actual events, it was much more humorous (Nicoletta basically out of nowhere slapped a plate of spaghetti over Claudio). Last episode’s preview made it look so dramatic, but in the actual episode it happened so fast that there was hardly any time to build up any tension, and instead the focus fell on Nicoletta, trying to get Isabella to understand to stop making Claudio suffer.

I really liked how the creators resolved Claudio’s issues with his former wife, which was very un-typical of anime. Usually, you’d build up and up, until the climax where characters confess their feelings and suddenly forget about all their problems, but here it was done very gradually. There wasn’t one point at which Claudio immediately forgot about his past. Instead, they just gradually became a couple over the episode: slowly, bit by bit Claudio was able to let go of his past, until eventually he returned his wedding ring. I wish more anime did this.

As a surprise, we also see more development for Olga. Her story was handled with a bit less subtlety, but I still liked it a lot. It really showed how much Nicoletta has grown over the past series: at the start of this series, you’d think that this show would be about a bitch-fight between an angry mother and daughter, but in this episode Nicoletta proved to be much more mature than her mother, and managed to convince her that she doesn’t mind the past anymore.

Overall, I’m glad to have followed this series. It was probably the most un-typical anime of the season, the drama was nearly always subtle and yet packed a punch. The ending wasn’t my favourite, but I would definitely label it among the top 5 of best endings I’ve seen in 2009 so far. The series also had the best character-designs for the past spring-season (in contrast to most people, I’m not yet a fan of Range Murata or Satoko Morikawa). It obviously wasn’t an epic series that had me on the edge of my seat, but it didn’t need to be: it used its time well and delivered a very enjoyable and relaxing series. I’m looking forward to what Noise has in store for us the upcoming season.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Among my top 5 endings I’ve seen this year so far. (For those wondering, the others are Birdy the Mighty Decode, Michiko e Hatchin, Ride Back and Jigoku Shoujo Mitsuganae).

Saint Seiya The Lost Canvas

Short Synopsis: Our lead character has huge powers for no particular reason and gets to become a saint.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (No way)
Okay, so I’m pretty much a Saint Seiya noob: I’ve never watched anything of the franchise, despite how it seems to be churning out an OVA every year. So yeah, this felt like a good opportunity to check out and see what this franchise was all about. Well, if the rest of the installments are anything like this first episode, then it’s a franchise full of hopelessly bad acting and stereotypes. Seriously, this episode starts with a bunch of generic bullies nearly killing a dog, only for one of the lead characters to act like a flower-child and protect it. The other lead character is your typical hot-blooded teen-aged lead, only exaggerated even more than usual. The episode was full of inconsistencies or things that just didn’t make any bloody sense; my favourite of this has to be the point where a river was blocked by a bunch of rocks from a landslide. So what does our main character do? HE TRIES TO PUNCH HIS WAY THROUGH THE ROCKS. Granted though, the animation looked really nice and the backgrounds looked pretty. But pretty pictures aren’t going to excuse the disaster that is the cast of characters.

Fight Ippatsu! Juuden-Chan!

Short Synopsis: Our lead character hasn’t been toilet-trained properly and Deus ex Machinas depressions away.
Chance of me Blogging: 0% (No way)
It’s stupid, clichéd, full of fanservice and stereotyped. But still I have to admit that it made me laugh at times. This is basically another shounen mahou shoujo, but for once the chemistry between the male and female lead was enjoyable, rather than annoying. The problem with this series however, is that that’s just about the only thing that I liked. The visuals look horrible, the background music is generic voice-less J-Pop. The drama is incredibly shallow: it’s built up poorly and simply solved because the lead character has the power make depressions go completely away. It just screams laziness to me. The fanservice also was abysmal at times. Fully unneeded, especially in the ED, and you know a character is bad when she still pees in her pants.

Umi Monogatari

Short Synopsis: Our lead character lives under water.
Chance of me Blogging: 40% (If the rest of the season is mediocre)
Another series with lots of moe, but it’s actually pretty interesting. Umi Monogatari tells the story of a tribe of people who live underwater and use strange rings to move to the shore. It’s got an ambient atmosphere with lots of quiet piano background songs. The pacing is also quiet yet at the end o the episode there were definitely some dark pasts. A major theme of this episode also was cultural differences, which can become quite interesting as well if the series develops it properly. My one gripe with this episode was the comedy, though; it just felt forced, so that’s a potential problem for the future of this series. I know that ZEXCS isn’t the best company out there, and the animation and visuals really are nothing special, but if they can make this series as solid as they did with Wagaya no Oinarisama, then I’m in.