Spring 2012 First Impressions – Mysterious Girlfriend X

I don't think secreting this much saliva in a short period of time is humanly possible.

Seriously, WHAT IS UP with this season?

I’m seeing actual good anime pop out like mushrooms on a rotting log. At the start of the season, I thought I would only be watching 3 or 4 anime, but now I think I would go past six of them.

Mysterious Girlfriend X is yet another much-welcomed surprise. The art style of the manga didn’t really sit well with me when I checked it out and I didn’t even bother finishing reading the first chapter… which is why I found it surprising that I liked how they drew the characters in the anime. It has that certain appeal to it that you would rarely see nowadays. It’s more detailed and complicated than post-2005 character designs.

Now, the main draw of the show is the supposed argument that a relationship between a boy and a girl in high school can be quite fulfilling even without sex. The manga is created with this in mind. For an in-show example, you have Mikoto and Akira, who are pretty much the description of an awkward relationship. It still kind of bothers me though, that the manga author decided to use saliva, of all things, to tie up our main characters. I don’t think they’re going for it to the extent of fully depicting sharing spit as a full-blown fetish fuel if the author’s statement is to be believed.

Now, on to the anime itself. It’s pretty much like your standard boy meets girl kind of affair between a normal high school boy and a not-so-normal high school girl. Now normally, this would work to the show’s disadvantage, but in this case, naivete and love-shyness is pretty much needed for the whole thing to work. People argue that Akira has that disease that most anime leads suffer from – lack of personality, but I don’t think that’s the case here. As far as I can tell, the fact that he decided to lick Mikoto’s saliva off the desk, his overall meekness, and those silly dreams he was having would suffice for us to get a good idea of what his character is like.

I also rather like Mikoto’s weird personality. She’s the kind of weird that I find very endearing. She randomly bursts into fits of laughter, sleeps during breaks, and pretty much being generally weird. These traits of hers don’t come off as annoying because they don’t try to shove them down your throat. Also, those long bangs, the cute eyes and that nice voice. I’ll be honest: I think she’s pretty.

There’s nothing much to say about the rest of the episode, as it was more of an introduction than a proper movement in the story. I found the episode to be one of the better ones I have seen so far, on par with Space Bros, which surprisingly, is being directed by the same person. I may blog this every week, as I’m pretty much sold here.