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Now in Japan
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Written by maehara
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Wednesday, 15 March 2006 00:00 |
 Take one ditzy girl, a 400-year-old promise, a ninja, and as many awkward situations as you can find. Mix well, and you have Kage Kara Mamoru, an action / comedy of sorts that also has an element of harem to it. Repeat after me: not another harem series...
1 - Continuing to Protect for 400 Years
Meet Yuna Konyaku - high-school girl, cute, clumsy, and not too bright (she's one of those girls who has trouble counting past 10, since that's where she runs out of fingers). She's been friends for years with her next-door neighbour, Mamoru Kagemori - a bespectacled and kinda geeky-seeming kid, who always seems to spend most of his days sleeping. There's a good reason for that: by day Mamoru may be a normal kid, but by night (and to be fair, any other time his services are required), he's a ninja who not even bullets can stop. When Yuna is kidnapped after spotting the local yakuza swapping bootleg anime figures, Mamoru swings into action to rescue her...
2 - There's Nothing in this World I Cannot Cut
Skip back 400 years, and we find Hanzouyo Kagemori being given then task of protecting the Konyaku family and their descendants - seems Mamoru's ancestor took the assignment seriously. Back in the present day, and there's a new girl on the scene - Tsubaki Mapputatsu, a sword-wielding shrine maiden who takes no crap from anyone. She's just been hired by Gakuaku to track down the evil demon Yuna and her ninja protector (guess who), and isn't about to let evil has its way. Shame she's only been listening to one side of the story. After tracking Yuna down to her school, she challenges her - but to the one thing that Yuna's actually good at: a tennis match. When that approach doesn't work, it's time to resort to more underhand tactics, but Mamoru's on hand to make sure Tsubaki doesn't get her way...
The harem element hasn't quite swung into full effect here yet - so far there's only Yuna, Airi and Tsubaki to deal with - but the huge number of girls who appear in the ending sequence is a fairly big hint as to where this series is going. Strangely, the girl who is the obvious "winner" is also the one with the least attractive character design, but there you go - although to be fair you're meant to love Yuna for her ditzy & apparently adorable personality. I think I'm missing something there.
With harem shows being nothing remotely unusual, Kage Kara Mamoru has to have something as a unique selling point, to make it stand out from the crowd. The link between the Kagemori and Konyaku families is that point, with Mamoru's "ninja protector" status being used to fairly good effect to add a little action to events. The whole thing is played out in a slapstick style, which is where the comedy comes from.
The last slapstick ninja show I watched was 2x2 = Shinobuden, which was fun initially but began to wear thin as the series progressed. Kage Kara Mamoru has some of the same elements, which makes me wonder about its long-term appeal, and these first few episodes haven't been quite as enjoyable as Shinobu's. What's here is quite good and fun in its own way, but there's simply not enough to make me want to watch it ahead of any number of other recent harem shows, and that means I'll have to pass.
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