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R1 DVD Reviews
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Monday, 11 January 2010 00:00 |
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Page 1 of 3
 Here's one I've been looking for an excuse to see again - World of Narue, a science-fiction romantic comedy that had seemed doomed to go out-of-print after Central Park Media were wound up. Fortunately, though, Sentai Filmworks have seen fit to pick it up and give it a re-release, and that's no bad thing...
As ever with multi-disc sets, you can find the episode summaries and screen shots on the following pages of the review. Narue Nanase's quite the cutie as highschool girls go, but she's never really gotten on too well with other people (probably something to do with her claims to be an alien) - until she meets Kazuto Iizuka. Their meeting wasn't your usual boy-meets-girl incident, either - nothing involving an alien ninja and a baseball-wielding alien girl could ever be described as 'normal' - but Narue makes enough of an impression on Kazuto that he's determined to find out more about her. And so begins a beautiful friendship... Meanwhile, class SF geek Yagi is determined to prove that Narue isn't the alien that she claims to be...
Given that most romantic comedies these days rely on some sort of harem aspect to keep the fans' interest up, Narue's setting, with nil harem content & with the two lead characters in a strong relationship from the outset, makes a pleasant change. Yes, there are a lot of cute female characters on the loose (and mid-season swimsuit and beach episodes featuring them all, to keep the fanboys interested), but none of them ever present any real threat to the strong relationship between Narue and Kazuto. That's almost unique in anime - the only other example I can come up with of a lead pair that's never in doubt is Belldandy and Keiichi from Oh! My Goddess - and it's a good thing to see. Kazuto, unlike many a male lead, has a mind of his own, decides early on that it's Narue he wants, and goes out to get her. Positive role model? We have one.
Narue's also doesn't quite fit in with the typical archetypes: she's kind and caring, yet remarkably good at defending herself and others; confident, but never brash. In a way, she straddles the dividing line between the two main types of anime girl that we usually get to see, the subservient or submissive dream girl (for example, Aoi from Ai Yori Aoshi) and the overdefensive loudmouth (Naru from Love Hina). In short, she's normal. Apart from the small detail of being half-alien.
You see, Narue's father hails from the planet Nihon, a world that culturally is almost the same as Japan, and yet is a far less pleasant place to be - the universe outside Earth seems to be a violent place, with Earth and its comparative peacefulness having been deemed worth protecting. He was long ago ordered to leave the planet, but having fallen in love with an Earth woman that wasn't about to happen. Now, 15 years later, with terrorist attacks on the protective fleet around Earth on the increase, the pressure is mounting on him to leave, and to take Narue with him. All this is background, though - the science-fiction aspect of the show is used to allow little tricks like Narue's teleporter or Kanaka's hi-tech games console, but the real meat in the story is in how Kazuto and Narue deal with their blossoming relationship and the threat of it being taken away from them. That's then wrapped in a healthy dosing of comedy - quite heavily loaded with fanservice in places - to produce a story that's funny yet touching. Whether the mix has been gotten quite right depends on your tolerance for fanservice - there are one or two places where I felt the show went overboard a little, and I'm quite relaxed about such things - but for the most part it felt like they'd done a good job of finding the right balance.
Where the show perhaps didn't get it right was in the introductions of some of the 'minor' characters, particularly Kanaka and Yagi. Kanaka is Narue's 'older' sister, although by a scientifically-accurate time problem she's actually two years younger (time dilation is a bitch); Yagi is a science-fiction obsessed classmate of Narue's who initially refuses to believe that she's the alien she claims to be. Both are introduced in ways that paint them in a very unlikeable light, and it's only over the course of two or three episodes that they're allowed to soften up. I can't help but wonder if it was really necessary to portray them quite so badly to start with, as it doesn't do them any favours.
Away from the rom-com core of the show, there are a few hints to larger problems on the sci-fi side of things that could have become major storylines if given the chance, but with just twelve episodes to work with the time simply wasn't there to deal with those possibilities in any real way - the series is based on a manga which I presume did get the chance, but sadly only a few volumes of it were ever released in English. Grrr. Here, it's really only the first and final episodes that touch on that side of things in any great detail, and even then it's only in passing.
Overall, though, while it's nothing earth-shattering, Narue manages to be a simple show that's a joy to watch. It even stands up to rewatching quite well - this was my third time through the series, and I can honestly say that it's lost none of its charm over the years. People looking for large doses of action will want to look elsewhere, but for something heart-warming that will bring a smile to your face, it's hard to beat.
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