What this opening episode lacks in originality in the story department, it more than makes up for in the animation.
It’s another “girls doing funny things” show along the lines of an Azumanga Daioh. The first episode revolves around timid girl Ayumi Nonomura’s first day at the new private school she’s attending and her meeting with the determinedly respectable Tatsuki Iizura, the strong but silent Suzume Saotome and the unrelentingly gung ho Torako Kageyama. They’re all stereotypical characters you’d seen in any number of these type of shows, but both the script and especially the body language in the animation do a good job of fleshing out these simple archetypes.
The main character is Ayumi, and because she has a talkative inner monologue, she avoids being the simpering crybaby that these sort of characters can tend to become.
Tatsuki seems to have an element of Hyacinth Bucket about her, a number of characters introduce themselves by breaking down their names into their component parts, and she gives the most high-falutin’ indication of how to spell her name. It’s just one line of dialogue but it works wonders in establishing her character.
Suzume and especially Torako are established more in their movement than dialogue. Which is a great thing. In particular the sequence with the door, the window, the brick and the teacher had me laughing out loud. It’s not a particularly clever or complicated series of events, but it ain’t half some funny drawings. Yay for funny drawings.
Other great things – the backgrounds are wonderfully lush and detailed, tracking shot sequences with animated background, slightly rough line to the characters, the way the characters’ hair moves, the use of the camera/choice of shots and the shadow puppet flashback. Only an overuse of the fish eye lens annoyed me somewhat with regards to the animation.
It’s still something you’ve probably seen umpteen times before, but at least it’s doing it well and on the strength of this episode alone, I want to see what Michio Fukuda does next.