Image by スカイ

This time we look at the 4th season of Minami-ke!

Minami-ke is an interesting series in that it's 4 seasons have been produced by different studios: Daume (first), asread (2, 3) and feel. (4). This kind of results in seasons having very different looks, the most radical being the jump between 1 and 2, where values dropped like a hot potato. In terms of seasons in ranking, not counting the current as it's still on going, it'd go 1st, 3rd and 2nd. Anywho, like the Maoyu review, this one will be using the same system.

Story in Minami-ke has always been the everyday life of the sisters, and I can't accurately remember if Chiaki's blurb before the opening sequence was used in the previous seasons as well, but that more or less accurately sums up what the series is. Light hearted and almost always funny, it's a series that's always been a blast to watch. The comedy isn't dumb slapstick comedy, and some of the jokes don't grow old. 

Art & Animation: 8/10

There's not much to say about this catergory. feel.'s character designs feel a lot closer to the ones Daume used in their season (more on that in overall), and it's animated well. It's hard to talk about the art and animation in this one because it hasn't really differed too much between seasons. Season 2 really dropped, but the 3rd was a step or two up from that (still not 1st level) and I feel that this 4th is right back to the level where the series started.

Characters: 7.5/10

The charcters haven't changed. They've stayed fairly consistent throughout the three previous seasons and haven't changed so far. We've learned a few new things about characters, mainly about Touma (I think she's the only one to really get anything new). Mako-chan is back in full force, and so is Hosaka, who's been toned down a little bit from his grand delusions of the first season. 

There is a new character, Miyuki, who joins Kana's merry band of friends at school, bringing the girl's middle school group to 4. She is,however, a minor character and hasn't had a lot of screentime since her debut, and I'm hoping she doesn't get forgotten.

7.5 is what this one gets. It's a fun series to watch on downtime as it's light and doesn't make you cringe at hit or miss humour. Characters return from previous season virtually unchanged, along with the art and feel of the first season making the 'ただいま' part of it's title rather fitting.

Now, let's talk about how this first season showing up in the series. Right from the opening theme, the series calls back to it's origin, using parts of the 1st season's opening theme in the song. The character designs are closer to those of the 1st season, and I remember the first season being noticeably 'cleaner' than the second and third. Call it rose-tinted lenses for the first season, but there's not denying that the first season was superior to both the second and third.

Image by Koma Kiri Aoko

It's been a long time since I've last posted on this. I'll try posting a few reviews over the next few weeks of series I'm watching right now and maybe games I've been playing.




I'll be rating the series I review over the course of the next few weeks on a scale of 10 under the following catergories:

• Story
• Art / Animation
• Characters
• Overall Entertainment

I'll give my two cents about the series, a rating and that'll be the review. I'll try to keep them short and sweet. Don't expect too many negative comments; I only watch what I like.

Story: 7~8/10

Maoyu is often compared to Spice and Wolf due to it's staff and general content, though the compairson is rather unfair. Maoyu's story is considerably more vast than Spice and Wolf's, which (I've gathered from the two anime series) focused a lot on the economics of the world, as well as the growth of the two characters. Maoyu on the otherhand, is a story encompassing an entire world - almost two. It's essentially what might happen if you were to travel back into the 1300s (or around there) and spread the ideals of the Enlightenment 400 years earlier.

 

The story is well written, which is why it might surprise many that the novel series has it's origins from 2ch. The anime skipped over some smaller plot details, and in turn also created a bit of a loose plot threads, which may or may not impact a future event, coming in a few episodes or so. An example from a more recent episode is the Dragon Princess. The staff skipped over the Dragon King battle in which the whole situation with the Dragon Princess comes up, making her first full appearance rather abrupt.

Art / Animation: 7/10

Animation wise, this series is fine. I've got no problems as to how it's animated. There really isn't much to blow a budget on, considering that in the last 5 episodes, we've been given 1 brief 'battle', which wasn't shown (flash of light), and a large navel failure (release the krakens) that wasn't exactly action heavy. I'm hoping that they'll pull out all the stops for the upcoming Aurora Island campaign because that campaign is mighty impressive.

Other than characters, the rest of the picture (backgrounds and most inanimate objects) have a washed down water colour look to them. It's a little bit jarring to see it contrasted with the sharpness of the characters.

Characters: 8/10

I've included character design in this one too because I'm not too fond of them. I'll acknowledge that I'm quite biased in this, as I'm coming from Ishida Akira's "Kotowaru" manga adaptation, and those designs were quite amazing. If these designs do one thing well, it's making the characters much more generic than Ishida's designs do. The generic names really benefit from the even more generic designs. Overall generic-ness of over 9000. The Demon Queen doesn't really look like a demon queen at all though. Looks like she could've been plucked straight out of the frontier village. The Dragon Princess really took a fall in design, though the embers on her breath wagging tail are a nice touch.

Anywho, personal biases out of the way, this one gets an 8 because the characters, while based in generic tropes, all have their own personalities and don't feel cookie cutter. I wish they had a little bit of focus on the Noble students though, as I feel that the growth in those three characters really personifies the growth of the Winter Kingdom.

Overall Entertainment: (7.5~) 8/10

Giving this one an overal 8. It's certainly something I look forward to every week and usually alway a fun and interesting watch. A few problems with skipping material, but overall it's a solid series. Anime-Only viewers won't have the same problems with it as I did but you'll probably notice some of the dropped plot details if you pay enough attention.