Congo Gum

Plot Summary: Fumihiko Matsumaru is an average salaryman with no girlfriend. He invited his colleague Miss Tanaka to a movie but was stood up. Right at the time he was about to toss tickets into a trash can, a cute girl appeared and asked him not to waste those two tickets. After movie and dinner, he escorted her home and found they live in the same neighborhood, yet unfortunately her apartment caught on fire hours later. Having nowhere else to stay, rookie seiyuu Aka Onda moved to Matsumaru’s place, and the two had started a “more than friend but not yet lovers” relationship under the same roof while keeping this secret from their employers.

If you’re looking for a new comedy/drama/slice of life/romance anime to watch then i would suggest this. REC is a great blend of laughs and tears with a cute Nekoki (Cat-Tree) thrown in. Although the series is very short, 9 x 12 minute episodes, it gets alot covered. There is no mindless filler here or episodes where nothing happens. Every episode there is something interesting going on and there is always a mixture of cute punchlines and lovers tiffs. However this could be said to be one of the shows downfalls, it’s length. While the episodes were great i would have liked some more, but that’s me just complaining.

Animation is not amazing by any means but it’s not bad either, it was worked on by Hideyuki Morioka (R.O.D, Neon Genesis Evangelion) and his talent on character designs shines in REC. Aka is cute and great to look at and the other characters and easy on the eyes and drawn very well. The voice cast is good, Aka and Matsumaru are done to a high standard.

Now that the technical stuff is out the way we can move onto the two best things about this show. The story and the characters. The thing i liked most about REC was it was believable and covers many things that most of us have or will deal with at some point in our lifetime. Whether that will be dissapointment, pressure at work, jealousy and envy or hurting someone you love. The story from the get go coveres these aspects and it does them well. The relationships between the characters work and you can’t help but to connect with them and cheer them on when things get rough.

One good tidbit was that each episode was named after a Audrey Hepburn movie, Aka’s idol, and each episode contained a line from the film it was named after. Aka really wants to make it as a voice actress, will she ever get her big break? can she really juggle love and work? Watch and find out.

Overall i’d say the show gets a 4/5. It’s can hold your attention and has a good quality finish to the show, Major downers would be the length. Although they cut the filler i wished they had more episodes with the same kind of story. The soundtrack was also catchy “Cheer~Makka na kimochi~” by Kanako Sakai fitted perfectly.

Fansub only but well worth the time to watch.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 11th, 2007 at 2:46 pm and is filed under Other Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.