Anime Lessons

     DearS…  It’s really hard for me to know where to start with this title.  I’ll say this as a disclaimer.  I usually like harem and harem-ish shows.  I also have very few titles that I dislike.  DearS breaks both of these rules.  So I watched it despite warnings not to and being told it was just a bad Chobits rip-off (I don’t find it to be a Chobits rip personally, but there are similar elements).  So as much as is humanly possible, I went into it with an open mind.

 

     Ikuhara Takeya is a normal high school student, but his world is anything but normal.  It has been one year since a spaceship filled with DearS crash landed in Tokyo Bay.  Unlike almost every other person in society, Takeya has no interest in these strange aliens.  Takeya is entirely convinced that they are here for an invasion and constantly keeps his guard up.  One day, while walking home from school, Takeya comes across a person hiding in the bushes, wrapped in nothing but a thin cloak.  The person drops the cloak and moves towards Takeya, suddenly kissing him.  This girl is a DearS named Ren, and like it or not, as soon as Ren kissed Takeya, the bond between them was formed.

 

     From this point on Takeya’s life will be far from normal.  Ren begins living with Takeya in his small apartment.  If this weren’t enough of a problem, the DearS Community seems to have a problem Ren.  As a result, one DearS after another begins coming into Takeya’s life.  Over time, Takeya will slowly learn the truth of the DearS.  They are not visitors at all; they are slaves, obeying every command of their masters.  The contract is formed by a kiss, the kiss that Ren gave him during their first meeting.  But Takeya doesn’t like the idea of having an alien slave…  The boy who wanted nothing to do with the DearS now finds himself surrounded by them.  He will learn many of their strange ways, including the legendary relationship known as the GIFT.  How will Ren and Takeya’s relationship develop and how will it be influenced by the concepts of slave and master?  And as Takeya’s life grows ever more complicated with the entrance of many unique individuals, how will he deal with these circumstances?

 

Music

     The OP theme from DearS is a song called Love Slave.  If I had to describe it, I would say it’s like listening to squirrels hyped up on sugar singing such charming lyrics as “I’m Your Slave” over and over.  This song, like certain other parts of DearS, gives me a strange feeling that rides the border between embarrassment and anger.  None of the other tracks come to mind as being particularly great or poor, but it’s not a very impressive OST to say the least.

 

Character Designs

     I actually liked the character designs in DearS.  I would call them one of the few redeeming features of the show.  One thing I can say that I did not like was the astronomically sized breasts, but this is a personal preference.  I liked the eyes, I liked the body shape excluding the breast proportions, and I just generally enjoyed the animation.  Of course, this excludes some moments of what could be called the laziest animation ever.  I’m sure it’s done for comedic effect, but only a few times did it actually make me laugh.  This particular “style” of animation looks, with no exaggeration, like a 4 year old got on Microsoft Paint and drew a character using large and ineffective color brushes.  They then proceeded to draw in what might appear to be a character on top of it.  But all in all, I really enjoyed the animation of the characters.

 

Characters

     The characters themselves were poorly done in my opinion.  Takeya is an indecisive and generally stubborn and angry character.  That’s not a perfect description, but I dislike him as a lead character in any case.  Ren is the reason that most people call DearS a Chobits rip.  She is one of those blank slate characters (just like Chii) who starts out with the brain of a child and an attractive body.  However, unlike Chii, I did not really feel like Ren ever matured or grew as a character.  Her interactions, especially with Takeya, are rather painful to watch at points.  Although part of her personality is that she doesn’t understand what Takeya wants, Ren takes this to the point of basically doing exactly the opposite of what he want.  One other character that really bothers me is Yoshimine Mitsuka, the teacher in Takeya’s class.  While for the most part I don’t think that DearS really is much of a rip, I can’t deny some very clear similarities.  Yoshimine-sensei is the exact same character as Shikijou-sensei from Mahoromatic, but only if you removed all humor and value from Shikijou as a character.  Other annoying characters include Takeya’s friend, Oikawa Hikoro and his little sister, Ikuhara Natsuki.

 

Character Development and Plot

     The biggest problem I have with DearS is the complete and total lack of the common devices that are normally referred to as “character development” and “plot”.  There were a lot of points in DearS that hit me as those kind of “wow, I want to learn more about that” moments.  But not once, not even one time did the story actually focus on or develop these points.  However, despite the fact that the plotline in the anime was both vapid and incoherent, I could still tell that there were a lot of interesting features to it.  This gave me the desire to read the manga, which up to volume 4, has been infinitely more interesting and successful then the anime.  Many of the characters and ideas that were just showing up in the anime at the very end are already developing in the manga.  But the storyline in DearS the anime?  No.  It fails.  I feel like this failure is primarily the result of the complete and total lack of decent character development, particularly for important characters.  Some of the background characters got better development then most of the main ones.  I would have loved to see something good come out of DearS in this area, but it comes up way short.  DearS is a good example of wasted potential.  I could have seen a great show developing out of the exact concept used in DearS, but you won’t find it in DearS, I can say that much.

 

Final Word

     I by no means encourage anyone to watch this show.  It starts off with an interesting enough concept, takes and does indescribably horrible things to it, and then tries to dust it off and pull out an ending.  I would hardly even consider it an ending.  The OP theme is obnoxious, and many of the characters are quite annoying.  Character development and important plot elements are excluded or brushed over.  Besides the decent character designs (again, this is not always true), I can’t say I really see anything of value in DearS.  There are countless shows that are similar to DearS that are actually good.  Feel free to PM me on the forum and I’ll point you to any number of them.

 

DearS rating:

 

   

   

 

   

   

 

   

   

 

   

 

 

(This review/pictures made by Throughhim413)