First Look: Kuragehime

Title: Kuragehime Genre: Comedy, Slice of Life

Summary: The story centers around Tsukimi Kurashita, a huge fan of jellyfish who moves to Tokyo to become an illustrator. She moves into "Amamizukan," an apartment complex with a no-men-allowed rule that is full of diehard female otaku. However, one day, Tsukimi invites a stylishly fashionable woman to stay over at Amamizukan — only to discover that the guest is not who "she" seems to be.

First Look: My first thought after watching the first episode is “refreshing”. It feels like this anime is completely different from the others I have seen in the past couple seasons. Kuragehime pulls you in with a sweet and relaxing opening that can put a smile on anyone’s face. As the anime comes to a close it again sets you off with a calm melody and simplistic (yet affective) background art. The soundtrack may have been the thing that kept me watching at first, but it soon about the story. A female otaku for one was something unique, and the cute story about Kurashita’s mother was a great touch. From the way things seem to be turning out, and the message from the ending song I expect this anime to be very uplifting for everyone. I love how the author brought the idea that all girls grow up to be princesses. It gave me this feeling of hope that Kurashita will realize a princess doesn’t mean she has to be physically attractive. Actually all of the characters have their own personalities and positive points. I’ve been talking about how sweet, cute, and nice the story seems to be which all true, but there is comedy as well. I did laugh at a couple of the scenes, though not very hard admittedly. I’d probably say the light comedy is add a little more fluff to the series.

Final statements: You may have noticed I found writing my thoughts on Kuragehime very difficult. Seeing as this is a first look I want to get the point across I will be keeping this on watch because it feels like it has a lot of potential. I can’t say it will be the next smash hit, but it has promise to being a very good watch.