MOTHER MARIA WATCHES OVER US EPISODE 1

i can't tell if this is going to be yuri or catholic. catholic yuri? *23 minutes later* i just finished the episode and i still can't tell. i think it is? this first episode throws a lot at you but with the breakneck speed of an elderly snail. it takes place in a catholic all-girls' school. there's a student council comprised of three 'roses' (students). each rose has a 'little sister' that they choose and mentor to become the next rose, instead of holding an election. (all upperclassmen have the option of asking any underclassman to become their little sister, but it extra-matters for the roses) and this is easy to understand but they decided to make it all a bunch of fucking french words and each rose has a special name alongside her normal human name so it'll be like "Rosa Gigantea en bouton" and then we only learn wtf that all means halfway through the episode this brings us to our first character, yumi. the pigtails girl is yumi. she's nervous all the times this is lady sachiko. she's an upperclassman thats super cool and suave and im still cracking up that they gave her the classic Seme Face. equality! (dont worry about the dialog we'll get to that later.) yumi is a fan of sachiko, but sachiko doesn't even know that she exists. awesome so the plot gets kicked off with this girl (who is my favorite character.) who took a photo of yumi and sachiko together earlier that morning. i didnt get a picture of it but thats not important. what IS important? CONSENT! she wants to display this photo during the school festival for the photography club, but she needs consent from both yumi and sachiko. she already has yumi's consent, so now she just needs to go get sachiko's. so they go. to the. student council house. to see sachiko. can you tell im trying really hard to make this sound interesting. BREAKNECK pacing here in this first episode. so sachiko is being forced into playing the role of cinderella in a play. she does not want to play cinderella in the play because she'll have to play romance alongside a boy from the all-boys school (prince charming) and she FUCKING HATES MEN and doesn't want to. but because sachiko doesn't even have a little sister, the head of the student council refuses to take her seriously in this matter. which is kinda fucked up. so when yumi walks in, sachiko just goes "THERE THAT ONE THIS WILL BE MY LITTLE SISTER. CAN I NOT BE CINDERELLA NOW" and the student council leader goes "well she can be your little sister. but you still have to be cinderella. will you still accept yumi as your sister?" and sachiko goes "YES." and then yumi goes "um... i dont want to be her little sister..." and everyone goes "Wtfff" and yumi goes "but its still fucked up to make sachiko be cinderella" and the student council leader goes "I Know. Let's have a bet." the bet is simple:

• if lady sachiko can make yumi accept her proposal to be her sister before the school festival, she won't have to be cinderella (but how do we prevent yumi from just accepting it anyway to help her?)
• if yumi accepts, she'll have to be cinderella instead.

btw this happens at one point, sachiko tumbled onto yumi while trying to angrily leave the student council room. also this shot from the outro miruro puts this anime under the "drama/romance" category. So i dont fucking know anymore

do i want to watch more?

i have to be honest this first episode was kinda boring. the concept of the bet seems interesting though, so i wonder if its just a case of first-episode-sleepiness. i'd watch another episode but if the pacing is also boring i will be turning it off. the characters all kinda talk the exact same except for sachiko, they don't really have many differentiating characteristics yet. and also i think this has the most nothing-burger intro ever. it's literally just a 3d model of a rosary slowly spinning around while orchestral music plays and we see headshots of the different characters fade in and out in the background. there aren't any labels anywhere so i cant even remember all of their fucking names it introduces like 10 characters in this first episode and the only ones i remember are yumi, sachiko, and tsutako (the camera girl) and i only remembered tsutako because i liked her. the intro feels like it lasts for 5 minutes

favorite screenshots

i like these two funny faces yumi makes. they are also the only two funny faces that are made in the whole episode the artstyle doesnt really let them be all too expressive most of the time which kind of makes me sad. this also isnt my favorite type of artstyle it feels like all the characters have like really heavy mascara on that makes me feel uncomfortable looking at them most of the time this comment under the first episode?

ELFEN LIED EPISODE 1

PLEASE DON'T BE ANOTHER CHOBITS PLEASE GOD PLEASE this episode has 10 minutes to convince me it's not going to be chobits again. it has a lot to do to convince me of this okay i don't think it's chobits 2. but its still. for basically all of this episode one of the main characters is butt ass naked the whole time (and then even when she gets clothes we still see her boobs) so it made taking screenshots difficult because I Don't want to put a bunch of boobs on neocities what if i go to JAIL it also doesn't help that there is large discussion in the community for this show about the Ages of the characters. the episode opens with a strange superhuman escaping a facility. there's like a solid 8 minutes of just her walking menacingly towards guards while they shoot at her and she kills them violently with mind powers. this is a really interesting opening and i like how everything is presented after she escapes the facility, she washes up on the shore where two university students discover her. hi yuka and kouta yuka makes kouta take off his button-up to cover up the girl to give her some decency. and then she goes "okay kouta, she should stay with you" and this is where i got really really scared that it was going to turn into chobits "oh, but pay, this isnt very chobits at all!" you misunderstand.

there's three reasons why this reminded me heavily of chobits.
• 1. This girl doesn't speak japanese. She only says "nyuu" and has a very childlike demeanour. Just like Chii.
• 2. She has little ear things. Just like Chii.
• 3. The boobs thing. she doesn't understand the purpose of clothes and takes off her t-shirt immediately after getting it on. Just like Chii.

luckily, it's not like chobits! because kouta isn't a gross pervert. he's just an asshole dude just fuckin' WHINES the whole time "why does she have to stay with meee in my big house that my aunt is letting me live in??? why do i have to clean it in order to stay here rent-free??? wahhhh wahhh" the facility that nyuu escaped from (they're calling her nyuu. because of course they are. Just like Chii!) is still pretty vested in killing her so that she doesn't crazy murder the rest of society. so they're sending an elite team of hitmen to take her out. while this is happening, we get to see more of kouta's backstory which basically amounts to: His dead sister gave him a seashell before she died. and he carries this seashell around with him everywhere. he's holding the seashell while he talks about this and nyuu takes it out of his hands and breaks it in half, and then smiles. kouta gets REALLY mad at her for this and she runs out of the house crying and into the cold dark rain. "maybe she saw that you were sad... and thought that it was the shell's fault... and she broke it. if you're sad every time you think about your sister... i think that would make her sad, too" -yuka.

do i want to watch more?

i think i would need to hear HEAVY endorsement from someone that i trusted in order to continue watching this one. it has some pretty interesting themes happening and i would like to learn more about nyuu's backstory and whole deal. and kouta's dead sister too i guess. but it's just. i need her to put those things away. ecchi's so objectifying it really needs to be like Top Tier Media otherwise for me to give a fuck about it. if this was just artistic nudity that'd be one thing. but in this case: its not. or at least, it doesn't seem to be. i get wanting to have some sort of relief from all the blood and guts but there's a lot of ways to do that that aren't Quick make the weird baby-acting girl do something sexual

favorite screenshots

i like this blood-splattered hallway because the colors look nice also there was this one frame where kouta slowly became distorted that made me laugh