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| Alice-sama no Kuma-chan |
A nice introduction to a promising anime for the Summer 2011 season. With this episode being double the length of a typical episode, there was plenty of time to give the viewer a sense of what this anime is going to be like. After watching this episode, I can't help but think this is going to be like a modern version of GOSICK. The small mystery in this episode was interesting and I can see the potential for lots of moe in this episode after seeing Alice's interactions with everybody. The tiny bit of comedy increased my enjoyment. Overall, it left a good impression and I will most likely continue to watch Kami-sama no Memo-chou.
Part 1
Right off the bat, we have the male protagonist, Fujishima Narumi, comparing the people on the street to pixels on a screen as soon as he arrives at the city. Meanwhile, some old guy looks like he is going to have some fun with an underage female prostitute before some teenage male shows up and takes a picture of the old guy unbuttoning the girl's shirt; enough evidence to be used for blackmailing. When Narumi walks into the love hotel area of the city, the two scenes are brought together as the female jumps from the window of the room she is in, landing on a pile of garbage bags and knocking herself out. The old guy then runs out of the hotel, dropping a bloody ashtray as he leaves. All of a sudden, Narumi gets pinned to the wall by some kid with a toy gun before being released once the suspect was apprehended. The group of people that appear then drive off with both the teenagers involved with the incident, leaving him to think about what had just happened.
Since he didn't really care about school, Narumi was essentially isolated from everyone else. One day, while on the school roof relaxing, he hears the door to the roof open. Upon checking to see who it was, he gets surprised to see a girl who's in his class even though he doesn't remember her. She introduces herself as Shinozaki Ayaka. Then, after noticing that he doesn't have a class pin, she jumps on his back and gives hers to him after he tries to get away. When the end of the school day rolled along, Narumi is forced to help Ayaka water the plants as part of the gardening club's duties since she agreed to join the computer club (which he is in and needs more members) if he joined the gardening club. On another afternoon, after finishing gardening club duties, Ayaka decides to treat Narumi to something since she is going to work. Before they leave school grounds, he notices the teenage prostitute from before goes to this school after she walks by him. The teenage mage who was with her the other day is then shown buying ice from a convenience store. Suspicious. Anyways, the Ayaka takes Narumi to the ramen shop where she works at and, at the back of the store, the same group of guys from the other day were there, surprising Narumi. His attempt at leaving the scene ends up being unsuccessful as Ayaka pulls him back. After the two guys from before realize that it's Narumi, the older one starts acting all friendly and stuff, putting his arm around Narumi. When Narumi asks whether the guy graduated from high school, Min-san, the owner of the ramen shop, shows up and tells Narumi that the guy is a drop out. When this new acquainted senpai of his tries to talk back to Min-san, he gets verbally whipped by her harsh words. Afterwards, Ayaka follows her employer back into the ramen shop for work. With the three now left alone, they begin talking. When the last member of the group appears and texts two girls he's dating at the same time, I finally realize what a good team they make. A good mix of strength, intelligence and charm makes them very capable of handling different situations. However, these three guys seem to have overwhelmed Narumi as he falls to his knees trying to comprehend his current situation. Suddenly, all three of their cellphones start ringing, with the caller being someone named Alice. It turns out that this Alice girl requested something along the lines of scallion soup. Now the problem is who is going to bring it to her seeing as she may possibly be in a bad mood according to the three of them. In the end, Narumi ends up going after losing the small game that made the loser go deliver the food to Alice (even though he wasn't even playing in the first place).
Upon opening the door to her room, he is greeted with a chilly breeze. After bringing the bowl of food up to her, he starts looking around the room. When she starts struggling to split the wooden chopsticks, he offers to help, but is coldly rejected via a strange analogy. After failing to properly split the chopsticks, she commands him to get her a DoKupe (some random canned drink). When he returns with it, she reveals everything she knew about him (which turned out to be a lot). She then goes into a long rant about being a NEET detective which I won't bother summarizing since it's pointless anyways. Another pointless rant that references the title of the series follows before a sound recording of what happened during that day at the love hotel between the prostitute and the old man is played. When the audio file finishes playing, Narumi realizes that it is from that day. He is then ordered by Alice to call those three who are currently downstairs at the back of the ramen shop to come up to her room.
Part 2
When those NEETs arrive at Alice's room, she gives them the details of the situation. Apparently, there's three people involved in this thing called "compensated dating" (a euphemism for prostitution maybe?): Teraoka Satoshi (the guy who got hit by the old guy with the ashtray), Kimura Miku (the teenage prostitute) and a missing girl named Shouko (though this name could be an alias). With this information, the group now has the job of figuring out how Satoshi and Miku are connected aside from the love hotel situation and how they are going to find this Shouko girl. The only thing Alice knows now is the fact that is was Shouko who engaged in this compensated dating and not Miku. She also predicts that both Satoshi and Miku will repeat their actions (luring a pedophile that knows Shouko by pretending that Miku is also in the business of compensated dating and then having Satoshi blackmail the man into giving them any information he knows about Shouko) until Shouko is found. The question now is: will something happen to Miku and Satoshi before Alice and co. solve the case? For now, each of of the NEETs is given the task of something they specialize in (Hiro with girls and Hitoshi with anything stealth related) except Tetsu who is given the easy task of interviewing cops to find out if anyone has filed a missing person report for Shouko. Back at home, Narumi is still confused about everything that happened today.
The next day, after ending up in front of Alice's room even though he refused to go there earlier, he opens the door and is shocked to see a large teddy bear running at him. When he recovers from being tackled by said bear, he realizes that it is Alice who is actually holding it. Through tears, Alice tells him that the bear's ear tore. Next thing he knows, Narumi is in a car with Hiro as the two go to someone named The Fourth, who is apparently a master sewer, in order to fix Alice's stuffed bear that she can't sleep without. Once they reach their destination and enter the large building, Narumi is overwhelmed by the number of strong-looking workers there. No matter how he looked at it, the place doesn't resemble a sewing factory at all. Shortly after their entrance, The Fourth shows up and it turns out that he's one of those guys who talks in an extremely rude manner to everyone. While The Fourth's employees carefully move the box with Alice's stuffed bear to his car, Narumi goes to print out the interim report of the current case using the computer in another room. While he does it, he realizes that the workers here are idiots because they are amazed by his ability to open a word processor to print something. All muscle, no brain? With the reports now printed out, they are given to the fourth who is the client for this case according to Hiro. When he sees that there is no information about Satoshi, he orders all his minions to go out and find Satoshi at all costs.
Narumi, being the peaceful guy that he is, decides to take the easier route in attempting to find out more about Satoshi by asking Miku about it. Her explanation of why she and Satoshi are doing the whole compensated dating thing starts off with a flashback in a coffee shop, showing how she found out Shouko and Satoshi were in a relationship. Their conversation got a bit rough after that as Shouko went ballistic after hearing Miku's shocked response when she learned that Shouko and Satoshi have "done it" already (Japanese people are so indirect). The reason for Shouko's seems to be because she is sick and tired of hearing people suck up to her when they say she's cute and smart. After that incident, Shouko just disappeared. Meanwhile, Satoshi, who was obviously crying not too long ago, is shown reminiscing about his past with Shouko. Back to Narumi and Miku, she tells him Shouko's real name (Sakuma Shouko), confirming that the name "Shouko" isn't an alias, before he runs off to deliver the information to Alice. Back at Alice's room, Hitoshi informs the group that he has successfully spotted Satoshi buying something at a convenience store but the sound of a nearby train prevented viewers from hearing what this "something" is. With this being the last piece of the puzzle, Alice, who seems to have solved the case, tells everyone else to start preparing. They end up at a hotel that Miku is staying at, with Alice being confronting her while wearing some goth clothing (reminds me of Victorique). Through a series of clever explanations, Alice accurately retold everything Miku had done after Shouko's disappearance. On top of that, Alice also reveals to Miku that the reason why Shouko hurt herself via compensated dating is because of the high expectations from both her friends and parents. Though she remained quiet the whole time, Miku snapped when Alice tells her that Satoshi knew where Shouko was the whole time despite the fact that he joined her in attempting to find out about Shouko's whereabouts. The ice that Satoshi had repeatedly been buying turns out to be used in order to preserve Shouko's dead body. With Satoshi now arrested for suspicion of abandoning the corpse, the Shouko's death is still a mystery; slits on her wrist indicate possible suicide. After hearing the news broadcast about this, Narumi realizes that Satoshi and Miku only knew half of Shouko when she was alive. By working together, they were able to combine these halves in order to understand Shouko more. Suddenly (and I guess for comic relief), Ayaka bursts into Alice's a room and orders her to take a bath since her last one was two days ago according to Min-san. As Ayaka struggles to take off Alice's clothes, Narumi couldn't escape the scene fast enough and ends up being labeled a pervert, pedophile, lolicon etc. before getting a can of DoKupe thrown in his face. As this long episode ends, Narumi is now technically working for the ramen shop as Min-san ordered him to deliver something for her. For an episode that is two times longer than usual, it was nice to see that I didn't find it boring at all. Next episode seems to include a new case that involves a large sum of money. Looking forward to it.
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