life line by line

For those out there that loved Kimi ga Nozomu Eien but wanted more light heartened comedy, Akane Maniax is for you. A side story from KgNE, Akane Maniax centers around Akane Suzumiya and newly tranferred Jouji Gouda during their 3rd year in High School. Or more to the point, Jouji’s attempts to win over the fair Akane

I can pretty much summarize the ova episode as such: Jouji transfers in, instantly falls for Akane, and tries every way to win her over. The real fun of the short series is basically watching Jouji unique attempts to gain Akane’s positive attention. The highlight of his trials and errors leads to a very interesting change for the school’s cultural festival. Much to say, I laughed throughout the whole viewing; especially loving Jouji’s daydreams involving a robot and saving the world as part of his trials to get Akane!

On the performance side of things, Kaori Mizuhashi and Tomokazu Seki do an excellent job voicing Akane and Jouji respectfully; Akane’s reactions to Jouji’s “love” are just great while Jouji’s hot-bloodedness could only be pulled through by seiyuus like Seki. Hearing Karoi Mizuhashi voice someone else other than Rosetta from Kaleido Star is a nice change of pace for me, plus doing a “normal” if slightly depressed character definite shows she can do more than just “happy” characters. Tomokazu Seki… do I even need to say anything about this man? He’s like a frickin’ jack-of-all trades in the voice acting business, and does an awesome job playing the hot-blooded yet simple minded Jouji to a T.

Visually, Akane Maniax doesn’t skip a beat from the original series it was based on. Excellent visual quality and on par with KgNE; also probably helps that this is a straight to DVD OVA release which usually mean higher budget. Just look at the screen caps yourself to see the quality (even if they’re all of Akane ).

Final verdict: if one is looking for something mindless to watch, definitely check out Akane Maniax. If you’re a fan of Kimi ga Nozomu Eien, still watch but don’t expect the seriousness of the original series. If you’re a fan of some good old high school drama, give the OVA a spin. Good visual style. Excellent voice acting. Humor. It’s all there, except for a good plot… but what can one expect after doing KgNE? The people who created it probably needed a break and wanted to do something fun, so why not just take one of the popular characters like Akane and stick her in her own mini-series? Worked out pretty well if you ask me!