Overview

There's been a glut of really good series coming out this spring season. Seems like every time I grab a new title, I find a new awesome story. So my expectations were high when I read the basic idea on Seto no Hanayome. Boy goes on vacation... boy drowns... boy gets saved by mermaid. Now, there's one minor problem... Mermaid's parents are Yakuza, and there's a law about land dwellers seeing mermaids in their true form and living... they don't. Right up until we get to the parents, the idea was pretty basic. Pretty much a standard Little Mermaid tale. I wouldn't have spent the time to download it, if that had been all... but the extended premise looked interesting.

Review

So ok, Nagasumi goes to Seto island with his family for summer break. They stay with his grandmother, and the first morning that they're there, Nagasumi promptly drowns... though not quite to death. As he's passing out, he sees a girl coming toward him - one with a fish tail. He comes back around, finding himself alone, soaked, on a beach rock. He tries to explain what happened to his parents, who of course, don't believe him... his grandmother, on the other hand... Well, actually, we never get a chance to find out what she was going to say, because the conversation is interrupted by a knock on the door. Upon opening the door, Granny asks why a mermaid would be coming around so late in the evening, and sure enough, when Nagasumi looks, it's the girl he saw earlier that morning, with legs...

The plot, honestly, kinda shreds at that point. It's... coherent isn't the right word. Perhaps better to say that it does move toward a consistent goal, and that it can be followed without too much difficulty, but... Part of the problem is that this is about when my major fault with the animation style kicks in. I'll cover that in a moment. The other issue is that the storyline is rushed right along. No, not rushed - it's chained to a hyperactive two year old on a sugar high that's just found something interesting to follow. The highlights here - the girl's name is San, her parents - and the rest of the clan of mermaids, for that matter - are Yakuza, there's a law that states any human that sees a mermaid must die to maintain secrecy, San's decided that the best way to avoid this is to marry Nagasumi, and San's father is, um... how to put this politely? Somewhat attached to his little girl. I should note, though, that after the first episode things do settle down a bit.

The character development of Seto no Hanayome is... inconsistent at best. Nagasumi and San are both in their mid teens. They both take turns being reasonably mature, childish, absentminded... Just plain odd now and then. I have to attribute part of this to the animation style, and again, I'll touch on that in a moment. But the simple truth is that the development is rather disjointed overall, because the characters are all prone to sudden, wild mood shifts and extreme over reaction. And oh yes, can we drop the bit with Nagasumi's 'first kiss'? It was humorous... for about half a second. Having it harped on every ten seconds or so is just plain annoying. I understand that the extreme reactions were done with comedic intent... I don't think that it worked. At all. All it manages to do is interrupt the smooth flow of the story development.

That's a pity, because as I suggested earlier, the storyline really does have quite a lot of promise. Hell, even with the horrible disjointedness caused by the mood shifts and animation style, there is a well thought out plot line evident that is developing. Unfortunately, you're just not allowed to enjoy it for what it is - the characters are too busy over reacting to EVERYTHING. Now to be fair, I don't doubt that I'd be jumpy as hell if my soon-to-be father in law was anything like San's father. That having been said, the writers really fouled up, focusing way too much on the gimmick.

The animation is... good at times, but outright lousy at others, and it's because of what I'm going to call the Furi Kuri effect. For those that have never seen Furi Kuri, it's a satire series that relies on inconsistent, abrupt shifts on animation style as an actual part of its story telling. Literally, the animation is a character in and of itself. Seto no Hanayome is trying something similar, but where Furi Kuri was designed with that very style shifting in mind, here all it does is break up otherwise smooth animation. See, when the characters aren't spazing out, the animation is an easy rival for any modern, good series. It's very consistent, fluid, and well done. When the characters go into their "Furi Kuri" mode, though... the quality of the animation vanishes, replaced by an extremely poorly done stab at manga-style reactions. It might have been effective... if it wasn't so horribly over used. Nagasumi especially spends more time in manga-reaction than he does in normal animation form. It breaks up the visual experience, and effectively nullifies any hope of keeping the story consistent.

The soundtrack is... alright. Actually, it's probably the best part of Seto no Hanayome, and unfortunately, that's not saying much. The op theme is decent, the end theme is... decent. The VA's suffer as much from the Furi Kuri effect animation break up as the storyline does. It's not that they aren't good... they just don't have a whole lot to work with, and when the characters go into manga-reaction, their voices have to change with it. In that respect, I actually have to credit the VA's.

Overall

Seto no Hanayome could be a good series. Actually, it could be a great series... I really did try to like it. But the sad truth is, the excessively forced reactions of the characters, coupled with an animation style that serves only to shatter an otherwise fairly solid storyline, just leaves this one dead on arrival. I'm not going to claim that there aren't those out there that won't find it a riot, but for myself I've never been a fan of over reaction humor, which is what a fair bit of the comedic value in Seto is. Had the writers and animators had the good sense to limit the hyper mood shifts to the occasional gimmick, it would be infinitely better, or at the very least watchable. As it stands, though, the series just isn't that good. Too much time spent shifting between at least a dozen different animation styles, and far, far too little on building on the foundation that has been laid. Pass on this one folks, it's just not worth it.