Overview

I suppose that I should have known not to expect much when I found out the translated name of Itsudatte My Santa - 'Always My Santa'. Come to think of it, I probably should have realized that the moment I saw the word 'Santa' in the title. But for some foolish reason, it never quite registered in the back of my mind what I was in for, as I patiently waited for the fansubbed two OVA series to download. It might have been that I'd had a long day when I finally sat down to watch it, or it might have been some long buried reflex watch response to anything related to Santa Clause left behind from when I was a kid. Whatever it was, I found myself watching this OVA, and wincing almost the entire way through it.

Fields	USA Info	Japanese Info	Image
Title		Itsudatte My Santa
Alternative	Always My Santa (English)
Dates		2005-12-07
Company	Three Fat Samurai
Creator	Akamatsu Ken
Director	Nakamura Noriyoshi
Genre	Romance, Christmas, Comedy, Magical Girlfriend
Related

Review

Itsudatte My Santa is the story of a young man who finds himself alone on yet another Christmas Eve. The poor boy's parents are never home to see their son on this day, and it's only made worse by the fact that it happens to be his birthday too. So, should it come as any surprise to us that this particular young man's name is... wait for it... Santa? ...I didn't think so. Going through his Christmas/Birthdays alone has left Santa bitter, and it is this bitter, cynical young man that we find sitting, alone, under a Christmas Tree big enough to give Rockefeller Center a run for its money. Of course, things can't possibly stay quiet for long, and sure enough, half a heartbeat after the intro is done, Santa gets immediately smacked for being a pervert because he - and everybody within the square - mistake her meaning when she offers to spend the entire night with him. She promptly announces - at the top of her lungs, mind you - that she's Santa Claus.

Needless to say, Santa is relieved when she gets dragged away by a couple of police, but only as long as it takes him to turn around and find out she's magically standing right behind him again... Folks, it really doesn't get any better than this point in the OVA. Our Santa-ette is really Mai, who turns out to have a little sister named Mai Mai who shows up in the second episode. Now, Mai is a Santa Clause in training - and she must be, because she can't summon anything that doesn't start with the three letters, 'San' Now, I'll admit that I found it mildly interesting, the number of San-items that popped up in a brief dual in the second episode, but the joke got old. Fast. Especially since they recycle half of them for the second episode.

Actually, there really wasn't much difference between the first and second episode, except that the first one takes place on Christmas Eve from Santa's point of view, and the second takes place from the middle of summer from Mai's point of view. Oh, did I mention that the reason Mai showed up in the first place is because she fell in love with Santa? At least, I think that's what she meant. I just can't press the 'I Believe' button hard enough to think that she fell head-over-heels for him in the space of two hours. Unfortunately, if that's really what she meant - and I have a sneaking suspicion that she did - then that's only to be expected of the story and characters of this series. See, the sad thing is, Itsudatte My Santa might well have had a great deal of promise, had the characters only shut the hell up once in awhile, and the plot not been so rushed it was like watching a hyperactive two year old on a sugar rush. The characters must have been blue in the face by the time the episodes were done, because they never... stop... talking... EVER!! Not only don't they ever shut up, but they talk at Chipmunk speed for the better part of the series, cramming far, far too many lines of dialog into far, far too little time. This could easilly have been a seven volume OVA series, if they'd just have paced the dialog out to a reasonable amount of time.

Let's see, characters - Santa goes from depressed, cynical loner to five-year-old-acting reborn believer in Santa Clause in a mere thirty minutes. Mai is energetic - note that that's sort of like saying a nuclear reactor is energetic - and earns the title's mild nudity rating by transforming from a brown-haired, very flat chested fourteen year old into a very, VERY buxom 24 year-old blonde bombshell in a Sailor Moon style sequence. I wouldn't have a problem with this, if not for the fact that her very little sister does the same thing at the end of the second episode, in unison with a prerequisite semi-friend, semi-enemy that shows up. Aside from them, there's nothing but a couple of token characters tossed in to provide comic relief or else show that the world isn't as lonely as Santa sees it.

The music is... ok. There are a number of vocal songs layered in over the dialog, which would have been nice had they managed to not make it harder yet to follow the already racing voice actors. Still, it never managed to be annoying... just distracting. Unfortunately, there's just not much to comment on here, as everything was just too rushed to really get a feel for the story. What DID get annoying was what passed for a 'Ho Ho Ho' for the girls - did I mention that there's more than one trainee Santa-Clause, and that they're ALL female? - should have been used as a dominatrix laugh. Exclusively. Instead, the same damned laugh was used for ALL the characters.

Overall

Yeah, anybody who couldn't see my rating of 'Stay Away' coming probably skipped to the end of the review. Itsudatte My Santa could have been good - it really could have. There's the foundation of what could have been a very fun, very pleasant romance story, and the idea of the whole Santa Clause school would have been interesting to see explored. Instead, we got an anime that was so rushed that it was nearly incomprehensible. It really felt like they couldn't decide whether they wanted to be serious, comedic, start a love triangle, or be an etchi series. Had it chosen one and stuck with it, it might have had a snowball's chance in a sun house, but as it stands, Itsudatte My Santa barely even qualifies as watchable, without even the tang of super-sweetness it should have had. Download only if you really, REALLY want to see a couple standard nude transformation scenes.