Akane Maniax

Information of Anime

Jouji Gouda is a new transfer student at Hakuryo High school.  He went in to be the best baseball player there is until he met Akane Suzumiya.  He fell in love with her on the 1st sight & strongly makes moves on her.  Akane doesn't like Jouji because he's annoying, but it doesn't stop him from going after her.

Akane Maniax is a spinoff to Kimi ga Nozomu Eien & is based on an ero PC dating simulation game by âge.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I have seen.  This section does contain some spoilers.  If you haven't seen the series yet & don't want to be spoiled, skip this section.  If you want to know the story & want to see how I viewed it, read on.

It's mostly about Jouji trying to find ways to get Akane to be his girlfriend.  A lot of his plans gets Akane embarrassed & hurt her feelings.  In order to get closer to her, he gives up his baseball dreams & joins the swimming club where Akane is.  However, he can't swim.  Akane feels more & more troubled by him as he tries to get closer.  When Jouji realizes her feelings, he begins to change.  However, it turns out that Akane was looking at him as a friend than a lover.  She still have lingering feelings for her sister's past lover.  What was actually troubling Akane was deciding whether or not to go study at America.  This leaves Jouji heartbroken.

The story ends when Jouji gets transferred out of Japan to somewhere else.

My Personal Review

Akane Maniax is pretty bad.  Even though it's a spinoff, it's just too much.  Personally, I won't recommend this if you were thinking it would be like Kimi ga Nozomu Eien but lighter.

Animation

The character designs look the same as the anime show Kimi ga Nozomu Eien's.  The girls look good & some are cute.  Jouji really looks like a character that got thrown in from a different anime show.  He's so out of place & I couldn't imagine why he was drawn like that.  I understand the game designed him like that originally, but I think they would have designed him better to make him fit in.

The colours are duller than Kimi ga Nozomu Eien.  For an OVA, it's pretty bad.  The tones didn't clash with the characters & the backgrounds.

The backgrounds are good, but I think the colours make them stand out a bit too much.  It makes the look a bit fake than artsy.

The animation movements are quite natural, but it's mainly strange superhuman-like movements most of the time.  This is all thanks to Jouji.  He really runs fast & flies out of nowhere.  He's really like a superhuman.  Because the creators want him to be a comedy character, I could see why he moves like that.

Sound

The sound effects are realistic, but are heavily based on silly stuff.  Again thanks to Jouji for this.

The seiyuus here aren't too bad as most of them are the original ones from the anime Kimi ga Nozomu Eien.  Jouji's seiyuu, Seki Tomokazu, does a good job here portraying his character.  However, I think it's going overboard.  You would probably never see anyone like Jouji in real life, which is probably why I didn't like this character.

The music isn't what you would expect from Kimi ga Nozomu Eien.  There's a lot of joyful ballads & silly rock tunes.  Personally, I didn't like any of the songs.

Story

It's way over the top here.  It's got mechas, world domination, evil overlords, & strange dreams.  A lot of it deals with Jouji daydreaming a lot.  If you were expecting something along the lines of Kimi ga Nozomu Eien like some sort of sequel, you can forget about this.  The attempts that Jouji makes are crazy, such as naming the school's festival under Akane's name without considering her feelings.  Although he is too simple-minded & annoying, this was too much.

What's nice about the OVA is that is has those small SD theater shows.  It's quite funny where the past cast of Kimi ga Nozomu Eien who don't appear in this OVA are fighting with the show producers.

Overall Conclusion

I would personally recommend staying away from Akane Maniax.  It's too light & crazy to be a spinoff of Kimi ga Nozomu Eien.  Although I did expect a lot of comedy involved, this was too much.  It got to the point where a lot of the jokes weren't funny.

Akane Maniax receives a grade of 5/10.  The storyline is too far fetched & tarnishes the Kimi ga Nozomu Eien name, even though it's a spinoff.  It's unrealistic & puts too much unneeded elements in the show.  Although it got its funny moments, the humour gets too old pretty quick.

Last updated on December 19, 2007