Muteki Kanban Musume

Information of Anime

Miki Onimaru is a poster girl for her mother's Chinese ramen restaurant.  Her job is to deliver ramen to homes.  However, she has this urge to pick on fights when she sees something not right or feels provoked.  This also includes her mother.  As a result, this causes problems to her mother's business.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've seen.  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.

There's no story here.  It's mainly Miki's encounters where she gets challenged by people or trying to help others.  Some people try to challenge her because they were bullied by Miki in the past & some are looking for a fight.  A dog named Toshiyuki even picks fights with Miki at times too.  Overall, it's pure slapstick comedy.

Each episode is broken down into two 12 minute mini-episodes that don't seem to link to one another.  The only linkage would be the theme from the previous mini episode.

My Personal Review

Muteki Kanban Musume is a funny anime show.  It hardly has any ecchi material & focuses more on clean, silly, & violent humour.  If you want something that has little ecchi content & had enough of the harem anime shows going around, this is the perfect show for you.

Animation

The character designs seem to be in the 90s era for some reason.  The tiny eyes & long triangle-like faces are what gave me that impression.  However, they weren't badly drawn.  There are a lot of times where the faces look silly such as having pinpoint eyes with large white ovals.  Also, there are sharp fangs involved as well.  But the clothing fashion is a bit on the plain side.  This isn't a bad thing actually since the setting takes place in a small simple town.

The backgrounds are on the dull side.  It probably used to show some age of the town.  They aren't very detail & kept at a simple level.

For the colours, it's pretty dull.  Another reason why it gave me that 90's impression.  However, it's quite clean as there is little blurriness & it seems solid.  Also, the colours between the characters & the background seem to blend in too well at times which may make it hard to see the characters when give a view from a far distance.

In terms of the animation movement, it's quite flowing.  But most of the time, you will see those sudden frames where 1 character sudden has his/her face in the wall in a split second.  Even with these sudden movements, the animation is very smooth.

Sound       

The sound effects are mainly on the silly side.  Not much of the realistic sounds, but it fits the show well.  They are timed on cue & are crisp.  There are times where it fuzzes a bit when you turn the volume up a bit.  However, there are times where it sounds a bit mono.  I'm not too sure why really.

The seiyuus here are not bad.  A lot of them were hard to get use to at the start, especially Miki where she does a lot of yelling & shouting.  Over time, I started to get use to it & liked how the seiyuu portrays her character.  Also, it seems funny at times where the seiyuus get into their character too much.  An good example is Kankuro Nishiyama where he ends most of his sentences with "nya".  It's weird how a guy would say "nya" when I hear a lot of it from neko girls.

The music is ok & creates the mood well with the scenes.  It's mainly on the silly ballads & pops songs.  They really help create those humourous moments.

Story

There is a story at all.  It's basically about Miki getting into fights & challenges of all assortments.  The show offers a lot of humour & doesn't go into ecchi mode.  You rarely see panties as well.  It's your classic "tasteful" humour.  There are rarely anime shows like this during this time of era.  However, some of the jokes aren't very funny at times.  It seems to be childish.  The reason may be because of the high expose of those ecchi jokes that I've seen from other anime shows.  It seems normal jokes aren't enough now.  They sometimes seem boring to watch.

Overall Conclusion

Muteki Kanban Musume is a classic example of what non-ecchi funny anime shows should be.  The jokes are sometimes funny & sometimes not.  But, you will be laughing about it for sure.  However, I don't expect storyline from this.  In fact, I don't think you should worry about that at all.  If you want a break from those harem & ecchi animes & want some simple & classic jokes, this is the show for you.

Muteki Kanban Musume gets an eight out of ten.  This show is definitively a breather from all those ecchi & harem anime shows out there & brings back those classic clean humour.  However, if you are spoiled by all those dirty shows, you may find the jokes to be a little dry.

Last updated on January 14, 2008