Sekirei

Information of Anime

Minato Sahashi failed his university entrance exam for the second time.  One day, a girl comes crashing down on him.  The girl's name is Musubi & she was in a middle of a battle.  While escaping the battle, she takes Minato with him by accident.  However, he possess the trait to be an Ashikabi, a master that can be partnered with Seikireis, whom Musubi would establish a contract with him & become winged.  There are 108 Seikireis & are a mixture of different genders.  The MBI corporation controlled by Hiroto Minaka has total control of the city & is launching the Sekirei plan in this city which is a battle competition between Sekireis.

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.

After getting in touch with Hiroto about the Sekirei plan, Minato is stuck in a mess that he doesn't want to be involved in & can't get out of it.  After making a contract with Musubi, Minato starts acquiring more Sekireis with most of them come from dreams linking with the certain Sekireis.  He would wing Kusano, Matsu, & Tsukiumi.  Once the certain number of winged Sekireis was reached, the MBI secured the city with no one being able to leave.  This causes phrase two of the Sekirei plan to move which is the start of the competition.

The Sekirei plan involves the 108 Sekireis to fight each other.  The last one standing will be able to have his/her wish come true.  Musubi's wish is to stay with her Ashikabi & love him forever.  Despite this competition, Minato wants to find a way to avoid these battles.  With the second phrase commencing, the show moves to its first & only storyline arc.

At this point, Minato's sister Yukari found a Sekirei who she'll later wing at the end of the show.  In this arc, Minato will help Haruka Shigi who is an Ashikabi & his Sekirei Kuno who is considered weak escape the city.  With the help of his Seikireis, Minato is determine to carry out the plan even though he knows it would cost him.  As a result, Musubi lost her Sekirei crest to MBI's squad.  But Minato's love for his Sekireis would revive her & awaken another Sekirei named Yumi who is No. 8.  Yumi manages to wipe out the enemies with ease when other struggled.  As Yumi leaves to store Musubi back as Minato's Sekirei again with her crest returning.  Haruka & Kuno manage to leave the city.

The show ends with a cliffhanger & questions such as how Musubi manage to get reactivated.  The show does mention the anime series to be continued; thus an announcement of a possible second season.

My Personal Review

Sekirei is one of  the top animes to watch for season of summer 08.  Although I know very little about the series from artbooks & PVC figurines, I decided to watch this show due to the hype & see what it's about.

Animation

The character designs are quite large on the faces.  The female characters have large pointy breasts & I was a bit surprised about.  Actually, I shouldn't be since this is being a common thing.  But the design is a bit rare & somewhat new now I guess.  The eyes are fairly large for both genders.  In terms of faces, they are pretty much the same with the slight changes in the eyes & hairstyle.  But overall, the designs seem strikingly close or the same to the manga designs which is a great thing.

The backgrounds are okay.  Not a lot of details & it does set the mood for the battles well.

The colours are on the bright side with some dullness.  The dull parts come during the night scenes mostly.  The colour balance is pretty good though.

In terms of the animation movement, it's a mixture.  Sometimes the movements are realistic & sometimes the movements are not normal.  But they are quite smooth with hardly any choppy frames found.

Sound

The sound effects are really on the silly side with some real ones on the side.  Because of the comedy harem theme, those sounds are there to make the show cute & funny.  The sounds are pretty clear & played on cue.

The seiyuus here are pretty decent as the lineup does have some big names on the female side.  The roles are played well as you can feel the emotions & life from their characters.

The music is mainly pop music here.  I thought there may be some rock songs here & there, but there aren't any.  All straight pop stuff. Cute ones too mainly.  None of them are memorable to me though

Story

The show follows a simple plotline with some popular events add to it.  A big competition that mainly has busty & sexy female competitors killing each other.  Add the harem element to it & you get a "must watch" show.  Although I do enjoy watching the show, the story is pretty simple.  Not predictable though as there is a lot of characters in this; 108 of them.  But those 108 Sekireis may not get a large amount of screen time or may end up dead right away in the show.  A couple of them already faced this situation in the middle to beginning.  However, not all of them are introduced here.

Although the story is straightforward & simple, how it bended & ended play a big factor in this.  The show lead to many questions unanswered which left me wanting more to figure them out.  Thus, the story is incomplete.

Even though the show ends this way with a "to be continued" announcement at the end, the show surprisingly wraps up well with all these loose ends.  The "wanting to know more" is there & a feeling of the show being completed is there as well.  Technically most of people won't be too happy about it, but I felt satisfied with it somehow.

Overall Conclusion

Sekirei is pretty enjoyable to watch.  The harem comedy element & battles are interesting to watch.  However, some people may not like the fact that most of the Sekirei girls have pointy torpedo-like breasts.  Nevertheless, this show is pretty good.

Sekirei nails a seven out of ten.  The story is straightforward & pretty basic.  However, the direction the show moves to is not predictable.  Plus adding the harem comedy element makes the show more enjoyable.  The ending may get mixed impressions on how it was presented.  For me, I was pleased with it while others may not like it & want more right away.

Last updated on September 22, 2008