Seto no Hanayome

Information of Anime

Nagasumi Michishio goes on vacation with his parents to his grandmother's house.  During his trip to the beach, he nearly drowns due to his leg cramping.  However, he gets saved by a mermaid named San Seto.  Because he saw her as a mermaid, mermaid laws require those humans who have seen their true form to be killed as well as the mermaid involved.  However, Nagasumi is saved when the mermans decided to have him marry San.  However, San's family is a group of gangsters.

Storyline (CONTAINS SPOILERS)

Below is a summary of the storyline I've 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.

Because of the turn of events, Nagasumi is forced to marry San due to the "idea" of her family.  If he refuses, he would have to die as well as his parents & San.  He decides to play along for the time being.  However, Gouzaburou Seto, San's father, is against this even though he agreed to the idea in the first place to save his daughter.  He decides to kill Nagasumi in secret away from his wife, Ren Seto, who tries to protect Nagasumi from him.  In the meantime, Nagasumi not only needs to marry San but to protect her mermaid secret from humans or else.  Although the way, he meet more mermaids & mermans when San follows Nagasumi back to his home & attends to his school.  Not only that, her family follows as well with most of them being staff members at his school.

Story picks up when Nagasumi's favourite idol Luna Edomae, who turns out to be a mermaid, starts making him as her slave for finding out her secret.  This slave deal turns out of to be love for Luna to Nagasumi when she starts living with him & tries to win him from San in terms of how she always gets the best out of her.  In one incident, this would cause confusion to Luna's father who turns out to be a blond hair Terminator like character in making Nagasumi marrying his daughter.  With Nagasumi taken away, San tries to get him back as she feels that she didn't perform her duties as a wife to him.  However, Nagasumi manages to get Luna to tell the truth to her father which partly stops the wedding.  San stops the rest of it when she barges in to confess her love to Nagasumi & asking him to take her as his bride.

Along San gets Nagasumi back, another group is also involved in getting the two to break apart by sending Akeno Shiranui as a mermaid examiner while secretly breaking the two apart.  Although Akeno would have a change a heart later on, her boss (a son from a noble that controls the government operations in Japan) tells her to give Seto family an invitation to a party.  During this time, Nagasumi accidently mentions about his marriage with San was forced; leading San to leave Nagasumi as it was a one sided love.  However, the party was a trap to get Seto to the noble's son as he's a perverted playboy that was eyeing San for a long time.  Learning about this, Nagasumi goes & save San with the help of her friends.  Here, he learns about "chivalry-mermaid" & finally tells San that he's loves her.  Afterwards, he start becoming the kind of guy that San likes as he rescues her.

The show ends with a now buffed Nagasumi & everyone living happily ever after.  However, Gouzaburou still doesn't approve of the marriage.

My Personal Review

Seto no Hanayome is quite a funny anime show.  There isn't a lot of anime shows these days that have mermaids with a leading role.  When I heard it was comedy, I decided to give it a whirl.  I'm glad I did.

Animation

The character designs have a fair amount of mixture.  They can look serious, plain, or very silly.  The changes in the faces really set the mood right.  Despite how ugly some of them are, I like them.  Most of thetime, they aren't very detailed as they are really simple.

The colours are suppose to be bright, but they have that dullness to them.  The bright colours make the show look lively with it's silly jokes.

The backgrounds are okay.  Not very detailed as they are quite simple as well.

The animation flow is pretty smooth.  It's got a mixture of realistic & silly stuff for comedy.  Most of it is silly stuff with a lot of missing & choppy frames.  Chances are they are there on purpose for the show.

Sound       

The sound effects are pretty good & clean.  Lots of silly sounds for those funny moments.

The seiyuus aren't too bad in my opinion.  They role play their characters well.  Nagasumi's character is portrayed very well here & I've grown to like that character.

The music is mainly pop music.  A lot of silly & cute songs as well.  Despite how they make the show look & feel good, they aren't memorable.

Story

At the start, it's Nagasumi fearing for his life from San's gang leader father at the start.  Nagasumi knows the threats & tries to avoid them.  San knows as well despite the fact that she still wants to be a couple with him.  It would be intersting to see how this show will develop.  I didn't expect any character development from this as it seemed to be pure entertainment.  How San's father will accept him is something different as he's doing all this based on parental love.  Things pick up when Luna's father appears & the storyline really moves.  However, this occurs for a couple episodes. Later on, another group jumps in to break Nagasumi away from San.  After that, another cycle from a different group.  Because of this, we finally see from movement between Nagasumi & San in terms of what their relationship is.  Aside from this plot, it's all laughs.

The ending was ok as the show didn't really have a plot to begin with.  After the final arc, everything is back to normal with Nagasumi all muscled up & his love with San being stronger being the difference.

Overall Conclusion

Seto no Hanayome is highly addictive & funny to watch.  It's got an interesting combination of gangsters & mermaids that is seldomly touched in a lot of stories.  I personally recommend watching this if you like love comedy with gangsters involved.

Seto no Hanayome gets an eight out of ten.  The show is a laughing train ride.  However, don't expect a good storyline from this.  It's got some stories in between to get the show going.  But it's still mainly for pure funny entertainment in the end.

Last updated on January 16, 2008