Pretear ep.1-4

January 9, 2004 | 8 Comments

Heh. This one turns out to be quite an amusing series. It doesn't have much originality or thought-provoking story but it provides a lot of comic moments which did make me laugh quite a bit. This mostly comes from the characterisation of its heroine, Himeno Awayuki. Although this series is heavily based on the Snow White and Cinderella fairy tales, you won't see much similarity between Himeno and the fair maidens from those fairy tales as far as personality goes. And the truth is, I think it's kind of fun to see a heroine who's loud, annoying, and silly. The first DVD contains episode 1 to 4 , clean opening/ending, a 'behind the anime' doco, sketches, and an optional box (which is rather thin) to house the DVDs if you want one.

Himeno is a 16 year old high school girl whose father has just remarried the richest widow in town. As a result, she now lives in the big mansion with her stepmother and her two step sisters. Yes, this part of the story is derived from Cinderella, complete with the evil stepmom and stepsisters. Although to be fair, Mayune and Mawata, the two stepsisters are not really evil. Mayune is annoying and snobbish and Mawata is simply angry at Himeko because Himeko's father married her mother so soon after her father's death. Also, the stepmother really does love Himeko's father. She just doesn't seem to care much about Himeko.

Himeko, as it turned out, is not a normal girl. She's actually a Pretear, a female warrior destined to fight the evil Red Snow Queen. However, she's not aware of this fact until she was informed about it by the Leafe Knights, 7 male warriors who are given the task of assisting Himeno. Obviously Himeno at first thought that these guys are a bunch of looneys. It also doesn't help that she have a love/hate relationship with one of the Knights called Hayate. Hayate, who seems to have a dark past seem to not want Himeno to become a Pretear for reason that is still unknown at this point in time. The first and second episode basically try to tell all of these background informations with the prerequisite 'monster of the week' final fights between Himeno and these creatures called 'The Mayochi'.

In order for Himeno to transform into a Pretear and fight these creatures, she must first become one with the Leafe Knights. Prior to the fight, we get the prerequisite 'Sailor-moon' transformation scene where Himeno and a Leafe Knight transform into one form. In addition to this, in order to ensure that the fights won't injure other humans, one of the Leafe Knights, Shin, creates a barrier field which transport the battle participants into another realm. The Leafe Knight then essentially becomes her weapon and armour as well as providing her with wacky costume that is special to the ability of the particular Leafe Knight. This also means, however, that often the Leafe Knights take the brunts and bruises of the fight in order to protect Himeno.

The third episode delves further into the confrontation between Himeno and Hayate. Hayate, who as I mentioned before, seems to have a dark past, is still vehemently opposes the idea of Himeno becoming a Pretear. And he determines to prove this by testing Himeno's suitability using some rather unusual methods. As expected, Himeno failed on every single one of them and the misunderstanding between the two grows bigger especially when Himeno tells Hayate that she doesn't need his help in other fights. Of course, at the end of the day, the two end up working together again. There is also a side story involving Mawata, who seems to have a bit of a crush on Sasame, one of the Leafe Knights who moonlights as a radio talk show host.

The final episode in the first DVD basically deals with Himeno's attempt to find a Mayochi, which according to one of the Leafe Knights, Kei, has now resides within the Awayuki residence. Little does she know that someone within the residence actually plants the Mayochi seed inside her flower pot. Meanwhile, we get to see how big the Awayuki residence turns out to be. Not only it has its own jungle (I'm not kidding), it also has some wild creatures ranging from a crocodile to a bear. Meanwhile, Goh, has the misfortune of being made into a 'servant' by Mayune who's lusting after him.

All in all, Pretear is more of a comedy series than anything else. It knows that it's silly and it doesn't pretend to be anything else. It has the usual angst that this kind of story normally has but it never goes overboard with it because then Himeno will quickly shows one of her super-deformed expressions and silly behaviour. Thankfully, Himeno does have some redeeming qualities on top of her rather silly personality. At one point in the second episode, for example, Hayate was hurt because of Himeno's carelessness while engaging the enemy. Himeno was at first sad that she failed to ensure that Hayate is not hurt from the fight. But she got over it quickly and instead of moping around, she decided to make up for it by training hard to ensure that she won't repeat the same mistake again.

© memento 2003