Ultra Maniac ep.4-7

February 14, 2004 | 5 Comments

Okay, I think I'm starting to really like this anime despite the fact that all of the episodes that I've watched thus far consists of mainly fillers and more fillers. I think this mostly because I find Nina to be a sympathetic characters and I want to see what's in store for her. I even managed to tolerate the opening song, 'Kagami no Naka' which at first pissed me off to no end because it reminded me of one of those US teenage shows theme songs. I do hope that the plot is going somewhere very soon though because I don't know how many more filler episodes I can watch.

Episode four, Da Capo, is basically a flashback episode that tells the circumstances in which Ayu and Nina first met. As far as flashback episode goes, I find this one to be quite disappointing because the episode doesn't tell anything new about Nina or Ayu than what I already knew beforehand. Anyway, the two first met on a bright, full moon night when Nina has just arrived in the city, flying on top of her magical bike. Nina failed to control the bike and ended up flying upside down and bumps into Ayu, who was walking on her own that night. Ayu, obviously freaked out upon encountering Nina and runs to the nearest convenience store to calm herself down. However, upon getting out, she's stopped by a bunch of thugs who sexually harassed her. Seeing Ayu in trouble, Nina decides to help her and help her to escape. Unfortunately in doing so, she was spotted by Kawanakajima, who ever since then, has vowed to reveal Nina's secret to other people.

Ayu and Nina eventually meet again in Ayu's house since Nina has to return Ayu's wallet which Ayu lost during the previous incident. They then learn more about each other such as the fact that Ayu spends the majority of her time in the house alone because her father is too busy with his work and how Nina is not very good with magic. Ayu then offers Nina to stay at her house since Nina has nowhere else to go. Nina who feels grateful decides to give Ayu a present. From here, Ayu gets to taste Nina's magic blunder where she ended up making too many clones of Ayu's stuffed animal. The next day, however, Nina was nowhere in sight and Ayu thought that she dreamed the entire thing until Nina shows up in front of her school saying that from now on, she'll go to the same school as Ayu.

Episode five starts with Nina getting scolded by her grandfather because even though she's spent 1 month in the human world, her magic skill still has not improved whatsoever. From here on, the story goes into the plot of Nina trying to find some magic balls that supposedly belong to her family. Nina suspect that one of the balls is hidden inside the mysterious room within her school. Because of this, she tries to persuade Ayu to help her finding it because she's afraid of ghost and she has heard that the room is haunted. Kaji and Tsujiai who overheard their conversation about the haunted room decide to help them as well. But in the middle of the search, they become unconscious thanks to a spell that is unleashed by a mysterious woman in black cloak.

Meanwhile, Ayu and Nina has managed to get themselves into the hidden room within the school. Upon finding it, however, Nina is being chased around by a chair which somehow flies on its own. After a while, however, Nina realised that someone is controlling the chair and found out that the controller is her supposedly old friend from the magic kingdom named, Maya Orihara. Maya, however, is less than thrilled to meet Nina because it turns out Maya is also looking for the same magic balls that Nina tries to find. After some more search, however, they both realised that the magic ball is nowhere within the hidden room of the school.

In episode six, all of the kids in Ayu and Nina's class end up going on a trip to a nearby forest. In this place, Ayu tells Nina how and why she puts up the cool and mysterious facade of hers. In one autumn day, she and Kaji ended going home together and Kaji tells her how she looks cool even after such difficult exam like the one they had that day. The truth is, Ayu wasn't looking cool. She was just to shocked with the exam that she barely managed to make any comment about it. But upon hearing that Kaji likes her 'cool' personality, she decides to adopt that facade ever since. Upon arriving the forest, the kids are divided into groups of two so that they can perform some kind of atheletic competion. Despite her wish, Ayu doesn't get paired up with Kaji and instead ended up with Tsujiai.

Nina, however, is even less fortunate because she ended up being paired up with Kawanakajima, who's hell bent on proving that Nina is a witch. During the competition, however, Nina receives a message from her grandpa that one of the magic balls is located in the forest and Nina decides to hunt for it. After a while, that turns out to be a fluke again. Instead, Nina has to help Kawanakajima who ended up falling into a deep well. At first, Nina doesn't want to use her magic for fearing that Kawanakajima may use it to his advantage. But being the kind person that she is, she can't help but feeling sorry for him. Thankfully for her, she accidentally hit him on the head with her bike that he end up unconscious and people end up not taking him seriously when he said that Nina is a witch.

Would you like filler on top of those fillers? Well, we got exactly that with episode seven which is basically about the shenanigans that happen in the school thanks to Maya's homebrew potion that she first created to made the rats in her house becoming smaller. I have to say that Maya is one creepy gal. Despite the fact that her potion becomes the source of comedy in this episode, the original intention of her potion was to make those rats becoming smaller and smaller until they become non-existent. Anyway, she screwed up the ingredient and as a result, her potion ends up making things bigger and bigger. The problem is, she's only aware of this when she tests the potion on one of her teacher's cacti plant.

Soon, the cacti, her iguana pet, and Nina's cat, Rio, turn into giant versions of themselves. Upon seeing this horror, Ayu and Nina had to convince Maya to do something about it while ensuring that the rest of the school don't know about the disaster. The result is quite hilarious and entertaining to say the least. At one point, a desperate Nina is forced to drop smoke bombs to prevent the rest of her class from finding out that Maya's iguana pet has now turned into a Godzilla-size animal. Ayu, trying to do her own part to distract the class from finding out that Nina is flying on her bike outside the class, at one point decides to make a spectacle of herself and is horrified when she realised that Kaji gets to see her far from 'cool' image. Thankfully for both Ayu and Nina, their problem is finally solved when Maya finally managed to make a potion that reverts everything to their correct sizes.

Overall, I was not particularly impressed with these four episodes, with the exception of probably episode seven which is quite hilarious. But I like the characters well enough by now to tolerate the excessive fillers and uninteresting plots that are going on at this point in the story. I assume these fillers are necessary because at that time the manga was still on going. Unfortunately, I still am not sold on the Ayu and Kaji romance. The two are still as boring as two block of woods. And when they're together, they're even worse. I am also not sure what to make of the new character, Maya Orihara. I don't particularly like her but I suppose maybe that's the intention since she seems to be the designated nemesis or at the very least, competitor for the magic balls that Nina is trying to find.

© memento 2003