Ranked #3639

Saishuu Shiken Kujira

There is a magical town that exists. In it, a giant whale drifts aimlessly in the clouds above. Its townspeople possess powers that make the inane aspects of life a little more interesting. Most importantly, this town is chock-full with some hot magical chicks!

That is what Mutsumi finds out when he moves to his new home. He is a little put off by the supernatural activities, but he quickly, QUICKLY gets over it. More than the issue of magic, there are some freaking hot babes who all seem to be interested in him! Isn't that wonderful?? Forget that his little sister is practically giving birth to stuffed animals or that there are aliens and mecha hiding all over the place--there are girls whose panties he can get to check out!

Saishuu Shiken Kujira is an ecchi harem-styled anime that downplays on the romance (somewhat) and puts greater emphasis on the supernatural elements of the town (and the unnatural breast sizes of the female cast). Each episode basically follows dipping your hand into the generic girl bucket and pulling out the a female character who will spend the next five minutes or so with the lead male character. It is a boring, direction-less anime that is painfully dull. It has a weak start and continues being weak, even taking a drop into the "What the hell...?" realm. Then there are the pitiful, futile attempts in the later episodes of this anime having a real storyline and plot. Those attempts simply remain as such.

Art is decent, and granted that this is an ONA which generally means that the production values would be low, it looks acceptable. Some of the characters have interesting designs, but again, they just might be Girl A or Classmate 5 from any typical eroge or galge. Ironically, they are based off of the Circus game designs, which means the source material is not good in the first place. Anyway, if you are going to make an anime about girls and their body parts, at least put a little more detail into it. Boobs are like melons or balloons hiding behind shirts--just utterly funny-looking.

Despite the decent ED theme song by eufonius, the sound aspect for this anime ranges from bad to average at best. In fact, the biggest problem are the voices for some of the characters. One girl has a voice that would make your ears urinate blood, and she is sadly one of the girls you see most often. Mutsumi's voice is irritating, though it is not bad enough to make you recoil in pain. The BGM is standard and not memorable. The nicest sounding thing is the whale.

The characters, as I said earlier, are simply uninspired and stereotypical. There is basically a "type" for every fetishist, whether you like the meganekko, the spunky tsundere, the deadpan weirdo, the adoring little sister (you know, for your "wincest" needs), the hot, stacked older chick and lots of other big-breasted females. Don't worry lolicon fans, there are under-age girls in it too, you have not been forgotten. The male characters are simply unimportant. The main character especially is basically a prop. He speaks and nothing of importance comes out of his mouth--that is, if he even speaks. Most of the scenes with him just has him there in the background while we get some nice fanservice. In fact, there should have been more scenes with the whale, since it is the deepest character in the lot.

Was there any potential of this being good? Maybe not, but it had the capacity to be mediocre, and yet it could not even accomplish that. The whale in the sky is possibly the only thing worth watching this anime for, as it floats there peacefully, continuously like some sort of guardian or traveller. It almost seems a little poetic. But then there's the shallow rest of this anime that exists around it.

Saishuu Shiken Kujira is a forgettable, regrettable viewing experience. Not to mention the whale seriously gets such a raw deal through the whole thing. read more

Okay to begin with it really doesn't have a good story. It jumps around and u never know what is really going on. The characters are well not to good but not to bad. The stories overall is very bad and I could make a better anime. Well although I was able to finish it I would NEVER EVER watch it again if I was paid to I could only because it was really short. At first u think that maybe u put them in the wrong order or they did that on purpose then u find out that it wasn't just that the episodes them self really don't tie together much a few do but mostly no. read more

Randomness! What better way to waste some time than with a mindless show with a whale floating in the sky and a girl that randomly generates plush dolls? Well, maybe I can think of a few better ways, sure...nevertheless, on the contrary to what I initially thought, watching this little flick was actually quite interesting. It gripes me that it was so very, very short, though; the initial setup calls for a more fleshed-out storyline, but with twelve episodes spanning five minutes each, it never even really manages to take off. But would this idea ever be taken to a more fully fledged anime, I'd be certain to have a look at it.

Story: 2/10
As said, the initial setup is promising. A guy ends up at an academy for some reason, meets up with a bunch of odd characters (mainly girls), and random stuff occurs. Usually I write a coherent little summary under this headline, but it's rather hard to do it this time around without spoiling the entire...um, "storyline", because of it being so short. But that's the gist of it, kinda.

And...that's really it. A few characters are introduced in the first few episodes, but they're given such scarce airtime that you hardly get any time to bond with any of them. Massive plot points are left out: It's never explained how the main character ends up at that strange academy, and he also seems to have the hots for his little sister who wakes him up in the morning - this is also just left as-is. In the beginning, he's startled over the fact that a large blue whale floats high up in the sky, watching over them, but a few episodes in he's adjusted remarkably well to all random facts. And sure, there are a few episodes that link together, such as the trip to the beach, but many episodes seem torn and jumbled together from totally different storylines, and because of the length of the episodes they barely manage to make any sense, much less make an impact. So story-wise, there's very little to gather from this show, unfortunately; the show makes several nice plot directions, but they are simply never used.

Art: 9/10
Save for Yun-Yun's caricature appearance (a character that simply magically appears in the fifth episode without any trace of introduction), I have no complaints about this. The art and animation is in a style and quality you could expect from any anime show, with delicate lines and soft coloring. A few small details seem created with CGI, but they blend into the animation harmony nicely without sticking out like sore thumbs (as I've experienced some CGI effects to do).

Sound: 8/10
The voice acting - wavering between "decent" and "quite good really". The music - beautiful, matching nicely with the mood of the show. It lacks an intro song, but with such short episodes it's to be expected I suppose. And the ending sequence is good, so it makes up for it somewhat.

Character: 7/10
Even though they're never quite delved into, I really can't rack down on the actual character designs - they all have their funny quirks, differing them from one another. I couldn't really say that any of the characters are uninteresting, save for the main character...I think that's how it's supposed to be, though, that the main character starts out as a slightly more blank slate than the others, and then gains his/her personality by interaction with the characters he/she meets.

In this case, it's not entirely possible, though, since...

...yeah, I've said that the anime is short quite a few times now, so I suppose you get the gist. I'm sorry. :p

Enjoyment: 7/10
Despite everything said and done, I enjoyed looking at this. Not for the storyline, but for the humor and situations embedded in the show. Every so often, it brought me to a laugh (randomness is a perfectly valid source of humor), and sometimes it delved into drama. Not so intense, not for so long, but still enjoyable. Naturally, the lack of a story robs the enjoyment of some points, as well as the fact that there's a lot of "dead time" in the show - drawn-out pauses, or scenes that are much longer than actually needed to put an impression through. Had they cut some of those pauses, they could've fit more substantial stuff into the show.

Overall: 7/10
Overall? A nice little pause from reality. Never mind the storyline - it was nice to look at, it was nice to listen to, and it was nice to chuckle at every now and then. And even though I doubt it will ever happen, I intensely wish for a more complete Saishuu Shiken Kujira to be released some time in the future, where the story has more time to develop and root in our minds. But until then, do try this one out - it could be more entertaining than what first meets the eye, if you'd give it the chance to be.

And now, to check out the OVA! :) read more