Itsudatte My Santa!

just finished for the first time and first happy holidays of course


but anyways first episode was pretty solid tbh... it had a good pace going for itself and everything it was a solid 7


the second episode used some of the same animation , tropes but i just didnt pay mind to it , (was just trynna have some christmas vibes) very good christmas special , looks and sounds like a anime from early 2000s

i recommend this for offseason and onseason i cant wait to watch this again a year from now

...
how many text do i have to have to summit this review?


happy holidays - marcell 2020

This is probably THE Christmas anime, likely uncontested by lack of there being many solely dedicated Christmas anime out there to begin with. Most anime will either have something relating to the theme of Winter or have Christmas be the backdrop to the episode - but this OVA is very unambiguously revolving around the holiday as it's core feature. Now, does that mean it is good?

Well, I found myself watching this mostly out of curiosity because this anime certainly does have a unique novelty to it - but that novelty wears off fast and I especially felt that as I dragged my way through the ... second episode. The first thing you will likely notice about this is that the pacing is so fast that you will feel the G-forces on you. This show very much doesn't like lingering on any moment longer for a few seconds and it is somewhat disorienting. You do not get much of a chance to soak in anything or absorb information that gets thrown at you every minute.

I'd forgive this strange problem if it led up to anything, but that isn't the case sadly. With how eccentric and speedy this show is, there is no real substance to any of it - even up through the ending. Give this a watch if you are interested in the novelty of there being an entire anime about this holiday, but don't expect anything life-changing. I know I was railing on it a second ago, but I don't think this anime is bad by any stretch. There is some enjoyment to be had if you go into with some low expectations - otherwise, give this one a pass.

Well, welcome back to the world of Ken Akamatsu, the guy who made a manga series that I was very annoyed with, spinning off into an anime series that I reviewed over a year ago and I really hated the hell out of that show and can’t understand why people like this but then again I reviewed the Christmas Special and that was less painful but still bad nevertheless.

Now given that this is only an OVA that lasts 2 episodes, I’m already considering to be better than…..well, you know, and I’m going to try my best to not much mention much of Love Hina, since ... this could be a whole different set of property than what I already seen of Akamatsu with some similarities to his past work.

An unlucky boy named Santa was born on Christmas Eve whose parents don't even care about meets a Santa-in-training girl named Mai. She is determined to wish him the best Christmas he will ever have and its gets even better when they fall in love with each other. Mai, a Santa in training, appears in front of an Unlucky boy named Santa, on Christmas Eve, promising him, she will make him happy for one night.

Well, I can tell you this: future and soon-to-be parents, if you ever name your kid Santa, they got every right to hate you and for leaving your kid on Christmas Eve, another reason for them to hate you (although in the show, that reason is mentioned but that is SPOILER territory that I won’t go into) so anyway, the first episode is a bit cheesy and sometimes serviceable considering a kid being left alone on Christmas time and you wonder why he really hates it. You could say he should took advantage of his parents being alone and he acted like a little angsty bitch boy and you might be right but either way if it would’ve gone that route, it would’ve been worse and far more disjointed and that’s not saying much as some of the comedy and drama elements are very disjointed.

One moment, you have Santa telling you about his horrible past and then the next, Mai gets into a fight with the Yakuza over for some damn birthday cake. However, that main problem only lasts an episode out of a 2-episode OVA and the second episode really seems pointless. I mean, as cheesy and annoying as the first episode was, at least it had a plot and storyline. The 2nd episode was just another standard beach episode with some rehashes of what I saw previously. It becomes blindly redundant and over repetitive as if the writers felt lazy and didn’t bother to expand the first storyline to fit into the 2nd OVA episode.

Well, for characters, there are some basic anime archetype characters like Santa being the angsty whiny boy character type and there’s Mai, the energetic trainee girl who tries to lift Santa’s spirits although it turns out in the story, she would end up being the romantic opposite of Santa and I did expect some Akamatsu female traits in her, much like Naru, fortunately she wasn’t as unlikable and irritating as Naru but not as smart as her (although Naru isn’t really that smart in the first place). Them as a romantic pair…….It seemed like they were just putting that together at the last minute and never develop any actual thought into it. Then in the second episode (or at the end of the first one) introduce the typical tsundere character Sharry and it’s definitely what I expect from this type of character although as bland and atypical they are, I wasn’t exactly raging in anger. They are just mostly boring characters for the part.

Animation is courtesy of TNK and if you don’t know who they are, well, it wouldn’t matter as they don’t make much good material anyway although their well-known stuff either involves high school, boobs, and sometimes murder (i.e., High School DxD & School Days) and this is mostly dull animation. Possibly even worse than what XEBEC did with….well, you know….it has the amount of and even on a 2-episode budget, this feels mighty cheap and I did suspect them re-using the same animation in the beginning of the 1st episode into the 2nd one.

And you know what? To save me and yourself some time, the music and the English dub from FUNimation is just awful (and by that, I mean the script either it be the Japanese or English version is dull and awful). First, the music is somewhat festive but nothing I would remember of the spot and I really didn’t like the theme songs that much, especially where they would scream MY SANTA!!! At some point. Then about the dub itself, Chris Burnett’s voice really didn’t work as Santa as he was whinier than the character itself and as for Britney Karbowski, she wasn’t exactly better either although for both of them, that’s more of the script’s fault than the actors.

FINAL VERDICT: This isn’t exactly rage-inducing but this is still quite bad. The writing is all over the place with a much lack of the primary focus into the story and like the Love Hina Christmas Special, I wouldn’t give it a pass because it wasn’t like its predecessor (although My Santa was only a one-shot manga). I would not recommend this for the holidays whatsoever. Hell, I would actually say watch the Love Hina Christmas Special over this…..yes, the one time I say watch anything Love Hina over this.