Sumomomo Momomo.. an anime that for 21 and 9/10 episodes I liked... and was prepared to put this into my list of one of my more favorite romantic comedies. But I was horribly let down. And I am pissed off about it! Why!? Well I guess you'll have to read on!
The premise is pretty simple and in typical anime fair, ridiculous but cute in its own way. Momoko's father having told her that she will never be able to master her families martial arts clan signature move, must go seek out the strongest man and make strong offspring! To which Momoko replies, "Hai!" I found this pretty humorous at the start of each episode. Though this is a bit of a falsehood since we learn shortly that Momoko's father and Koushi's have made a prearrange marriage for the two of them to unite the martial arts world and keep peace. While this seems to be an interesting premise on the surface the story never really develops this concept, beyond different factions sending assassins to kill Koushi. There is even a scene towards the middle of the series where several female martial artists unknown to the story up to then make comments about making him their husband but then we never hear from them again. Other characters also appear seemingly having more to offer the story and then just as quickly vanish without any explanation. I do give the story a good rating though solely on a couple of arcs that are pretty interesting and funny.
With the exception of Koushi (more on him later) I give Sumomomo's characters a very good rating. Momoko , Iroha, and Sanae are great. The series does a great job in developing their personalities and backgrounds, though Momoko's back story is surprisingly weak compared to the other two female leads. The show does a good job at keeping the cast at a minimum for the most part, which is a good thing. A lot of shows allow themselves to be bogged down with huge numbers of characters that take away from the development of the mains. I fell in love with all three of the girls, especially Momoko (who couldn’t love her!). Hanzo was also very funny as was the appearances by the old landlady who provided a lot of laughs in her search for rent money or her bizarre training of Sanae.
Now on to the bad of the characters.. Koushi. Momoko’s love, she devotes herself totally to him, unselfishly protecting him from assassins, cooking and cleaning for him, unconditional love.. like a puppy. Regardless of how cruelly she is treated in return. Koushi's reject on her is pretty funny, especially of her more outlandish behavior (like pulling a futon out of nowhere to make babies), at first. But the show beats this over and over and over again until it starts to become unfunny and starts to just be mean. Koushi comes off, well like an asshole. While sometimes he seems to have feelings for her, it is completely forgotten 5 minutes later and was back to where we started. So for a show that is supposed to be a romance as well as comedy there is really zero development on this plot point. He also is wimpy, hides behind girls the entire show, and seems to be selfish and the only time he seems to have any genuine concern about someone else is when his own skin is in danger and not having that person around means he’s getting his butt kicked. Why Momoko, Iroha, or Sanae want to protect him or even like him baffles me at times. By the end of the show I find myself thinking that Momoko should have just let the jerk die.
The art is pretty good, the show uses "chibi" style animation a lot, which is a favorite of mine and it does it well enhancing the comedy in a number of places. Though the non-chibi models of Momoko and Iroha are a bit too small for their supposed ages and them come off a little too loli like and is a bit creepy sometimes. I am a big Aya Hirano fan and her voice for Sanae is great, the other acting is good too, though I think Momoko's voice sometimes doesn’t fit all of the time. The songs are a mixed bag too, the first opening song is pretty good but the rest are fairly mediocre.
Overall I did like this show for the most part, and I was going to give it a rating of 8. But did I mention that ending? Yeah, it was that bad IMO. If you thought all of Momoko's hard work and feelings was going to be accepted and end in a satisfying emotional reward, well um not really. Just when you think you’re about to get the payoff, your let down. It’s like going to a cake shop and seeing this wonderful looking cake and buying it and then when you taste it finding out that it doesn’t taste as good as it looked. The show has a lot of funny things in it and maybe for a lot of people you will probably not mind the end as much as I did. But if you in any way like to see a show wrap up with real endings that show something did change from episode 1 to the final, then you will probably be disappointed in it as well.
