Zettai Karen Children (Psychic Squad)

They're cute, adorable and three of the most powerful Espers the world has ever seen: Kaoru, the brash psychokinetic who can move objects with her mind; Shiho, the sarcastic and dark natured psychometric able to pick thoughts from people's minds and read the pasts of inanimate objects like a book; and Aoi, the most collected and rational of the three, who has the ability to teleport herself and the others at will. So what to do with these potential psychic monsters in the making? Enter B.A.B.E.L., the Base of Backing ESP Laboratory, where hopefully "The Children" and others like them can become part of the answer to an increasing wave of psychic evolution. It's a win-win solution... Unless you're Koichi Minamoto, the overworked young man stuck with the unenviable task of field commanding a team of three pre-teen girls!

(Source: Sentai Filmworks)

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Adaptation:	Zettai Karen Children
Summary:	Zettai Karen Children: Oobanburumai! Natsuko to Hotaru no B.A.B.E.L. Tsuushin, Zettai Karen Children: Gentei Kaikin!! OVA Chou Sakidori Special!!
Sequel:	Zettai Karen Children OVA: Aitazousei! Ubawareta Mirai?
Spin-off:	Zettai Karen Children: The Unlimited - Hyoubu Kyousuke
Other:	Shounen Sunday CM: Zettai Karen Children

Taniyama, Kishou
Japanese

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Staff

Kawaguchi, Keiichirou

Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Matsuoka, Hiroki

Sound Director

Watanabe, Shinichi

Episode Director, Storyboard

Hiroshi, Ikehata

Episode Director

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Opening Theme

	1: "Over The Future" by Karen Girl's (eps 1-26)
	2: "MY WINGS" by Karen Girl's (eps 27-45, 47-51)
	3: "MY WINGS feat.THE CHILDREN" by The Children' starring Aya Hirano, Ryoko Shiraishi, and Haruka Tomatsu (eps 46)

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Ending Theme

	1: "Zettai love×love Sengen!! (絶対love×love宣言!!)" by The Children' starring Aya Hirano, Ryoko Shiraishi, and Haruka Tomatsu (eps 1-13)
	2: "DATTE Daihonmei (DATTE 大本命)" by The Children' starring Aya Hirano, Ryoko Shiraishi, and Haruka Tomatsu (eps 14-26)
	3: "Break+Your+Destiny" by Hyoubu Kyouske vs Minamoto Kouichi with Sakaki Shuuji starring Yusa Kouji+Nakamura Yuichi+Taniyama Kishou (eps 27-39)
	4: "Soushuunhu (早春賦)" by The Children' starring Aya Hirano, Ryoko Shiraishi, and Haruka Tomatsu (eps 40-45, 47-50)
	5: "Zettai love×love Sengen!! (絶対love×love宣言!!)" by Karen Girl's (eps 46)
	6: "Over The Future" by Karen Girl's (eps 51)

Reviews

Mar 19, 2022

AomiTatsuya

Recommended

I am sure everyone who has watched this Anime would agree with me. Minamoto is a really irritating idealist who keeps on admonishing Hyoubu, saying he is the bane of all normals and some stupid stuff like that. He doesn't even try to understand Hyoubu's point of view.

Hyoubu is the SIGMA of the series. Other PANDRA members fall under the ALPHA category. Minamoto is a beta for sure. The other BABEL members are gamma's.

I have never seen such a bland characterization for a protagonist(Self-Proclaimed) Minamoto, who always spews idealist stuff and blames everything on Hyoubu and PANDRA. He doesn't even know the dark ... side of humans which is shown constantly in the series.

The main antagonist, is what they say but the true protagonist of the series Hyoubu is the most unique and most awesome character to be ever made. He is funny, powerful, sarcastic, kind, caring. He is a whole package. But the idealist Minamoto who spews nonsense always trains his gun at Hyoubu,

I liked Minamoto at the beginning but he kinda does the same thing, Hyoubu would just be taking to Kaoru but Minamoto will arrive and be like, "don't go near him he is evil", after literally being saved by Hyoubu. In reality i liked Sakaki who had a unique character very much unlike Minamoto.

The Girls were cute and funny, but sometimes i just skipped the stuff they say since they are boring. The school parts were funny. Kaoru grows into an OK character but the initial episodes in which they appear, Kaoru behaving like a pervert, Shiho like a mature yet yandere type character both sucked very much. Aoi is a silent character which i enjoyed since she is humble and not a creep like the other two.

Some evil espers do some bad deed, but Minamoto being the tunnel visioned beta blames who? You have guessed it right : Hyoubu. Someone is hypnotized, someone is killed, someone is kidnapped : Hyoubu.
Someone is saved : BABEL. BABEL is the place where love beats power. Even in BABEL chief doesn't see the girls as girls but treasures. More like things that show the domination of their country. Good job BABEL. This is the propaganda they spread. Looking at it now, makes me laugh my ass off.

My only wish was Hyoubu to have been in all 52 episodes atleast for 10 mins per episode. He was so popular they made a spin-off with him as the protagonist. And it has much higher rating than the parent one. And also not seeing the spectacled beta everytime.

Everyone constantly berates Hyoubu to be a Lolicon, but Hyoubu only cares about the happiness of the Espers especially Kaoru's and their safety, but in reality the Chief, Minamoto, Tanizaki are the real Lolicons, all are from BABEL by the way.
I really get pissed off at Minamoto when he says Hyoubu to be a Lolicon when he constantly have these blushing shitty moments with the girls. "Think back on what you said about Hyoubu you beta", is what I want to tell to Minamoto.

Sorry for the long review but I just wanted to make sure everyone knows about "The beta, who keeps berating the SIGMA, just to be saved by him again and again and again." This actually sums up review.
"SIGMA rules."

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Jul 30, 2016

NG_Chloe

Recommended

Let's start with my favorite parts of the show: The main Antagonist

Kyosuke for me is interesting, he's cool, he's likable, he's funny, and I have never wanted to join the villains organization more than I want to join PANDRA, Even the members are awesome.

Then there are the main characters in BABEL, now if I wasn't going to join PANDRA, and I was an Esper(#Esper_master_race), I would join BABEL maybe. That's because while I like most of the characters in BABEL, most of them should be fired or sent to prison. The chief is the the absolute worst character in the show, he wastes resources ... and harasses 10 year olds. Then there's Sakaki, who while actually being a very likable, would be arrested for some of the things he does in the office. Then Supervisor Tanizaki, who was extremely creepy in episode 4, Tanizaki is the other worst character in the show.

Then there's Director Fujiko, whose introduction could be edited out and it would change nothing, including her ability to drain other characters energy with physical touch, which was used in a pointless minute long seen that could be removed and change nothing. I actually do like Fujiko in some cases, but the first few episodes she's in are mediocre and in the grand scheme of things, pointless.

Next let's talk about my one of my favorite characters in the, Naomi! 2 out of her three episodes in the show were amazing, and they all have the same premise, Tanizaki(the creepy guy) is worried about her, and our main characters spy on her to figure out what's really going on. Other than episode 4, these episodes are really good.

Next let's talk about the main characters, Kaoru Akashi, Aoi Nogami, Shiho sannomiya, and Koichi Minamoto. These characters are really good, most of the time. The girls constant jealousy or attacks against Minamoto get annoying after a while. Minamoto himself, if you look had him individually, he is very bland. The girls themselves are likable in their individual characters are very likable, especially Kaoru, who has to be since she is probably the most important character in The Children. Aoi is cute, but annoying at times, and Shiho doesn't really have a lot to her in terms of character in the beginning, but gets better as time goes on.

There are also some some other characters who I really like, but we don't have time, we should move on to other parts. Let's talk about the music. I really love the music, even though I didn't like either of the opening themes at first but I grew to love opening 1, and like opening 2. I love all the endings, especially ending 3, I usually like female singers more than males, but I love the singing voice of Kouji Yusa(Hyoubu Kyousuke).

Next let's talk about the animation. The animation while outdated, looks really good to me. There is one episode in collection 3 when they have a really fast paced fight scene and they sacrifice a lot of detail fr the movement is what it feels like. There are also episodes that have good artistic direction, and bad artistic direction, where for some reason they make the screen sideways, like it's meant for some kind of Fanservice, but really just makes you dizzy.

Let's talk about the story, which the anime doesn't actually get to the main plot of the entire series till the end of collection 2. Now I'm not going to go too deep on spoilers, but there was a prediction of the future, and a select few characters are trying to prevent it in different ways, and realistically you know that it's going to happen because that would be anticlimactic. I like a lot of the events in the show that I personally like and though I really wish there was more of this show, because I really like a lot of the characters.

The ending we're given is serviceable, even though the manga is actually still continuing today. I really think that in few years we should get a remake that goes all the way to the more resent manga chapters, which in 2018 or 2019 the manga might be over. Now they could probably just remake the the whole series because not a lot of people have seen it, considering you can't really stream it anywhere legally, but I will say this show is worth buying, I rewatched several episodes in the show, but I would say that they should cut out some stuff in order to broaden its audience.

Like they could sensor a lot of the loli stuff, and though I'm kind of against the idea, they could do an FMAB and have a filler that tries to introduce us to the characters and stuff in order to skip some of the other stuff, I'm against the idea though, because you'd probably miss out on many amazing moments and a few hilarious moments too, but I would understand trying to get to when they're in middle school as fast as possible though.

I give this show my fullest recommendations to watch by any means necissary. I'd also like to have to possible remake to be licensed by funimation, becaused while they could never be as good as this Japanese cast, I would like it to be dubbed. The show is licensed by sentai filmworks and does not have a dub. It's also cheap to buy, which is another reason to buy it. I only spent 100 dollars on these four collection, and 25 on the spin off, The unlimted Hyobu Kyosuke. This show is known as Psychic squad on disc release

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Mar 9, 2015

ggultra2764

Mixed Feelings

Zettai Karen Children is a shounen action-comedy focused on a government organization called BABEL tasked with serving as mediators in hostilities between espers and humans. Among the organization and main focus of the series are a trio of powerful esper 10-year old girls called "The Children" who are chaperoned by Koichi Minamoto. The series explores the developing bond that occurs with Minamoto and The Children, as well as the group and BABEL coming at odds with several enemy organizations who have differing views on the future that espers can bring to humans to the world.

Zettai Karen mixes around comedic and serious moments in exploring its ... world and characters. The comedy mostly comes in the form of parody and the eccentric quirks of the cast. It makes nods at points to other anime titles and pokes fun of elements to sentai shows with the over-the-top introductions, commands and attack names being called from BABEL and other espers. The series also milks the eccentric quirks of the characters for its humor at many points such as Kaoru's perversion for attractive women, Muscle Okama's stereotypical gay character and Ichiro's lusting for partner Naomi. Many of these comical bits left me feeling rather indifferent or feeling some of the quirks were on the obnoxious side, particularly anything involving perversion of the characters being shown or teased. Still, there was some stuff that got me giddy such as series anti-hero Hyobu Kyosuke trolling Koichi for his personal amusement and an episode that parodies Death Note.

The series also has its serious developments in exploring the hostilities between espers and humans. In spite of his trolling, Kyosuke's character is fleshed out to explore a rather tragic back story that led to his mentality to become a Magneto-like figure in trying to aid espers and prepare for a possible war between his kind and humans. The pasts of the Children are also explored with how they became part of BABEL and their complicated pasts with their family members. The positions of organizations and individuals on esper abilities and how those with such power utilize it are also focused on at points throughout the series. While the series is comedy-driven throughout a good chunk of its first half, it does come to gradually tone down on its humor as hints to a possible dark future for Kaoru and the presence of another enemy organization rear their head in the second half.

Still, the series lacks a proper ending as the mentioned enemy organizations are still at large and things with Kaoru's future are left uncertain. Plus like a good number of action titles of its kind, Zettai Karen Children still dabbles fairly heavily in cliches typical of shounen anime with a number of adult characters behaving childishly for their age, many characters within the series filling certain archetypes and a good amount of black-and-white morality being milked in regards to some of the enemy organizations.

Overall, I suppose my thoughts on Zettai Karen Children are a bit mixed. I liked what it explored with its esper premise when things got serious and some of the humor to it did get me laughing, especially with moments where Hyobu was behaving like a troll. However, a good chunk of the show's humor did not really appeal to me and it still dabbles fairly heavily into the typical cliches and character types that one would find with a shounen title. I guess like the majority of titles aimed at the demographic, the series is best worth checking out if you're fairly new to the cliches offered for action-comedies geared toward younger male fans.

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New Anime of Zettai Karen Children Announced

According to Weekly Shonen Sunday, a new anime project of Zettai Karen Children was announced. Details of the project will be revealed in the later issue of the maga...read more

Jul 12, 2012 9:40 PM by dtshyk | Discuss (39 comments)

Sentai Filmworks Licenses Zettai Karen Children

According to their official press release, Sentai Filmworks has licensed Zettai Karen Children (Psychic Squad). Sentai will release the series digitally and on subti...read more

Jan 30, 2012 5:18 PM by Florete | Discuss (11 comments)

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Poll: Zettai Karen Children Episode 20 Discussion Zerosbakainu - Sep 13, 2008	9 replies	by BenjaminJunior »» Apr 18, 1:51 PM
Help: Psychic Squad filler episodes? JoNuttanon1994 - Dec 27, 2023	1 replies	by Therud »» Dec 27, 2023 8:05 PM
Poll: Zettai Karen Children Episode 51 Discussion nyamo - Apr 6, 2009	30 replies	by Ilfracombe »» Oct 10, 2023 6:45 PM
Poll: Zettai Karen Children Episode 49 Discussion Beave - Mar 24, 2009	12 replies	by Ilfracombe »» Oct 3, 2023 6:30 PM
Poll: Zettai Karen Children Episode 43 Discussion datsunvic - Feb 8, 2009	8 replies	by Ilfracombe »» Sep 11, 2023 6:20 PM

Zettai Karen Children

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Zettai Karen Children

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Background

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Ending Theme

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