Muteki Kanban Musume

Ramen Fighter Miki is probably one of the more interesting anime series out there. Upon first look of it you may think this is just a simple cooking series with a little bit of action thrown in the mix. In actuality however it has little to with anything regarding cooking, let alone ramen. The best way to describe this series is: Picture if you will, what would happen if "Azumanga Daioh" and "Dragonball Z" had a baby...well you would get "Ramen Fighter Miki" as its off spring.

Story: 7/10
The story starts out with Miki’s first day at the restaurant, followed by her spilling ramen on her ... very first costumer. This episode is all about introducing the main characters, it shows a flash back on how Miki and Megumi grew up as kids and thus became rivals. Out of all 12 episodes of this series, this one is probably going to be the hardest for you to watch. As most of the characters are bouncing around all over the place, and there really is no story at all to it. (other than them trying to out do each other) Rest assured however, that episode 2 and on does in fact have a plot to each episode, as new characters are introduced as it progresses. There is no over all plot to the story, most of the time its Miki takingon her rivals (or in some cases helping them) in a fight, or simply her trying to make her deliveries......which most of the time ends up spilling. That being said though, the episodes as well as the humor itself, are thought out and executed quite well. Which is surprising considering that the show is made up mostly of random fights and gags. I didn’t find all of the humor in the anime funny, but it did have some unexpected jokes..........like the creepy teacher that pops out of no where at the most random (yet well placed) moments. Still, some anime fans might find some of the humor repetitive and a bit pointless.

Music: 7/10
The music that this series has to offer was also pretty decent, though sparse over all. The beginning intro is a little misleading to say the least, it opens up as a space theme and has all the main cast doing fighting poses, and features some action scenes between Miki and Megumi. At this point you might be thinking that Miki and friends are super hero’s on an adventure destined to save earth...yet none of the actually series takes place anywhere other than their home town. But the opening its self is a pretty good j-pop themed intro, which fits the series, as does the background music. Now the voices I have to say are great, while none of them ever stick over the others, they were fitting to each personality. I am not much of a fan of heavy metal music (which is what the opening consists of), but I did think it complimented what was going on during it!

Art: 8/10
The art style to this title is very well done, the animation along with the wacky humor is all thought out good, the fight scenes themselves are pretty stiff however, and won’t hold up to other action titles when compared to them, but it's a colorful series with well animated character design and detailed backgrounds. While it is by no means the best looking anime around, it more than gets the job done.

Characters: 6/10
All the characters that appear, (its not the largest cast you’ll see in a 12 episode series like this) I personally found to not have much distinction between them. Most of them love to make evil faces and laugh a lot. And here was my main complaint with the show: The characters themselves! Not only do most of them act alike, but we are never given much back story to them. While in the first few episodes we find that Miki picked on Megumi and Kankuro as a child, we are never given much more detail than that. In fact there were some characters such as Akihiko for example, I never really got who he was. Other than him working at the shop next to the restaurant, you never really get to feel what he was all about. Same thing with Miki herself, it was never explained just why she likes to fight, or even how she learned it. Her mom is a better fighter than her, so I guess we can just assume she got that fighting spirit from her. Heck we never even learn why Miki and her mom are even into the ramen business in the first place. Its all left up to guess work. I do realize that this is the kind of anime that puts humor above all else, but I still feel it couldn’t have hurt them to explain the characters more. To its credit though, nobody ever comes off as annoying, and since this title is all about random comedy...its main goal is to keep you laughing. Which I have to say it does a pretty good job of!

Bottom Line: 7/10
While it does have its flaws, overall Ramen Fighter Miki is a good title! People who are expecting a whole "ramen themed cooking" show may be disappointed. Even though it may not blow you away with its basic over the top humor, it does serves up enough laughs to keep you into it. If your a fan of action and/or random comedy anime, then I recommend giving this series a try. Watch the first two episodes, you’ll now by then whether you’ll like it or not. I mean, how could you not like an anime where the main characters biggest rival......... is the neighborhood dog?

Muteki Kanban Musume is a comedic anime based on a manga written by Sadogawa Jun. The anime was released shortly after the last manga volume. The adaptation was handled by TMS, a studio which is probably best known for Lupin III or Detective Conan, but they've done much more than those. None of which I can recall reviewing. Let's take a look.

This is one of those comedic works without an over-arcing story. The basic setup is that our titular invincible delivery girl, Miki, is working as the poster girl of her family's ramen restaurant. Miki has to juggle her work with combat challenges and ... various hijinks. The humour in this is a mix of parody, targets include super sentai shows, romantic comedies and action anime tropes, physical humour and zany craziness. The comedy is very effectively handled. Virtually every joke in the series is genuinely funny. The series likes to divide each episode in half, generally starting both with the same basic setup or having them be somehow related. You would think that this would lead to the second half of each episode being predictable and less entertaining, but the execution is very clever and the directions that these episodes go aren't what you would anticipate. Which leads to a lot of uproariously funny moments. The series even manages to keep its running jokes fresh throughout the series. Partially because it doesn't over-use any of them and partially because it constantly finds new and unexpected ways to deliver them.

The characters in this are goofy. They aren't particularly fleshed out or three dimensional, but they do interact very well for comedic purposes and they all have their share of comedic moments. For an absurd comedy, the characters are just about perfect.

The art is highly stylised. Some scenes will look pretty ordinary but most of the time they do something bizarre with the facial expressions or there'll be something odd thrown in. There are quite a few jokes that rely on the visuals and they're executed very well. The art can be outright bizarre, but it's honestly a perfect match for the series.

This series has a really good cast. Miki is voiced by Nabatame Hitomi, who also voiced Cyndi in Ika Musume and Kanade in Gokujou Seitokai, so she's no stranger to comedic works. You've also got Koshimizu Ami (Claes from the first series of Gunslinger Girl), Hiyama Nobuyuki (Hiei from Yu Yu Hakusho) and Nakamura Yuuichi (FMA Brotherhood's Greed) to name a few. The entire cast does a really good job of putting a lot of boisterous energy into their performances, which is what the series calls for most of the time. They also do well in scenes that require them to pull things back and sound more serious. The music is fairly effective.

The ho-yay factor in this one is a 2/10. There is a scene in which two women encourage a third to remove her clothes. And even a scene as ordinary as that is executed in a weird way in this anime.

So, how is Muteki Kanban Musume overall? It's a bizarre series. The situations don't make a lot of sense and it's glorious. In terms of zany comedies, this one comes pretty close to perfection. It's thoroughly enjoyable from beginning to end with a lot of really memorable, really funny moments. If you enjoy high energy zany comedies, give it a watch. My final rating is going to be a 9/10. Next week, Shin Sekai Yori.

"Inconsistencies in men are generally testimony to their immaturity."

Basically sums up Muteki Kanban Musume in a nutshell.

Muteki Kanban Musume is definitely one of those oddball slapstick action parody anime about a powerfully strong yet ditzy ramen delivery girl (just go with it) and her exploits in beating up her rivals and pissing off her mother in the process. By all accounts this kind of anime especially how each episode's skits have overarching plotlines that also spill into the continuity of it's latter episodes making this comedy anime a rare oddity, though it's in the realms of Shinryaku! Ika Musume style of skit-based story telling.

For characters, ... well start off with the titular character of Miki Onimaru voiced by Hitome Nabatame who is the most powerful ramen delivery girl in her shopping arcade, she has feuds with Megumi Kannzuki voiced by Ami Koshimizu a skewer-wielding bakery owner ojou who's on PAR with Miki for power levels thus their personal and business rivalry, Kankuro Nishiyama voiced by Nobuyuki Hiyama for HIM wanting to fight Miki all the time and Toshiyuki voiced by Rokurou Naya who isn't in exactly good terms with Miki and is in similar power levels if not she considers Toshiyuki her biggest rival next to Megumi. The ONLY person to quell and stop Miki (and by extension any of Miki's rivals), happens to be Miki's own mother Makiko Onimaru voiced by Sayuri Sadaoka and she's kinda a badass in her own right to stop the psychotically uncontrollable fighting machine of Miki. Going a bit in depth with some of the sub-characters, LA actually REALLY likes Megumi to the point of favourites merely because even though she's a sneaky tactician-like character that wants nothing but Miki's downfall one way or another, she does have that side of her in which she's not "just" all that and she has some empathy in there.....ohh god it's gap moe all right but all the more that she's LA's favourite character. LA really didn't like Kankuro as a character, sure his contributions to many of skits are there and works to an extent and usually ends in the same way however with his verbal tic of ~nya got annoying very easily and VERY quickly (to point this out, because this anime's characters have NO INDOOR VOICES you can see why LA would get annoyed) and some of his skits were too predictable from journey to end (even if other characters contribute to his cause), the other character that LA kinda thought was annoying was Akihiko Ohta voiced by Yuuichi Nakamura the neighbor of Miki who owns a grocery, LA's problem with him is minor unlike LA's annoyances with Kankuro but LA just really didn't like his entire Sentai-a-la-Star Rangers scthick, LA "gets" why as he is the everyday badass and his strong sense of justice is a key feature to Akihiko HOWEVER, considering that we have Miki, Megumi and Toshiyuki AND Makiko who might as well be godly beasts comparing to Akihiko's (and by extension Kankuro) normal human power, BOTH Kankuro and Akihiko are essentially butt monkeys even if it's their respected skits and heck even the anime brings this up.

Even with the technical "useless fighter characters" in Muteki Kanban Musume, another factor is that Muteki Kanban Musume's use of character dynamics mainly in the line of "character with same motivations" allow even the most useless of characters to both have some presences, interact with other characters they wouldn't have during their initial appearances and not allow them to be turned into one-trick ponies (Again your circumstances will vary with Kankuro, but works brilliantly with say Miki and Megumi's interactions more), thus the dynamics between the rather minimalistic cast allows the comedy to be on the unpredictable or more so...the crazier side of things

Really the comedy of Muteki Kanban Musume lies in the absurdity as well as the immaturity of it's characters and how it stacks to makes the situation all the more crazier though predictability is kinda to be expected for the results...how it got there however is entirely unpredictable and sometimes characters comes out of nowhere for their own goals just to add to it's unpredictability. Muteki Kanban Musume also delves into referential humor through it's several skits that kinda adds to the situation (eg. parodying the MGM logo intro, The Ring, Sailor Moon, Babe Ruth, Pinocchio and Jackie Chan's Drunken Master), this was an anime released in 2006 so why not?.

In terms of animation by Telecom Animation Film, the animation if anything is limited most of the times resorting to overexaggerated facial expressions and ball of fighting at times. The battles are kinda stiff at times but if it needs to show some fights with a bit of fighting choreography again, limited but still decent. The character designs are decent and memorable to say the least as most of the characters always have their signature costume (easily making Megumi and Miki recognizable). The backgrounding again though limited is decent as well. Really for Telecom Animation Film although it had limited resources they used it to decent effect is the best way to put the animation of Muteki Kanban Musume...not bad even for a crazy action parody anime THAT NEEDS the animation to pull through in order to make it work.

In terms of voice acting, well there are some welcome surprises most definitely being Hitome Nabatame voicing Miki as she's usually typecasted as the brooding loner type character with a tragic backstory, HERE...she's a ditzy psychotically powerful ramen delivery girl in a COMEDY ACTION PARODY...it's pretty much a rare playing against the type role for her. Ami Koshimizu as well gets this treatment as she voices a ego-centric backstabbing ojou, considering when Muteki Kanban Musume came out she wasn't typecasted as the badass lead heroine (a la Code Geass as Kallen Stadtfeld not one season after Muteki Kanban Musume was released) again it's a rare role for her to do. -sigh- LA will say this again but Nobuyuki Hiyama was annoying, LA doesn't hate the voice actor, LA just found Kankuro to be annoying that is all and his odd verbal tics compounded by this anime's characters having no indoor voices sealed Kankuro fate for LA. The only other mention would be Sayuri Sadaoka as Makiko, voicing a mother you DON'T wanna mess with as Sayuri did it GREAT...NO INDOOR VOICES AND ALL.

Muteki Kanban Musume does have a theme of immaturity being a downfall slipped within it's skits and this theme does show itself from time to time and is easily manifested in MANY of it's characters (Miki, Megumi, Kankuro and the obvious one from Akihiko) and this does add into the comedic potential this anime has and delivers and again compounding with referential humor reflecting that immaturity leads to downfall and for an anime within the comedy action parody actually makes sense in the grand scheme of things.

Muteki Kanban Musume is a crazy romp through some wildly crazy adventures of one ditzy ramen delivery girl and her exploits in beating up her rivals and screwing up her job time and again...sure it might be repetitive with some running gags (LA is looking at you Akihito's Star Rangers and Kankuro in general) but with it's brilliantly timed comedic execution and somewhat cleverly done thematic nature of immaturity in a comedy action PARODY makes this simple action parody anime into something much more that LA even thought it would be.

Pull your sleeves up...

Grab that ramen delivery box...

And go crazy...Miki would have wanted that.