Fairy Ranmaru: Anata no Kokoro Otasuke Shimasu

Fairy Ranmaru is a camptastic anime filled with nonsense and absurdity. It was trash and I loved it!

Let’s get the technical stuff out of the way: the story and characters leave a lot to be desired. This is not a “conventionally good” show that can be enjoyed in conventional ways. If you’re looking for tight writing and intricate characters, Fairy Ranmaru will not meet your expectations.

It follows the typical, trope-heavy “monster of the week” format that most fans of the “magical girl” genre will recognize. The episodic formula is extremely repetitive, especially in the latter half of the show where there’s very little variety. ... I think a lot more could have been done with episodes 6-10, specifically. More time should have been spent fleshing out the character dynamics, but unfortunately there are very few developments during this stretch, and it feels like a wasted opportunity.

What this anime does have, though, is some pretty fun music and art. Each of the character songs that play after the transformation sequences are quite catchy; I never grew tired of them! The opening and ending songs are also surprisingly good! When it comes to the animation, it can be quite choppy at times, but the show always displays a consistent style. Visually, this anime shines during its fight sequences, which have a “Madoka Magica”-esque, surreal aesthetic.

Now, the real draw of Fairy Ranmaru is the campiness and the fanservice. If you don’t enjoy either of those things, then this anime will bore you to tears. However, if you’re looking to have a good laugh while ogling bulges and indulging in some homoerotic tension, then I can’t reccommend this show enough. It’s just such a fun watch for people like me who get a kick out of over-the-top silliness!

I had a lot of fun watching Fairy Ranmaru, despite its many flaws. As it stands, I think that this show is criminally underrated; it’s really not as bad as some people make it out to be! It’s one of the least watched shows of the 2021 Spring season, and I think that’s a damn shame.

Oh well! I’ll still fondly remember this goofy little anime for years to come! :’)

Currently, this is one of the lowest rated anime airing this season, a fact I find both hilarious and unfair. On one hand, yea, I get it, this show is overwhelmingly horny and not in a currency that a lot of people accept. On the other hand, I think if you try to watch this show without letting your personal tastes on its particular brand of horniness overwhelm your judgement, you'll find a show that it is... solidly okay!

Plot: I am not watching this show for the plot. I am very much watching this show for the *PLOT*. Not even in a horny way! ... Buff fairy men in skimpy outfits or tied up in ropes is not really my thing, although I'm not exactly opposed to it either. Basically, my dick is flaccid but my brain is short circuiting. That's the appeal of the horniness in this show to me. It's so over the top and ridiculous and unique (Uruu's transformation.......) that it's hilarious in a 'I can't fucking believe what I'm watching' way and a 'they aired this on TV???' way. And I honestly just have to respect the staff for giving literally zero fucks. They really picked a vision and stuck to it, huh.

Oh right I should probably talk about the actual plot huh. Uhh, it's about these five fairies who come to Earth to find women to help so they can harvest 'attachment' to bring back to the fairy world. Basically, it's very formulaic, very monster of the week type stuff. I'm finding myself somewhat bored by it most of the time, honestly. It's not shallow, per se, I do think it is interesting how it tackles societal issues and such, but it's not anything groundbreaking either, and I just don't think it's very interesting to watch. I'd much rather they spend more time on the fairy ass.

Also, I should mention that this show is weirdly heterosexual (in like an otome game kind of way), more than you think it would be considering its... aesthetics. Not that that's necessarily bad, it's just odd.

Characters: They're fine. I don't think they're like, super shallow or anything, they get some interesting development + backstories, but I still feel like we don't see enough of them to really get attached. I definitely think its 'woman with a problem of the week' type formula is something that's hindering it in this regard, as each episode only focuses on one fairy, and the characters don't really get enough chances to interact. Their clients in each episode also don't have enough screentime for any real characterization. Overall, I'm pretty meh on the characters. Uruu's love-hate antics with Homura do amuse me though. Oh, I also like that the main guy Ranmaru wears glasses. People With Shit Vision Rise Up!

Animation: I'd say it's pretty nice. When they're in the human forms it looks alright, nothing standout. But during their fairy battle scenes, the environments change and it looks pretty cool. When the first episode came out I saw a lot of comparisons to the witches' labryinths in Madoka, and for that particular episode it was fitting. But they do change up the art style each episode (e.g. Hokusai, Van Gogh), and I've been enjoying seeing them. The battles themselves don't leave much of an impression though, except for uh. Those parts.

Music: It's good. Of particular note are the insert songs, each fairy has one that plays after their transformation in each episode. They're real catchy and fun. I'm real glad they put them in because otherwise I might've already dropped this show. The OP and ED are pretty good too (although perhaps the aesthetics of the ED are more noteworthy than its music). The BGM is fine too, there are some cool tracks that play during the battle scenes.

Overall: You know, I don't think that I like this show that much, but I have also been spending all my time thinking about it for some reason. It's not a brilliantly written masterpiece, but nor is it some trashy brainless show just for fanservice (even though that is an integral part of it). I'm enjoying my time with it. And I know I said the plot bored me, but I am actually interested in what they're going to do with this overarching plot they've set up, even if by the 9th episode we still don't know very much about it. Here's hoping the next three episodes are bangers.

Okay.. So this anime is rather uhum- interesting. I don't mean this in a bad way either. Sure the ploty is iffy and a bit boring but I mean I'm pretty sure we all expected that. The anime wasn't bad and the art animation were good, the characters while looked pretty could've definitely been fleshed out more. It wasn't even like the protag was 3D and the others were 2D, they all had pretty equal screentime which means they were okay just not good. The fan service was okay to me, and I'm saying this as a fujo. It wasn't all that great. The relationships ... are not there if your looking they just have some really heavy tension. This is definitely one of those where your brain just need to shut off and you have to be in a mood. No not that mood, get your mind out of the gutter. All in all this anime was okay, could've been great if they focused less on the boring day to day problems (why we're all the problems surrounded by girls? We're there no boy problems?), and less fan service to focus on the characters and relationships.

I don't like writing reviews that much so I'll try and keep this brief but, well, in short, Fairy Ranmaru is the sort of anime that you can turn your brain off while watching. The visuals are nice, the ending and opening songs are really good, and the characters (in both their buff fighting forms and cute every day forms) are eye-candy in the purest form. In terms of visuals, the whole thing is beautiful however in terms of story... Not so much.

The story is, to say the least, a little repetitive. There's a few sprinkles of an overarching story and it does follow ... the genre staple of monster of the week, however the way that it executes it is almost too formulaic (and I'm saying this as an idol anime fan). The messages given in the first few episodes are also very creative/animator centric and at times it more feels like the writers and artists venting their frustrations and preaching their own version of justice. Of course, I'm not saying that they can't put their own personal struggles into the characters, but seeing very specific scenarios play out and then get saved by muscle-bound fairy men using their powers of CGI keys can, at times, be a little boring to watch. One thing I will praise the show for is not seeing every issue as a black and white good vs evil issue, although that only happened once in the selection of episodes I watched before losing interest in the show entirely.

Another interesting thing about the show that I will warn about is that if you dislike seeing people tied up, or find it just a generally uncomfortable thing to see, you will NOT like this anime. There's a lot of instances of characters being tied up, and even the ED features a beautiful illustration of all the boys tied up with ropes. It's not entirely in your face, but it's clear that somebody on the production team either really wanted to appeal to the rope-kink community or has one themselves. And of course, I'm not going to shame anyone for that however it's something that you might not expect when going into this cutesy-cool looking anime.

Overall, and like I said in the beginning, this is the sort of show that's great to just switch your brain off and enjoy the cacophony of colour and music. The boys are cute, the art is nice, it's no masterpiece but it's got a lot of potential. If you liked Fairy Ranmaru, I'd also recommend watching Binan Koukou Chikyuu Bouei bu Love, as it has the same sort of queer subtext as Fairy Ranmaru, as well as also being a Magical Boy genre show (I also thought that this was by the same director before coming to MAL and discovering otherwise, so if that doesn't show how similar they are, I don't know what will)

Between the overt homosexuality, constantly recycled canned animations and story beats, weak story carried by bland characters and lack of direction, there's a lot to not like about this show. I don't like BL as a genre. I get it, sex sells, fujoshi exist, there's a market for this. None for me, though, thanks.

The only reason I watched this was because on paper it sounded like a comedic premise. Actually watching it proved to be far less funny, as it has the fatal flaw of taking it's ridiculous narrative too seriously. I feel like I criticize a lot of shows for having that problem, and ... I should come up with a word or short-hand for it. If there were a flagship series for pioneering that sort of bad storytelling maybe I'd use the name of that show but none come to mind.

Anyway if you like various gay stereotypes dressed as magical girls going around doing a worse version of Persona 5, you might like this. I give it a 5/10