Itsudatte My Santa!

I'm not even going to waste my time with this review so lets get into this. Its a waste of time writing a review on this but I have time to spare and to waste.

Story (1/10)
I had thought that Kanokon ~Manatsu no Daishunikusai~ would be the most lackluster anime that I'd see during 2009. Given that Kouta and Chizuru graced our screens in November, that assertion seemed likely to hold. Oh, how wrong I was. After the delicious melancholy of Blue Drop, I fired up Itsudatte My Santa! looking for something short and funny with a slight zest of holiday cheer. Unfortunately, however, it proved ... too long on stupid and too short on functioning humor for my needs. Good thing it was a mere two episodes, as otherwise I might have set fire to my monitor in disgust.

Much like Mai, Itsudatte My Santa!'s overenthusiastic protagonist, the OVA tries too hard to please. Straight from a melodramatic voice-over wherein Santa (yes, you heard that right) muses on how children come to stop believing in Santa Claus, the story jumps right into a trainee-Santa Claus attempting to cram happiness down the poor boy's throat. At this moment, any sense of pacing flies out the window, and the "story" careens from gag to gag without pausing to reflect on whether or not anything works. The rest of the uninspired episode consists of an off-brand imitation of A Christmas Carol cheaply bolted onto a half-formed love story. The second portion jumps forward into summertime to provide one of the worst beach sequences in the history of anime: little or no fan-service, a weak riff on Mai's "I can only create things with 'san' in their names" power, and jerky animations of the gang eating watermelon, and finishing off with a montage of Shirley trying to orchestrate some alone time for the two hopeless lovers. That this segment derives most of its humor from Maimai biting Shirley's backside demonstrates the series' puerile wit at its finest.

Of course the OVA wraps up nice-and-neat in the finale, but the fact that the narrative never goes to any length to introduce significant tension or conflict makes the whole thing seem frivolous. However, since Itsudatte My Santa! isn't strange enough to elicit a massive "WTH?" (think Puni Puni Poemy). I--like most viewers I imagine--have to ask, "Ken Akamatsu took time off writing manga for THIS?"

Art (4/10)
Itsudatte My Santa! has to be one of the most cursorily animated OVAs out there. For most of the two episodes, viewers can feast their eyes on boring pans, nearly-still shots of people talking in front of static backgrounds, and action scenes that play out like flip-books written in the corner of high school texts. In 54 minutes of video, only one scene has any kind of visual flair and the director uses it TO END BOTH EPISODES. Famed moe champion Ken Akamatsu CLEARLY intended these two scenes to be identical. The repeated actions and events serve to reinforce the unchanging and therefore nonthreatening nature of Santa and Mai's relationshi... No. Reusing footage is just plain lazy, and placing it at the end of the boring second episode feels more like a slap in the face than an inspiring end to the story.

Sound (3/10)
No, this OVA doesn't ear-rape you, but it sure-as-hell tries. While Santa, Shirley, and Maimai all have bland, reasonable voicing, Mai bounces immediately into the high-obnoxious register and stays there so long as she's not in Santa Claus mode. Whiny, shrill, and always shouting, her voice actor, the talented Aya Hirano, should be ashamed of this performance, deeply ashamed. Luckily, Mai's magical girl transformation into a holiday avatar lowers the pitch of her voice, and this, coupled with the spare minutes when the character keeps her mouth shut offer some respite.

Underneath all the action, an innocuous score wends its way through the anime. A standard synth affair blends in bells and faux-choral themes to enhance the anime's "Christmas" feel, but the music's low volume means it serves more as layer of frost atop the more offensive aural elements than an active participant in any scene; this is unfortunate, as louder music might have drowned out Mai's grating exhortations.

Characters (2/10)
A foursome of cardboard cut-outs forms the main cast of the anime. Santa himself starts out interesting, but the OVA wastes no time in reducing him to a shallow romantic stand-in by the second episode. But of course, this is a Ken Akamatsu anime, so it's the girls that are interesting, right? Nope. Mai shows less depth of character than your grandmother's silver and nowhere near as much history. She flits between mopey, bubbly, and confrontational with no apparent motivation, which further damages the already frayed plot. Add to the mix her loli sister imaginatively named Maimai and a non-descript rival in the form of Shirley and you get... Well, I've seen mad-libs with more personality.

Overall (1/10)
I know what you're going to say. "DeSwitch! You scored less than the sum of its parts!" to which I have to reply that this anime is the single most insulting thing I have EVER watched. The short OVA tries far too hard to make the most of its meager content and comes across as scattershot, insincere, and rushed. This drivel wears its three jokes thin within the first ten minutes and then follows up with a tired attempt at romance in its second installment--should you care to stick around that long. The fact that Ken Akamatsu believes you'll watch this or that this is what you're WAITING to see it is tantamount to violence against his fan-base in my mind. Do yourself a favor and skip this one. Also, consider burning your Negima collection in revenge.

This is a rather… odd show. It’s about a boy named Santa who has always been alone every Christmas and yet because he was born on the Eve of Christmas, he is given the name Santa. Who in their right mind would call their son Santa? Well, his neglectful parents it looks like. Then suddenly, out of know where (like almost every other romance anime out there) this girl shows up and asks him ‘want to spend the night with me?’ And thus begins are strange and odd show. Its not that this show is bad, more like predictable.

Santa sounds rather whinny and annoying but ... because of Mai, I wouldn’t be surprised. Mai is extremely crazy and overly energetic. She can only create things that start with ‘San’ because she is in training. Now this doesn’t work well because in the dub, the items are not called the same in Japanese and so changes that. She can’t cook, goes overboard at times, and is rather stupid as well. At least Naru had brains, this girl doesn’t seen to have an ounce of smarts in many areas. All she really seems to know is how to be a Santa.

In the first episode is about there first meeting, as well as them talking about Christmas and fun. Sadly, it feels very, very bland. It’s got cheesy written all over the script. It would actually be fine if they ended it there but they actually have a second episode. The second episode though… its just a excuse to see the girls in swimsuits. There was no real reason for them to have a second episode. It’s even cheesier then the first!

The animation is rather good, though it does end up having scenes that are reused so many times. A lot of the animation is rather standard and bland half the time. Luckily, they don’t go out of their way to show breasts but they hint a lot about panty shots.

Oh god, we get to the voices now… Although Chris Burnett is a rather nice voice and fits the character of Santa well, Brittney Karbowski is so not the part I would of picked for Mai. Her voice tends to get way to whinny and annoying the more she talks and it turns into a high pitched squeal when she’s talking to long.

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.