How they thought that this would be a good manga to turn into an Anime is beyond me. The story does not have much to it, just a girl who is trying to make a guy happy on Christmas Eve because she is a Santa. The anime had the only thing that made the story at least kind of sweet… and notice I said Anime. In the anime, the main male characters parents, Santa, were helping children in a third world country during Christmas and that was why they weren’t around on his birthday. In the manga though… they just went on vacation because it was their anniversary. With that logic, I would feel jaded too if my parents didn’t care at all about my birthday and only went out on their anniversary. I understand Santa’s feelings there. He had a right to be pissed and sad on Christmas Eve if they did that every single year. Sure in the anime he had a right to be pissed but at least the parents had a noble cause.
And now we come to the thorn in my side of this manga/anime, Mai. Mai is the strange Santa trying to make him feel better about himself but she ends up screwing things up for the most part. In the Anime, she could be at least somewhat useful as she could make things appear out of no where as long as it started with S. In the manga though… she can only make fish appear. WHY IS IT ONLY FISH? She is a santa in training right? So what would be a time that someone would want fish for Christmas? Unless she is the Santa for cats… but even then, why would she care so much about making a human happy?
‘So what of the Summer Beach trip and the strange rival in love that was so annoying in the Anime’ I hear you asking. They don’t happen. Plain and simple, they do not happen at all in the one shot. In fact, I don’t think anything from the second episode was ever in the manga except maybe the end. I don’t think I am spoiling much on that little fact but ya… the ending is the same I guess. This little revelation bothers me even more as I had to actually sit through that dumb episode.
The artwork is standard Ken Akamatsu style with crisp lines, beautifully detailed hair, and nerdy looking men that look just the same as all his other nerdy men. His characters always seem to look the same to me in any of his manga which is both good and bad. Bad that I can’t tell two characters apart outside the manga and good because he does do a good job in drawing them. A while back I had seen a picture of him and when holding it up to a lot of his male characters, he looks a lot like them. The backgrounds are alright as well with beautiful details. He does a good job on all the art, it just seems like he doesn’t have that much range on the look of characters.
So ya, this one shot isn’t all that good and I don’t feel as though it has anything new. The first episode of the anime was better then the manga in fact and I am so sorry that I am saying that.
