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The box says: ``Warning, a comedy from the team that brought you Serial Experiments: lain''. Mayuko is a solemn girl and a good student, struggling to make ends meet as she works her many part-time jobs, working her way through cram-school. She has to work hard, because she is supporting herself, and .... NieA, an unwelcome, food-obsessed, self-centered member of an alien underclass who appeared one day in Mayuko's closet. Many years ago a giant saucer crashed outside Tokyo, and the aliens came to live among us. At first it seemed strange, but after a while everyone got used to it. Describing itself as ``domestic poor @nimation'', this story gives us a unique glimpse into ``the other Japan'', a Japan of part-time jobs, unpaved streets, and a giant crater where aliens continue to live in a shanty-town. We watch the relationship between NieA and Mayuko evolve, and encounter the wacky characters of the neighborhood around the Enohana Bath House: Chada, the turban-wearing alien operator of a ``11/7'' store, Karna, the ambitious alien in Chinese dress, Yoshinen the pyromaniac who tends the bath-house boiler, Chie, the precocious daughter of the owner of a restaurant at which Mayuko is a waitress, Kotomi the manager of the Enohana bath-house, Chiaki, Mayuko's UFO-obsessed classmate1. The series is a mixture of silliness and solemnity. NieA is a zany, and chaos ensues when she is around. Meanwhile Mayuko is solemn (almost morose) in her struggle to make ends meet and to find herself.2 At the same time, the series raises the issues of ``aliens'' and outsiders in Japanese society (most clearly in a later episode when Mayuko is informed by a government bureaucrat that the missing NieA ``can't exist''). Actually, while raises these issues, it's not at all clear what it has to say about them: in the early episodes many of the aliens are portrayed as broad stereotypes and their attempts to organize to protect their rights are mocked. This initial bufoonery gives way in later episodes as we see how much Mayuko needs the vanished NieA (and her search is frustrated by the aforementioned unresponsive bureaucracy). But the show's message remains ambiguous. Mayuko is voiced by Kawasumi Ayako, who debuted as Outlaw Star's Melfina, and who also plays Shitou Megumi in Rah-Xephon and Lafiel in Crest of the Stars. NieA is voiced by Miyamura Yuko, easily recognizable as the same voice as Evangelion's Asuka and Hyper-police's Natsumi. Chiaki is voiced by Orikasa Fumiko, who also plays Chise in Saishuuheiki Kanojo (Saikano), Meia in (Vandread) and Hikari in Haibane renmei. 1 NieA_7 has the same director (Ryotaro Nakamura) and character designer (Yoshitoshi ABe) as Lain. Missing from the team is script-supervisor (writer) Chiaki Konaka, who, like the Chiaki in NieA, is a UFO freak. 2 As the series progresses, it is tempting to see NieA and Mayuko's relationship in terms of the relationship between the US and Japan. Many Japanese have stereotyped views of Americans as rude, lazy and unproductive (this stereotype occasionally causes a flurry of controversy when Japanese politicians refer to it in unguarded moments). NieA is certainly blonde and brash, and she also frequently resorts to what might be seen as another Americanism in her legalistic references to ``discriminatory speech'' and citations of various laws to protect aliens and promote equality. These scenes are frequently accompanied by American iconography: red, white and blue stripes, a cartoon of the Statue of Liberty. This lazy, unproductive bum occasionally works miracles --- such as her flying UFOs built out of junk. Mayuko, on the other hand is long-suffering, studious, and often repressed. She isn't so far from certain stereotypes of Japanese youth and the Japanese salariman culture. These two are thrust together by circumstance, frequently can't seem to stand one another, but, in the end, they also need one another --- at least, the series seems to imply that Mayuko needs the the light and leavening that NieA's freedom brings into her life. |
