The Summer 2009 season has officially started, and one of the first shows out of the gates is Umi Monogatari ~Anata ga Itekureta Koto~ (what a mouthful... will be referred to as Umi Monogatari from now on), a magical girl series that is inspired by a line of pachinko machines (a device that's a cross between pinbal and slots). Weird eh? Anyways, below is a brief summary of the first episode and my first impressions.Looks like a cheap ring to me.Cute SD faces are cute.You are never going to destroy a ring like this.Kanon has quite the throwing arm.Basic Premise:Two "pure" sister who live in the sea journey to an island where they meet a high school girl, and this chance meeting awakens a hidden power as the world is threatened by an enveloping darkness.Brief Summary:Marin and Urin are two sisters who live in the sea with the fishes and whales. One day, a beautiful ring falls into the sea and is recovered by Marin, and Marin decides to go above water to return the ring. Marin and Urin journey to a nearby island where a festival is under way. After looking around, the sisters are able to locate the ring's owner, a high school girl named Kanon who tossed the ring into the sea because it was given to her by her nerdy ex-boyfriend. Marin and Urin try to return to the ring, but Kanon tosses the ring into the forest after catching sight of her ex-boyfriend with another girl. The two sister go off to look for the ring and become separated. Marin eventually meets up with Kanon again and they decide to look for Urin instead after the fireworks have started. Elsewhere on the island, Urin is frightened by the fireworks and runs to an abandoned shrine. On the shrine grounds, Urin spots the ring lying in a crack next to a sealed coffin. Urin is able to retrieve the ring but her efforts have broken the coffin's seal, and the young sea maiden starts hearing strange voices telling her to open the coffin. Urin complies and pushes open the lid, and suddenly dark smoke streams out of the coffin and engulfs the island in a fierce storm. The dark smoke also contaminates the ring, but Urin doesn't notice and hides beside a tree with the ring in her hands.Are you sure she's one of the good ones? She looks pretty wicked to me.It's hard to take your eyes off of that.My Precioussss...Isn't it common sense not to follow the order from strange voices?~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The first thing I noticed when watching this episode was that the OP sequence was so bright! Everything has this shiny white tint over it. Thankfully the brightness didn't persist into the episode itself or else my eyes would hurt. I suppose you could say that ZEXCS know how to do their sunlight effects.Anyways, the episode itself was decent. The animation qualify is quite good, especially evident in the underwater scenes. In regards to the story, not much happened in this episode until near the end where Urin opened the coffin. Most of the episode was character introductions and laid-back comedy, which didn't have much substance, but the SD faces of all of the characters were kind of cute. Judging by the absence of a villain going "Muhahahaha!" in the OP sequence, I'm guessing that the primary focus of the series will be on laid-back comedy and bonding between the two main characters Marin and Kanon. We have the standard contrasting personalities setup with Marin being carefree and airheaded and Kanon being cynical and depressed. We also have Urin, and current indications point to some comedic girl-to-girl friendship bonding involving Marin convincing Kanon to loosen up with saving the world on the side.As noted by several other anime bloggers, the most impressive part of this episode was the ED sequence with Marin and Urin watching a slide show of The Little Mermaid. The sequence was cuteness overload on Urin's part and it had a coherent story to boot. The song wasn't bad either and was better than the OP song. It's certainly one of the more memorable EDs I've seen.Overall, the debut of Umi Monogatari was decent but not overly impressive (except for the ED). I'll at least stick around for a few more episodes to see where the story is going. It should be a watchable series if the animation quality can be maintained and the story doesn't go down the toilet. As for whether or not I'll blog this show episodically, I still have to check out the other new shows of the season before making the decision.
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