After 6 episodes of mostly good timing physical humor, the best of which often makes me cackle out aloud, and the not great ones being at least cute and amusing, I’ve finally resorted to setting down and turn off my brain when watching this show.
In recent days, I’ve discovered that a good show lends itself to good reviews. Such is the case of Claymore. But then I have a problem – all of the sudden I don’t find any other shows good to review. When I review El Cazador I mostly flame it. It’s got a couple of pretty decent eps but mostly I just shook my head in disappointment. In any case, let’s just sit back and take a look at Potemayo 6.
Just about every show of affection in this show gets turned into some kind of Love-love mode. If one person really likes another person it seems that this show never considers that they could “just be friends”, or “siblings.”
Let’s count the “cons” – no, not the anime conventions or conventional plot devices – I’m talking about the “loli-con”, “shota-con” type of”cons”. Here we go, starting with the most recent “con” discovery:
Ane-con – Yasumi for Mikan. He’s like turned on when he sees his older sister wearing a short skirt, a cute apron and a funny cap for preventing hairs falling into food when cooking – but he can’t admit to himself and just enjoy the view (thank God!) so he palms his sister’s head like a basketball.
Mudo-con – Yep, made that name up. This one refers to when a taller, unpopular, big budda-look dude having a thing for his smaller buddy. I used to think he just cares for his small friend’s bad luck and misfortunes, but after he spew blood from his nose after seeing his friend’s naked ass (yeeeewwwww!) it all of the sudden just dawned on me.
And here are the older ones:
loli-con – Mudo wants Potemayo bad he could almost taste it. I can’t remember but somehow that’s why he became a slave to Nana.
Meganekun-con – Mikan loves Sunao, who’s the glasses guy, but she’s deep enough to like him without the glasses.
Speaking of glasses, Sunao makes an extraordinary discovery while looking for something vital to his success in daily living in the wrong place, and that makes Yasumi feels mighty good and Mikan cry like a baby.
I like the physical timing of this show, it’s well placed and it’s funny. But there isn’t anything for me to analyze. It’s definitely a good show to watch after a long, hard day of work or when you simply need a simple laugh without thinking too much.
However, there was one very important thing that I was looking for in this episode, which made it crucial to my enjoyment of this show as a complex and meaningful whole…
OH MY GOD! THEY DIDN’T KILL MUDO! You bastards…oh wait….
Well, that running gag got tiring in South Park. I realize that the gags here don’t get over used often and I think that’s good. So I’ll say =>
75% recommended for your daily anime diet for what this episode and show is meant to be – just a light snack with the right ingredient mix. I’d give it 83% as a more personal biased opinion, because I can almost always laugh when I see this show, but I don’t seem to remember much about what happened in it afterwards.
P.S. Gu…gu…Guchiko beeeaaaamu is funny!
P.S. 2 Nana’s brothers are hilarious! Check them out!
I don’t know why people think this is funny. I downloaded it based on good reviews but I sat through it thinking wth am I supposed to laugh about.
Maybe this type of humor just isn’t compatible with what I was used to–is this based on a 4-koma?
Mushi – yes, it is based on a 4-koma. The problem with us foreigners looking at these comic strips and comic strips turned anime is that a lot of things that a Japanese Otaku would find funny would seem rather plain, pointless, or dull to the rest of us. Some of it is because how the Japanese society work – that uptight atmosphere and pressure that everyone holds in would make most people from outside explode. But looking at the characters in 4koma, who most of the time don’t really hold back and just do whatever, that not-following-the-order-of-the-day business makes the people in the culture laugh.
In this case, for Potemayo, it’s selling two things: 1. moe. 2. physical cuteness and discrepancies among the characters and perverting stereo types. Potemayo and Guchiko is cute, and they can do whatever out of ordinary things that people can’t do. The order of things is broken, which is funny to quite a lot of people (including) me. As for the discrepancies of the characters, Yasumi palm’s Mikan’s head like a basketball; Mudo’s friend has a crush on the scrawny kid Mudo, who’s like a loli-con; Moriyama Sunao is just plain deadpan and seems unimpressed and expressionless about everything; Guchiko beams whoever and whatever she doesn’t like to death, or scythe them, and yet she fixes what she cuts with tapes – all these discrepancies combined with physical comic timing is what makes this show funny to (again) a lot of people. However, I can see why some people simply can’t laugh at it – even I feel sometimes it’s just plain silliness and not all that funny.
Have you tried Azumanga Daioh, School Rumble(not a 4koma based show), or Lucky Star? I personally think for 4koma based shows that we can see, Azumanga Daioh is the funniest, but even that one is packed with enough cultural specific references.
Just my way too long 1 1/2 cents.
But physical cuteness can only go so much…xD
Seriously though, your analysis is spot on–only certain demographics could actually appreciate these types of series, kinda like how anime is for a certain market, and there are subsets of it that further break down into the preferences of each viewer.
I do wonder though if these types of shows would have a re-watch value to it– in the future would you still consider the jokes funny, or are the sheer randomness and unorthodox humor enough to make the series have an imprint on viewers.
No, I wouldn’t. At least not for this show. So far the characters in this show don’t impress me at all. They don’t quite play it off each other as a good comedic team. And the unrealism can only go so far. This show to me, is just another light snack that’ll be quickly forgotten after it’s finished. It’s not on par with Azumanga Daioh or even Lucky Star – the former has memorable and quirky characters and the later capitalizes on the “Otaku phenomenon” and also has quirky characters, but these characters don’t play it off each other as well as the characters in Azumanga Daioh.
hahaha. Mudo-con. I’m going to have to use that! XD (mudo’s friend Kaoru is one of my fave characters, he’s just amusing as heck)
awesome review and such.