Aishiteruze Baby

You'll have to forgive me for thinking the worse for japanese anime and manga culture. I have been exposed to much too much of the stuff. Anyway, the worst that I have seen involves something so utterly disgusting but apparently popular enough to be called "lolicon" (no, there's much, much worse but I won't say it). The first part of that word stems from "lolita" so you get the idea. When I first watched the first several minutes of Aishiteruze Baby, I had a terrible, terrible feeling it was going to be just that.

Fortunately I was quite wrong. But knowing that there exists something called the internet, there is probably going to be fan-made crap that will twist the entire thing into such trash.

I'll stop thinking so terribly about this show and talk about how cute it is.

Hooray! It's a schoolkid story that's neither boring nor ridiculous! A 15 17 year old boy is put in guardianship of his 5 year old cousin when her mother disappears. It's all a bit disturbing at first because the boy's got some weird relationships with his female friends at school, but it's all innocent. An innocent love at first sight. :)

The story develops with realistic issues that a 5 year old could experience. None of that candy-coated "my friends have better toys than me" crap. More like issues of abandonment, solitude, jealousy, child abuse... on the other hand, the show deals with them at a decent pace and without making you feel like throttling certain characters despite some weighty topics.

Jorgh probably won't like the series too much because it doesn't have any hand-to-hand combat, perpetual powering up, absurd comedy, or boobs. OK, it has boobs. But not naked boobs.

ADD.: So the manga series ends differently, and it's much, much more heart-tugging than the anime ending, although things seemed more rushed.