天下制覇

If Love Hina was built on the back of our delightful Horie Yui, then Nagasarete Airantou is going to live and die by the same. Even though she’s not the most talented VA around in my opinion, she does have a delightful voice to listen to and has some of the best vocal chops in the business.

Oh, there’s some show about a kid on an island too.

I’ve only read about the first volume of the comic, but from my memory, it follows very closely. Hapless hero Ikuto runs away from home and due to various circumstances, ends up trapped on an island of amazonian girls and is pretty much adopted by the ultra energetic and well meaning Suzu. Lacking knowledge of men, all sorts of ‘crazy’ hijinks ensue, though almost all of them are of the “female hits on/walks in naked to/flirts with” Ikuto variety and being the harem putz that he is, he’s of course mortally traumatized by the nubile flesh being thrown his way.

Anyway, the show itself is actually quite a bit better than I was expecting. The comic is a rather fun slapstick ride that doesn’t really offer much new in the way of creative twists or surprises, but just excels at being generally well written and developed, and at least through one episode, Airantou succeeds at that as well.

The music is nothing to really write home about, though it’s always a delight to hear Horie sing. The animation is also not stellar, but it was a lot better than I had expected it to be and there were more than a few moments when it was clear that Feel put the extra effort in. Art is always a high point of Feel’s works too, and this was no exception. Rather high quality throughout.

So, I guess what I’m saying is that as far as harems or slapstick comedies go, you could easily do far far worse than Nagasarete Airantou. I doubt it’ll make many people’s Top 10 lists ever, but if the first episode’s any indicator, we should be in for a rather entertaining ride. Next episode, the great competition for Ikuto!