Anime Maria

[Sangome]

[SIZE="1"]WIKIPEDIA SUMMARY GOGOGOGOGOGO

[quote]Maria Holic revolves around a high school girl, Kanako Miyamae, who is scared of boys and breaks out in hives if a boy touches her. During her second year of high school, she enrolls in an all-girls school hoping to find a female romantic partner. However, her ideal candidate, Mariya Shidō, turns out to be a crossdressing boy.[/quote]

I'm sure you're all going EHHHH at that right now. But it's another anime from the zany studio known as SHAFT, who has worked on other anime such as Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei.

Now that you're nodding your head in agreement and going "ohhhhhhhhhhhhh" in an understanding tone, Maria Holic is easily my favorite anime of the winter season, which has been filled with stuff not too interesting to me. It's nicely animated, has wonderful, hilarious characters, awesome music, and, of course, enough zany humor to go around. My favorite is definitely Mariya, 'cause I love me a trap.

So, what about you all?

[For extended research, here: [U][URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Holic"]Wikipedia[/URL][/U], [U][URL="http://myanimelist.net/anime/5030/Maria%E2%80%A0Holic"]MAL[/URL][/U], [U][URL="http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=10200"]ANN[/URL][/U]][/SIZE]

[2010DigitalBoy]

As a huge Shinbo fan, I had very high hopes for this show. However, I didn't like the first 2 eps very much. Then the 3rd came and changed all that with plenty of awesomeness and the final countdown. The fourth was nice, too.

I am a fan of the girls in Kanako's harem, all of whom are just great. the show's vocal talent is of the chart. Maria is okay but he mostly pisses me off because he's just such a total jerk. Normally I'm huge on traps, but this one just infuriates me.

Anyway, I did blog posts on the first 4 episodes which are much more informative, but I warn that they are swear-heavy.

[B][URL="http://21stcenturydigitalboy.wordpress.com/2009/01/06/maria-holic-first-ep-impressions-possibly-in-a-desperate-attempt-to-be-trendy/"]ep 1[/URL], [URL="http://21stcenturydigitalboy.wordpress.com/2009/01/20/maria-holic-2-you-gunna-get-raped/"]ep 2[/URL], [URL="http://21stcenturydigitalboy.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/maria-holic-3-its-the-final-countdown-dadada-dah-dadada-da-dah-dadada-dah-dududadaduda-dah/"]ep 3[/URL],[URL="http://21stcenturydigitalboy.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/maria-holic-4-but-yesterday-was-friday-the-13th/"] ep 4[/URL][/B]

My favorite thing about this show is definitely the absolutely amazing opening video which I did a [URL="http://21stcenturydigitalboy.wordpress.com/2009/01/26/maria-holic-opening-possible-influences-erwin-wurm-and-the-red-hot-chili-peppers/"][B]research experiment[/B][/URL] on that you may find interesting.

[Shinmaru]

You know, it took a while, but [b]Maria Holic[/b] has slowly become my favorite anime of the winter season. (Not that it really has much strong competition, although I am watching more shows this season than I thought I would.) It's not quite as good as [b]Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei[/b], because there are more and stronger loonies in that show; however, it at least inherited the focus [b]Zetsubou Sensei[/b] has. Everything is essentially filtered through Kanako, which is part of what makes the show so strange, because she is such a weird pervert, haha. Her delusion this week about the different angels that would make up the Virgin Mary Festival is great, haha.

Mariya is definitely a jerk, but I think he has become a bit less overbearing because the show has gone out of its way to show him in many different situations in recent weeks. He's not just bullying Kanako -- he also has to keep up his appearance. I like that he is shown to be at least semi-serious about religion, although that does lead to him snapping at Kanako a bit more. xD

My favorite of the girls used to be Ishima, but now it's Nanami. She's an oddball, but she is pretty cute when she makes friends with everyone.