Review: Pretear

Ok, so after having thoroughly rotting myself with anime for several hours today, I finished Pretear! Maybe it’s not such a good idea to do this with an anime (did so with DN Angel… overload!)… but I couldn’t resist! So even though I rotted myself all day it produced *tada!* a reviewable anime!

 

Pretear (anime)

“Sixteen year old Himeno Awayuki wants a normal, happy life. But when her nutty father Kaoru marries the wealthy executive Natsue, Himeno finds herself living on an estate the size of a small country and saddled with two step-sisters, Mayune and Mawata, who won’t give her the time of day! Little does Himeno know her life will go from bad to worse when the Princess of Disaster escapes from the realm of Leafeania. The dark princess is seeding the land with demon larva and intends to suck all the leafe – the life force of all beings – from the world!

Lead by the brooding Hayate, seven Knights of Leafe search for the only person who can stop this catastrophe: the Pretear, a special girl who, when merged with a Knight, transforms into an all-powerful defender of life. And the Pretear just happens to be Himeno! But is she up to the challenge?”

~Summary on back of DVD Box Set

This anime was really a day-brightener for me. At first when I found a preview on crunchyroll and read a bit of the info, I was like “Oh great, another schoolgirl saves the day” anime >.>

However, the plot is mostly what drew me in at the beginning. Here you have a girl, one who’s personality I can really relate to for once (as can most of us probably), who is going through a huge adjustment in life,  is found by the Leafe Knights and asked “could you save the world?” Simultaneously (looking at it from the other side) a group of life-defenders find out that, “uh oh!” the Princess of Disaster that they had sealed up 16 years ago *info alert sry* has escaped and plans to drain the world of Leafe.. and if they don’t find the Pretear – the one who can restore Leafe to the world…. everything will die!

The most interesting part of the plot in episode one is that you start out thinking it’s going to be the typical “guy finds girl, they start liking each other from second 1 of meeting, and the story develops from there to the end with ridiculous romancing”… however it actually follows a more complex plotline! I was pleasantly surprised with how the main character and the leader of the leafe knights go through a rocky start of their friendship through the first… 4 to 5 episodes! The awkward beginnings of the pretear and the Leafe Knights adds to the enjoyability (hilarious moments) and the drama, as well as the believeability of the story; I mean that it adds a link for us into the anime… things we can understand and relate to are tied into the plot and make us feel a little bit more for the characters and everyone else involved. {Sometimes the more realistic/logical (to an extent) the story is the more people tend to like it}.

A few things bothered me about this lovely story, though. There was an overuse of language in places *no problem for a TV guardian I suppose.. but TV guardians tend to mute out some of the rest of the convo >.>*, and I thought that they – for a shojo anime of all things – had a bit too much “fanservice” in it; the preting scenes flashed by some unnecessary places on Himeno, the preting itself looked a bit awkward (I had flashbacks of Sailor Moon during the transformation scenes >.>) . Mayune’s “shower scenes” were altogether unnecessary to go as far as they did.

Also, I think the anime took the action on a bit too fast; the plot seemed to be a bit accelerated at times. Perhaps it just seemed this way because I watched the whole series in a matter of hours, but perhaps an extra 15 minutes on each episode (or spreading the plot onto at least one or two more eps) would have made a better transition; we flit about from hilarious beginning training of Himeno to a rather serious matter about the Princess of Disaster, to yet another serious part about Mawata and Himeno, and then we go to the end! Even with the in-between stuff, it all happened a little too fast.

But on a good note they didn’t use filler episodes like most longer animes.

Overall it wasn’t bad at all for a 13 episode anime, though I wish they would have made it longer =(. And the ending though excellent… lacks something I thought was rather important. This is the only time I got mad during the whole anime… I would go into it but I’d prefer to not spoil it for you. Regardless, I think the creators of the anime could have done us all a service and made the ending a bit more shojo *sigh*. I hope you enjoy this anime as much as I do!

Additional Information:

Rating: 10/10!

Episodes: 13

OP/ED: “White Destiny” (Youko Ishida)/”Lucky Star” (Toshiyuki Oomori)

Type: Shojo

Parental Rating: PG (personally I wouldn’t let anyone younger than in their preteens watch this if they’re mature… but I have a rather strict moral scale so it’s with your discretion…)

DVD info:

*Complete Collection Box Set*

languages: Engl/Jap

Sub/Dub?: yes/yes!

Time (for entire series): 325 minutes.

Producer/Company: ADV films

this vid’s pretty cool. song: pretear, “white destiny”. enjoy =)

~ by hayatekaze on September 27, 2007.