Hanamaru Kindergarten - Innocent Starter

There’s something rather piquant about three adorable kindergarten kids, their bumbling male teacher, and the assortment of characters that accompany them through twelve episodes of pastel-coloured fun that feel like twenty-four when it’s done. It’s cute, not pedo, and the series goes to great pains and lengths to avoid the traps of a genre which, by any other name, would sound as uncomfortable as you would feel if you’d just been asked to take a seat over there.

All it takes is a look at Hanamaru Kindergarten from a wider perspective—it’s self-aware to the point where you’d have to erect (and immediately demolish) a fourth wall should you want it to be any more sentient. It delicately sidesteps the numerous queasy factors that come with a girl in preschool confessing her love for her teacher with all the grace of a matador, allowing the show to focus on the more important things.

What are the important things in this show anyway? Perspective is the first thing that comes to mind. The way in which the various characters play off each other come to mind; Hiiragi, for example, is ingenious in the way her mature thought processes allow for a lot of amusing yet heartfelt escapades otherwise impossible without someone like her—the maturity she possesses isn’t handwaved as a convenient way by which to advance plot; it is merely incidental, thoroughly explained, and does not wholly define her as a character.

Furthermore, Hiiragi’s perspective is significant because it allows us to hold two views at the same time—that of the viewer, and that of the children—and, while certainly crosseyed at times, the dissonance present in such a contradiction plays a key part in exhibiting most of the series’s humour. We expect the children to behave like children and yet while they do so, they subvert it in many ways, some of which, like Hiiragi, resemble an adult’s forethought more than anything.

Then there’s the EDs. Seriously. Have you seen them? It’s another feather in the cap of the series—there’s nothing essentially “Gainax” about Hanamaru in that sense, but the unique EDs, one for each episode, help to add a definite touch to what would otherwise be a rather unremarkable adaptation with not much by way of the animation studio.

That being said, it never felt at any one point that Gainax working on Hanamaru was “wasted”, as it were. They obviously know how to handle a given work with much care and have matured over the years in this delicate business of bringing a static work to life, and while I’d welcome yet another adaptation, there’s something in me that’s looking forward to Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt this October. Never change, Gainax.

(Source: moe.imouto.org)