Ookami -San to Shichinin no Nakama-Tachi Review – 77,5/100



For the series that had the most hard to remember title of the past summer season, I was expecting something like a fairy tale story with some moe elements. Instead, we got a moe story with some fairy tale elements. Obviously that was a bit of a disappointment, but it’s still a pretty decent series.

I think the best way to describe this series is that it’s generally well executed, but it has a number of things that ended up holding it down. JC Staff really put some of their best animators on this series, which really results in a show that is chock full of interesting animation, with rich and detailed movements. It’s well directed, the dialogue is also pretty well written and presented. The characters are lively and are portrayed as such. At these aspects, it’s a very charming series.

Unfortunately, this is one of those series where it’s really the plot and content that hurts it the most, in which your mileage may vary depending on how much you can stand moe and harem stereotypes, because this show is chock full of it. Maids, tsunderes, boob jokes, punks, magicians, popularity contests, fireworks, pool episodes, you name it and this show probably has it. This is great for if you love these kinds of things, but personally I was rather annoyed with all of the stock situations that this series came up with, even though it often provided some sort of twist or creative twist to their cases. You can see that this series likes to be tongue in cheek about its subject material, and it’s very much a homage to various moe stereotypes, but for my tastes it wasn’t tongue in cheek enough.

The presentation is, like mentioned above, pretty solid, though there are some strange and notable exceptions. You know the good comedies, who even when a joke falls flat remain fun and interesting to watch. Ookami doesn’t have that: when a joke falls flat, it really falls flat, and this show often has a tendency to repeat those jokes over and over again. The most notable here are the boob jokes (there are way too many of those here, and they just refuse to leave), but the narrator also has some moments in which she thinks she’s funny while she actually isn’t.

This is also one of those series that doesn’t try to hide the fact that it’s based on a still on-going series of light novels. It just ends. There is no real conclusion, and the final episodes fail miserably in their attempts to at least have some sort of climax by introducing way too many new side-plots and turning the big bad guy of the series into an evil genius with huge holes in his plans. And to the rest of the villains of this series, the creators aren’t really kind either: most of them just end up as one-dimensional punching bags for the lead characters, so they fail to introduce any kind of tension.

And yet… despite all that I said here… I do kindof like this show. The lead characters are pretty charming and nicely characterized, and all of the protagonists have their own backstory and personality. The episodic nature of this series prevents it from dragging on and the fairy tale roots of the series aren’t really a core of the series, but they do provide the series with a nice amount of symbolism which really helped this series. It is indeed a show focused heavily on moe stereotypes, but I have watched tons of blander moe shows.

Storytelling: 7/10 – Solid, though a bit too reliant on stereotypes at times.
Characters: 8/10 – The good guys are interesting to watch, the bad guys not so much.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Excellent animation, I have to admit.
Setting: 7/10 – Too many moe stereotypes that will turn off those who aren’t interested in them.

Suggestions:
GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class
Kannagi