Category: Telepathy Shoujo Ran

Short Synopsis: Ran, Rui, Rin and Midori solve the case of the haunted resort building.
Highlights: Dialogue-heavy like no other.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Whoa! Since this is a NHK children series, you wouldn’t expect the dialogue to be so hard to understand, but Telepathy Shoujo Ran somehow manages to do it with this episode. Heck, the entire episode was one huge non-stop dialogue, with perhaps one or two seconds at which people weren’t talking. I really must say that for a children’s series, this series is pretty smart.

Okay, so if I understood correctly:
– Inside the resort, one of the guests who were staying with his family was killed.
– The one who killed him is an old classmate of his. The two of them killed (at least, that’s what I suspect, in any case they buried the guy’s dead body) one of their friends when they were young, and were too afraid to admit that what they did was wrong.
– They buried him at the place where the inn is right now.
– After the recent ghost sightings, the culprit wants to buy the inn, in order to get rid of the evidence and rumours.
– The culprit then killed the victim by throwing ice-cold water on him, to cause a heart failure.
– I didn’t quite catch why the victim had to be killed, but I suspect that he had enough of keeping their sin secret and he was planning to notify others of it.

This is why I love these NHK children’s shows. The kiddie series are of course to be avoided, but the series that air here can and will be surprisingly mature for their audience. Tsubasa Chronicle was about the only exception, but take a series as Dennou Coil, which very openly discussed the issues of death and forgetting about the deceased ones. Kaze no Shoujo Emily in its turn was very poetic, and also managed to slip in a number of deaths and mature topics, and Telepathy Shoujo Ran looks about to do the same. There’s of course censorship: the death are never referred to directly, and yet this episode was nothing short of a murder mystery story.

Seriously, I wish that Dutch children’s television was as good as this. I’m not saying that American children animation is bad, but nearly all of the stuff that makes it across the Atlantic IS, and everything is horribly dubbed. I mean, how else are these children going to learn any decent English?

Okay, enough ranting, my point is that I really liked this episode. For a murder mystery, this episode was surprisingly interesting, especially due to the lovable cast of characters, and even the ones that only appeared for one or two episodes are enjoyable to watch. I also liked how this episode combined both fake ghost sightings with real ghosts. That grandfather in bermudas was a nice touch. 😉

Short Synopsis: The current arc: a “supposedly” haunted hot spring resort.
Highlights: Look and watch Midori make an idiot out of herself.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8/10
Telepathy Shoujo Ran is obviously not perfect with its lack of subtlety and mysteries that sometimes are a bit far-fetched, and indeed my biggest fear is for this series to turn into the next Allison to Lillia, with the series going south as the inspiration of the creators runs out. For now, I’ll remain positive, though, because yet again this episode was really enjoyable. It shined through the banter between the different characters, and for now I’ll call this among the best of the middle-school detectives-genre.

I’m still not sure why the chief of the resort suddenly knew about Ran, but the rest of the mystery was pretty well done. The creators first pretend that this is some sort of Scooby Doo-esque mystery series, where the ghost appearances were caused by a human (where mostly Midori broke down the ghosts actions so that human actions would easily explain them), only put down a bunch of actual ghosts in front of the characters. I suppose it makes sense: since the powers of Ran are so omnipotent, why wouldn’t she be able to see ghosts?

I must say that I’m liking Midori more and more with every episode. She’s the smartest character of the cast, she’s sarcastic and likes to make sarcastic jokes and yet she continues to make an idiot out of herself whenever she’s in front of Ran’s brother. She’s really enjoyable to watch, no matter how questionable the mystery may end up to be.

Short Synopsis: There was indeed someone behind the phenomena in the village, but who?
Highlights: Huge pacing, and yet nothing was rushed.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 8,5/10
Whoa! Since when was this series this good? It’s still got the same problems as before: some plot-twists are a bit too coincidental and Ran has a few too elements of a Mary Sue, but damn, this episode had me pumped. It was like a roller-coaster ride from start to finish. In one episode, this series manages to reveal all the mysteries behind the village, and develop both the main characters, side characters and villains a bit.

I also really liked the amount of thought that was put into the “emahikusa”-flowers: they bloom whenever someone laughs, and they seem to be something left behind by a curse of the 13th century. The only strange thing was that the ultimate villain was the same teacher again, who had been messing with the villagers’ memories through mind-control, though at the same time, this episode turned her into more than just a bad guy, and showed a human side to her.

What’s also interesting in this episode was the different ways at which Midori and Rui look at death. Midori is very much straight to the point, and Rui seems to hate that part of her. They’re like two polar opposites, hold together by Ran.

I must say, that Telepathy Shoujo has successfully gone where Allison to Lillia failed. It’s obvious that a lot had to be cut out of the original storyline: the past two episodes contained 270 pages of the original novel. And strangely enough, the creators knew exactly what needed to stay and what needed to be cut out, and left to the viewer’s imagination. I can imagine how the whole story in the 13th century also was described in detail, but I’m perfectly fine of just having to guess what happened back then, and the creators captured the essence of this story: Midori kept acting so indifferent to death, but at the same time she would have died if it wasn’t for Ran’s powers and strong emotions when witnessing her death.

At the same time, there are seven volumes of the original children’s novels that still need to be animated through 21 episodes, meaning three episodes for each arc, which should be a perfect number with this pacing. It’ll allow the creators to take their time, and yet continue with this same addictive pacing.

Short Synopsis: Ran, Rui and Midori look for a way to spend the Golden Week. They end up in a suspicious looking village.
Highlights: No signs of subtlety yet, but the quiet moments is as solid as ever.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
Well, it doesn’t look like this series is going to be a subtle one: Ran, Rui, Midori and Ran’s father arrive at the village, and they’re immediately attacked by an army of zombified villagers. Thankfully, it does know how to build up a good mystery-plot that keeps you interested. Since the characters have gotten such huge powers, this series also needs to come with some big and complicated enemies.

Also, I’d love to see the face of someone who watched episode 1 and 2, and then skipped episode 3 to move on to the fourth one. You wouldn’t be able to recognize Midori back. I knew that she’d turned good quite soon, but this episode shows her fangirling over how cute Ran’s brother is. It’s interesting how she does know how to speak in regular Japanese, but just switches to Kansai-ben when she’s in a trusted environment. Makes it harder for me to understand, though. One thing I also like about this series is how the word jokes are easy enough for my limited Japanese to understand. I agree how it’s funnier if you manage to pick them out yourself.

In any case, what I’m most surprised about in this series is the huge role that Ran’s family plays in this series, where most families in show about middle or high-schoolers are virtually non-existent. This episode features Ran’s father, as he seems to know one of the people in this village (incidentally, this also turns to be the one who’s linked to the village’s mysteries. A bit sloppy, in my opinion).

Short Synopsis: The villain turns out to be… a teacher. More importantly: Ran and Midori become friends.
Highlights: Excellent banter, though the evil teacher was way too evil.
Overall Enjoyment Value: 7,5/10
I’m probably going to end up comparing this series a lot to Night Head Genesis, the in my opinion best series about psychics. There are a few things that Telepathy Shoujo Ran could have learned from it, and I especially mean how the lead characters grew up. Naoto and Naoya’s parents clearly loved them, but in the end they were taken away because Naoto kept causing trouble with his powers and quick temper. Telepathy Shoujo Ran’s reasoning turns out to be much less subtle: Midori and the teacher became hateful because they’re hated, Ran became cheerful because she has a caring family.

It’s really what this series needs: subtlety, because it’s bloody awesome in every other department: a terrific soundtrack, great graphics and especially an excellent sense of characterization. It just wants too much in too little time. Still, who knows where this series would end up once the characters start developing? This series is so much fun when something exciting isn’t happening, so I’m interested to see what this series can do once it has the time to build up and the characters have gained depth. For only that reason, I’m going to follow this series until the end.

The Kansai-ben was quite a surprise, I never expected Midori to come from Osaka, and this episode certainly changed the way you look at her character. I like how she’s witty, and doesn’t take everything for granted, although that Kansai-ben is a bitch to try and translate. I already have enough trouble with regular Japanese. It’s the same with Ghost Hound: the characters there too talked with weird accents. Ran’s brother also surprised me, in terms of the big role he had on Ran when she found out that Rui (Louie?) was missing.

Also… why were there sakura-petal on top of a school-building?

Ah, it’s good to see another good series about middle-schoolers. I’m not sure why, but in average, I tend to like these series much more than the series that focus on high-schools. Perhaps it’s the impulsive way that they try to solve their conflicts, or their innocence. Or how your average middle-schooler is much less annoying than your average high-schooler. In any case, this is going to be the first show I’ll be blogging this season.

Overall, Telepathy Shoujo ran is a great way to start the season, though it’s not perfect yet. It’s a tad heavy on the angst already, and it’s a shame that that masked guy didn’t reveal himself nor his intentions at the end of the episode, because now I have no way of knowing whether its mysteries will be stupid or not. At the moment, there still is a chance of this series ending up in the pits of cheese like Suteki Tantei Labyrinth or with a stupid plot like Allison and Lillia. One series with a dead body spiked on top of a radio-tower is enough.

Still, the potential’s there: the slice-of-life moments are nicely done and detailed enough to keep my interest. Ran also started out like an interesting main character, and even the romance is pretty cute. It’s talked about death already, so it’s not afraid to be a bit dark, despite the young age of its characters, which is a plus as well. After rewatching, I also realized that it’s also using a lot of foreshadowing. Always good for building up.

Another annoying thing is the overuse of CG for the psychic scenes. I liked the method Night Head Genesis used much better, but I guess that it does the job, and it’ll be easy to get used to. It’s in any case a huge contrast between the normal world and characters, which I think is what the creators had in mind with it.

Apart from that, the art looks excellent, despite its simplicity. Yoshihiro Ike also managed to deliver a great soundtrack and the OP and ED are both really good as well, so this series is solid on the production-values as well.