Muromi-san was just about what I expected, only half as much…

Turns out Namiuchigiwa no Muromi-san is a half-length anime – checking in at about 13 minutes with no ED sequence – which is a mild disappointment as I’d hoped it would be one of the few comedies worth pursuing in a season loaded with action and science fiction.  Still, I’ll take that over a three-minute short, and it provides enough time for the series to show off some pretty decent comic chops in the premiere.

In content this series is pretty much what it looked like from the previews, which is a good thing.  It’s old-school art from an old-school studio (Tatsunoko), with old-school tastes in comedy.  Yukari Tamura is the mermaid Muromi-san, and Mizushima Takahiro the human boy, Mukoujima Takurou (I can’t hear a woman say “Takkun” without thinking of FLCL), who fishes her up.  It’s pretty meta having Mizushima as the guy who ends up hanging with a mermaid, of course, and the comedy in this series is generally pretty fourth-wall breaking and self-referential.  You’ve got talking starfish, some ecchi, a gag about an Aeon shopping mall opening next to the site of the Sea God’s old palace (those guys really do seem to be everywhere).  It’s definitely comedy of the carpet-bombing school – keep the gags coming fast and furious, and some of them will stick.

It’s hard to see blogging this one – as a gag comedy and a half-length one at that it doesn’t lend itself especially well, and it airs on the busiest day of the season.  But I”ll be surprised if I don’t keep watching – it made me laugh several times in the premiere, and it really does feel like you’re watching an anime comedy from an earlier era.