I was really looking forward to panning H2O. Seemingly a basic low-level visual novel conversion with fanservice and light-hearted ’storyline’ cliches abounding, it didn’t seem to offer much promise.

It’s been a while since I got to break out my flaming keyboard and H2O looked to be just the whipping boy needed to make more endearing shows of the visual novel / romance genre look even better about themselves. But instead, I found out the show as a whole is kind of like its central heroine, Hayami.

It’s offputting at first, a bit offensive, a thing that looks like something you don’t want to be acquainted with, but of course, there’s more to it than that. There’s a backstory - even one that’s a little tacky - to be told, another side to be seen, and overall, you can kind of see the merit of it.

It’s probably a testament to the fact that I’m horrible at hating things, as H2O isn’t going to be the next legendary show or anything…but it’s shaping up to be an anime worth watching, as it does, for all the things it does exactly the same as the last ten and the next hundred harem shows, there are actually some concepts that aren’t seen a lot around these parts of the woods.

And, come on. Mako-cakes proved a trap could work. Why not go for a second shot at gouging your eyes out?

I’ll say it straight. Episode 4 hurt. Beach episodes usually engage the eyebrow-twitching nerve pretty early with a jiggle-fest with all the bluntness of Link’s fairy Navi shouting “HEY! LISTEN!” every two seconds. H2O’s wasn’t really any exception, but at least near the end it managed to wrap around the badness meter into true hilarity.

Because after one side character tries to off Hirose, the other loses her swimsuit, another participates in the obligatory public bath groping scene whereupon Hinata grows five sizes, Hamaji mysteriously manages to hide his manly parts and stuff his swimsuit, Otoha fans Hirose with her skirt (in perfect-camera-angle fashion), … watching a trap and the main guy lip-lock in some CPR is absolutely hilarious.

It makes you wonder really what the animation team is trying to do with Hamaji. I’m not sure how many people found the CPR scene incredibly sensuous but I’m sure a few who were unspoiled were diving for the brain bleach soon after when Hamaji oh-so-subtly exposed his true self - yes, literally - to Hirose in the public bath.

Yet it’s skimmed over so easily before and after as if it never happened; I can understand why Hirose wants to forget, but are the girls unaware or uncaring? It seems like it’d be an important point … but I suppose Hamaji’s not an important character.

More important, actually, is the fixing of the other point that really stuck me about H2O aside from big-stick fanservice, and that was the more romantic-level pandering. H2O’s third episode wasn’t bad per se but it sent up some red flags about being a bit too catering to lonely viewers with Hinata (among others) jumping all over Hirose without even a moment’s effort. Hayami was a bit worrying to, being the obligatory “everybody hates her … except for you, the noble hero!” girl in visual novel, but we’ll return to her.

Hinata’s demeanor as a whole, like that of most ‘childhood friend’ type characters, is one that I’m not horribly a fan of, perhaps because I subscribe more to the school of working to make the relationship work. It all seems too easy, the equivalent of beating a game with cheat codes on - simple, yeah, but rewarding in the end? Hah. Maybe it’s fun the way you can totally smash through without a second thought or a foot placed wrong, but in the end it’s usually better to play the game the way it’s meant to be played, and in terms of romance that means taking the two-way street.

Luckily, Hinata’s behavior seemed rather suspicious to me, like it was a bit too good to be true, too much of an act, like it was forced. And this turned out to be the right guess, as Hinata’s family (or rather, her token crotchety old man) was pressuring her into jumping high-class Hirose’s bones instead of hanging out with Very Bad Girl Hayami. Because, y’know, Hinata’s not a bad girl … which must be true considering how much she rolls over to her grandfather’s orders to roll over for Hirose.

In the end it still boils down to a somewhat tacky story of “I must love you because my family said so,” still sort of pandering but it’s a much deeper story than what the original looked to be, and combined with the other characters it seems like something that could actually be something not bad.

This is because H2O is a bit less afraid than other anime to take a look at what many claim is the true side of Japanese society, or at least of some social structures, in ostracizing certain people as ‘outsiders’ without a second thought. Many anime, at least the visual novel ones, live in nice bright happy worlds, where everybody is pleasant (or nonexistent, depending on the environment), but H2O gets a little grittier than usual in showing the intense conflict between the essential haves and have-nots.

Granted, it’s not a Kaiji world by any means, and it’s possible that all this depth is just a ruse to make Hayami a more sympathetic character. But again it’s another side that’s not what it first seems at the beginning - it makes sense of out of the seemingly mindless, shock-value violence inflicted on Hayami in the first few episodes, another thing that, while it may disgust viewers, makes H2O distinctive from other visual novel shows in at least a little way.

Hirose is one step above the standard visual novel character as well, in how he has a character gimmick and the semblances of a backbone. His blindness is something that not a lot of characters have, and while it may just be a cheap ploy for fanservice and was removed at the end of the first episode, there’s an overhanging sense of “Otoha giveth, and Otoha taketh away,” but it could be something to see Hirose lose his vision again, and how he will be forced to cope with that development.

Not to mention, he does have the sense to do something when he gets the feeling that something is wrong, as is with the cases of Hinata and Hayami (although, when both are involved, he tends to freeze up). He has a sense of morality that drives him moreso than most harem leads just along for the ride, perhaps as a result of his temporary gift from Otoha. And I like that about him; his apparent background as something of status (why Hinata is chasing him) will make for another interesting aspect once it becomes clear that he’s chasing Hayami, when he begins to feel the brunt of the peer pressure as well.

All the praise for H2O might be just out of my sense of relief that it wasn’t as bad as it first seemed, the old ploy of starting out horribly to make the subsequent mediocre content appear better than it is. But in the end par for the course at this point in the show is promising considering that with any luck the show will continue to go up from here. There are enough plot points in the Hayami - Hinata - Hirose - the world relationships and interactions that if the show avoids dumping all its fanservice and dreck in one episode like with Hamaji’s (and, I worry, with the next one, Yui’s), it could turn out as quite respectable.

Considering what it’s going up again this season, epic might be a bit hard to reach; but nothing wrong ever came out of having a soul merely shook instead of rocked…

-CCY

(It’s kind of empty here for once. How about I mention that the new Super Smash Bros. Brawl has been sucking up a lot of my time recently? I’m surprised I managed to get this many posts in.)

This post is tagged H2O ~FitS~