While watching the first episode of Okami-san and her Seven Companions, and saw a long-haired, flat-chested girl with piercing eyes, I said to myself, this is a JC Staff title… and I was right! Yes, here is the first episode review of Okami-san and since this is part of ONEShots, I will also post a synopsis of this episode.
The episode kicks off with a guy running away from a long-haired girl that says she is a representative of the Otogi Bank, we will get to know that thing later. After he is cornered, a short girl that kinda looks like Pinoko of Black Jack fame, flashed us some photos of him stalking a girl.
The guy suddenly attacked the long-haired girl, and charged her with his knife. But because of a pebble flying, it disarmed the man and gave the long-haired girl a chance to attack her with her cat claws (Well, not technically cat claws but cat-shaped gloves) and knocked the guy down. After the guy falls down, Ringo (The one that kinda looks like Pinoko) said to Ryoko (The girl with those gloves) that she has taken everything on tape. The two leaves and we saw a glimpse of the guy who disarmed the one who attacked Ryoko.
Now, the episode official starts! Long, long ago okay, not that long ago, there is a city called Otogibana and a school called Otogi Academy. We are now introduced to the heroines of this story, Ryoko and Ringo and the Otogi Academy Student Mutual Assitance Association or better known as Otogi Bank (Sheesh, the real name is quite a mouthful!).
We are introduced to this club’s president, Kiriki Liszt, its Kiriki Alice, the cousin of the president that kinda looks like Wilhemina Carmel of Shakugan no Shana fame (Another JC Staff title) and their meido, Tsurugaya Otsuu.
Since their mission earlier is quite dangerous, the President suggested if they will have a new male member. But Ryoko said that is Urashima enough for the club in which we are led into this scene.
It’s up to you on what these two are doing.
Anyways, the President said that if they will find an interesting guy, they should inform him. We are now then led to Ryoko’s after school activity, practicing in a boxing gym… that was spelled as gim. After taking a shower, she walks to her home and we heard a strange voice. The voice keeps on telling Ryoko that he likes her. The guy appears, and introduced himself as Morino Ryoshi… and it seems this guy is scared when someone stares at him.
Ryoshi then tells Ryoko that he likes her. Ryoko not interested left the place but Ryoshi stopped her and Ryoko asked him what those he like about her. He tells that because she is strong, wild and manly, something that you would not tell a girl. Ryoko suddenly left the scene. Poor guy.
And on that night on Ringo and Ryoko’s dorm, Ryoko talked about being confessed by a guy. Ringo asked who is the guy, she searches him in her laptop. Ringo after learning that he is the guy that confessed him love to her best friend, she fired up and do her bst to make sure he is worthy for her best friend which leads to this.
Ringo recruiting him in the Otogi Bank, we learned thanks to Ringo’s research that his physique is average-ish and he has the ability to hide his presence thanks to his grandfather who is a hunter… and learned that because he grew up in rural areas, he is not used being stared at, you can say he has scopophobia.
After Ringo told everyone that he confessed his love for Ryoko, we learned that he has been tailing Ryoko for quite sometime, could he be the one who threw a pebble on that guy’s hand? The seniors accepted Ryoshi but Ryoko can’t accept him because he admitted that when he saw her being attacked with a knife, he didn’t make a move to save her. Ryoko leaves and a client appears.
The client introduced herself and she wants Otogi Bank to help her with her sempai in the Tennis Club, and the meido asked her the conditions in hiring Otogi Bank, she replied the conditions, “In exchange for their help, she has to help the Bank.”
With those conditions in mind, the meido asked her the details of her request, Ooji, is a second year Tennis Club member who is known in their school as the Prince of Tennis (Not related to that anime filled with bishonens that ruined my interest in the said sport). Because of his injury, he cannot play tennis and plans to quit from the club. Because of the client’s admiration for the guy, he wants to stop his plan on handling his club resignation form. This is where our hunter will start making his impression on Ryoko.
Ryoshi is assigned to follow Ooji around and if he gets the chance, he will get the form and prevent Ooji in leaving the club. For Ooji’s resignation to be complete, the form must be stamped by the club president, the club moderator and the homeroom teacher and pass it on the school meeting at 5pm. After many attempts, Ryoshi failed in grabbing the form and all three stamps are stamped on the form, all Ooji needs to do is to give it to the meeting.
Which leads to this, we are introduced to Majo, the group’s mad scientist and showed to us her invention, a bicycle pumpkin. O_O Okay, we have a Cinderella reference except it was set in the modern age and the client is the one chasing for her Prince Charming.
But because if the client will ride the bike and she is wearing a mini skirt, it will have some difficulty so, Ryoshi volunteered but because of him being scopophobic, Majo had an idea, he will pedal the bike blindfolded with the client telling him directions. After the client saw her senior, she orders Morino to stop the bike but since the bike has no brakes, he checks if the bike has other ways to stop and removes his blindfold. Since everyone is staring at him, he bummed out and crashed into a bench which caused the client to fly towards her sempai and leads to this.
RAIDA KEEEEK!
Because of this kick, it knock both of them down and caused the client’s shoes to fly out from his foot. This is when Prince Charming will start looking for her assailant.
After the success of the mission, some thugs confronted Ringo and Ryoko and Ryoko fights them with her Neko Neko Gloves (Those cat claws from earlier). The knocked down thugs grabs a metal shaft lying on the ground and tried to hit Ryoko but Ryoshi arrives and turns himself into a human shield! How sweet. After defeating the last of them, Ryoko went to Ryoshi and learned this, Ryoshi has been following them again, this time he is planning to apologize to Ryoko but because of the thugs, he decided that he wants to fight them but he froze, and so, he because a human shield.
And so, Ryoko accepted him and she said that she would just call her by his first name, Ryoshi and he will call her by her first name, Ryoko. The opening of the series played and after this, we are now back to our Prince Charming, like that Prince in the fairy tale, he looked for girl who owns that sneaker and asked each girl to kick him until finally, the client appears and kicked him. He asked the client to kick him again and after this, the two live happily ever after, the end.
On the review, the first episode of Okami-san and her Seven Companions was quite good. A standard JC Staff episode that has a tsundere for a female lead and a guy who doesn’t have musch self-confidence for himself as the leading man. The first episode felt like Toradora! (Another JC Staff title) all over again except that our guy is the exact opposite of Ryuji.
First impressions on the characters, Ryoko was like Taiga Aisaka aside from the fact that both of them almost have the same personality. I sense that Ryoko will be pressure cooked like what happen to Taiga later on in Toradora! by pressure cooked, I mean we will saw a softer side of this girl.
Ryoshi was like Ryuji Sakai earlier in Shakugan no Shana except that unlike Ryuji, Ryoshi is a hunter and probably have skills of a hunter that we are about to see later on in the series (Heck, the ending sequence of this episode gave us a clue on Ryoshi’s abilities).
For the other members of the Otogi Bank, how could I say it, only a couple of them interest me in this first episode. Otsu, the maid who has this fetish on returning back a request kinda interest me because seeing her enthusiasm on the client after telling her story gave me this sense that she will go overboard in some request later in the series.
Since this is still the first episode, we don’t know if some characters later in the series might interest me or not, I will reserve my comments on those later once the series is over.
Here’s one thing I observed in this series, the show has a lot of fairy tale references. When we are introduced to our characters, Ringo is said to be the Little Red Riding Hood in this series. Since okami means wolf in Japanese, you can say that Ryoko is the wolf in the fairy tale that wants to eat Riding Hood. Add the fact that Ryoshi is a hunter, we can just that the hunter fell in love with the wolf that he should kill and later on, if my theory is correct, the wolf will slowly harbor feelings to the hunter and Riding Hood become their medium in their relationship.
Speaking of fairy tale references, the episode’s client is like Cinderella’s opposite and the climax of his request is the exact opposite on what Cinderella did in the fairy tale. Instead of running away from the castle before midnight, we have Cinderella chasing his Prince who is going to the castle before 5pm! Like Cinderella, he left his glass, I mean, cotton sneaker.
Overall, aside from the fairy tale references, the narrator poking fun on our heroine’s flat-chest, the first episode was a good start of this yet another JC Staff romantic comedy.