Cute High Earth Defense Club Happy Kiss First Impressions

I enjoyed the first Cute High Earth Defense Club anime but dropped the sequel mid-way because it just felt repetitive. I wasn’t going to pick this up, but a few positive reviews encouraged me to try episode one. I ended up being pleasantly surprise. What did you think of this first episode?

What happens when five guys gather in a club room and then a bath house talking about nothing in particular when a strange creature appears and grants them magic powers they didn’t ask for and don’t want? Well, we’ve seen before what happens and for a season at least it was pretty entertaining so what does Happy Kiss bring to the table?

This time around we have an otter instead of a wombat and this otter claims to be a Prince. Judging from the preview of the next episode it looks like the politics of the aliens are actually going to come more into play this time around though we’ll wait and see. We also have five different guys but at the same time it is more of the same. While the cast are amusing enough they are all pretty much standing in for some fairly standard tropes and the dialogue, while entertaining isn’t exactly flowing naturally. Particularly with fourth wall breaking comments about the animators flubbing a scene.

Still, this works because it holds to the standard magical girl cliches and injects just enough humour to the situation through the absurdity of it. As a first episode it was amusing enough and small details like the tea cups early in the episode having a stripe of the colour the boys would eventually transform into were appreciated.

I’ll give this one a bit longer and see how it goes. And yes, I know I’m being contrary after dropping other comedy shows but for some reason I have a soft spot for this franchise.

Thanks for reading.

Karandi James