Moetan 1, Bad English comes to life

 

     Moetan  is an anime based on some English language study guides published in Japan targeted towards anime, manga, and video game otaku. These study guides were originally made fun of because of there poor quality in studying proper English usage, and these guides have even been parodied several times. The series follows the adventures of Ink-chan, a shy, cute, very young looking Japanese high schoolgirl, and her crush Nao-kun a Japanese high school guy. Ink-chan has a serious crush on Nao-kun but can’t quite bring herself to tell him so, she even gets encouragement for her friends but she still can’t say it.

     Ink-chan is very good in English class, she gets the highest scores, Nao-kun is very bad in English he scores so low that his future university attendance is put in jeopardy, this situation could ruin Ink’s dream of them attending college together. As Ink goes to a temple to pray for Nao’s college situation to improve she gets hit in the head by a falling duck like creature. It turns out that the duck was sent by the king of the magical world into the human world as punishment, and that he going to make Ink a magic girl. Well, at first Ink says no, but when she finds out she can change her appearance and help Nao-kun study she accepts the magic girl job. So she gets a magical transformation device (cell phone), and transforms into magical teacher, pastel ink. So Ink uses her new magic girl persona to help Nao-kun study English, and lots of madcap fun occurs at Nao-kun’s house. That’s all for episode 1.

     Well, I found Moetan  to be a quite amusing sightly ecchi send up of the magic girl genre. Just about everything you’d find in a magic girl series is just slightly twisted in a funny way. In most magic girl series the main character is a sweet, pure and innocent girl with a non sexual attraction to her crush but Ink clearly lusts after Nao but doesn’t have the courage to say it. also in most magic girl series the animal mascot is usually a older more mature guiding voice of reason, but Ah-kun is a semi perverted disinterested guy. When a magic girl transforms she almost always changes into a slightly more mature version of herself, but Ink’s transformation is to a more loli version of herself. All in all I found the show to be a quite funny spoof of a magic girl series that anyone with a little otaku in them could love. Hell if your an otaku you can only dream of the night a loli maho shojo shows up at your door to “help you study”.