Inu X Boku Secret Service

I LOVED this soooooooooo much i wish there was a season 2. My favorite character's ish Karuta Roromiya, and Banri Watanuki also Ririchiyo and Soshi, Rensho and Nobara i cnt pick 1 favorite also Maid # 1 . It was really funny and up beat but also rlly sad when it ended that ish why i hope there is a 2nd season and it was really cool all the different transformations they had. The theme song was really sad but also up beat. I never would hhave guessed that Ririchiyo and Sou would get married !!!!

Knowing that Aniplex was the company behind this, I simply had to watch it. Aniplex came out with a pretty good number of great anime series: Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Oreimo, Gurren Lagann, Anohana, and a good number of others worth noting. Knowing they've had a good run with anime, I've decided it was time for me to watch Inu x Boku SS.

Here's my review.

Plot: This is an anime that takes place at Ayakashi Kan, where reincarnations of ancient demons live under the protection of Secret Service agents. This, then, is the story of Ririchiyo Shirakiin, a reincarnation of a demon of some sort, who makes a contract with Soushi Miketsukami, the reincarnation of a nine-tailed fox. The first episodes reveals the powers of almost all of the important characters of the series, if not all, but other than that, there will only be a couple of instances when these powers will be put to use. This is where I realize quickly that this is not exactly centered as a supernatural fantasy anime; this is really more of a romantic comedy, if you're into that sort of thing (I'll admit that I am). This anime doesn't have much of a plot. All you really need to do is select between certain episodes and then watch the last two to get a grip of what's really happening.

Characters: Watching these characters, to me, was like watching a blender take characters from other animes and mixing them together: Usui Takumi from Kaichou wa Maid-sama, Kuroneko from Oreimo, a female version of Twenty from Tantei Opera Milky Holmes, and so on. The characters, in that sense, are pretty generic, but it still amazes me how they work pretty well together.

Content: There are times when it's reminiscent of a drama, but almost all other times you should be convinced you're watching a comedy. It's an anime that you could laugh out loud at, and that is what puts it in the comedy genre. The romantic part, though, could be had from the start with Miketsukami, who is basically in love with Ririchiyo from the start, and the rest is just Ririchiyo trying to understand her own feelings.

If you're a fan of fan service, I'm almost certain you will love Nobara Yukinokouji. She's the perverted character with a loli complex, and just watching her in her perverted fantasy is enough to coerce a smile here and there.

Miscellaneous: Is it okay to be making up terms? I think it's hilarious how Nobara invented a term all on her own, after the characters noted that Ririchiyo is a tsundere type. As for music, I've already got a couple of songs in my playlist, which is an interesting turn, I should say, since the song I'm most likely to listen to again and again is the one that Karuta Roromiya sings. As expected from Aniplex, I love the animation. I've always had a strange bias towards high-quality animation.

Overall: So what's the deal? I basically said I like this anime, but why give it 3 stars? Well, it was a decent anime, I'll say that. I just wish that they didn't stray too far from its roots as a supernatural combat anime, although the romance aspect was done pretty well. At the end of the day, the characters are recycled, and although this anime is good for a couple of laughs, that strange mix of drama in an anime that "deforms" faces too often simply doesn't work with me.

Watch it once, but from that point on, I'd decide whether or not I'd want to watch it a second time. I would, but that would be after I watch all of my favorite anime series again.

The little piano bit that pops up here and there is probably the prettiest thing in this anime...

Good things first. First, the animation. They didn't slouch here, it's well done in the anime style and you have a nice rambunctious cast of characters to watch fly across the screen. This goes for the two main protagonists as well.

Second, the secondary characters. Honestly they make the show. Most of them are quite humorous, and give this show what little kick it has in terms of humor. Unfortunately these characters are side characters and we are forced to swallow a huge helping of probably the the two *weakest* characters in the show.

This is a romance. Let me first point out that at no point during this show did I empathize for a relationship to form between them. She's a short, average, somewhat grumpy facade-wearing tsundere type girl, and he's this incredibly tall (in comparison to her) self-described sub-human servant who is pretty much at her every beck and call. Let's get this straight...there's nothing romantic about this. It's just weird at best. I could just honestly never get in to the idea of them being perfect for each other. Both aesthetically and character-wise. It just didn't work, which to me is a failure on the shows part because it's a romance, I assume I'm supposed to want the two main protagonists to be together, or kiss, or *anything* really, but I did not ever feel that. I found myself sort of retching a little bit near the end what with all the blatant confessions and outward emotions (the inquiry as to being her child bearer...), which all felt arbitrary to me because since it's such a short series, it needed to happen somewhere I guess.

All the proprietary details like them being demons, or everyone in the damn house they live in being demons seems to sort of be nothing but unimportant fodder. This whole anime could have been done without any of the demon stuff and I'd almost be inclined to rate it better. It literally has NO bearing on the story. At all. There's a fight or two which could be eclipsed by some rom-com scene and nobody would notice they were missing.

They clench the relationship between the two characters at the end by dumping an incredibly heavy amount of back-story in to the last couple of episodes and I *haaaaaate* when animes do this. It's a mere tactic to make you feel surprised, or feel like there was a big twist, but it's nothing more than glorified on the spot retcon to pull all the dangling ends together at the end in a way you couldn't have possibly guessed.

At the end of the day you have an average romantic comedy with incredibly in-frequent moments of blushy gushy and even more in-frequent moments of action, pieced together in the end by a flash-back heavy last couple of episodes. It's *average* at best and annoying at its worst, but to me the fact that I could never get on board with the two characters being in love was a huge strike on them, and it's not particularly difficult to get me on their side for a love story. It really isn't.