Mitsudomoe - Episode 1

With a staff roster that takes in a number of those who worked on Minami-ke's first season, and a similar slice of life outlook, Mitsudomoe certainly looks on paper like a series which could prove to impress in the humour department. Whether it can do so depends, to a large degree, on its source material however.

This summer season show begins by introducing us to a brand new teacher just starting his career, Satoshi Yabe, and an equally new and beautiful school nurse named Aiko Kuriyama - A pairing which soon grabs the attention of the three young girls at the centre of the series. So far, so Hanamaru Kindergarten.


It doesn't take long for Mitsudomoe to set out its stall in terms of either its humour or the personality of that aforementioned troublesome trio, a set of triplets with wildly differing personalities. So we have the strong and overly perverted Futaba Marui, the self-confident and decidedly sadistic Mistuba, and the mysterious bookworm Hitoha. These three characters and their personalities very quickly become the template for where the show is headed, and nowhere is this better demonstrated by the second half of this opening episode, which involves the introduction of a class pet which somehow ends up getting the name Nipples, thus filling the joke quota for the entire ten minutes or so that follows.

If anything, I almost get the feeling that Mitsudomoe is trying a little too hard here - Satoshi's over-the-top reactions soon start to grate, and I have a nasty feeling the three Marui sisters will begin to do likewise as the show progresses. Similarly, there are elements of the humour which work well, before being battered into the ground by their constant repetition - The girls attempts to injure Satoshi's crotch in the name of romance work for so long before the gag is in danger of wearing thin, and however funny the "nipples" thing can be at times it simply went on for too long in the end. Certainly, Mitsudomoe won't be bringing us any highbrow humour, nor will it set out to be as cutesy as Hanamaru Kindergarten - This isn't a bad thing in either respect, but I do worry that its focus is too narrow to last out an entire season without becoming boring and/or repetitive.