Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko - Episode 1

With his parents moving away for work and no way for them to take their son with them, Makoto Niwa is sent out of the countryside and into the city to live with his aunt and attend school there.  Yes, it's a pretty typical opening gambit for an anime series - something Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko makes no bones about admitting straight from the mouth of its protagonist.

Needless to say the aunt in question, Meme Touwa, looks young beyond her years and has a cutely energetic personality that seemingly defies the position of responsibility over Makoto in which she has been placed.  That aside, she seems reasonably normal apart from making mention of the fact that the area she resides in is renowned for UFO sightings... oh, and she also shares her home with a girl who is constantly wrapped in a futon who she claims is her daughter but refuses to pay attention to or speak of at all.

This scenario only serves to pique Niwa's interest, and so he soon strikes up conversation with Erio Touwa, said "chikuwa" in a futon, only to have her respond to his questions and comments in a decidedly odd way which suggests that she isn't quite of this planet.  Come the end of this first episode, Makoto has finally coaxed the girl out of her futon, only to find this beauty claiming herself outright to be an alien, leaving Makoto to assume that her lack of coherent brain cells to rub together can only be to offset her good looks.

Really, judging by this opening episode Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko couldn't have been more of a perfect fit for the SHAFT treatment if it had been called SHAFT: The Anime; it simply has everything you'd expect from on of their more typical outings, be it the smart-alec protagonist full of one-liners and sharp comments, the utterly weird female character who everyone humours because what the Hell else are you going to do with her and the overly-cheerful comic relief aunt.  Throw in even more outright weirdness and you have Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko.  I seriously can't make my mind up what to think of this opener to the series - it gave me a few laughs, but at the same time it occasionally feels like it's trying too hard, and more importantly I can't really get a feel for exactly where the series is going to go from here.  In short, it's done enough to keep me watching for now, but I hope it has more to its bow than "oh look, the girl wraps herself in a futon all day" jokes.