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| 3. Iodine
 
Easily one of the most mind-numbingly adorable shows ever produced,
the series follows the adventures of a magical kitten who might be a long-lost
princess. The gimmick here is that Taruto and all the other cats are portrayed
as pint-sized humans with cat ears and tails, who wear clothes and speak. Their
regular sized human owners still treat them like normal cats, and it takes a while
to adjust to the odd visual results. Taruto is a bright-eyed, extremely emotional
young lady, who is desperately devoted to her drowsy-looking young master, Iori.
The adventures are mainly silly, juvenile crises with a dose of the supernatural
once in a while. These are clearly meant for the benefit of a very young audience,
but Taruto simply never does anything of interest with its premise or characters.
Taruto herself is so mindlessly, cloyingly sweet, she's hard to take for even
short periods of time. The secondary characters are disappointingly bland, relying
almost solely on the pretty visuals to give them personality. With
decent animation and unnervingly cute designs, the show's eye candy is its one
saving grace. The rest, from the voice acting to the writing to the direction,
are mediocre and unremarkable. While the writing manages some sweet moments, these
are few and far between. Admittedly, my tastes don't run to these types of shows
in the first place, but Taruto is the only anime I've ever seen that I
can only describe as completely dull and uninteresting. |
| 2. Cross
Scars 
This series follows the adventures of a young cat girl, Taruto,
who is supposedly the magical princess of a civilization from another world but
who was sent here for protection. At 12 episodes
MNNT is a relatively short series but this doesn't stop the plot moving
quite slowly. In the first episode we're shown that there are groups searching
for Taruto but after that we don't see these groups again until over half way
through the series. So for the first half the plot doesn't really go any where
but it's still good to watch. The whole thing is very cute and the characters
likable so even without any plot development it's nice enough to watch. Plus there
are some subtle undertones to the series which mean that it's far from being as
brainless as the description sounds. However it's
really in the last several episodes that the series is at its most entertaining
as events start to happen. But despite this it's good to see that the series doesn't
lose its original light hearted appeal as happens in other series. The second
half of the series also helps to develop the characters into more rounded individuals,
it's just a shame things didn't get going slightly earlier. Despite
the rather stereotypical sounding background MNNT is a series which focuses
very lightly on the magical aspect of the show and is enjoyable to watch for completely
different reasons. MNNT might have been better off being squeezed in a
five or six part OAV, as the middle episodes drag slightly, but as a whole it's
still a very good short series. |
| 
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(3.5)