The next two reviews are of separate TV series, but both were aimed at adolescents and were broadcast on Wednesdays at 6:30 pm on Japan's WOWOW-TV satellite channel. NieA_7, 13 episodes from April 26 through July 19, 2000, was followed immediately by Hand Maid May, 10 episodes from July 26 through September 27, 2000. The two show different ways that anime humor is being targeted for today's age 13-and-up TV viewers.

© yoshitoshi Abe/NieA Project.

NieA_7. V.1, Poor Girl Blues. V.2, Funky Water Blues. V.3, Sayonara Blues. V.4, Under Seven Blues.
TV series (13 episodes), 2000. Director/writer: Takuya Sato. V.1, 4 episodes/100 minutes; V.2 - V.4, 3 episodes/75 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual $29.98. Distributor: Pioneer Entertainment.

"Ny-ee-ah under seven," as it is pronounced, is a combination of soap opera, sci-fi, and frenetic humor. The setting is so ethnically Japanese that the DVD extras include "footnotes" to explain unique cultural terms and traits. One is the frequent use of the word "hetare," meaning "lame humor." The note points out that "hetare" is a good description for NieA_7 since the dialogue is full of bad jokes, deliberately obscure references (even more so to Americans), and adolescent off-color humor.

The date is twenty years after a flying saucer has crashed in Japan, stranding its crew who look human except for Spocklike pointed ears and Teletubby antennas. They settle into human society as lower-class laborers. The setting is Enohana, a small town so far into the countryside that it has changed little since the end of the 20th century. Mayuko Chigasaki is a poor high school graduate attending a cram school to raise her grades enough to enter college. She is a tenant at the local old-fashioned community bathhouse, which desperately needs more customers to stay in business. She also has to put up with NieA, an alien girl who is a squatter in her closet. The tomboyish "no antenna" NieA has the personality of a spoiled cat; lazing in the sun and always asking when the next meal will be ready. Mayuko's attempts to make NieA "pay her way" by performing some chores, or trying to adapt some of the alien technology to the bathhouse's use, results in much Odd Couple humor.

The plot threads centering upon Mayuko emphasize realistic small-town life. Mayuko is concerned with earning enough to pay her college tuition, yet aware that she has no real goals once she does finish college. She and the other tenants of the bathhouse are a small family, with their own lives plus their shared effort to keep the outdated public facility open. The characters are appealing enough to hold viewer interest even when performing such actions as washing dishes. (Sato's clever directing keeps unexciting everyday activities from becoming boring.) The plot threads that spin off NieA emphasize the crazy humor. She builds miniature flying saucers out of junk and crashes through the bathhouse roof. A fellow alien becomes the manager of the local "11-7" store; he adopts the appearance of a turbaned East Indian because it is expected that convenience store managers be Hindi immigrants. Other aliens are parodies of other cultural stereotypes, including the overweight pimply anime fanboy. There is some overlap; one of Mayuko's Japanese friends wears his hair in Rastafarian dreadlocks. NieA's lazy ways make her a pariah even among the other aliens; will she ever improve herself? So the "odd couple" is not just Mayuko and NieA, but the juxtaposition of slow-paced rural Japanese society (drawn and animated realistically) and the clownishly bizarre alien society (grotesquely drawn and animated, allowing the Triangle Staff studio to use lots of limited animation). Two very different soap operas, deliberately clashing in every respect, intermixed during "a Summer at the Enohana Bathhouse."