NieA 7

This is the second effort by Ryotaro Nakamura and Yoshitoshi ABe, the creators of [Serial Experiments Lain]. Apparently, after completing Lain, the team felt like making something light-hearted and less emotionally demanding of the audience. Anyone who has seen Lain will understand this immediately.

It is summer, and it is hot, and humid, and the cicadas shrill relentlessly. Mayuko Chigasaki has a very hard life. She works like a dog for little pay (holding at least three menial jobs... cleaning up at the bath-house, delivering newspapers, and working as a waitress at a diner with no customers), attends a "cram school" (juku) otherwise populated with children of privelege, and she has an alien (NieA) living in her closet. She lives in a room under the leaky roof of the bath-house formerly owned by her family, in the small Enohana suburb of Shinagawa.

NieA claims to have been living in Mayuko's closet before Mayuko rented the room. I have only watched the first four episodes of the series so far, but I suspect that she is not telling the truth, and her motives in attaching herself to Mayuko are not entirely clear. Her antics cause considerable property damage, and Mayuko grudgingly accepts responsibility for it, driving herself ever deeper into penury. This is not a healthy relationship, but Mayuko somehow maintains an amazing equanimity which is reflected in the general mood of the series, giving it it's characteristic and uncanny atmosphere.

Events unfold at a leisurely pace, characters have long conversations where they discuss their individual day-to-day concerns, and life just goes on. There is a liberal sprinkling of mostly slapstick humor that balances things out pretty well. NieA 7 is beautiful, and funny, and dubbed with love, and you need to go out and buy it right away!

The creators of NieA 7 expressed surprise at the positive response it has received in the U.S., stating that the aliens are based on Japanese stereotypes of Americans. This seems astonsihingly naive.

If you love Ukelele music, you have a special reason for getting NieA 7... full Ukelele soundtrack! Woohoo!