Noucome

Summary: >

It's odd that Kanade is known around school to be one of the "Reject Five". He's smart, handsome and quite friendly. Kanade however suffers from the curse of "absolute choice". At times he's given choices he sees as literal multiple choice questions, which he MUST answer and obey. These choices are incredibly bizzare, embarrasing, and happen at the worst times. It's doomed Kanade to become notirious around school in a bad way.

It appeared his fortunes might change for the better when he's given an option of "a beutiful girl falls from the sky", and sure enough one did. Better yet, she'd been sent to help him. Unfortunatly she's inept at her task, but she brings good news that his curse can be lifted if he can complete missions from God. The missions seem to be as bad as the curse at times.

Thoughts: >

It had to happen sooner or later: a show with a title so long there's no avoiding breaking my site layout. My Mental Choices are Completely Interfering with my School Romantic Comedy (Abbreviated Noucome in Japanese) easily defeats Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Second Gig as the anime with the longest title I've encountered. For obvious reasons I'll refer to this by the abbreviation.

Noucome is centered around a really interesting idea: a guy sees life as literal multiple choice questions. Just as I was hitting the play button I thought: man, I sure have seen a lot of shows that turned out dumb despite centering around a clever idea. Which I think cursed the anime. It's truly puzzling how a show like this could be screwed up. Seems almost impossible from the fun concept doesn't it?

The multiple choice thing is a big let down, because the questions asked mesh poorly with the rest of the show. Noucome is off the wall and all over the place. Occasionally it's funny, but generally not. I spent the first five episodes not really laughing, instead trying to figure out what Noucome was trying to do. Then episode 6 changed things up; and it pains me to write this, but the little sister character improved things substantially. She made it clear what the show had been missing: direction. Noucome gleefully goes into spastic directionless fits, but that in itself isn't funny. The little sister went a specific direction with her jokes, and it's far more amusing. I wouldn't say things get focused, but the anime does come around for the better. By this time however, only 5 episodes remain of a 10 episode anime. If you wondering about the multiple choice theme, that also gets a little better towards the end.

I didn't like the characters either. I wish I had something witty to say about that, but they're just generic crap characters. But despite all the problems, the thing that really annoyed me came down to the end (or lack there of, since it's not conclusive). It's typical of harem anime to feature an indecisive guy. Noucome however is constructed around the core idea that the guy MUST choose. By the end, three girls took a liking to him. Inevitably he's presented with the option to choose between them, along with a fourth cop-out choice. And he still doesn't choose! Okay, maybe that was a spoiler, but not much of a surprise. It's a sad state when the main feature fails this badly, considering how lacking the rest is.

From start to finish, Noucome changes little and accomplishes nothing. The multiple choice theme seems cool, but it isn't utilized well, and pretty much everything else falls flat. I wouldn't say it's horrendous failure. It's watchable and has some funny moments, but as it stands now the entire thing is pretty pointless.

Screen Caps: >