Fight-Ippatsu! Juuden-chan – Episode 1
Studio: Studio Hibari
Premiere Date: 6/25/09
Genre: Ecchi Comedy

The Story

Taking place in a world not entirely unlike ours (actually, it is ours) humans are helped along everyday without ever realizing it. In a parallel world to ours, a group of office ladies are trained to enter our world and help out depressed people. The main character of this series is one of those ladies named Plug (insert your own “insert item A into slot B” joke here). While she’s not great at her job, she still puts in her best effort to go to Earth each night and charge up depressed people using electricity.

One night while searching out a target, she meets a young man taking care of his younger sister while working himself much too hard. This has left his little sister depressed and in need of a charge. He is absolutely not sold on the idea of depressed people being charged up with electricity making him work even harder to thwart Plug’s every effort to give his sister a recharge.

Good and the Bad

If you’re a person who follows anime news regularly, you’ve been given every single warning possible regarding this series. The first hint was Bow Ditama being the original creator. With Mahomatic and Kiss x Sis to his name, that gave fans an idea right away. Then a number of early images found their way online which smacked fans over the head with some of the early sex jokes. Going into this first episode, I was prepared for almost nothing but sex jokes and needless nudity (not that this is necessarily a bad thing); imagine my shock when I found that episode actually introduces something that actually resembles a cute story.

Yeah, So there are a few of those

Promising off the wall physical sex jokes, Juuden-chan goes a much tamer route in this first episode. There are still a ton of jokes that fall right into that comfortable ‘ecchi’ category. What is nice about this first episode though is that these jokes aren’t the central focus of the series so far. Starting things off with a nice story introduction, fans are eased into this series with a nice sequence. While it only takes about two and a half minutes for audiences to get their first peek of flesh, it works as a solid punch line rather than a beaten to death one liner.

The one thing that never seemed to go over as well during this first episode is the large amount of the physical comedy. Despite the caring disposition that he shows towards his sister, Sentou really comes across harshly making it hard to like him. Sure he’s protective of his sister but watching him beat Plug senseless three to four times within one episode lost its humor really quickly.  

Working with a small cast, Juuden-chan introduces a solid crew of characters for fans to start liking almost right away. Serving as a funny and charming heroine, Plug had me laughing throughout most of the episode. Enthusiastic about her job, Plug comes across as just the right amount of quirky to stay funny and interesting without becoming a doorknob capable of nothing but fan service.

Don't ask me about the things in her head

Visually Studio Hibari created a very nice looking opening episode. Filled with nicely drawn characters and good presentation, it’s easy to just sink back and enjoy this series. As promised, this episode does have its own share of fan service with promises of even more later. A great example of this is Hakone’s bath scene late in the episode… you just know that when this series is released on DVD the steam is going to fade and the breast content of that scene is going to rise by about 200%.

Music

When you first begin to watch this series, the music can be deceptively faint making it easy to tune out. If you find yourself doing that, be sure to snap out of it because the music in this episode is worth listening for. Composed by Akifumi Tada (Skip Beat, Final Fantasy Unlimited, Hare+Guu), the background music did a great job of keeping the atmosphere strong particularly during Hakone’s scenes. When she’s sad, the music has a soft theme that slows the pace down considerably. Minutes later, the charged theme does another great job of changing the atmosphere completely and giving the audience a brand new side to the sad little girl they were getting to know.       

Hey, there's a loli in my foreshadowing! Sweet!

 

 

Overall 

With the first episode of Juuden-chan, it’s easy to see how so many fans could be taken in by it. Filled with funny characters and a charming story, the first episode did a great job of hooking fans in for more. It should be of absolutely no surprise to anyone though when the second episode ramps up the fan service and sex jokes considerably with the introduction of Plug’s rival. I am going into the next episodes excited to see more but it will be interesting to see how many unsuspecting fans will end up dropping the series later when it delivers on all its promises. For now, Juuden-chan is a hyper comedy that is just getting started on its quest to charge people up with breast jokes and all the fun things go with it.

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