Random Curiosity

OP Sequence

OP: 「素直になれない」 (Sunao ni Narenai) by Little Non
Watch the OP!: Mirror 1 Mirror 2

Summary:
Konoe Sunao has a dream about acting in a play that had no audience and where the curtain is dropped down on her. She wakes up and is already late for her first day at her new school. Sunao arrives in time, and is treated to the sight of a girl named Kurogane Otome waving a katana at a boy, and the sight of two girls - second-year Kanisawa Kinu and first-year Yashi Nagomi - arguing. Sunao tries to get them to stop arguing, but both of them want her to not interfere and leave them alone. The stand-off is interrupted when the princess of the school, Kiriya Erika, rides in on her bicycle and causes an uproar among the boys. Once the bell rings and Sunao goes to class, she introduces herself to everyone and proclaims that she loves theatrical plays. It garners almost no reaction from anyone, save for a girl named Nishizaki who takes a picture of Sunao. During lunch, Sunao asks the girl sitting next to her about the theater club, but the girl - named Asada Shizuka - tells her there is none. After getting over the shock, Sunao decides that she’s going to create the club herself. Shizuka tells her that she’ll need to apply with the student government, so Sunao goes to the student government building. She gets there only after having a run-in with a guy named Samesuga Shinichi, aka. the “Shark,” who thoroughly analyzed her body before she rejected him.
Inside the student government building, Sunao finds the president Erika in a compromising position on top of her assistant Satou Yoshimi (nicknamed “Yoppi”). Once things get cleared up, Sunao tells Erika about wanting to start a theater club. Despite Sunao’s enthusiasm, Erika rejects the proposal at first. Erika doesn’t think that Sunao is that serious about it, so she decides to give Sunao a condition: if Sunao can show Erika how interesting plays are, Erika will give her seal of approval. What’s more Erika wants her to do it today after school. Refusing to lose, Sunao decides to go ahead with it and returns to her classroom to practice her Romeo and Juliet. She passes by a boy she doesn’t notice, but that boy turns around and wonders where he’s seen her before. When the time comes, Sunao finds that an entire set has been prepared on the stage, and Erika even has a costume ready for Sunao. As she’s getting ready to go on, Sunao gets stage fright, remembering the time from her youth when she panicked in front of her audience during a performance. Back then, it was the encouragement of a certain boy that allowed her to continue on. However, that boy had also called her “Daikon” because of the way her hair was shaped.
Sunao works up the courage to get on stage and starts her one-woman Romeo and Juliet show. Erika becomes quite impressed by her ability, but then gets interrupted when the boy from before (the one who found Sunao familiar looking) comes in with some documents she needs to stamp. Sunao hears Erika address this boy as Tsushima, reminding her that the boy from her past was named Tsushima Leo. The face in her memory matches up to the face of the boy in front of her, meaning that this is Leo. The realization causes Sunao to lean forward on the castle set, tipping it forward and triggering everything to fall down. When the dust clears, Sunao is sitting on top of Leo after he tried to save her. She notices that he doesn’t seem to remember her. When she mentions it, he has to think for a while before he notices her twin tails of hair and calls her the “Daikon” nickname. Sunao slaps him for saying that and almost starts to cry. In the end, Sunao has to clean up the set after Erika rejected her theater club. Thinking about it, Sunao almost starts crying again, but clears her eyes when Shizuka comes up to her. Shizuka had been watching the performance earlier and declares herself to be Sunao’s fan because of how well Sunao did. An emotional Sunao hugs Shizuka and starts to really cry. After letting Sunao cry for a while, Shizuka asks her what the “Daikon” from before meant. That word quickly gets Sunao angry again.
In the student government room, Kinu comes looking for Leo so that they can go home together. Leo is still sitting depressed over the slap he got from Sunao. As Kinu and Nagomi start arguing again, Leo tries to figure out why Sunao hit him.

ED Sequence

ED: 「open」 by 詩月カオリ (Utatsuki Kaori)
Watch the ED! Mirror 1 Mirror 2
The OP is as unimpressive as when I saw it on the official website yesterday. I don’t like the song and the images are just taken from the first episode. It remains to be seen if they’ll actually introduce an OP sequence or if they’re just going to use in-episode shots each week. The ending is quite a lot better, but I’m somewhat biased towards slow songs. This one’s lyrics are written by KOTOKO and performed by Utatsuki Kaori, both of whom are from the popular I’ve Sound.

Preview:

The first episode was alright, nothing to rave about, but not bad by any means. Animation level was right about where I expected, which is decently high. Comedy was a bit on the light side, though it had lots of cute character moments. There was a lot more fanservice than I would have thought in the form of all the eye-catches they threw in (and the yuri moment). Overall, I’d call the first episode average, mainly because this series doesn’t offer anything new or exciting in terms of plot or animation or whatever.
Having said all that, I’ll probably keep watching to see how the story and characters develop. Since Sunao is the main character, I assume the story is going down her path (not that I’ve played the game). This has the potential to be a good series (or that’s what I keep getting told), so I’m giving this series a lot of leeway. It means my Saturdays are now a bit overloaded, but we’ll see how the coming weeks go.
The preview was a bit odd in the sense that it’s not your traditional this-is-whats-going-to-happen next episode preview. It just showed Otome practicing her martial arts with the candles. One of the many oddities of this show, along with the talking parrot and that Nishizaki girl who only goes “kuu~.”