Keitai Shoujo

It isn't all bad, and considering the fast pace you might as well check it out.. but don't get your expectations high. It feels like this series tried to be some Omnibus/Dating-Sim style series, but even for those it would be way too plain. Each of the first 5 episodes introduce one of the girls, some of them not even really meeting the male protagonist. Then in the 6th and final episode, it fast forwards to christmas eve where he confesses his love to one of them. So, there is no depth to any of the characters nor is there any romantic development - girl getsintroduced, timeskip, mutual love confession, the end. That's it. And considering which one was the girl he ended up with, it felt quite random.

EN: An anime that defends what characterized the slice of life of the 2000s. In these 6 episodes of 6 minutes (actually less than 4 minutes), they briefly tell us stories of girls in love or interested in a boy who apparently they do not adequately reciprocate their feelings. In essence it reminds me of a strange mix between Hatsukoi Limited and 5 Centimeters per second. Although of course, saving the distances. It should be noted that the characters of the first episodes become concurrent in the following ones, since everything takes place within the same high school. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this show and theonly reason to see it is that it is a kind of documentary on how the first cell phones penetrated the culture of adolescents at that time. Those times when, in addition to calls, the vice was SMS. And the first with built-in cameras. On the technical side, it's nothing special but it does the job, or so I imagine since on the one hand it was very difficult for me to find this anime in a minimum quality, fortunately I was able to see it on YouTube (how ironic). The Hibari studio, who are responsible for it, can't boast much in these days of supposed past glories either. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ES: Un anime que hace apología a lo que caracterizó a los slice of life de los años 2000. En estos 6 episodios de 6 minutos (en realidad menos de 4 minutos), nos narran brevemente historias de chicas enamoradas o interesadas en un chico que en apariencia no les corresponde adecuadamente a sus sentimientos. En esencia me recuerda a una extraña mezcla entre Hatsukoi Limited y 5 Centímetros por segundo. Aunque claro, salvando las distancias. Cabe destacar que los peronajes de los primeros episodios se vuelven concurrentes en los siguientes, ya que todo transcurre dentro de la misma escuela secundaria. Quizá lo más destacable de este show y único motivo para verlo es que resulta una suerte de documental de como penetraron los primeros teléfonos celulares en la cultura de los adolescentes por aquellos tiempos. Esos tiempos en que además de las llamadas el vicio eran los sms. Y los primeros con cámaras incorporadas. Sobre el apartado técnico, no es nada del otro mundo pero cumple, o eso imagino ya que por un lado me fue muy difícil de encontrar este anime en una calidad mínima, afortunadamente lo pude ver en Youtube (que ironía). El estudio Hibari, quienes son los responsables tampoco pueden presumir mucho en estos días de supuestas glorias pasadas.

*Spoilers ahead, but I still wanted my review to be seen, so I didn't check the box. Don't bother with worrying about spoilers for this show anyway. I implore you to read on.* Keitai Shoujo translates into 'Cell Phone Girl', but despite that name, the titular 'Cell Phone Girl' Rin is nowhere to be seen, save for a strange cameo at the very end, but let's not get ahead of ourselves here. Beginning with the story, it's certainly nothing to write home about. It is neither good nor bad, just incredibly basic, and beyond that, very sparse. The 6 minute episodes,which are really only 3 minutes when you factor in the minute and change the OP and ED take, cover a fundamentally basic story, with some stereotypical anime tropes thrown in. It follows a group of friends and acquaintances in high school, who are connected by their phones, which are supposed to be a central theme around which the show defines itself. They show up to each other's sports events, are late to club meetings, talk about crushes, all the usual fare, and at such a short runtime absolutely nothing sets it apart from the crowd. Of course, something would set it apart, but even the weird plot point of a cell phone turning into a magical girl is absent here, so you're left with this bizarre shell of an anime. I try not to include spoilers in my reviews, but here I must, to discuss this anime's greatest sin, episode 6. Episode 6 is just an earlier episode where they introduce Sayo, followed by an extended credits sequence, and then a time skip where the entire main story happens. That's right, the viewer is shown three slides of text, describing how the protagonist Hiro meets the magical Cell Phone Girl Rin, and how she opens his heart to love. Then the anime resumes, and Rin is dying for some reason. A tearful goodbye is had, and Hiro confesses his love for Sayo at the Christmas festival. I was stunned. Why would they give us 5 and a half episodes of prologue only to skip the entire main arc and plop the audience down at the last 2 minutes of the show? Why they decided to even bother making this thing is beyond me. Even for its intended purpose as supplementary promotional material for a visual novel, it feels hollow and woefully incomplete. There's really nothing else to say about this profoundly underwhelming anime. The art is standard 2006 stuff with competent character design, the sound is perfectly serviceable, the characters are fine, but that damn story structure is what I'm hung up on. Everything about this anime blends into the crowd, save for the bizarre decision to reduce the bulk of the story to 3 text slides at the very end. Do not bother with this incomplete, unremarkable garbage.