• Title: Zettai Karen Children
• Studio: SynergySP
• Genre: Shounen/Fantasy

Ratings (out of 5):

• Story: ♥♥½

• Animation: ♥♥♥
• Characters: ♥♥♥½
• OP/ED Themes: ♥♥♥
• Overall: ♥♥♥ (I think Kaoru and I are soul mates.)

Thoughts:
I wrote this one off for the spring preview because I was under the impression that it was just a kids’ battle show, and it sort of is, but it’s actually also pretty pervy and fun, so I’m glad I snagged the first episode.

Set in the (slight) future, where nations’ prized posessions are espers: people with various psychic abilities. Three such espers are Kaoru, Aoi, and Shiho, all ten years old and all level 7 (”nuclear weapon”-level) psychics. They work for an organization called BABEL that uses them to subdue esper criminals. Together they are known as “The Children,” and are spoiled rotten by the fatherly leader of BABEL, Kiritsubo. They also have a new field leader named Kouichi Minamoto who treats them as regular kids (except for the whole sending them into battle part), which weirds them out. He kind of reminds me of Aoki-sensei from Kodomo no Jikan, except less easily-flustered. Only the field leader has the ability to release the limiters on the three girls that hold back most of their powers.

Anyway. The girls have their own personalities, particularly the energetic Kaoru. Voiced by Aya Hirano, sounding more like Konata than Haruhi most of the time, Kaoru is an otaku…but somewhat less of an anime otaku and more of an idol otaku, apparently, since she spent a significant chunk of time drooling over female idols in a magazine. When tied up with her fellow espers she laments that they don’t have bigger breasts, which would make it a really “ero” situation. A girl after my own heart, indeed!

The animation is pretty standard for a shounen, nice and clean and bright. The OP and ED are both pretty cute. Oh, and did I mention that our first esper baddie shoots psychic beams from his crotch and molests Minamoto? Yeah, it’s good stuff.