Nanami-chan - RePost

In the on going search for entertaining anime for my children I stumbled upon a fun little series from NHK called Nanami-chan. It is the story of a little girl named Michi and her parents who have come to live in an apartment that is part of a number of properties that are built on and in a tree. The tree and all of its buildings are known as Happiness House.

    Upon arriving Michi goes to check out her new bedroom and stumbles upon an acorn shaped jar. Out of the jar pops a similarly shaped creature. Michi gently coaxes the frightened pork-bun like creature out of hiding. Michi tells the creature her name in which it replies that its name is Nanami. Soon Michi’s parents come upstairs to find out what the racket is, causing Nanami to go into hiding again. Michi coaxes the creature out one more time and it warms up to the rest of the family. The shock of living with a bizarre, somewhat talking, creature quickly wears off and Nanami becomes a valued member of the family, less like a pet and more like a child. Michi and Nanami grow and learn together as they run into different situations and meet the other residence of the Happiness House. Not only are lessons learned but Nanami’s vocabulary slowly grows as well, much like a toddlers.

    Ok, this is a NHK show aimed at young children that is supposed to teach them life lessons. The show is aimed at about 3 to 5 year olds and deals with such things as friendship, trust, responsibility and so on. Each episode is only about 4 or 5 minutes long and each episode is one contained story. Other characters do continue to show up again but it isn’t necessary to know them in the order the show was created. The only episode whose order would really matter is the first one where Michi and her family move into the house and meet Nanami. In the second episode you find out the story of how the Happiness House came to be and you find out that Nanami is the spirit creature of the tree. The character designs are a little odd, super deformed with exaggerated features, especially the women, they all have bold colored lips and rosy cheeks.

    This is your typical education series that uses cuteness to try and convey important life lessons to little children. My children are incredibly addicted to this show, they can sit down and watch all 4 seasons that we have in one crack and they do regularly. They have minimal understanding of Japanese and they are still incredibly drawn to this cute show. Unfortunately my attempts to find a stuffed Nanami for my oldest child have proven fruitless. They had produced the stuffed Nanami’s for a short period of time and the products are now unavailable through both NHK and the manufacturer. There is plenty of other series merchandise that is available though, but I will keep trying.

    The series is simply drawn and simply written, again the audience is supposed to be toddlers and kindergarteners. There is just one problem I have with the series, and it might just be my adult understanding causing this; some of the messages the show tries to bring across might not be the best ones when looked at with an adult view on the world. The most obvious case that I noticed is thus;
After being scared by a program on aliens, Nanami and Michi end up running into one of the Happiness House residents who is an alien otaku. The guy looks like a giant onion and sports tiny glasses, he looks pretty much like a typical otaku caricature. This alone should be a warning to children to generally stay away from the creepy otaku as many now a days have an unhealthy preteen fetish. Anyways, they follow the otaku into his house to help Nanami understand that aliens are not essentially a bad thing. The otaku shows them his alien website he has and all of his paraphernalia. The otaku happily asks Nanami is he/she wants to have his/her picture on his website.

    OK, so here is my problem with this, essentially the series is telling you that it is ok to follow the incredibly creepy otaku neighbor into his house and let him take pictures of you for his website. This may just be my bend on reality drawing this conclusion and understanding of this episode, but you see what I mean. Yes, I still do let my kids watch this episode; I’m not really worried about it giving them the wrong message.

    All in all this is a fun series for both children and their parents, my kids are incredibly addicted to it and I have fun watching it, even my wife is mildly entertained by it. It’s a fun, light hearted and semi-educational series.