Title: Yumeria
Alternate Title: ゆめりあ
Encompasses: Complete Series
Published by: ADV Films (Former License Holder), Sentai Filmworks (North America)
Re-release Date: 12th November 2013
Based on: Video game developed by Namco
Genre: Adventure, Harem Comedy
Audio: English and Japanese dubs
Subtitles: English
It’s one thing to wake up from a dream and be a little confused, but on his 16th birthday Tomokazu Mikuri wakes up WITH a dream: right next to the strange girl that he’d just been dreaming of! Weirder yet, his hot older cousin, Nanase, takes the new addition to the household in stride and enrolls her in Tomokazu’s high school, despite the fact that the girl can only say one word: “Mone.” But things get totally out of control when Tomokazu discovers that he can take others back and forth to Mone’s dream world, where his new-found abilities may be the key to stopping a nightmarish invasion! Faster than you can say “harem anime,” Tomokazu’s two worlds collide as girls from his “real” world join with those from the dream world to take on the evil forces of the Feydooms! But can a 16-year-old nobody really lead a superhero team, stop the bad guys, save the world(s), and/or get the girl(s) in the end? It’s the kind of thing that only happens in dreams, but when the whole world’s a dream world, anything might be possible!
Welcome to my very first “archive” review, another monthly series which will look at titles from years gone by which for one reason or another have never been covered on The Otaku’s Study. This first review is to the credit of Sentai Filmworks who recently announced a number of licence rescues of old titles from ADV Films – one of which was Yumeria.
When Namco Bandai released Project x Zone last month, one of the characters you may not have recognized was Neneko. Her character was sourced from the Playstation 2 exclusive video game Yumeria developed and published by Namco back in 2003. This game was never released outside of Japan, however its anime adaptation which was aired the following year was. So lets assume you were interested in the small storyline tidbits promoted in the game…. is it worthwhile following up with the anime?
Storyline
The main storyline follows main male protagonist Tomokazu Mikuri who sets himself up as being an average teenager who despite having below average grades makes up for it with being an above average pervert. On the morning of his 16th Birthday he has a dream where he alongside a petite girl in a blue outfit (Mone) are under attack by an unknown enemy soon revealed to be “Feydooms” who wish to use the dream world as a passage into the human world.
Over the coming days and weeks he manages to accidentally list an all-female harem of characters into fighting the threat – including his childhood friend Mizuki, his guardian’s sister Kuyou, a young grade-school age detective Neneko with a close tie to the events that unfold and a mysterious overly busty woman in green who serves as mentor to everyone else all the while hiding her identity from nobody but the character cast.
While there was nothing overly complicated put into it, I have to hand them some marks for the overarching storyline – it was a simple idea that could have been handled quite well. The series started off pretty well, and especially within the first few episodes it was pretty enjoyable as Tomokazu meets the different characters, has a handful fights with his extremely eccentric teacher (Who for no apparent reason dislikes him – and wears fetish gear during detentions) and wraps them all up with a couple of dream world action scenes. Sure there was little to rave about, but they were episodes you could sit back and enjoy.
After you pass the initial episodes, rather than appreciate the few occasions where they decide to get serious (eg. the backstory uncovered by Neneko) most of the attention is spent towards forgettable action scenes and far too much fanservice to take things seriously. I don’t necessarily mind there being fanservice in an anime, however with Yumeria it felt like they were forcing it too heavily upon the viewer and impacting the storyline because of it. Having a “gym uniform” episode followed by a “swimsuit” episode and then followed by a “beach” episode for example and basing the action around them didn’t agree with me. They try to redeem themselves at the end by adding an a satisfactory conclusion, but it felt forced and needed more time dedicated to properly flesh out and implement.
But hey, if you go into Yumeria wanting and expecting fanservice your opinion may very well differ from mine in terms of storyline.
Design / Music / Voice Acting
When you consider that Yumeria was produced back in early-2004, the animation and design quality wasn’t all too bad. The character designs have been well adapted from their more 3D-like character models and given their unique personalities they at least look the part. Character animations in battle look impressive the first couple of times with their appeal subsciding after the first few of episodes.
But perhaps the highlight of Yumeria when it came to the design aspect were the backdrop / environment designs. These designs were especially prominent in designing the Dream World environment, with all the little visual quirks to highlight the characters were sound asleep in the real world.
However the biggest letdown were the designs of the Feydooms themselves. Considering they were the major enemies of the series their designs looked awfully generic and were overused.
Yumeria comes with a single opening theme “24 Jikan Aishiteru” by Moyu Arishima and Tamaki Nakanishi (Japanese VA’s of Mone and Neneko) and a single ending theme “Precious Treasure” by Masumi Asano (Japanese VA of Mizuki). The upbeat opening sequence when complemented with the simple animation does the job of setting the tone for the series well while the ending sequence lacks animation (A handful of static images scrolling across the screen) but the song fared a little bit better in my opinion. Despite this, you may find yourself skipping over them after a watch or two. The remainder of the music backing in the episodes did the job well, especially in the more casual scenes.
I have to hand it to Brittney Karbowski and her Japanese counterpart Moyu Arishima for enthusiastically voicing Mone, considering the primary word spoken by the character throughout the entire 12-episode run is “Mone!”. The remainder of the English voice cast were also enthusiastic and satisfactorily matched their characters distinct mannerisms. Highlights of Yumeria’s English dub include Chris Patton as Tomokazu, Nancy Novotny as Silk and John Gremillion as Ishikari.
Extra Content
Given that the Sentai Filmworks edition of Yumeria has yet to be released, it is hard to say what will be on offer as extra content in this release. In the ADV Films release I own, it contained the clean opening and closing ending animations and previews for different ADV titles. Another addition that you don’t usually find in DVD releases (Given the move in recent years from 4-episode anime collections), next volume preview videos dubbed by Chris Patton (as Tomokazu).
I would expect pretty much the same in the upcoming release, albeit maybe without the next volume previews due to their redundancy.
Personal Opinion / Final Word on Yumeria
While I don’t mind fanservice in anime, if they set out to deliver a storyline with it I expect them to at the very least balance the focus between the two. Unfortunately after the first couple of episodes this balance was lost and at times became a challenge to keep watching. On the other hand, if you are planning to watch this series primarily for the fanservice there may be more for you to enjoy here. Otherwise there are better titles coming out in November 2013 to warrant your attention (I for one am extremely excited about Little Busters!).
