My Bride is a Mermaid: Complete Collection – Review

Storyline

The best way to describe My Bride is a Mermaid would be to take the mermaid and (select) romance elements of “The Little Mermaid”, take the Yakuza elements from Sega’s Ryu Ga Gotoku and take the comical elements from any relevant anime series you can find and merge them all together. I went in expecting 26 episodes of cliche fanservice and plotline… and while it was that to an extent, My Bride is a Mermaid worked well with its concepts and genre to provide a solid comedy series that makes for easy watching and potentially quite a bit of laughter.

The series focuses around  Nagasumi, a student who was spending his summer vacation in the beach town of Seto and for the most part was enjoying himself… until he drowned. With no-one else left to rescue him, he instead finds the hand of a mermaid who drags him back to shore. Of course, nobody believes his story until the mermaid “Sun Seto’s” family arrives with the news that according to mermaid law he and his family must “sleep with the fishes” or take the mermaid’s hand in marriage. Of course not willing to meet his untimely demise he agrees to have a relationship with Sun… but with her family as the head of the Seto group and daddy not approving – the question is if Nagasumi will survive the in-laws, the human shark and a giant octopus who occasionally shows up.

If you were to look at the overall storyline alone there is very little too it, even to the point where the fact Nagasumi and Sun are due to wed is forgotten at certain times – with major plot points appearing at the start, middle and end of the 26-episode season. The ending in particular is rushed and felt like it was added to give some ending to the series – with the main antagonist of it having no role during the majority of the episodes. That is not to say the storyline is bad…. infact as a romantic comedy its focus is dedicated to single of sets of episodes dedicated to one comical plot point and overall works well.

The series does not rely on simple grope and punch into the sky gags that other series may – infact as Nagasumi is one of the more level-headed characters in the series… these few events lead into more plot-based points that in turn lead to further comedy. While with every series, the comedy is pretty much hit or miss and its appeal will vary between viewers but Funimation did a solid job of localizing it to retain and/or localize jokes to the international market where applicable and there is a lot of it – some more spontaneous than others.

The series initially starts off with a moderately sized cast for the first few episodes, mostly consisting of the couples families, which both provide their own eccentricities (and different feelings towards Seto group member Masa). As the series quickly jumps from the beach environment to school-life, the series revels in a moderately sized and creative character cast especially when a rival appears “Lunar” who appears and threatens several times to take away Nagasumi from Sun, leading to more than one occasion where Sun and Lunar factional wars take place between the male students of the school. The effectiveness of other characters I felt varied, some contributing more to the storyline than others but still led to a rather enjoyable watching experience.

While the series is strong in the comedy department, it would really come down to your personal preference – but in the context of this review it worked well for me. Aside from this however, only a few characters receive much development in character and the storyline at several points could be considered cliche.

Design

My Bride is a Mermaid was worked on by the studios Gonzo and AIC – both with solid histories in producing anime series and while this series might not be a masterpiece for what it is I think they did a solid job. The character and environment jobs do their jobs well and are appropriately detailed albeit sometimes bland, but at the same time have moments when they really shine when required – such as during song performances between Sun and Lunar.

The animation in this regard is similar, as the series often uses dialogue for comedy the standard animation is kept pretty simple. In the moments where action or comedy requires animation they arise to the occasion and do pretty good at it – even when they do something as simple as comically censor the screen or reduce the characters to stick figures for effect. While the design and visuals are nothing to brag about, what is provided works and isn’t really an area I can complain about.

Audio / Voice Acting

When the series was originally aired in 2007, the one thing that stayed in my mind about it even today was the opening sequence “”Romantic summer” by SUN&LUNAR”. The best way to describe it is “fun”, as everything from the song to the animation tied in with the series well but with energetic and enjoyable to watch. While it is a trivial issue more than anything, Funimation does edit the sequence slightly to include the English title of it in but its design fails to tie in with the rest of the animation. The two ending sequences “Ashita e no Hikari by Asuka Hinoi” and “Dan Dan Dan by SUN&LUNAR” were solid songs but failed to live up to the opening in either music or animation.

The series features a solid instrumental music listing which complements the series well. Where it really shines is the number of insert songs spread throughout the episodes which are linked in with certain plot events. Funimation chose to include English dubbed versions of these songs and fortunately Alexis Tipton and Cherami Leigh were more than up to the challenge and perform well in these tasks. For whose who prefer the Japanese dubbed songs, they are still present and available at the click of the audio change button. I would have been interested to see them tackle the opening sequence – even as an extra more than every episode (As I quite like the Japanese opening theme)

In terms of voice acting, while it comes down to personal preference considering this is a comedy I think the English dubbed cast managed to match or even outshine their Japanese counterparts in delivery. For the male characters, Todd Haberkorn does a solid performance as Nagasumi but are easily outshined by John Swasey, Christopher Sabat and J. Michael Tatum as Gozaburo Seto, Masa and “Lunar’s Papa” respectively. As mentioned above, Alexis Tipton and Cherami Leigh do great jobs as Sun and Lunar respectively.

Extras

Unfortunately the collection lacks anything special in terms of additional content, a real shame as I could have seen something in them including commentary, textless insert songs or something along those lines they have done for other titles. However, what is included is as follows:

• Textless Opening Sequence
• Textless Closing Sequences
• Trailers for respective publisher

Personal Opinion

My Bride is a Mermaid was not the series I was expecting at first glance, instead it proved to be a much better and more enjoyable 26 episodes that I could happily watch again at a later date. Sure if you were to strip it of comedy you would not have much in it at all… but it does work and is one I could happily recommend at least consideration in purchasing at a later date.

Final Score
Storyline / Character Development: B+
Design: B
Music/Voice Acting: A-
Extra Content: C
Personal Preference: A
Overall Score: A-