Ooyasan Wa Shishunki

All that hassle in owning and renting a house. I’m sure for those who rent, many are faced with the unwanted problematic landlords that come in all forms of quirky personalities. From mean ones to those who just create weird rules, but you know, that is just half of the stories. Yeah, tenants from hell. So imagine having a landlord who is just a little girl! Wait. What? You read that right. At least for Ooyasan Wa Shishunki. A girl who is young enough to be your daughter is actually your landlord. The one who rules over whether you have a place to stay tonight. Don’t worry. This isn’t some sort of dark series but rather a light hearted comedy that lasts only 2 minutes about the daily lives of this landlady and her occupants.

Episode 1
Maeda just moved into his new apartment but who is this cute little girl, Chie Satonaka? Could she be his long lost sister that dad has secretly kept from him? A fiancée from his past life? Dream on! She is the landlord of this building. Dang. But I guess it isn’t all that bad. I mean, how lucky can a tenant get to have a cute middle school girl as their landlord? Or maybe Maeda is just being a typical male pervert. Making Maeda’s life ‘better’ is that his neighbour, Reiko Shirai is a hot woman. Reiko hands Chie a welcoming gift. Chie thinks it is some premium cooking oil she always wanted but never had because it was too expensive. To her dismay, they turn out to be bottles of bath liquids. What’s so bad about that? This apartment doesn’t have any baths. Oh…

Episode 2
If you’re wondering why Chie is always wearing her school uniform all the time, it is because it gives her a peace of mind. Heck, her wardrobe only has these clothes. So basically those are the only clothes that she can wear! Reiko has brought a cute apron for her but she prefers the traditional type that covers her entire body since in that way her uniform won’t get dirty. The girls help Maeda to cook because you know, guys like him are a noob in the kitchen. He must be enjoying his life with 2 girls flanking him as he cook. As he tastes the broth, he starts thinking about the indirect kiss with Chie. Reiko won’t allow that and quickly washes the little plate! Thankfully the food turns out to be good and Maeda is glad he is at the pinnacle of his life.

Episode 3
It seems Chie is being stalked by somebody! Reiko can’t stay with her since she has to work. However she doesn’t want Maeda to stay with Chie. Guess what? Chie interprets that this means she will stay in Maeda’s room! A win-win situation for Maeda?! So how does it feel to sleep next to a middle school girl? A sound startles Chie as she hugs Maeda in her reflex. Can you consider this out of his control? Time to turn in to bed although it is still early. Chie wants to hold his hand while sleeping. But after a minute, she falls deep into sleep and slaps his hand off. Next morning, Chie feels safe and assured so she thanks him. Then they discover the stalker outside the door poorly pretending to be a cat, Kengo Sasaki. This guy from her class has a crush on Chie. He questions Maeda’s relationship to her. Chie’s answer? He is like a father figure. Oh, the heartbreak. This has Kengo ask her to be his girlfriend. She declines because she doesn’t want to go out with a guy who follows her all the way home! Rejected! Oh, the heartbreak. Chie then leaves for school as she leaves behind 2 shocked men with broken hearts in her wake… Oh, oh…

Episode 4
Maeda returns home to find Chie cooking for him. In fact, she is acting like his wife. Serving him and even cleaning up. Now he has some explaining to do to Reiko. Chie ambiguously put it that Maeda told her she could drop by anytime to eat with him. I mean, food tastes great with company, right? As for how she got in, she has a spare key. Also, she thought it would be quicker to cook in Maeda’s place instead of carrying the ingredients back to her room. Reiko is devastated the duo are like close roommates. I’m sure she is against this relationship but when they invite her to join them, she quickly reschedules her plans.

Episode 5
When Maeda and Reiko learn Chie doesn’t join any clubs and heads straight home after school, they try to appeal to her about sports and music clubs but are ignored. When the teacher notices Chie is always alone, she gets the wrong idea alone means being bullied. She tries to have lunch with her classmates. They let her join but Chie finds their radiance is so shiny and sparkly. Unlike their decent bento, Chie’s bento is just poor. It makes her depressed. So Chie seeks Reiko’s help to make cute bento although all she knows how to make is onigiri.

Episode 6
Reiko makes character bento for Chie but it looks like a horror character! She shows it to her friends and they are scared at first but come to terms at how amusing it looks. Chie becomes the centre of attention when more friends come to join her for lunch. Chie thanks Reiko for making such a great bento that everyone snacked only on the dried squid. Is that a compliment? With everyone having fun talking about making character bento, Maeda suggests to form a club with her friends. After getting all the necessary approvals, the cooking club is ready to go. But did she have to use that horror character as the advertising poster?

Episode 7
Chie and her cooking club begin cooking their pork soup to commemorate their first day of the club. The friends are impressed seeing how Chie is so adept in using the peeler to cut and the knife to quickly shave or cut. While they may be feeling tired or their hands numb, Chie is still like a work horse! She is not stopping! In the end, the pork soup was worth all the preparations. But since they left the window open, the great aroma attracted other people as they have a great taste of their pork soup. So they’re like a cafeteria now? Chie returns home to tell Maeda and Reiko how they made 220 servings! Yup, definitely not going to make food for the entire school again.

Episode 8
Maeda and co head to the public bath. He wonders why there are suddenly so many old men. Is it because they are here for Reiko and Chie?! As Maeda soaks with those old farts, he wonders why everyone is so silent. Is it because so they can hear the girls eavesdrop?! They blush whenever the girls mention their name. But the old guys soon become jealous when the girls seem to mention and talk about Maeda’s name a lot. At the end of the bath, Chie gives Reiko a good massage. Her sexy moaning gives Maeda a wrong idea. As they leave, while the girls enjoyed theirs, Maeda feels he doesn’t want to go to such baths again.

Episode 9
Chie’s friends see her reading a grocery flyer. But they are wondering if they should tell her she is reading yesterday’s edition. When they do so, it seems Chie knows and the reason being if she looks at today’s flyer, she can’t concentrate in class. They heard rumours of her shopping with a grown man. They paint a handsome picture of him As they ask her, Chie thinks they are talking about Maeda and mentions he is just a tenant (Tanako) but the girls misinterpret that as his name. Because of that, they get the wrong idea of her relationship when Chie explains they live in the same block and eat dinner together sometimes. As they squeal in delight, it makes Chie wonder if having such good rapport between landlord and tenant is unheard of.

Episode 10
Chie’s friends, Mayu Ueno and Yuki Miyamura are at her place to study. Instantly Reiko and Yuki click. Why? Because they have big boobs and they understand how hard it is to have them! Even more shocking, Yuki for her age, her busts are already big and she mentions they are still growing?! So they head to the lingerie store to buy bras. When Yuki tries hers, she realizes she has grown 2 sizes! Luckily Chie and Mayu are glad they are flat chests since they won’t have such problems. At home, Chie tries to put on a hook bra for the first time. Need more practice…

Episode 11
Chie realizes her entire wardrobe is filled with the same school uniform (refer to episode 2 to refresh your memories). Now you know why she wears the same outfit everywhere she goes, right? Feeling out of place, Reiko and Maeda take her shopping for clothes. Well, if the zeroes on the price tag don’t kill her… Since casual clothes aren’t her thing, they look for some kimonos. Yeah, more zeroes… Maeda and Reiko manage to buy her an affordable one. Chie declines to accept at first but seeing how bad they felt, she accepts. She is quite happy with the gift and ends up staring at it all night. Didn’t get to sleep a wink…

Episode 12
Maeda doesn’t think Chie needs a chaperon for the fireworks festival as Reiko wanted. She insists he be her bodyguard. When Chie is seen clumsily running in her yukata, all that cuteness is enough to make him take the job. Chie meets her friends to head there and Maeda is definitely in heaven seeing all the girls in their cute yukata. Because it is crowded, Chie gets bumped into and Maeda saves her. She finds him cool. But I’m not sure if this makes him cooler because he starts directing the crowd traffic while the girls have fun! Talk about overdoing his job and even more. When it is time for the fireworks, Chie meets up with him to thank him for what he has done. He really looked cool. Ever since he moved in, she has nothing but fun. She hopes to come here with him again next year. The best ending a guy could ever have. But not so good ending for Reiko because she is desperately trying to find Chie and take a cute picture of her while her colleague restrains her since they’re supposed to be on duty. All dressed up and no Chie in sight.

Tenancy Due For Review
Well… Even though it wasn’t anything special, at least it wasn’t that disappointing. The very short duration of the series may have influenced my overall sentiments because despite being short in length, series like this are supposed to be fun and in bite-size. But recently there were a handful of short length anime series that were even able to disappoint me (looking at you Pan De Peace and Mahou Shoujo Nante Mou Ii Desu Kara). Therefore this series wasn’t as bad as those aforementioned ones and still had the decency of keeping me entertained.

The plot isn’t anything special and it feels as generic as a simple series can be. Like as mentioned in my opening paragraph, it just deals with the daily antics of the occupants of a certain apartment. With many of the funny moments come bursting in as spontaneous, maybe that is why the entirety of everything this series had wasn’t so bad. The pacing felt a little fast (think Teekyuu but on a slightly slower note) but that is what you get when you have to cram everything in 2 minutes. And that isn’t counting the opening theme which already takes up half a minute there. So yeah, the story isn’t much but at least it was a little funny in an entertaining way.

As for the characters, nothing really too deep. From the synopsis, it gave me the impression that Maeda would be the main character. Because it explains ‘a lot’ about him. Typical adolescent male. Constantly fantasizing about attractive girls. I know it isn’t much but that tells you a lot that he is a pretty normal and ordinary dude. But as far as I see him in this series, he felt just like a secondary character. Despite he is just normal, he is funny, he is nice and mainly friend zone with the only 2 girls around him. Hey, at least he gets to live with 2 attractive ladies. That is not bad, right?

Thus Chie is the main character since well, it is very much hinted in the anime title itself. Duh. Chie’s character could have been anything. It felt like they needed a reason why a loli would be living with a grown man (and a grown woman). I don’t remember if there was any reason why Chie inherited the apartment but isn’t it just odd to let a girl who hasn’t even finished her middle school education? I am not sure if she is the youngest landlady I have ever seen in anime but I have seen a handful of young high school girls having such position (think Mahoraba, Rokujouma No Shinryakusha and Chokotto Sister). I mean, Chie should be living her life as a normal middle school girl (in which she seems to be doing just fine in this anime) instead of having to shoulder such responsibilities regarding property. What the heck is Japan’s welfare system doing?! Thankfully Chie is a cheerful as well as honest-to-goodness girl although at times she can be naïve but that is okay, right? Although she is only a young girl, she already has exceptional skills in cooking and cleaning. It’s her passion, I guess. Sometimes it makes her look like a middle aged woman when she’s applying her skills…

Completing the trio is Reiko and being the prettier face (at least for this apartment) I believe her character doesn’t do much accept to prevent in making Maeda and Chie’s relationship look like some unholy union of an adult and a child. I am unsure if Reiko has a crush on Maeda because despite me trying to pick hints it is very vague and it could be me just thinking too much. Not sure if her jealousy of him being close to Chie is because she has a crush on him or if he doesn’t like Maeda looking like a pedo. Because I believe Reiko has some sort of obsession with Chie. In the sense that if you see a cute kitten and you can’t resist squeezing it to death. Yeah. That. Speaking of romance, what happened to Kengo anyway? Bitten once, twice shy? At least we know with that heart breaking revelation, he stopped stalking outside Chie’s apartment for the rest of the episodes. The other minor characters like Chie’s classmates feel even more like extras. It feels like they are there just to show us that Chie isn’t just a lonely soul back home but she too has friends too in school. At least we get to see her make some.

Making this whole landlord-tenant thingy seem weird is that the trio are the only ones occupying this small apartment. Are there any other occupants around? I don’t know. Personally it makes these people feel, uhm, so lonely? Isn’t it the reason why they prefer each other’s company during meal times and eat with each other? Yeah, they look more like a family unit than anything else. But too bad for Maeda. You can’t consider Chie to be anything more than your landlord or you’ll be treated as a lolicon-cum-pedo and arrested. Oh well, if the trio are so happy together, I suppose they don’t need to add more tenants to ruin it. You know, maybe it isn’t the case of more the merrier but too many cooks spoil the broth. So the trio might be just right for the time being.

Drawing and art feel pretty normal and simple. It is nothing to shout about. Really. Chie is cute and Reiko is a bijin. Can’t complain, can I? At first I thought with the cameo appearances of the characters from Komori-san Wa Kotowarenai in a certain episode, both series were made from the same studio. Nope. This series was done by Seven Arcs (Dog Days, Sekirei, Trinity Seven, Asura Cryin’ and Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha series) while the latter was by Artland (Kateikyoushi Hitman Reborn, Senran Kagura, Mushishi and Kenkou Zenrakei Suieibu Umisho). I tried finding out if they were written by the same author. Nope. The only similarity I found was that they were published in the same manga magazine. I’m not too sure if the authors are best friends since this series’ characters also made a cameo in that said series. Exchange programme?

The opening theme is a generic and typical anime pop song, Shining Sky by Every♥ing. The small cast members are Yurika Kubo as Chie (Hanayo in Love Live), Takashi Kondo as Maeda (Hayato in Yahari Ore No Seishun Love Comedy Wa Machigatteiru), Hitomi Nabatame as Reiko (Yukiji in Hayate No Gotoku), Erii Yamazaki as Yuki (Yuu in Pan De Peace) and Ibuki Ueno as Mayu (Hibiki in Re-Kan!).

Overall, this anime is easy to watch and enjoyable. No need for confusing plots to follow, that’s for sure. The characters are amusing in their own right as well as, uhm, heart warming? Well, at least I could agree with that heart warming word (and comedic plot) in the sentence they said about the characters in the synopsis. Even if it isn’t much. Heh. It is like the synopsis itself is already a review for the series. How we’d wish to have a landlady as cute and nice as Chie because we wouldn’t be renting if we had our own places to live in the first place. If property prices didn’t skyrocketed in the first place. But screw life’s logic. Chie is so cute that we’d rather sell our homes and move in and rent a place just to be with her. But then reality also screwed with us because we’d ended up having Yurumates instead…