Kobato

Wai-wai. It's magic time.

Honato Kobato has arrived in the human world together with her stuffed toy Ioryogi. Ioryogi isn't your regular stuffed toy ofcourse (after all, this IS a magic series) and he serves as her instructor. A stern instructor I might add who is impatient and prone to losing his temper. In his defense though it has to be said that Kobato, while sweet, lovable and cute, is also extremely naive and not to mention a first class klutz.



The reason that Kobato has come to the human world is because she has a wish she wants granted. In her case she has a place she wants to go to, but we aren't told what place exactly nor the reason she wants to go there. As nothing is for free, in order to get her wish granted she needs to collect broken hearts into a special flask. That special flask has also to be earned though and she can earn it by proving she can blend into the human world and seeing we're talking Kobato here this is not as easy as it sounds (well, if it wasn't we wouldn't be having any fun right ;-)

This first episode is about Kobato earning the flask she needs to collect the broken hearts. Needless to say that on various, no scratch that remark and make it, nearly all occassions Kobato ends, or even starts with screwing up. During one of her mishaps she has a short meet with the male lead in this anime, Kiyokazu Fujimoto. Short of the fact that he seems to be working several part-time jobs we don't learn much in this first episode.



It's obvious that if you make another version of Sakura and Toya that those two will have more interaction with eachother later on and having seen up till episode 3 I can confirm that this is the case. I'll pause a minute to let the reader recover from the shock of this totally unexpected development.

Having seen more then the first episode I also can see where the relation between Kobato and Fujimoto will be headed so the Anidb synopsis is probably right on allthough they give away to much imho so I think that someone read the manga already.

Okay, could somebody please arrange an non-fatal accident for the lead designer at Clamp so they stop doing crossovers for at least a little while? Sakura and Fujimoto are in fact not the only figures you'll find familiar. Having seen up till episode 3 I'll just say that unless I'm way off, I spotted more of Tsubasa Chronicles characters and definitely some Chobits look-a-likes. I know crossovers are popular in certain corners, but if you do it in nearly every show you produce it smells like laziness to me.

It's a bit early to tell for real, but it looks like basically a 'capture a new broken heart every week' kind of show. Short and sweet 1 episode stories with some humor and perhaps a touch of romance here and there. It's not terribly deep, but especially Ioryogi losing it makes me chuckle everytime and I have to say the choice for his voice actor is epic. Graphics wise it's ... generic for the latest clamp series I'd say.

Temporarily verdict: 7,5 out of 10.