The main female character in the Denpa Teki na Kanojo OVA is named Ame Ochibana.  She's a quiet, intelligent, and resourceful girl with an agile mind.  She also believes that she and the show's protagonist, Juu Juuzawa, were linked in a prior lifetime, he as a king, with her as his loyal subject.  She swears fealty to him early on in the show, which is set in current times.  Her vow to protect him from all who would harm him seems laughable on the face of it, as he's considered their school's main delinquent, with a talent for brawling.  He, of course, considers her a wacked-out stalker who has a penchant for breaking and entering, usually into his apartment... a creepy girl, if you will.

This being anime, of course there's more to it than that.  Ame is probably the most sane female character in this show... most of whom want to cause rather severe physical harm to Juu, and usually manage to do so.  Until Ame shows up, at which point things rapidly go south for those hurting Juu.  She's skilled with a taser, is able to talk logic rings around just about anyone, and even occasionally works in a maid cafe.  But with her almost expressionless manner of speech, her penchant for wearing her hair in front of her eyes, and her physical stillness (which is a silly way to describe an anime character, few of whom have much in the way of fidgets, I know... but the animators still manage to make her seem very still, even when she's in motion), she really does seem kinda creepy.  The occasional glimpse of her eyes that we get just make matters worse, for some reason.

But the most disturbing part of Ame's character is her voice.  It's quiet, breathy, mature but still that of a young girl... and almost, but not quite, sinister.  She very rarely puts emotion behind her words, which makes it even more creepy when she's talking to one of the really crazy girls in the show, the one who lives in a small, filthy, low-rent apartment with her dead mother and believes that if she "steals happiness points" from other people, her mother will come back to life.

It's Ame's voice that truly completes the character, and it's one that I knew I recognized, but couldn't immediately place.  It wasn't until about halfway through the first episode that I figured it out, at which point I was amazed... a character more opposite to Ame it would be difficult to find, in a show diametrically opposed to Denpa Teki na Kanojo.

Who?

Alice Carroll, my favorite character from the ARIA series.  Both Alice and Ame are voiced by Ryou Hirohashi.  She's also been the VA for Tama-chan in Bamboo Blade, and Kyou in Clannad, amongst many others... Tama I can believe, but Kyou is so incredibly different from these others that it just blows my little duckie mind.


Hard to believe.

*with apologies to Tom Servo.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 09:53 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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