Hare and Guu Volume 1

Review Date: 2006 March 27 11:18

Reviewed by: Azure

Released by: AnimeNation

Age Rating: TVPG

Region: 1 - North America

Volume 1 of 7

Length: 100 minutes

Subtitles: English

Audio: English 2.0 Stereo
Japanese 2.0 Stereo

Summary

Ten-year-old Hare lives in the jungle with his mother, everything seems peaceful until Guu moves in. At first she seems super sweet but in fact she's some sort of pan-dimensional, mind reading centre of sarcasm.

Review

Every so often an anime comes along and grabs you, you can always explain it but from the very first scene you’re hooked. Hare and Guu opens with Hare playing an RPG on his computer, his mother walks in drunk, resets his system and sends him out to get bananas. Hare dutifully goes out and picks them; unfortunately for him a giant monstrous shadow appears and devours him; the next thing we know his mother is introducing him to Guu a super cute little girl who’s going to live with them. At first she appears to be the perfect foster sister, sadly for Hare things don’t last. This is where Hare and Guu really starts, the next day the super sweet Guu is gone replaced with a monotone sarcastic Snoopy faced girl. She seems strangely ignorant of everyday life so Hare whilst terrified of her tries his best to educate her. Unhappily for Hare Guu still thinks she knows best and before he knows it she’s devouring everything, and using a myriad of strange powers to teach him various lesions.

That’s the set up of Hare and Guu and it’s perfect set up for the series. If you hadn’t guessed it’s absolutely crazy, Guu seems to be able to do anything she wants too. She has a curious mix of wisdom, her various stunts often teach Hare valuable lesions but she often seems very ignorant when it comes to her relationships with others. She explains her switch from cute to deadpan by telling Hare his mother told her first impressions count.

The animation is clean and bold, whilst there are no major special effects what’s most striking is the unique character designs and the way Guu is animated the way she moves is really odd, and is a joy to watch. The music is also top stuff highlighting the action perfectly.

The voices in the Japanese version are absolutely amazing particularly Naoko Watanabe who plays Guu, who plays cute Guu and deadpan Guu with equal skill. The dub is also of a good quality; whilst it struggles sometimes to keep up with the original it’s a tough act to follow. It’s worth watching the dub just so you can enjoy the visuals.

Hare and Guu is silly and fun and in an odd way like Snoopy speeded up. It’s one of those shows that’s very difficult to dislike, and I urge anyone with a taste for unusual comedy anime to grab a copy now.

Rating: 9/10

Notes