‘Sup everyone, I’m JesseRoo. A few of the other guys made blogs specifically to introduce themselves, but I figured I could just slap my introduction in front of the first blog I write. So that’s that.

Although I probably won’t be able to attain the same level of quality as TehVict’s Sasami-san@Ganbaranai analysis, I still felt like doing an analysis of at least one series this season. Unfortunately because I procrastinated too long my choice was rather limited if I wanted to start from the first episode. Luckily, though, one of the series which I was most interested in this season happened to start yesterday (relative to when this blog post will go up on the site). That series is none other than Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai kara Kuru Sou Desu yo?,  or Problem Children Are Coming From Another World, Aren’t They?. For my sanity’s sake, I’ll be referring to it as simply Problem Children from now on.

It’s my first post, so I’m bit a nervous myself.

Potential spoilers for the first episode after the break, so you might want to watch that first.

The first observation I made about Problem Children was how quickly the story passed within the first three minutes; the characters were introduced (more on each of them later), we had some subtle hints towards their supernatural abilities, and they were all teleported into the actual setting of the show, the Little Garden. I don’t really have a complaint about the odd pacing, especially considering the series is only going to be 10 episodes long; they couldn’t have devoted an entire episode to events in the real world. Of note is that Problem Children is based on a light novel of the same name, although I haven’t personally read it so I can’t speak for how different it is nor point out any changes.

The basic premise is that three “problem children” from the real world who have supernatural abilities are transported to the Little Garden, where they bet on and participate in Gift Games against other people of various different fantasy races who have similar powers to win various prizes. These three characters are:

Sakamaki Izayoi, who is never seen without his (apparently waterproof) headphones. In his introduction, he remarks about how boring the world is and sits by idly as a kid is being beat up in front of him. Eventually he stands up when the attackers have crossed the line of homo-eroticism and asked their victim to strip naked and jump into the river. Although it hasn’t been explicitly stated, I’d assume his power is super strength; he manages to defeat a god by kicking it in the face in the conclusion of the episode. From the looks of things, he’s probably going to serve as the “main” character of the series. He also seems the most excited about Little Garden, as he sees it as an escape from his otherwise boring life.

Kudou vi Britannia commands you!

Kudou Asuka’s power is, again, not explicitly stated (although she was interrupted in the middle of revealing it), but seems to be the ability to command people (or animals, it seems) to do whatever she asks. She seems to be from a rich family, as she has a maid and has the general attitude one might except from a stereotypical rich girl in anime. The episode show show what could form the foundations of a friendship between her and the next character, though, so she’s not all bad.

The aforementioned next character is Kasugabe You, who had the decency to actually tell us what her power was; talking to animals. I must be missing something, though, because this power doesn’t seem very special in a world where a large portion of the population are half-animal and capable of doing it anyway. The ability does lend itself nicely to a crazy cat lady, though (and in fact her cat comes with her to the Little Garden, where he uses his manly charms to seduce a local cat girl). Of the three characters, she has my favourite design appearance-wise.

The “Black” Rabbit.

Serving as the “guardian” of the trio is Black Rabbit, whose hair is either blue or red but never actually black. She is a member of a community named “No Name” (that’s not even my joke, that’s actually its name), which is led by Jin, who is either a child or very child-like in appearance. If I had to take a wild guess about how the story will progress from here, I’d say that the Gift Games are only going to serve as a framing device for the conflict between No Name and some other community, which would probably be led by the imposing evil-looking figure who appears at the end of the episode.

In closing, Problem Children looks like an anime that has a lot of potential; it will be only 10 episodes long, though, so the plot won’t be able to run as deep as other, longer anime can; they could try, of course, but that hasn’t worked out too well for other anime in the past (*cough*Chaos;Head*cough*). That’s fine, though; I’m not expecting the Divine Comedy here. I think Problem Children’s strength, and the reason for anybody to watch it, is that it’s just fun. Superpowers, fighting, gambling, cat and bunny girls, an almost MMO-like society structure? These are all things that exude fun (or massive money loss). I’m no expert at writing things poetically, so I’ll just leave it at that. Problem Children’s first episode is, and the rest of the series looks like it will be, fun.