Anime Sunday: Nanana’s Buried Treasure

Michael Blaker
Game Industry News is running the best blog posts from people writing about the game industry. Articles here may originally appear on Michael's blog, Windborne's Story Eatery.

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This week for Anime Sunday I’m covering the rather excellent, but way too short Anime adaptation of a Light Novel series of the same name, Nanana’s Buried Treasure.

Plot Synopsis: On the “Special Student Zone” artificial island – Nanaejima, the story centers on a beautiful, optimistic, but NEET (not in education, employment or training) girl Nanana Ryūgajō, who was mysteriously killed in her own apartment.

Ten years later, a boy named Juugo Yama was forced to transfer to a high school on the island. With only a certain amount of money to live on, Juugo chooses a low-rent apartment that happens to be haunted by the ghostly Nanana, who is bound to her former home and unable to move on.

Plot: The plot is fairly good, and while it’s not a harem series, Juugo is kind of a ladies man, or at least he tries to be. He usually fails at that rather spectacularly. Juugo’s interactions with Nanana are often quite heartwarming and while she usually kicks his ass, despite being a dead spirit locked in her old room, she’s quite a useful fount of knowledge regarding her buried treasure. Her treasures that someone, we never find out who sadly, has hidden around the island are the point of the show. They can do some pretty crazy things, like allowing you to see who is lying, or giving you the ability to do whatever you can imagine with your mind a limited number of times. That said lots of plot threads are left dangling because of the limited episodes, which is a bummer because this easily could have been a 2-cours (2 seasons or half a year of air time) show. If you don’t mind that the plots amazing.

Characters: The cast is just as crazy as Nanana’s treasures and while some got on my nerves I didn’t mind it too much cause the rest of the show was too awesome. Tensai is probably my favorite side character, although she’s close enough to being a main character, although her habit of calling herself a master detective is grating. She certainly is smart enough to warrant that title, and her name is way too fitting as well (Tensai means genius in Japanese). That said Nanana and Juugo are the stars of the show, and the rest of the cast is there to hinder Juugo from obtaining enough money for rent and bribing Nanana with premium brands of pudding so she doesn’t beat the crap out of him.

Art: The art for this series is amazing, and I absolutely loved the animation quality. Though that is probably because of the limited episodes of this series.

Music: The music for this series is fantastic, although the opening and ending themes are lacking, the soundtrack is great.

Overall: If you like a good adventure series, with a bit of magic and mystery mixed in you have to watch this.

For those who like: Adventure, Mystery, A bit of magic, Great animation, Fantastic soundtrack, Amazing cast of characters.

Not for those who don’t like: Any of the above, or loose plot threads.

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