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Series name: Happy Lesson

Review date: 20051009

Genre: harem comedy

Length: OVA: 3 episodes on 1 DVD; TV: 14 episodes on 3 DVDs

Fan service: moderate

Rewatch: low

Summary: Chitose is an orphan high school student who lives alone. He's having trouble in school, and he's been getting into fights. Five of his teachers simultaneously decide that what he needs is mothering, so they move in with him to become his mothers.

Main Characters:

		Ichimonji Mutsuki – Teaches classics (literature). She's Chitose's home room teacher, and is probably the sanest of the mamas. She wears glasses at home, but never at work."Ichimonji" means "straight line". "ichi"==one. "Mutsuki" is an archaic name for the month of January.
		Shitennou Uzuki – Teaches art. She's quite an otaku and comes off as flighty, and not just because she likes to wear wings. "Shitennou" means the 4 Devas of Buddhism. "shi"==four. "Uzuki" is an archaic name for the month of April.
		Gokajo Satsuki – Teaches PE. She's a boisterous jock. "Gokajo"  is the fifth form in Aikido. It means "arm stretching". "go"==five. "Satsuki" is an archaic name for the month of May.
		Sanzein Yayoi – The school nurse. She's a very devout adherent of Shinto, and at home she always wears a miko costume. "Sanzein" ?? "san"==three "Yayoi" is an archaic name for the month of March.
		Ninomai Kisaragi – Teaches chemistry. She's a mad scientist and even the other mamas think she's strange. Oddly, she has an absolutely killer wardrobe and always dresses more fashionably than the others. "Ninomai" means "repeating the same failure". "ni"==two. "Kisaragi"  is an archaic name for the month of February.
		Yazakura Hazuki – A very successful and famous idol. She grew up in the same orphanage as Chitose. She has an unbelievable appetite. "Yazakura" is an eight-petaled cherry blossom (a particularly prized form of sakura). "Haduki" (alternate romaji spelling) is an archaic name for the month of August.
		Rokumatsuri Minazuki – A middle school student who grew up in that same orphanage. Hazuki, Minazuki, and Chitose think of themselves as brothers and sisters, even though they are not actually related. "Rokumatsuri" ?? "roku"==six "Minaduki" (alternate romaji spelling) is an archaic name for the month of June.
		Nanakorobi Fumitsuki – Class president, and classic meganekko (glasses girl). She's got a crush on Chitose but is not very successful in getting it across. She's also suspicious of his living circumstances and asks unfortunate questions. "Nanakorobi" is a reference to the Japanese proverb "nanakorobi yaoki" - literally "fall down seven times, stand up eight", colloquially "never give up". "Fumitsuki" is an archaic word for July.
		Togakushi Kanna – Another mad scientist. She's a childhood friend of Kisaragi and is even stranger, which is really saying something. She thinks boys are icky, but finds herself strangely attracted to Chitose. (TV only) "Kannazuki" is the archaic word for October; Kanna's front company is named "JuuGatsu," the current form for October. There is a Togakushi school of ninjitsu.
		Hitotose Chitose – The unhappy victim of all this attention and affection. At times he seems to be at risk of being loved to death. "Hitotose" means "one year" or "long ago". "Chitose" means "a thousand years".

Comments: This is an interesting twist on the classic harem comedy, in that there is really only one major character who is genuinely romantically interested in the hapless protagonist. All the other girls/women love him or want to love him, but not romantically. Mutsuki, Uzuki, Satsuki, Yayoi and Kisaragi all think of themselves as Chitose's mamas. Sometimes they do compete with one another, but there's no jealousy involved.

The real story here is how 8 lonely people who are not related eventually form family bonds with one another. It happens slowly over the course of the series, but it's quite real. The five teachers actually do feel motherly about Chitose. Early in the series he calls them "mama" rather grudgingly, but by the end it's genuine, and he really does care about them a great deal. That's the best feature of this series.

Episodes tend to be girl-of-the-week, and they vary a lot. Some of them are really, really good; a couple of them are really bad. But that basic approach to the series soon wears.

In story terms, the OVA comes before the TV series and should be watched first. The first OVA episode introduces Chitose, Fumitsuki, and the five mamas and begins to show us something of their relationships. It also introduces "Student B" and "Student C" who are there mainly so that Fumitsuki can beat them up. The second OVA episode brings Hazuki into the story, and the third introduces Minazuki, and completes setting up the basic scenario for the 8 central characters who eventually become a family.

For the first episode of the TV series, they took the first OVA episode and edited out about a minute of material. The second episode is primarily about Mutsuki. Ep 3 is Yayoi and is easily my least favorite in the series. Ep 4 reintroduces Minazuki and Hazuki. Ep 5 is the Satsuki ep, and is my second least favorite.

On DVD 2, Ep 6 introduces Kanna. Ep 7 is mainly about Minazuki and is not very good. Ep 8 is about Utsuki and is one of the best in the series. Ep 9 is primarily about Fumitsuki, though Minazuki is also featured. Ep 10 is about Hazuki.

DVD 3 begins with ep 11, which concentrates on Kisaragi. This is easily the strangest episode in the series. Ep 11.5 (sic) seems to have been grafted in from outside; it wasn't part of the original broadcast schedule. It concentrates on Kanna, but it also provides more and better fan service than any other episode in the series. Eps 12 and 13 make up a two-part story which primarily concentrates on Fumitsuki.

This series doesn't have as much fan service as some harem comedies, but all the female characters are attractive and there are beach episodes and bathhouse episodes.

Things to watch for: At the very end of the last DVD, there's a brief live-action sequence of the seiyuu who did the five mamas and Chitose. It's eery to watch, especially the one who did Utsuki. That voice shouldn't come out of a real human being!

Complaints: There's rather a lot of what I would consider unnecessary violence in this series, mainly by the mamas with Chitose the victim, especially in the early TV episodes. (Eps 2 and 3 are the worst of the lot in this regard.) It's very stylized and played for laughs, and the violence leaves no lasting damage, but I didn't find it at all funny. I wish they'd left it out. Fortunately, they deemphasize that kind of thing in the later episodes.

Is the ending satisfying? I hated it. They spent one and a half episodes developing exactly the plot line I'd been hoping to see all through the series, and then jerked the rug out from under with the cheapest, crummiest deus ex machina to be found in Writerville: a reset. Two characters suddenly lose their memories of the events of the previous few days and proceed as if none of those events had happened. It's a cheat, a copout. In plain terms, they wanted to preserve the basic series continuity for potential sequels, and that episode-and-a-half of development would have fundamentally changed the character dynamics. So they let us watch it, then grabbed it away from us again instead of carrying through. Talk about plottus interruptus...

Recommended? I had two letdowns while watching this series. The first was halfway through ep 5, where I suddenly got bored and simply quit watching. Later I picked it up again, and found that ep 5 didn't finish the way I thought it was going to, and found that the later episodes were a lot better than that one. The second disappointment was half way through ep 14 when they committed their deus ex machina. Because of that in particular, I can't say this is a top-drawer series, or even a second-from-the-top drawer series. But it isn't a waste of time, either. Some of the characters are actually quite engaging. Yayoi (the nurse) and Satsuki (the jock) are a complete waste of time, but the other mamas are fun, and Minazuki and Hazuki inject a nice note of warmth. Fumitsuki makes a good romantic interest -- or would have, if they'd followed through. Chitose starts the series sullen and alienated, but he changes as the series progresses -- and that, in fact, is the story being told.

I don't actually know whether I recommend this series. There are a lot of good aspects to it, and a couple of outstanding episodes. But there are also deep flaws and major letdowns. I think that if someone was forewarned that they could enjoy it more than I did, so I guess I offer a conditional and tentative positive recommendation.

If they had followed through in the last episode the way they should have, I would have given this series three stars and an unqualified recommendation.