Cookin' Idol Ai! Mai! Main! Ep. 01 - Cabbages and bad CG

Yes, that is a picture of a unicorn pulling a lettuce carriage through outer space. And yes, that screencap is pretty indicative of the coherency of the entire episode. Quick summary: Main is an "adorable" little girl who's trying to become an idol. Except she has zero self confidence and overwhelming stage fright. Her manager tells her to think of lettuce during her idol competition, and she winds up changing the lyrics to her song to be all about lettuce. Some bizarre producer sees it and decides to invite her to the "Cooking Idol" competition. Meanwhile, a strange race of cooking aliens (or something) send off their best chefs to find human partners on earth. One little alien dude gets sent along accidentally, but not before the alien chief presents him with a very important cookbook that will help him find his destined cooking partner on earth. The little alien dude falls into a truck of lettuce and predictably winds up with Main as his partner. Then there's a weird magical sequences where they spin around together and stuff. The end.

Admittedly, I think I'm a little older than the target audience, but I've enjoyed some embarrassingly childish shows before (see: Fushigiboshi no Futago Hime). And honestly, I think I'd actually find this show tolerable under normal circumstances. The plot may be paper thin, but it's not unexpected. The animation is decent, too. The real problem lies in the voice acting. The line between cute and annoying has been breached. And she really can't sing that well, either. Not like the song was a terribly flattering one in the first place. Also, I'm sorely disappointed in the lack of actual cooking in both the animated and the live action sequences. Little alien dude even asks "Is that really cooking?"

Of course, the live action segment doesn't really do anything to improve the show (does it ever?) The girl who plays Main knows what she's doing, and she has the right smile, but there's something a little unsettling about seeing a girl so young go through motions like that like a trained dog. I can't actually tell if she's having any fun. And little alien dude really stands out. His CG self isn't even textured, poor thing. Of course, it's weird that I'm even bothering to critique this in the first place. I assume that the target audience doesn't care nearly as much as I do. But hey, I expected it to be bad.

--Ou-bento