Mieruko-chan

Series Overview

Mieruko-chan (見える子ちゃん) is a supernatural horror/comedy series about a girl who one day can suddenly see ghosts. It also features a decent amount of ecchi, which is weird, but I’ll save that for later in the review.

I want to explain the title of this series here at the start of the review because I don’t want the title to go over the heads of anyone with no Japanese knowledge. Mieruko-chan isn’t the name of the protagonist of the series. It’s a play on her name, which is Miko.

Miko’s name is spelled as みこ. Mieruko is spelled 見える子. Mieru (見える) means to be seen and ko (子) means child. So Mieruko translates to something along the lines of “child with sight,” which is a reference to the fact that Miko can see ghosts and other spirits.

With today’s Japanese lesson out of the way, what’s the series actually about other than a girl who sees dead people? Well, that’s basically it. Miko can see all these terrifying ghosts that most people can’t, and that changes how she interacts with the world around her.

Something many of these ghosts ask those they cross paths with is “Can you see me?” Miko doesn’t know what would happen to her if a ghost learns she can see it, and she doesn’t want to find out. For this reason, she has to act like she doesn’t see them no matter what they’re doing or how scary they are.

Obviously, she’d love nothing more than to have nothing to do with these ghosts. But unfortunately for her, they’re everywhere. And on top of that, she frequently has to steer her best friend Hana, who can’t see ghosts, away from them without alerting her to their existence.

Main Characters

Miko Yotsuya was your typical high school girl until she awoke one day to find that she could see all sorts of scary things. There’s not really all that much else to say about her that I haven’t already said. But, I will mention that she can see good spirits too. So it’s not all bad.

Kyousuke Yotsuya is Miko’s younger brother. He’s not really that important in the grand scheme of things. But since there aren’t many characters of note, I felt like adding him. He enjoys watching horror shows on TV, particularly with his sister.

Hana Yurikawa is a more important character. In a lot of ways, she’s the opposite of Miko. For example, there’s no way she’d be able to stay calm if she saw a ghost as Miko does. And Hana appears to have an ability that converts the calories she eats into a holy aura that eradicates ghosts.

Yuria Niguredou is a loner girl who Miko and Hana befriend. Like Miko, Yuria has “the sight.” But unlike Miko, Yuria’s sight is relatively weak. She can only see small, fairly harmless ghosts, not the massive, terrifying, and potentially deadly ones that Miko can.

Mitsue Takeda is an old fortune-teller who Yuria looks up to and wants to be like. Yuria learns of Miko’s sight after the latter visits Mitsue in search of prayer beads that will keep the ghosts at bay. Mitsue retires to her son’s house out in the country after witnessing Miko’s power.

Zen Toono is a man who’s haunted multiple spirits, including a bunch of cats and an extremely possessive woman. Why’s this random guy worthy of mentioning? Because he’s a recurring character who has a whole arc dedicated to him.

Horror x Ecchi

Here’s the part of the review in which I start to get a bit critical of Mieruko-chan. I don’t think it’s a particularly good anime. And the biggest reason for that is simply that it’s part horror and part ecchi. The comedy portion of the series doesn’t really matter to me.

Horror anime generally aren’t good. I’m sorry, horror fans, but it’s true. Parasyte -the maxim- and School-Live! might be the only horror anime I’ve seen that I would actually consider being good. But Parasyte is also a thriller and School-Live! has some mystery elements, which make them better than your standard horror.

Alright, so Mieruko-chan isn’t a great horror anime. I expected that when I started watching the series, so it’s not a huge deal. But Mieruko-chan also features ecchi, particularly in the first half of the season, and it’s an odd choice to mix with horror.

Obviously, the ecchi was a bad thing for the series because it detracted from the horror. All I want is for a horror anime to actually be scary. And I can assure you that it’s not going to be scary if it’s showing me a cute anime girl naked in the bath, no matter what ghosts may appear.

But don’t get me wrong, the ecchi was probably the best part of the whole anime. There was a lot of great content from the episode when Miko took a bath. But, the fact that the ecchi was so good is actually a bad thing, as well.

All the ecchi scenes really did was show me that this series would have been better if it just went all-in on both the horror or the ecchi. If you’re going to make a horror anime, make it a horror anime. And if you’re going to make great ecchi content, just make that the focus of the series.

Conclusion

Mieruko-chan is a 5/10. It does things well, like the ecchi. But it doesn’t commit to any one thing and I think that’s what hurts the series. It doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be, and so it will never truly be good.

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