Squid Girl Series 1 Complete Collection (Cert 12)

2 Discs (Distributor: Manga Entertainment) Running time: 306 minutes approx.

For years mankind has been polluting the ocean with its waste, toxins, bodily fluids and other general rubbish and it seems the inhabitants of the seas have had enough and want revenge. Step forward the irate Ika Musume, aka Squid Girl, who launches a solo invasion on humans to teach them a lesson for their poor treatment of the oceanic waters. With her hair like tentacles Ika-chan plans on making all humanity bow down before her in subservience before leading them on to global domination. Her first mission is to establish a home base of operations and she chooses the first building she comes across after arriving on land, the Lemon beach café. Unfortunately the café owners, sisters Eiko and Chizuru Aizawa, along withy younger brother Takeru, don’t take Ika-chan seriously. After the wannabe invader puts a hole in one of the café walls, she is forced to work off her debt. Slowly Ika-chan adapts to life above sea level, learning something new every day.

The “invader from the bottom of the sea” (per the DVD cover) first launched her campaign via Masahiro Anbe’s manga in 2007 with this adaptation from studio Diomedea hitting TV screens in 2010. It’s a delightfully comic affair which takes the formula of three short stories per episode detailing Ika-chan’s exposure to daily Japanese culture and her interactions with the extensive and occasionally whacky cast. While the idea of world domination tends to slip to wayside in favour of captivating new discoveries, such as video games, make-up and umbrellas, Ika-chan remains resolute in her indomitable spirit for showing mankind who the boss is, even if it gets her in huge amounts of trouble.

There is no overarching story line across these twelve episodes other than Ika-chan’s gradual assimilation of human life. The fact she is in human form – aside from her tentacle hair and squid hat which she cannot remove or she’ll die – and can speak is somewhat readily accepted by the land dwellers when Ika-chan makes her appearance. When no-one pays her any attention, Ika-chan’s attempts to make her mark often backfire, incurring the ire of hot headed Eiko, who takes an instant dislike to Ika-chan which subdues over the course of the show, and Chizuru, quiet, cheerful but scary as hell! Young Takeru plays with Ika-chan as a friend, eventually leading to the Aizawas taking her on as a lodger.

Over the course of the series, Ika-chan finds much value in the friendships she strikes up with the Aizawa family and surrounding regulars; these include: Sanae, a hyperactive young woman who develops an unrequited crush on Ika-chan; Nagisa, the part timer at the Lemon café who is scared of Ika-chan; Goro the nice but dim lifeguard who is in love with Chizuru; and Cindy Campbell, a bikini clad American investigator in charge of investigating aliens, which she believes Ika-chan is, with the aid of her inept scientists Harris, Clark and Martin. Elsewhere the owner of the rival South Winds café forces his beautiful but shy daughter Ayumi to attract customers so he dresses her up in a Squid Girl costume when Ika-chan becomes a hit at the Lemon cafe. And finally Kiyomi is a school girl who becomes Ika-chan’s first real friend when they meet after a prank goes wrong.

For someone (something?) supposedly a threat to mankind, Ika-chan is a fun and often adorable character who one feels for whenever she is taught a life lesson rather than being an obnoxious interloper who deserves everything they get. Whilst on land, Ika-chan’s impressively extendable tentacles earn her much praise at the Lemon café for her multi-tasking skills as well as help her win at various sports including volleyball and baseball; her ink helps create a new top selling cuisine at the cafe while her power of illumination make Ika-chan too effective during a night time trip to the graveyard. Even as Ika-chan acclimatises to human life, many elements of her cephalopod origins remain on display; for example she freaks out if she sees an inflatable killer whale thinking it’s the real thing or her favourite food is shrimp!

There is little not to like in the show itself – however where I DO have a gripe is in the handling of the translations from US licensee Media Blasters. The show’s original title is Shinryaku! Ika Musume which translates to Invade! Squid Girl – far more exciting than just Squid Girl I’m sure you’ll agree. Then we have the dialogue. As some of you may know the Japanese like their puns and many appear in anime which we foreigners never understand as they seldom translate well. This show isn’t any different in both that squid puns are used and the fact they don’t translate well. This however didn’t stop the US translators as both the subtitles and English dub are littered with annoying overuses of silly puns and supplanting of basic words. To wit: “invasion” becomes “ink-vasion” or “you gotta be kidding me” becomes “you gotta be squidding me” and so on, with “squid” or “squidding” thrown in at random. It not only becomes very annoying very quickly but one sometimes has to make sense of what the pre “squidified” sentence was!

The final gripe is a personal one. You may have noticed that I have referred to our heroine as “Ika-chan” in this review. This is pretty much what she is called in the Japanese dialogue while the English dub and subtitles call her “Squid Girl”, “Squiddie Girl” or just “Squiddie”. While these are accurate translations of “Ika Musume” I personally wish the translators could have met us halfway and used more informal “Ika-chan”, if only to maintain the cuteness factor.

These moans aside, Squid Girl is an immensely enjoyable series which provides laughs and slice-of-life humanity in a sun soaked package, starring arguably one of the most effervescent and engaging characters to hit anime for a long time. A bona-fide “guilty pleasure”!

Extras:

English Language 5.1 Surround

Japanese Language 2.0 with English Subtitles

Disc 2 Only:

Textless Opening

Textless Closing

Interview With Hisako Kanemoto

Hat Folding

OVA Mini Episodes

Ratings – **** /5

Man In Black