Ristorante Paradiso #01 — Ouran Ripoff Club

April 8th, 2009

 

Only creepier and without any of the wit.

New Season Disclaimer:

I prefer to give every show a chance. You never know when your dream-eating insect wielding Mai HiME knockoff will turn out to be a psychological romantic thriller, or the strange moeblob show will be full of wit and urine jokes. However, my preferences are still my preferences, and while I’ll endevor to at least convey why I do or do not like things, there are genres of shows that I just plain don’t particularly enjoy. My opinions are based on nothing more than a gut reaction to what I watched literally 10-15 minutes prior and should be construed as nothing more and nothing less than that.

Actually, the first two episodes aired as a special broadcast… and both are up on Crunchyroll as well.

Impressions:

You know the story… mother abandons daughter, whiny girl with mommy issues chases mother to Rome, finds her mother running a giggolo restaurant of old men, falls in love with married man twice her age. Maybe Nicoletta would have been a little bit more of a sympathetic character if her first stated goal wasn’t to ruin her mother’s life out of spite some 15 years after the fact. To make matters worse, the episode 2 preview was Nicoletta straddling and undressing him. I… I don’t even want to know. Production was bleh at best with the most egregious abuse of CG outside of the Children of the Corn show.

I’m not really even certain who this is aimed at to be honest. Is this supposed to be a trashy romance? Some kind of coming of age? Who wants to see an old man getting busy with a young woman, or I suppose more accurately, some whiny little bint trying to seduce old men? Please don’t answer that. They even went through all the old men and their manharem roles, despite half of them being married. I’m out. I’m so out. 

Ristorante OP

Preview:

I… what? No!

Posted in Anime | 19 Comments »

19 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • digitalboy says:
    April 8, 2009 at 5:36 pm

    you obviously don’t know any fujoshi, who are currently masturbating furiously at this show.

    Also, ouran ripoff? it’s more maid cafe than host club, and you can’t pretend ouran invented the host club concept either.

    • Aroduc says:
      April 8, 2009 at 5:51 pm

      At which point we come to the crux of the matter, does Aroduc care about the semantics of manharems?

    • miya says:
      April 9, 2009 at 1:28 am

      you obviously don’t know any fujoshi, who are currently masturbating furiously at this show.

      That made me laugh.

      Although… the series has a relatively decent following of women in their early to mid twenties, which isn’t exactly surprising as that IS the show’s target audience. Fujoshis tend to gravitate more towards bishounen, not older gentlemen. In all my years, I haven’t come across any spazzing fujoshis (which is probably a good thing.)

      • Nellie says:
        April 9, 2009 at 6:04 pm

        This is based on a seinen manga which means it’s target audience is 18-30+ year old men. I’ve no idea why, but Homo seems to have an opinion on the matter.

  • Anonymous says:
    April 8, 2009 at 5:42 pm

    Why does every shojo draw their characters with big noses?

    Do girls like big noses?

  • Taiyaki says:
    April 8, 2009 at 5:44 pm

    I’d rather see these two old dudes from Antique Bakery dance happily in the rain than something like this.

  • lelangir says:
    April 8, 2009 at 8:51 pm

    >>you obviously don’t know any fujoshi, who are currently masturbating furiously at this show.

    I LOL’D BIG!

    But yes, comparing this to Ouran simply on the genre of manharem is dumb, because obviously this is quite different tha…oh shi you probably don’t care.

  • Aroduc says:
    April 8, 2009 at 9:41 pm

    Well, manharem isn’t a genre, it’s a premise. And the two are nigh identical. An organization of males catering to different fetishes whose job is to flirt with girls are joined in their work by a female.

    The difference is the genre. One is a comedy, and the other is… I have no idea, bad dimestore romance?

    • shio says:
      April 8, 2009 at 10:02 pm

      So which is Ranma 1/2?

    • miya says:
      April 9, 2009 at 1:18 am

      And the two are nigh identical. An organization of males catering to different fetishes whose job is to flirt with girls are joined in their work by a female.

      That ‘Ouran Ripoff’ snark is misplaced. So the two concepts are similar, does that mean the two shows are identical? Going by that logic, that must mean 99% of shounen series are total rip offs of one another because they all use one single formula.

      I’ve been a longtime fan of the Rispara and Gente series, and I can tell you that Ouran and Rispara are *nothing* alike.

  • lousy jingles says:
    April 8, 2009 at 10:30 pm

    In case anyone didn’t know, this is based on a seinen manga, which means it is aimed at men. That’s just makes it even stranger, doesn’t it?

  • Nellie says:
    April 8, 2009 at 11:19 pm

    Hilarious! Anyway, the older man twice her age is divorced and her grandmother told her to go to Rome. As for the straddling, nothing happens since he isn’t interested. I think the girl is upset that her mother abandoned her for a man and won’t acknowledge her. Oops, right! You don’t care.

  • kosjin says:
    April 9, 2009 at 8:02 pm

    A possible May-December romance is fine with me, heck, it’s not like we’ve been privy to anime (or even manga, I suppose) like that before anyway.

  • Zaku Spring Impressions | hontou ni sou omou? says:
    April 9, 2009 at 8:42 pm

    […] Aroduc, I thought the CG was ok; it did evoke nice memories of the streets of […]

  • tertyl says:
    April 9, 2009 at 9:57 pm

    Right, so women are allowed to fap furiously at a host of old gigolos but Flying Spaghetti Monster forbid if any fanservice is shown in elsewhere involving women.

  • Kazu-kun says:
    April 11, 2009 at 2:11 pm

    @Nellie, @ousy jingles

    You’re wrong. Ristopara is not a seinen manga. Manga Erotic F, the magazine this was serialized in, is an alternative magazine that targets both genders, not a seinen magazine, and Ristopara in particular caters to their female audince.