Kashimashi Episode 1: So full of yuri goodness!

So, the new season of anime has begun and the first and best series, truly near and dear to my heart, is Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl. Since the term "kashimashi" is given in katakana there's no direct translation, nor does it seem to refer to any of the characters.

Our hero, Hazumu, is walking through the woods trying to survive a broken heart. A sensitive boy with soft facial features and longish hair, he had been pressed by his friends to confessing his crush the pretty girl Yasuna but Yasuna rejected him. Hazumu is so sensitive that he's president of the school gardening club and often wanders the woods looking for native flowers, so it's clear that he's not lost, but as he wanders he stumbles upon the places where he first met Yasuna and they collected flowers together which does not help his state of mind.

Back at the school, his friend Asuta is looking for him to give him a "guy thing, a rejection relief package." Asuta meets Tomari and Ayuki, two female friends of Hazumu, and tells them the terrible truth. As it gets dark and they have not found Hazumu, Ayuki confronts Asuta over the contents of the package and both get terribly mad at him when they learn it contains porn. "Hazumu is not that kind of guy!" Tomari says, giving Asuta the anime equivalent of a slap across the face. Tomari then seems to get very emotional herself and Ayuki says, "You pushed him too, didn't you? Because if he and Yasuna worked out, you thought that might make your own crush on him go away." Tomari nods her agreement.

Interleaved with this concern for Hazumu, we've been getting odd shots of an alien spaceship which seems to be spiraling wildly out of control and heading for Earth. (Hey, it's anime! What do you expect?) It seems to be headed straight for Hazumu's home town.

Yasuna, meanwhile, has dug up a small bush of flowers she had planted right next to Hazumu's, and replanted them in the woods. She starts to cry and says, "Once again, I'm alone."

Our trio get to Hazumu's house in the hopes of finding him. His parents are freaking out, his teacher Namiko (who looks and acts like a slightly toned-down version of Mitsuka from DearS) is of no help, and then the alien ship appears in the sky and comes under control just as it strikes the mountain. A message booms out in Japanese, and video appears in the sky: "Our appearance is an accident and we mean you no harm. This human was injured by our actions. We return her to you, fully repaired." The picture is of Hazumu. The spaceships drops Hazumu on a beam of light into the woods more or less near the impact site, just as both Yasuna and Tomari get there. Hazumu, apparently unaware of what has happened, sits up stark naked and looks back and forth between the two girls. "What?" Hazumu asks. "Is something wrong?"

It's obvious from the set-up that there are two things going on in the series: comedy over Hazumu learning to be a girl (and others learning to accept her as a girl), and romance as both Yasuna and Tomari recalibrate their attraction to Hazumu and try to figure out if that'll all work. Given that the end credits repeatedly shows them arranged in a triangle (with triangle motifs everywhere) I think that not only will they get over it, but that fireworks are gonna fly.

I'm just shivering with antici.. (say it! say it! say it!) pation!

One thing: the fansubs I've seen so far are terrible. Doremi seems to have one out today; I'll download it and see if it's any good. I watched the original raw and understood at least half of it. Admittedly the vocabulary's not very hard: "Wow, pretty flowers, huh?" and "Hurry and get me out of here!" are well within my target range. The aliens on board their ship subtitled; I have no idea what they were saying but it was probably something along the lines of "We're gonna crash!"

Yay! More yuri makes Elf happy!