This wonderful anime centers on a parody character based on Ren from our favorite show, Ren and Stimpy, and his graceful exploits while dressed in drag. Well, actually that's not true at all except that it is more confusing than that. It's more confusing than 32 rampaging turtles trying to sing Pachelbel's Canon a cappella while forming a "human" butter churn out of their bodies and eating rice pudding. It's more confusing than this article. The basic plot is that a young Indiana Jones-type is trying to get the Salamander-something while one of his sisters and one of his teachers protect it. His other sister is involved in a police-like safety organization, and I think a third sister is in a spy network or something. The girl that likes him who he never notices is also a character. Then "Fairy Princess Ren" comes to him (she is small and speaks complete gibberish), and another fairy chasing the first one comes to that girl that likes him. The spies find out about this and speak in code to each other (note this is also like gibberish). Then someone's big plan unfurls and the wannabe Indiana Jones helps the Ren do something while he thinks he is helping her do another thing. Then the first episode ends with some nice explosions. The only real drawback to the series is that no one wants to translate the second, or any further, episode. Why, you ask? Because it almost killed three translators just in the first fifteen minutes. Something like Marmalade Boy (targeted at the 8th-grade speaking level) is relatively not bad to translate. BlackJack is a bit tougher, and Ponpoko is quite difficult. Fairy Princess Ren is truly impossible. Usually if, say, you have trouble with a word or two, the context clues will help you out, but here it's total gibberish, so you have to know every word and just do it literally; well sorta literally because any grammar in the Japanese gibberish must still be kept. Then you have the spy-like people who talk not in gibberish, but in code, which is like gibberish but not the same. I guess I can't say too much about it since I don't translate much myself, but I've written this with help from one of our resident translators, Lillian Olsen. Speaking of Lillian, she graduates this year, and we really need more translators to help us bring you more cool stuff that otherwise wouldn't be available. Don't worry, we won't make you translate the next episode of this nightmare, unless you want to. Back to the original topic, I personally loved this show, even though I have only seen one episode; maybe you'll feel the same, or perhaps green lake and monkeys. |