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The Wallflower
Anime DVD Review
The Wallflower has been an absolutely surprising riot to watch. I must admit it does start off like a yaoi when it introduces us to our first four main characters: Ranmaru, Kyohei, Yukinojo, and Takenaga. They are four of the most gorgeous guys to ever grace the Earth and at the moment they are all in a mansion and living a life of leisure thanks to Auntie Akiko. She sounds old but she is really young and beautiful; there have been descriptions of her as being the Marie Antoinette of the East. Their free ride is about to end though because Auntie Akiko has given them a job that they better accomplish or they'll have to pay back every cent of their old expenses and pay triple their normal rent in the future. Liking the sound of living an all expense paid lifestyle for the next year (I think we all would), our four guys will just have to teach a girl HOW to be a girl.
 After all only guys can show a girl what guys like. Ranmaru thinks that all girls are princesses and would only care to spend all his days devoting his love to them. Yuki has tenderness and purity to offer and cool Takenaga knows what works and what won't for a girl's future. All Kyohei wants is a nice home cooked meal and for people to stop groping his ass. All they have to do now is show Auntie Akiko's teenage niece, Sunako, how to become an elegant lady. It's not going to be easy to teach a socially awkward, acne faced, majorly chapped lipped, mangled haired, slightly psychotic, definitely paranoid, a tad neurotic, horror movie addicted fashion road kill to become a lady, nevermind becoming an *elegant* lady..
 After being sent to live with these guys in her aunt's mansion, it's amazing that Sunako is still alive. She refers to them as Creatures of the Light and gets a nosebleed every single time she is in their presence. She seems to get extreme nosebleeds whenever Kyohei is around, especially after she accidentally walked in on him taking a shower and saw EVERYTHING (I'm surprised she hasn't run out of blood at this point). If the nosebleeds don't kill her, her lessons definitely will since they run her ragged, chasing her back and forth in the mansion until she is too tired to fight them off from putting make-up on her, dressing her up in fashionable clothes, giving her facials or haircuts, making her sit through torturous lessons in etiquette, or throwing her into a cab to go to parties.
 Maybe the guys will be the ones that would be lucky to be alive after all this. Sunako has a tendency to revert back to her old scary self the minute the guys stop paying attention and creep them out. Between crawling out of the rosebushes like the girl crawling out of the TV in The Ring and maniacally laughingly while bloodily dicing up fish to prepare their supper, she can seriously give them a heart attack. If that doesn't work, she can continue to hold discussions with her anatomical dummies about how to assassinate Kyohei once she can stop getting nosebleeds from just looking at him. Maybe she can try her "exploding the lights mysteriously" trick again and scare them off? Oh, oh, oh, maybe the "sucking the life essence out of her surroundings" trick?
Let's see who gets to survive who after all the bloodshed, transvestite dressing, bomb exploding, nudity, role playing, swordplay, eyebrow plucking, food eating, dummy threatening, midget changing, and eerie supernatural stuff happenings, shall we?
Reviewed by Carolyn Whu, March 2008
Below: Scenes from the Wallflower.
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