Winter Garden = heavenly

Winter Garden OVA: Would someone please make this a full-length series? I can say I have never been more surprised by an anime; to put it in another way, I did not expect Winter Garden to be a small piece of treasure like it is.

It starts off with the normal and rather over-used lonely girl on a snowy Christmas eve. There she is, our heroine, sitting in the park with her crushed cake (that snow can be slippery!), when suddenly a guy comes up and offers to exchange his perfect store-bought cake with this lousy box of mushed goodness. Seriously, who does that!?? I kept my patience and kept watching, and our lady in distress brings back the cake to share with her younger sister (who has no problem chowing it down). Imouto-san smells romance in the air and makes fun of her sister by way of instant-drawn yon-koma. This cracked me up:


Through different chances, our heroine managed to "accidentally" bump into the guy again, and now it's the guy's turn to come visit her at work, just cause he "had nothing better to do". Oh well, we'll take the cheesy romantic plot. Imouto-chan makes more smarty-pants remarks regarding her sister; pure gold, people. The first episode ends with the relationship beginning to blossom and the two go on a date, as the credits roll and the ED song comes on, and what do I see as the main characters' names but Dejiko and Puchiko?!?!?!? Oh WOW!!! Turns out Winter Garden is an OVA of the Di Gi Charat series where the two lives in sort of an alternate universe where they're normal human beings, aged approx. 20 and 16 (my guess). Of course, they are voiced by none other than the originals, Asami Sanada and Miyuki Sawashiro!! OMG just kill me now lol.

Off to ep.2 (now they actually start mentioning their names ^^"), and Dejiko is dating the clueless guy. Puchiko is off to work at a McDonald's (a real one too, talk about product placement lol), where she is bumbling around the place, but no matter, says the manager, the customers are all there to check her out anyway. The scene when she steps under the counter and the crowd returns to normal, and when she steps up they get all hearty/googly eyes is just priceless. She works there to raise money to buy herself a guitar for performing at her gakuen-sai. Dejiko's coworker sees her boyfriend being close with another girl, so when news got to Dejiko, she assumes the guy has moved on. No matter, she had to return to her old family to run the ryokan business anyway, so it was just as well. It was kinda sad to see Dejiko like that (and the plot actually becomes credible), but in the end there was closure since the mystery girl was just the guy's sister. A bittersweet end to an excellent OVA, and it has me clamoring for more.

Unfortunately these are usually one-off things so chances are slim that there would be new ones, but at least I'm enjoying the soundtrack and OP/ED songs. The best part was seeing the return of Dejiko and Puchiko. While Dejiko is more reserved and deredere, it was refreshing to see her in this way rather than the rambunctious and destructive Dejiko in the good old days. On the other hand, Puchiko (in this form) must be one of the funniest characters ever; her sarcasm is unmatched and well-handled by Miyuki-san. I am left speechless by Puchiko.

Manabi Straight ep.3 is watched and will be reviewed soon. In a battle of Manabi vs. Winter Garden, I wouldn't know what to choose ^^

~~Seitokaicho style~~