Lint Speed: Lovely Complex 1

- Lint speed, what's that?
- Well when you do your laundry, you check your pockets and you don't find lint, right?
- Well, I suppose.
- But after it comes out of the dryer, what do you find?
- Lint?
- That's correct!
- How did it get there?
- (shrugs in response)
- It's THAT fast!
As recalled from the Tick Animated series.

And that's the speed that the anime version of "Lovely Complex" starts at. The first episodes introduces the main characters at rapid fire. Koizumi (small spring) Risa is a tall high school girl who falls asleep in the assembly the last day before summer break. When her homeroom teacher confronts her, she makes a joke of it and gets sentenced to summer classes. In the same supplemental lecture is her short classmate Otani (big valley) Atsushi. Also in the class are Nakabi, who is on the basketball team with Otani, and Nobu, Risa's friend and Nakabi's other half. Chiharu and Suzuki round out their group.

The Young All Halfling-Giant comedic duo.

Throughout the school year, they were labeled as the All Halfling-Giant comedy duo and they continue their cat and dog antagonism and "in stereo" comedic delivery during the beginning of the summer. However, the duo team up to win the objects of their affection. Otani is after Risa's petit friend Chiharu, while Risa has her eye on the tall Suzuki. What anime would be complete without a summer visit to the water? Otani invites Suzuki and Risa brings along Chiharu as the crew hits the pools. Risa and Otani show their childish sides and indulge in rides, while the more sedate Suzuki and Chiharu get to know each other.

The next day, the Halfling-Giant duo get hit the the first shells. Chiharu could talk with Otani, though because he was short and therefore didn't seem like a guy. Otani capsizes from the hit, but is revived with Risa's rough encouragement. Suzuki reveals that he felt similarly about Risa, though for the opposite reason.

Risa demonstrates to Otani just what friends are for.

The duo make one last try during a summer festival. Chiharu and Suzuki show up together and glow with compatible chemistry; the duo gives up. Not a pair to stay down, they run amok playing games and pigging out to an upbeat tune and end up holding hands. The episodes ends with Risa and Otani standing on the school roof top. They challenge each other to a bet to see who will score a date first.

The first episode stayed faithful to the original concept and events of Nakahara Aya's original shoujo manga. The anime preserve the best jokes (esp. Otani saying "Call me Kotani") and managed to throw in a bit of the new material (e.g. puppet Otani). Just as importantly, the anime kept the awkwardness of being a Halfling and a Giant.

I had a friend who was a lot like Koizumi. She was 6'-1" and had a lot going for her in the brains and looks, so I was surprised when she told me that she had been taunted early and often for being tall. And I'm talking here, on these shores, between sea to shining sea. This sort of real life conflict gives the anime heart. Often shoujo heroines (Miaka from Fushigi Yuugi comes to mind) are place holders; Mary Sues labeled "insert otaku-ette here". Male otaku are at least equally guilty with harem series and gal-games. Risa and Otani are stung by the barbs thrown at them, but face the challenges with a mixture of humor and courage.

The character managed to keep Koizumi's gangly attractiveness. Not every heroine needs to be klasically kawaii.

Koizumi struts all 170 cm (5'-7") of her stuff.

The anime stayed focused on the plot and comedy with a rapid, but still coherent, pace. The manga was more painful. Otani talked up Risa to Suzuki and Risa talked up Otani to Chiharu, resulting in a head-on collision. More importantly, Otani let go of Risa's hand during the festival; this set back their relationship in the manga. The writer had to bridge the distance in their relationship, while the anime moves their relationship forward more linearly.

The stuff shoujo is made from.

I think that it was the right design decision. Motion is a forte of anime. Internal dialogue is better suited for manga than animation. The pacing was well used to create a comedic momentum that serves the storyline well.

The first episode gives the viewer good reason to follow the series.

PS. Here's a trick for rapidly estimating height in inches from centimeters.
Memorize these three bench marks:
30 cm is about 1 foot or 12 inches
150 cm is about 5 feet
180 cm is about 6 feet

If the height is above 150 cm and less than 180 cm, subtract 150 from the height and remember 5 feet. Take the remainder and put it over 30. Round it to the nearest convenient fraction like 1/6, 1/4, 1/2, etc and proportion against 12 inches.

Risa's height = 170 cm
170 cm - 150 cm = 20 cm
20/30 = 2/3 AND 2/3 of 12 inches is 8 inches
Risa's height is about 5'-8". Mathcad 2001 Pro converts it to 66.929 inches or 5 feet 6.9 inches, which gives me a 1.6% error. Not bad for a quick estimate.

Otani's height is 14 cm less than Risa's or about 1/2 of 30 cm, which is 6" difference, or 5'-2". Mathcad gives 61.417 in or a 0.9% error.

Alternately, you could use 2.5 cm ~ 1 inch, but I work better with fractions.


P.P.S. In an attempt to put Risa's height in perspective, I did a bit of searching and stumbled over this neat website: http://www.tallpages.com/uk/ukstatist.php. About 3/4 the way down the page, Koizumi's height was equaled or surpassed by 0.0002 fraction of the women between 18-30 in 1987 or 1 in 5,000 women.

According to http://www.heightincreasewiki.com/index.php?title=Average_Height, the average height has migrated up 2 inches in the intervening 20 years, so Risa's height is not quite as much as an anomaly, but you would still need to look through a few high school to find some one as tall as Risa.

Take 3 years x 9 classes x 40 students x 50% women ~ 500 girls per high school. So say, Risa is now a 1 in 1000 case, you would need 2,000 students on average to find another girl at least as tall or 4 high schools. Though 5'-6" might be close enough.

Hopefully someone can find better stats out there, but that's enough for me tonight.