Märchen Awakens Romance

Phantom and Alviss

Märchen Awakens Romance is what anyone would describe as a typical shounen anime, using a plot far too common in this kind of series. Toramizu Ginta, the son of an author of fantasy books, is an outcast in his own school. Without brains, physical strength or charm, his only friends are the girl Koyuki and his videogames. He dreams often of going to another world, fight monsters and saving the princess... and one day, a mysterious door opens in the middle of his school and takes him to the land of Mär-Heaven.

Soon he discovers that he's stronger than he was in Earth, has more stamina, and doesn't even needs his glasses. Meeting the witch Dorothy, he finds out about ÄRMs, jewels that grant magical powers to the users. It doesn't take much longer to find why he was summoned to this world.

Phantom and Alviss

An evil group called "Chess no Koma" (Chess Pieces) is trying to conquer Märchen, and the only hope is a person from another world, since the Chess, in the past, tried to conquer MÄR, but failed because a warrior like Ginta was summoned from Earth.

Pretty cliché, huh? The anime extends itself for 102 episodes with tournament-style fights without a single drop of blood, a show obviously aimed at small boys. Strangely enough, the manga is full of gore, violence, blood and nudity. The only thing that doesn't get cut out in the anime is the erotic factor of the series - for a kid's show, you get plenty of girls without clothes and... slashiness. Yes. Where in the manga you don't get a hint between the characters, in the anime you get almost canon relationships.

Ginta and Phantom

Most of the male characters have beautiful designs, and it's a feast for fangirls who like pretty boys. It's a pity the animation quality is quite bad in the majority of the episodes, and it's more common to find the characters being drawn weirdly than beautifully.

What got me most attracted to MÄR, as it's called, are the characters interactions and personalities. Even though most of them fits in a typical role (the cold pretty boy, the cute girlish boy, the playboy, the hyperactive main character) , their stories and relationships beg to be slashed.

And in the anime, they were.

It surprised me, as a fan of the original series, how the producers turned an show aimed at male audience into a slash fangirl's dream. With 102 episodes, anyone could guess there would be fillers... but not that there would be a full arc created to expose the relationship between three of the male characters.

Alviss and Nanashi

Phantom, the villain of the series, constantly hits on Alviss, the pretty boy who summoned Ginta to the world of Mär-Heaven. He went as far as trying to kiss Alviss - twice! Alviss hates Phantom with passion, and in the anime this was twisted so much that, in an episode, Phantom is shown to keep Alviss in a collar. When Alviss cries, Phantom licks his tears. And there's also Rolan, another knight of the Chess, who was saved by Phantom when he was a kid and devotes himself to the man. He often fights Alviss, and his jealousy is obvious.

There are plenty of hugs, public displays of affection, and it's definitely a must watch for every fan of shounen anime who would like it to be spiced with BL. While it has a few strong points (the music is top notch: the opening and endings are sung by Garnet Crow, whose songs are very creative and original, and the background music is so beautiful it made me cry a few times; the work of the seyuu is awesome, too, specially Mitsuki Saiga as Phantom), patience is needed, since the BL only begins later on and, until then, MÄR isn't this great.