From left to right: Uruu Seiren, Juka Mutsuoka, Ranmaru Ai, Homura Hoterase, and Takara Utashiro
Fairy Ranmaru (the full title in Japanese being Fairy Ranmaru: Anata no Kokoro Otasuke Shimasu) is a 2021 magical boy anime animated by Studio Comet.
The anime follows five men that work on Bar F, a bar that heals the heart of its clients. Secretly, the five are members of noble fairy clans, recruited to go to Earth and collect "attachment" from people suffering from heartbreak.
The anime started on April 8th of 2021 as part of the Spring Season anime.
Compare the Cute High Earth Defense Club series, which was a direct inspiration for Fairy Ranmaru as well as being animated by the same studio (...aside from the 1st season of LOVE!, that is).
Taboo rescinded! Love! Dazzling! Tropes!
- Art Shift:
- The human and fairy forms of the main characters are designed and animated by different teams, giving them distinct looks. The human forms look softer and more stylized, while the fairy forms are more detailed and, well, more anatomically correct.
- The battlefields are inspired by the work of a famous artist or art style, ranging from Vincent Van Gogh's paintings to late 90s anime.
- The ED is made on a different art style more influenced by paintings and richer in detail.
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: Every episode ends with one, where the fairies fight the weekly villain in surreal battlefields shaped after the latter's psyche.
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: Zig-Zagged. The boys are drawn with nipples when they are in their fairy forms, but they vanish when they turn into humans.
- Big Damn Kiss: The show may involve a lot of kissing, but we finally get a non-transformation version between Uruu and Homura, complete with sweeping music and dramatic zoom out.
- Bond One-Liner: Whenever the fairies unlock the heart of the Monster of the Week."Assumption of the Holy Mother! Go to heaven!"
- The Casanova: Takara. He's with a new woman every episode and is shown to be sexually active with the women he dates, despite one of the fairy rules forbidding it.
- Clothing Damage:
- The final shot of the ED shows the main characters in their transformed outfits now sporting a lot of them ripped off and showing torso, legs, chest, and even a bit of crotch.
- At the end of Episode 7, Chilka stabs Homura in the chest, shattering his gem, which (for some reason) causes most of his clothes to combust.
- Jyuka fights against a giant plant in episode 8, which releases a sticky acid that burns off part of his clothes, including the back of his pants.
- Dean Bitterman: The villainess of Episode 8. She loathes children and childcare, yet she runs a kindergarten because she inherited it from a relative. While she doesn't do anything bad to the kids themselves, she sees them as things she can profit from, and she's exploitative and verbally abusive towards the teachers she employs.
- Dual Age Modes: With the exception of Jyuka, the fairies' human disguises look significantly younger than their original forms.
- Duel to the Death: The fights between the main characters and their adversaries end with the opponent getting their souls sent to heaven by one of the main characters, ensuring the victim always gets their justice in the end.
- Executive Meddling: In-Universe example. Episode 2, Wrath, focuses on a young mangaka who wants to make a series about a hero she modelled after Homura, but her editor has the main character changed into a Moe little girl because it appeals to his personal tastes.
- Fanservice: A lot. Characters' outfits are pretty much on the "skimpy battle outfit" subcategory, and both the OP and ED lean into it. The ED goes particularly hard on it, showing all the male characters tied up in shibari-like set-ups and naked. The transformation sequences themselves lean hard into fanservice territory.
- Female Gaze: The transformation sequences go hard on this. There are about 10 seconds of the transformation that are nothing but going down the transforming man's body showing off torso and legs, and at least one moment of those transformations focus on the character's crotch, like showing Ranmaru wearing a glowing thong before pants appear as well as seeing the cloth wrapping itself around Homura's crotch to make his thong.
- Feuding Families: The Ignis and Aqua Clans have never gotten along well due to their differing values and temperaments, something that bleeds into Homura and Uruu's relationship, though Takara hints the two might have more personal reasons to dislike each other.
- Ghibli Hills: The Arbor Clan's territory, beautiful green fields sprinkled by towering flora and floating houses.
- Her Boyfriend's Jacket: Invoked in Episode 3. Souji doesn't want his relationship with Iyo to go public, and has told her not to upload photos of the two together to her social media. Iyo, however, wants other girls to know she's dating him, so she posts selfies wearing Souji's clothes.
- Hive Caste System: Fairies are divided in five clans, each of them specialized in a role:
- The Lux Clan handles religious rites and are considered the strongest of all the clans.
- The Ignis Clan specializes in combat.
- The Aqua Clan handles administrative issues.
- The Arbor Clan heals the injured and tends the crops.
- The Metallum Clan handles finances.
- Incest Subtext: A lot in episode 10. Takara fights against an evil illusion of his mother, which throws herself atop of him, sits on his lap and pours liquor from her mouth to his, the subsequent scene shows them at an angle that seems like they're having sex before her transforming into a fat version of herself and try to suffocate him with the weight of her breasts.
- Laser-Guided Karma: The Monster of the Week gets their comeuppance related to the injustices brought upon the fairies' clients, while also improving the lives of the clients. For example, in Episode 1, the class Alpha Bitch, responsible for bullying Ranmaru's client to near-suicide, becomes the school pariah. The client, meanwhile, is much happier and now has a boyfriend. In Episode 2, the mangaka's editor gets fired for his misconduct, and the mangaka gets her manga about Homura published. In Episode 9, this gets deconstructed; while Uruu's client no longer has to live with an unfaithful mother, it came at the cost of her mother's life, because she was the instigator of the affair. The man she had an affair with gets back with his significant other scot free, ending the job on a very bitter note.
- A Magic Contract Comes with a Kiss: The fairies need to kiss their clients in order to trigger their Transformation Sequence and enter the battlefields.
- Mail-Order Bride: Ruise, the shopkeeper from Episode 5, is offered to become one to pay her family debts. She's heartbroken at the idea, but decides to accept because her future husband has also promised to pay for her sick father's medical expenses. Thankfully, Takara's intervention guarantees that she doesn't have to go through with it.
- Moe: In-universe, this is the subject of the second episode, when an editor tries to force his mangaka to draw moe when she wants to draw men.
- Monster of the Week: In the metaphorical sense. The enemies the fairies fight against are people that make their clients miserable in some way.
- Our Fairies Are Different: The five main characters are all fairies who are disguised as humans. As fairies, they don't look much different from humans aside from having wings and Pointy Ears. The fairy world they hail from is ruled by the Fairy Queen and runs on a Hive Caste System, with each of the fairies hailing from one of the five fairy clans.
- The Power of Hate: Homura collects power from a woman's rage and is able to use it to fight.
- Sea Sinkhole: The Aqua Clan's realm is a floating ocean with one of these in the center.
- Shout-Out:
- In episode 4, the abstract world is heavily inspired by Vincent van Gogh's paintings, with the background being "The Starry Night", while the area is a field of Sunflowers (a subject that he painted extensively).
- In episode 5, Takara fights an enemy made out of parts of Pablo Picasso's "Guernica" painting. The entire abstract world he is in is heavily influenced by his Cubist style.
- Single Mom Stripper: Tina from Episode 10, who is working her hardest as an exotic dancer to provide for her toddler. In an unusual case, she's still in contact with the father, but he doesn't take care of his own child and mostly uses Tina to feed his gambling addiction, stringing her along by promising to marry her once he wins big. The episode ends with her quitting her job and moving to New York, starting a career at a circus.
- Snake Oil Salesman: Episode 6's Victim of the Week. She's portrayed rather sympathetically for someone making a living out of selling quack medicine to the elderly, as her boss horribly mistreats her and she's been wanting to quit for a long time.
- Transformation Sequence: As usual in the genre, each fairy gets a lengthy, detailed, fanservice-rich one.
- Underwater Kiss: Uruu gives Homura a long one after the latter falls unconscious into a lake. While it's of the "breath of air" variety, fans were quick to point out that CPR usually doesn't involve putting your tongue in the other person's mouth.
- Volcano Lair: A heroic example. the Ignis Clan's territory is located in a volcanic Floating Continent, with their palace being right on top of a volcano.
- Woobie of the Week: The episodes center around the fairies trying to help a troubled human (which just happen to always be girls or young women) deal with a problem or making a wish come true.
- World in the Sky: The fairy world is made out of a ring of islands floating over a vast ocean. The Queen's Palace is located in the center of the ring, with the surrounding islands being the homes of the different clans.
